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Laura Locke Estes

@lblestes.bsky.social

Assistant Professor at Pepperdine | writes on Syriac Christian exegesis, early Islam, and construction of religious identity

163 Posts386 Follower354 Folgt
Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 2w ago

The über rich do not live in the same world as you or I. This guy's shock at totally normal security implies he goes years w/out pumping gas and suggests he's been offloading all sorts of typical tasks to human assts for a long time, & it's not surprising that he'd see an AI asst as the same thing.

Matt Ford@mford.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...

So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading. What do you think when you hear that? The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter? That’s my question for you. Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does. But there must be some set of skills that matter. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those. There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.
Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · last mo.

Every fall semester I forget that there is such a thing as being "in teaching shape," so I get home after the second day of school and my legs are tired, my voice is tired, and my brain feels like mush from too many hours of extroverting.

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

If anyone's wondering how the desk riser/walking pad set up is going, it's great! I do most of my grading, reading on a screen, email writing, and other not very deep work tasks while walking at 1 mph. If I'm actively writing I usually need to turn the pad off and just stand.

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'm striking out in all the usual places... Syriacists, has anyone figured out how to get Word for Mac to stop breaking connections between letters after diacritical marks? (keyboard/font work fine in google docs, mellel, and on a PC, it's just this dang Mac Word update that finally snuck through)

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 3mo ago

After assembling my new standng desk, I put on my heat compression mask for dry eyes while laying on my cervical traction pillow and think: is middle age is just an ever-expanding nighttime routine?

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The university-required travel company is insisting we take a 3.5 hour layover instead of a 2 hour layover, so you all can look forward to me complaining in July about arriving to my gate 2+hours early. 😇

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Not a single one of my 33 students told me that the Canvas module for today wasn't published (meaning, not a single one of my 33 students did the reading, meaning we're all going to encountering Kant together for the first time in class). Pray for me.

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 6mo ago

If you're wondering how it feels to finally have my kids back in school after their two-week spring break that did not align with my university's break, the answer is: it feels like 1500 new words towards my current project!!

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A dear friend shared her Olympics local presale slot with me and now we're headed to the Men's Team Artistic Gymnastics finals at #LA28 (plus tennis and women's soccer!) fingers crossed we get another "pommel horse guy" moment of brilliance

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 6mo ago

As #SBLAAR26 paper acceptances go out, anyone who’s trying to figure out to juggle parenting while at a national conference should say hi! I presented at my first SBL w/my 4 month old in the audience (paper title, appropriately, was “Babes Who Need Milk: some subtitle about anti-Jewish polemic”)

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Watching my tiny alma mater play Oklahoma’s only HBCU for the NAIA Men’s Basketball Championship tonight. There’s something really charming about college athletics sans the crazy money and marketing machines.

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Somehow evaluating paper proposals for four different conference units, reading apps for a scholarship committee, and kicking off the search/being committee chair for our church's new children's minister all fell in the same week, and 10/10 would not recommend.

Laura Locke Estes@lblestes.bsky.social · 10mo ago

what are the best staplers? the ones that never jam and aren't finicky, even if you're someone who has weak grip strength and likes to hold them sideways and staple in the air instead of using the table?? I would pay good money for the perfect stapler.