"tiktok Has Massive Problems That Even If You Don't Agree With A Complete Ban Have To Be Addressed For

However frustrating the recent drama on the left has been (and it has been very frustrating), let's all remember how much worse it is on the right (and how much funnier, since I don't have a sense of dread every time one of these far-right idiots trips on his own feet). The Red text says, in French: "Live, 2024 legislative elections: a third preliminary investigation targets Eric Ciotti".

Edgin + being completely normal in his reactions to Xenk

On Plagiarism and Academia

Welp, I watched hbomberguy's new video (just like everyone else). And... I loved it! (Go figure) It's a great video, he's genuinely funny and presents the information in an engaging way (I barely even noticed it had been four hours), and we need the information he presented very badly to remind us to independently verify the things we're listening to. But something that he said really struck me because it's something that I'm dealing with in my offline life right now. Disclaimer: this is a hypothesis generated from my own personal observations and experiences and isn't meant to be a sweeping statement of every single academic institution across the entire world.

He seemed really surprised that no one (or very few people) noticed that the Youtubers he was calling out were plagiarizing other people. Like. Really surprised. And at one point, he made the argument that maybe that was because plagiarism was viewed only as a problem in academia, so people assumed it wasn't a problem online and weren't looking for it.

And that hit a chord because the thing is, at least in my small corner of the world, I don't think that plagiarism is a problem in academia. Or, rather, I don't think academia views plagiarism as a problem anymore.

So, if you've been following me for a while, you know I have a whole tag about my struggles in grad school. I've been a grad student for the last six years at [insert major university here], and because my lab doesn't have any funding to pay me, I've been employed as a TA all six years to pay my salary. At this school, in my department, TAs are expected to proctor exams--every single exam for the course and frequently one additional exam from another class.

If we see cheating, we're not supposed to call it out in the middle of the exam. Instead, at the end of the exam, we're supposed to take the student's scantron and hand it over to the professor and give them an estimate on how certain we are the student was cheating so they can pass it on to the university, which, in every syllabus of every class, states they take a hardline stance on cheating and plagiarism. (Yes, I know I'm talking about cheating on exams, which isn't the same thing as plagiarism, but I swear I'll loop back around to it in a minute.)

During the first exam I ever proctored during my first semester of my first year in 2018 (this was three weeks into the semester), I caught a student cheating. Like. Blatantly cheating. Cheating so badly that over a dozen separate people came up to me at the end of the exam to tell me that she was cheating, just in case I hadn't seen it myself. I did exactly what I was supposed to.

I took the student's scantron.

I turned it into the professor and told her that I was 100% certain and had witnesses to back me up.

She gave it to the university.

...And the university came back and said that they weren't going to do an investigation and were just going to let the student take the exam again, this time with a different proctor because they felt I was biased against this student because of the "very serious accusations [she] had leveled against [me] of singling her out for her race." (Newsflash: the student cheated again with that different proctor and got away with it again)

During that first year that I spent as a TA, I reported eight different instances of cheating across six separate exams. Every single one, I was 100% positive that the student had been cheating, and on five of the occasions, I had student witnesses to support my accusation. The university tossed every single accusation out without even a cursory investigation or even filing a report. Oh yeah, really hardline stance there, university.

For the most part (and partially because of distance learning), I stopped reporting cheating, but I tried one more time this past spring to report two cheaters and got back the same result that I did my first year: not even an investigation to see if there was any merit into my claim because they're "busy."

I don't report cheating to the university anymore. They've more than shown me that they don't actually take cheating seriously even when I have more than a dozen people supporting me. Even when I have students half out of their chairs to see what the person in front of them is writing. Even when I have students with their phones out on the desks, looking things up. The university doesn't care, so why should the students?

So how do I loop this back into the discussion on plagiarism? Well, yesterday, while grading my students' final papers, I ran one of them through a plagiarism checker, and it pinged the radar. Two sentences were a direct quote and hadn't been listed in quotations or been cited in the body of the text. If I scrolled through the (long) list of citations at the bottom of the paper, I could find the source, but if it hadn't pinged the checker, I would never have known that those two sentences weren't their own.

The lack of the quotations and the source after the quote is what kicks this over the line into plagiarism, regardless of the source in the later bibliography (the same thing that got Illuminaughtii in trouble on hbomberguy's video). But I was willing to assume it was an honest mistake, and so I emailed the student to ask them to please add the proper citation and resubmit the paper.

This should have taken the student maybe--at most--five minutes to fix. Literally, all it needed was a set of quotation marks and a parenthetical aside with the author's name and year.

Instead, I got a response from the student telling me that they were very busy, it was finals week, and they weren't sure when they could get to it. Oh, and by the way, what grade would they get on the assignment if they didn't fix the source?

It was a stunning lack of regard for the error they'd made on their original submission, and now, because I'd brought it to their attention, if it wasn't fixed, it was willful plagiarism--and we both knew that! They can't claim ignorance or an accidental mistake anymore. We both know that they're passing off someone else's words as their own!

I emailed them back and told them if it wasn't fixed, it would be a 0, and then I messaged the instructor and asked her what happens now? Her response was as disheartening as my previous experience with the university's response to cheating: they'll dismiss it, regardless of their supposed hardline stance, and nothing will happen. Don't even bother reporting it; the most we can do is give the student the 0 I'd already threatened.

So there you have it. This particular university doesn't care if you cheat or plagiarize. Academic dishonesty doesn't mean anything to them--and the students know it. Every year the topic of cheating comes up with my students during my office hours, and every time, the students complain about how their sorority sisters and football team members and fellow classmates get away with cheating over and over and over again because they know the university won't do anything about it, so why should they bother maintaining any kind of integrity? I even asked them if they reported it to their proctors and instructors, and while I got back a few yeses, I got even more why bothers. What's the point of reporting it if nothing is going to happen?

To loop this back into hbomberguy's video, I don't think as few people noticed the plagiarism as he thinks. I think quite a few people noticed (and looking through the comments on the various videos of the James Somerton scandal, not just hbomberguy's, I do see more than a couple comments along those lines). The thing is, I think they kept that to themselves. And though I do think that part of that has to do with the mob mentality of fandoms on the internet and the fear of getting attacked for pointing out something shitty that someone else is doing, I think a lot of it also comes down to this: plagiarism is thought to be an academia problem, therefore the way the academics respond to plagiarism should be what we look to to deal with the same problem elsewhere. But if the way the academics respond to plagiarism is to ignore it and sweep the reports under the rug, then why would we ever think that Youtube, of all places, would deal with it any better?

I understand that 'Yefreitor' is a modifier added to a rank when you refuse a promotion. And that 'Detective' works basically the same way (except that the way you acquire it is kess clear). But I'm still unsure about satellite-officer. Is it a modifier ? Because no one is calling Jean anything else. We know that you become Satellite-officer if your partner is promoted and 'you rise with him'. But does it replace your actual rank? Are all Satellite-officer equals? MacLaine is also a Satellite-officer, but his partner is a sergeant, so does Jean outrank him even though their titles are EXACTLY THE SAME? How do people know?

And if it is a modifier if another rank, why not say the rank like they do with Yefreitor? Like Lieutenant-Satellite.

It's just such a weird rank to have. Have they been promoted but they have to keep the Satellite designation to remember where they come from? You can be a Lieutenant[normal], a Lieutenant [Yefreitor][complimentory] or a Lieutenant [Satellite][derogatory] ? How do you get rid of the modifier that says 'you're not that good but this other guy is, so... ' ?If you change partner, are you demoted? To a rank below? To the last rank that you held on your own?

Incredibly confusing hierarchical system.

LE PEN EST MORT!!!

So I'm relistening to Malevolent, as you do, and this will forever be one of my favourite interactions ever:

...

I remember when I first saw the Coming Out Video. I spent most of it wondering if I had lost the ability to recognize faces.

New Philosophy Tube Dropping in May

The next episode of Philosophy Tube is gonna be very special I'm travelling back in time to chat to my past self, and it does not go well... More pics on my Patreon now!

I also want to say a special thanks to you all on this one. Today we cross-shot a dramatic scene with three cameras, a dedicated sound engineer, a hair and makeup artist, a professional actor, plus me. We had a full hour lunch break and everyone got paid a pro rate. I'm proud of the production quality we're able to achieve on Philosophy Tube and, I hope, of the way the crew get tret - that's super important to me. When patrons and Nebula subscribers trust me with their money it's important to me that it goes on the screen.

So thank you. This kind of thing just would not be possible without audience support - Patreon subscribers and Nebula subscribers - because advertising doesn't pay for quality like this.

La décennie du numérique.

Goddamn voting website is not working are you fucking kidding me

There is also the glory of Hogfather's villain, Teatime. In both the English and French version, he gets irritated because people mispronounce his name. But in French, Teatime translates to "L'heure du thé", which he insists is pronounced "Le Redouté" (The Dreaded One)

I deeply appreciate the fact that Discworld translators add their own terrible, terrible puns.