To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enrichment to kids like mine who are able to learn quickly and are ready for more advanced learning opportunities, only to discover that it is haphazard, often in name only, and there isn't time or interest in providing more.
But it's not because of some drive for 'equity'. I've talked with teachers (as friends, not in a school setting). They're doing what they can with the resources they have.
The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the 4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example).
Also no point. But honestly, if you want people to have kids earlier, you need to make them think that their life won't be bleak if they do.
Whipping Star has some amazing alien vs human discourse (at least, that's my memory from ~20 years ago!). It was the first time I found alien dialog that didn't sound like repackaged English.
The really fun thing is to realize that juggling is a meta-hobby. I started out with juggling balls, a short time on rings, spent a long time on clubs, and now spend my time trying to apply some of that to juggling hoops. Plus there's kendama, yo-yo, diablo, poi, and contact juggling, all of which are also available for juggling (I've never seen someone juggle yo-yos, but kendama, diablo, and poi, it's all attested).
As someone who has always picked up and put down hobbies, juggling has stuck with me because it's easy for me to just shift slightly and now have a very different experience even though it's all "just juggling".
My history was teaching myself 3-ball cascade, reverse cascade and then figuring I was 'done' with juggling. When I went to teach my kids in, in an attempt to get them to understand "improvement by inches", I discovered that youtube now has slow-motion breakdowns of every trick you might ever want to do. I picked it back up more than 5 years ago now and still go to regular local meetups. (sadly, my kids didn't ever really get into it)
There are several philosophical approaches to the purpose of prison.
1. Revenge
2. to keep society safe from dangerous/anti-social people
3. to provide a safe space for rehabilitating people for re-integration.
I tend to view (1) as the worst possible option, even discounting the fact that we are completely 100% aware of the existence of false convictions. You are entitled to believe that revenge is a valid society choice, but I will definitely judge you for believing that.
I know American management isn't a monolith, but over the course of my career, I have gotten extremely good play by educating people about blameless RCAs both for myself and my chain below, and across chains. Once I make it clear that the goal is to understand how this happened, and how to make it not happen again (or at least how to think about the risk-vs-cost calculation), most people would get onboard.
I've on occasion also educated up the chain on why attacking someone is an anti-pattern. If you can get the higher-ups onboard, then attacks tend to be viewed as a problem in and of themselves. Or, and this is certainly possible, I'm incredibly naive and have just been very lucky.
I know this is off topic, but having spent a significant amount of time convincing people around me to use signal, once they remove this feature, literally 100% of the non-tech folks I've gotten onto signal will drop it and move back to SMS. It makes me so sad.
I'm certainly unconvinced that the first part of that statement is true. We've seen self-driving cars run into static obstacles. We still need to deal with emergent behaviour of groups of self-driving cars. There are still unpredictable environmental factors that we rely on humans to work out now.
Stupid question(s) for a non-medical person who doesn't even know enough to be wrong.
I really thought "inflammation" is/was a generic term for a myriad of different causes and symptoms. Did something change and now we "know" that inflammation == c reactive protein? Or is this just one particular well-known marker of a common cluster of inflammation symptoms? Or am I just completely confused about the whole thing?
I can't read the study directly (and it's not my field, which makes reading it directly challenging), but this is the abstract conclusion:
`
Higher fasting insulin and higher c-reactive protein confound the association between BMI and the risk of all-cause mortality. The increase in mortality that has been attributed to higher BMI is more likely due to hyperinsulinemia and inflammation rather than obesity.`
Bashing on lottery tickets due to EV also really feels like it's really missing the point. Lottery tickets are a mechanism for enjoying a fantasy. Sure you could technically just pretend that you won $10^9, but there is a hard cliff from >0% to 0%. I buy lottery tickets (very very occasionally, but who cares!) because it helps me enjoy a fantasy about being radically independently wealthy.
There's no reason to hate on people for doing something that they enjoy, regardless of what the expected value is. For god's sake, I juggle! As a hobby! Can you imagine the expected return on THAT?
In general, you won't have enough information to accurately model this yourself, IMO. You might increase your edge, but you're still basically getting lottery tickets.
I am assuming that. In most countries it's required that you can return non-consumable items in a sensible time-frame. Restocking fees vary in legality, but typically need to be disclosed before purchase.
I mean, you could have bought them. Tried them out while in the store, then returned them if they weren't to your liking. But I'll admit that might be more overhead than you were hoping for. But it would also be a great way to communicate to the store that their policies are bad. "I'd like to return these. Nothing really wrong, just don't like them. Oh, and I'd like to try...I mean buy these headphones. ... Actually, I'd like to return these please [etc, etc]
Having grown up poor, I was going to challenge the statement that 'most Canadians own property', but it looks like it's ~70%.
I mean, I think hanging 30% of your population out to dry is a bad idea, but I can't argue that this isn't a tyranny of the majority situation (or maybe tyranny of those in power, of which I expect closer to 100% are property owners).
I found that earplugs + headphones with brown/grey noise absolutely made the universe go away. I don't use it now because my work has changed and I work in a single-person office, but I found this super effective at reducing distractions.
Can you provide some substantial ideas about what you would like to see different and what makes the current model "garbage"? Otherwise it's not clear what you're advocating for.
But it's not because of some drive for 'equity'. I've talked with teachers (as friends, not in a school setting). They're doing what they can with the resources they have.