At some point I need to cut my losses, and just accept that my son will do really well on tests in whatever subject he is taking, and almost refuse to do nay of the homework. I can’t send a kid like that to college can I? He takes honors physics, aces the test and I am sitting there wondering how he has a D in the class. Sure its weighted to a C but still.
There must be some employer out there that where a lazy student can succeed exclusively on merit based test taking ability…
What? If I am I not allowed to scare the shit out of my own children, who is?
¡enlaces!
Mexico unveils their diabolical plot to build Latin America’s biggest supercomputer. Lets call it El Superordenador!
Firida Kahlo painting sets record for auction for one of her many self-portraits. Of course its not the real record, its the women’s record so if you’re a male that can’t compete with Rembrandt there is still a way to smash records.
Trump pardons former Honduran president previously convicted of drug trafficking…Interesting I wonder if it has anything to do with…
…Honduras though is in the news due to their election last weekend. A “right wing” candidate that received endorsements from Team Orange Man and Javier Milei is currently in a statistical tie with his opponent that is naturally, a socialist. Trump already accused them of shenanigans. I put right wing in scare quotes because apparently this guy is something of a globalist which leads me to wonder just how much of a nutcase the other guy is.
Feels like a 90’s type day. Enjoy your Tuesday!
New York State Government.
It’s a very Chinese system
If it’s any consolation, I hated doing homework and rarely did it even in college. But I learned what I needed to learn and tested well. I did graduate college with honors and had a successful career as an engineer. And work stays at work and doesn’t follow me home.
Of course, I should note that I worked shitty jobs for 7 years before I finally got serious in college. I was motivated enough to pass the classes and get the degree because I didn’t like the other options in life.
Also, I don’t recall any college class that had graded homework.
That horseshit is limited to the secondary schools. It was a problem when my kids and grandkids were in school. (yes that means that my grandkids are past secondar school)
I had business school classes that were case study and class participation was 80% of the grade. If you didn’t read the cases and prepare for class, you failed.
Upon further thought. I did have to write and run code for the CompSci classes. And the English classes had required writing assignments. But the math and physics classes had lots of recommended problems to solve, but nothing was turned in and graded.
I took a lot of Poli Sci. Writing assignments were a regular requirement.
I had one biology prof grade you down for spelling errors on tests and papers.
Needless to say I flunked (I’m assuming because I never checked my grades as the college put them all online so they could charge you an extra $35 per class fee for online content) two of his classes.
My crystal chemistry course had homework / reading followed up by a quiz on the reading every class.
The reading and quiz were intended to help ensure you were prepared for his lecture and could participate in discussions and ask questions. The quizzes were not difficult.
They were 10% of the course grade. It was one of my favorite classes in my undergraduate.
Mexico unveiled plans Wednesday to build what it claims will be Latin America’s most powerful supercomputer
That’s just Cray-Cray.
the NGO he helps lead was attempting to impose a predatory carbon market known as the GREEN+ project as well as an inter-continental “smart grid” to facilitate smart cities in North, Central and South America alongside an Argentine company called Satellogic. Satellogic is deeply tied to current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who helped pioneer carbon trading at Cantor Fitzgerald; former Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin; and Argentine oligarch (and big-time Milei supporter) Marcos Galperin, among others. Satellogic is also intimately tied to the stablecoin Tether (as is Lutnick, of course), which is poised to become the inter-continental currency of the Americas and a covert weapon of de facto dollarization.
Sounds legit. Does that come before or after the global socialist dictatorship?
None of my employers ever asked to see my report cards.
Google asked for my GPA and test scores. Most of the people there were insufferable.
I have my kindergarten report card somewhere if HR is interested.
Easy. The teacher is basing too much of the final grade on homework, likely so that the front row girls can pass the class by doing busywork rather than mastering the concepts.
Classwork and homework were my bane.
I never did homework unless my parents sat down and made me do it in front of them.
Got A’s on most of the tests, but my report card was all D’s & Custom.
Have I mentioned I hate teachers?
Tactical surrender?
Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday, hours before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders visited striking baristas on a picket line.
The development came amid a continuing strike by Starbucks’ union that began last month at dozens of locations around the country.
The workers want better hours and increased staffing, and they are angry that Starbucks hasn’t agreed on a contract nearly four years after workers voted to unionize at a Buffalo store. Union votes at other locations followed, and about 550 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned stores are now unionized. The coffee giant also has around 7,000 licensed locations at airports, grocery stores and other locales.
Nice business youse gots heah…
Yes, probably easier to settle with the rabble than let them continue to flap their gums.
The progs that run this place drove Starbucks out of town a few years ago. I assume the hipsters behind the counter at the remaining local mini-chain are making a “living wage” which is why a cup of coffee goes for like seven dollars.
Evergreen:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/15/darwins-ltd-close-all-locations/
Came across a typically wordy prog screed the other day – the gist is this lady had to sadly close her bar, some place around the corner I have never been to, because she can’t afford to be “certified” to pay the “living wage”. 🙄
OMG it took her seven paragraphs to get to “genocide”. JFC I hate leftists. This place is fucking lousy with them.
“There must be some employer out there that where a lazy student can succeed exclusively on merit based test taking ability…”
One of the early programmers at the last startup I worked at was a high school classmate of mine. He attended class occasionally. I’m not sure he graduated. If there was an award for Most Likely to Shoot Up the School, he would have been the favorite to win. Anyway, he did something right to get into the jobs he had. His dad was a fairly well known rock star, so that might have opened some doors for him but he at least had the skill to walk through those doors.
Which classmate was that, Jimmy Sting or Stuart Idol?
Considering where Jaime is, probably one of Cherry Garcia’s brood
Wot? You think I’m English or something? Wanker.
OK Jim Bob
“These are not demands of greed — these are demands of decency,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist who ran on pledges to aid working-class people, told the crowd.
He’s just looking for pragmatic solutions to the problems of our time.
There may have been a few improvements in auto safety over the last 50 years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6sShngVcLs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_p8s27VcOg
I had a 70s vega.
I had a ’76 Ford Pinto station wagon
I am trying to remember if I ever owned a Pinto. I remember having a 70s version of the Maverick which was just a hollow tin can.
We had a Chevy Citation. We called it the Shitation.
Keep it away from UCLA unless you want it to blow up.
Half of the boys in my high-school (1986 Grad) had a Ford Pinto they bought for $300.
Pintos were the bomb.
A good friend of mine never bothered finishing high school, but instead started taking classes at the local JC and ended up with a CS degree, and now works in Silicon Valley.
No one has ever asked for his HS diploma.
Like your son, I rarely did my homework, and did well on tests. At that level everything is simple enough to puzzle it out on a test.
According to the von Moltke model, you put him in the C-Suite.
Stupid and hardworking – FIRE IMMEDIATELY!
Have you considered Praxis?
My daughter is brilliant, learns things really well when she’s motivated, and had horrible grades in HS. She also did really poorly in college because she just found it utterly uninspiring and. With praxis, she’s flourishing.
It’s a great program for teaching people how to succeed in business world, getting them to set commitments which they then keep, and sets them up with decent jobs that are tailored to their skills and interests. I can’t say enough good things about it and it’s been worth every penny.
I had my daughter pay 33% and my wife and I covered the rest.
Neat.
It’s weird to discover that not every smartypants enjoyed regular school like I did.
I hated formal schooling, but I didn’t mind high school. And I was the son of a professor. Because it was a college town, there were a whole group of us faculty brats who were piss poor students, unlike the other professor’s kids who were try-hards.
In a tirade on social media late on Monday, Trump accused the election officials of “trying to change” the outcome of the election, and doubled down on vague threats of retaliation should his favoured candidate not be declared the victor of a tight race, which has been beset by problems with the results website.
This is all so tiresome.
Amen. You’d think people would eventually get tired of getting worked up over the same shit that never materializes.
Stupid and hardworking – FIRE IMMEDIATELY!
Stupid and ambitious sounds like a natural born politician.
Just tell the son….if you don’t do your homework, someone like this will be in total control of your life…
Noooooooo!
Or a military Academy. Although you can count Valley Forge Military out as someplace to send them to. They just closed the secondary school (the college is still open, for now).
Someone who makes cheesy jokes?
Speaking of schools:
The Real Way Schools are Failing Boys
https://time.com/7335723/auto-draft-25-2/
tldr: Schools shouldn’t be made more “boy-friendly”, instead boys need to be taught how to compete with and lose gracefully to girls.
How about a return to sex-segregated schools which can be geared towards the way each student population actually learns.
Madness. Lunacy. Irresponsible humbuggery.
The “boys are defective girls” model, which has served us so well for the last several decades.
I just bitched about this yesterday, although not this article. It was a report on Australia’s Radio National ostensibly about men’s mental health, but with the idea that the way for men to have better mental health was to be more like women.
There may have been a few improvements in auto safety over the last 50 years:
My takeaway: don’t be in a head on collision.
Horrific
President Donald Trump on Tuesday ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from.”
“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
——-
There are an estimated 80,000 Somalis in Minnesota, and Walz said Trump is “demonizing an entire group of people who came here, fleeing civil war, and created a vibrant community that makes Minnesota and this country better. But that’s Donald Trump: deflect, demonize, come up with no solutions. He’s not going to help fix anything on fraud.”
In his remarks Tuesday, Trump called Walz “a grossly incompetent man. There’s something wrong with him.”
He’s the giant flaming bag of dog shit America tossed onto Washington’s front porch.
Two assholes in a fart contest.
This is what I voted for.
He says out loud what more than half of Americans believe but are afraid to say.
Bless his heart.
Academia
Fulnecky’s instructor, Mel Curth, a graduate teaching assistant in the psychology department, gave Fulnecky a zero on the essay.
“Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point [sic] for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive,” Curth wrote in response to Fulnecky.
“While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc., is not best practice.”
*blows whistle, throws flag*
Psychology? An empirical science?
It should hardly come as a surprise to hear the “teacher” described as transgender.
Curth’s assignment asked students to write 650-word reaction papers “demonstrating that you read the assigned article, and [including] a thoughtful reaction to the material presented in the article,” according to the assignment instructions circulating online. “Possible approaches to reaction papers include: 1. A discussion of why you feel the topic is important and worthy of study (or not). 2. An application of the study or results to your own experiences.”
Perhaps they could actually post the full assignment. You can go either way here. Her reaction in the context of her religious beliefs may satisfy the criteria or it may not.
This kind of stuff really pisses me off: “If this chain of events sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Undergraduate students are grabbing headlines by looping in politicians to challenge what can be taught, spoken about and evaluated for credit in college classrooms, with material about gender identity drawing particular attention this year. Over the summer, an unnamed student at Texas A&M University filmed herself challenging the legality of an instructor’s gender identity lesson. When the student provided the footage to a Texas politician, the resulting online firestorm led to the ouster of the instructor, demotions of two administrators and the resignation of Texas A&M president Mark Welsh.”
First, I don’t think the student should have contacted politicians. Nor should the politicians have got involved (yeah, I know, slim chance of that). But this high-and-mighty academic position of “Gasp! Can you believe someone used this for political means?” As if academics never do that kind of shit. And, the lead at the top of the article, “conservative recipe to stoke controversy: an appeal to individual rights.” Yes, because if anyone disagrees with the accepted academic view, it must be a “recipe.” It’s simply not possible that students can think for themselves and come up with a contrary view.
Second, the zero is pretty harsh. I don’t know what level the course was, (it says the student as a junior), but I very rarely give a 0 on anything. And, on a “reaction paper” well, you’re kind of asking for a reaction. I always think I know what to expect, but every year or so, a student submits something that I’d never thought of.
But, again, the self-righteousness from the IHE author is what pisses me off. But, keep in mind, we’re now about three (maybe four) generations into the liberal control of academia. Most of these people have absolutely no idea that there are alternative, reasonable positions out there. This is why I never bother reading IHE or the Chronicle on these kinds of things.
My only thought about students contacting politicians is whether or not they would have gotten a fair response from the admin. I know that at the local uni (R1) they wouldn’t have, as the president and provost on down to the deans are all in on Trans rights here. But, then again, so to are the most of the regents and the governor. So, if a student was from the other (conservative) side of the state, roping in their representative could be the right call.
Zwak: fair point. But i would always encourage students to follow the standard grade appeal policy first. It may come to nothing, but it might also be helpful.
RN, my expectation is the “process” would be to allow the student to redo the assignment with the proper talking points for some credit.
The idea that a non conforming view would satisfy the requirements would not be remotely considered.
I’d love to be proved wrong, but in liberal arts or social “sciences” I don’t see it.
Yeah that is the exact phrase that set off my warning bells. I knew a whole bunch of flapdoodle was coming.
I wonder how the psychology TA would square this with “autoethnography”.
Psychology likes to think it’s an empirical science but it runs on operational definitions that are open to all sorts of biases. That being said, quoting from the bible and stating one’s religious beliefs doesn’t cut it.
I almost guarantee, although I can’t say for sure because I’m not going to do a deep dive, that she could find some supporting evidence in the published literature that relates to how she views society’s expectations related to gender roles and she should have cited those to support her assertions.
This is kind of where I am.
Your son sounds just like me – I always tested extremely well, did little homework. One difference – I got straight As in almost everything. He’s probably bored. He could probably get better grades if he saw it as a game that he could win without much effort.
@Threedoor, Ram is gas. My dream is a diesel Ram, non-dually, all-wheel drive, with a manual transmission.
Hey Mo, sincere question here. A few weeks back, you noted you would never use BP meds. Can you explain why? Not trying to catch you out or argue, genuinely interested.
Oh, well, so I changed my mind on that when my ob/gyn decided he’d rather talk about my blood pressure than my lady bits. I said I don’t really care if I drop dead. He said, “You won’t die. You’ll have a stroke and then your life really will suck.”
I’ve been told that before, but I didn’t really take it seriously, but then I started thinking about it. I spent the first 3 months of this year caring for my bedbound mother, whom I couldn’t lift or move. Could I really stick my husband with the care of a fat woman who can’t do anything for herself? Nope.
I called my PCP and said, “Uncle,” and now I have some.
I didn’t want them because of certain side effects I wasn’t willing to suffer, and one of the biggies is insomnia/nightmares, which I cannot afford. That’s a beta-blocker.
I did a risk analysis and decided to err on the side of side effects. It’s the same choice I made when I went off estrogen after my plumbing was yanked. I had to decide whether to sacrifice bone mass for heart health, and I chose my heart.
I’m on a couple BP meds and there aren’t any side effects I’m aware of. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At least, she didn’t inform me of any and I haven’t noticed any.
My wife is also on BP meds. And this year has been the year of loosing weight, as she had some issues over the last couple.
Thanks Mo. My PCP usually doesn’t write prescriptions as his first intervention so, when he told me I needed to be on meds, I was willing to listen.
Per the Mayo Clinic:
“Sleep deprivation can lead to hypertension (aka high blood pressure). And one study found that people diagnosed with sleep deprivation have a higher risk of hypertensive heart disease, which is the result of long-term unmanaged high blood pressure.”
So the meds deprive you of sleep which causes hypertension which requires BP meds which deprive you of sleep…..
Sorry I’m late to the party here but a couple of points:
1. You probably should get another doctor. Unless your blood pressure is severe, you smoke, and you have a genetic predisposition, you are unlikely to have a hemorrhagic stroke, which is the type of stroke that typically results from severe hypertension. The vast majority of strokes are ischemic, in other words resulting from blockages that have very little to do with blood pressure.
Your doctor has no business trying to scare you into compliance in that way. According to the Framingham study (still held up as a gold standard study), your lifetime risk of stroke as a middle aged woman (knowing nothing else about your family or medical history) is around 20%. People with good blood pressure control have about half the risk of those that don’t. In other words, you have around a 80% chance of never having a stroke even with crappy blood pressure (I’m using round numbers here). If you have really great blood pressure, it’s around 90% (yes, 10% of those patients have strokes anyway). I’m willing to bet your OB has no idea what those number are and certainly didn’t disclose them to you.
2. All prescription medications have side effects. Your doctor should discuss the potential downsides of any treatment, whether it’s surgery, medications, or whatever before starting the treatment. They should also discuss the benefits and what alternatives there might be to the proposed treatments. Unfortunately, they generally don’t. Many times people tolerate medications well and that’s fine, but sometimes they don’t and you should have those facts before starting a course of treatment.
From Slumbrew’s link:
In response to the initial closure, members of Darwin’s United organized a rally at Cambridge City Hall on Oct. 29, calling on the owners to guarantee employment to the workers at the Mt. Auburn location, raise wages to $24 per hour, provide three weeks of paid time off, and offer zero-deductible healthcare.
“It’s a goose. It lays golden eggs.”
“Awesome. Let’s kill it.”
“We have a right to employment on our terms”
That is exactly what it is.
It just leaves me… speechless. These ungrateful shits have no idea of the real world.
You should see the call for unionization at a single-location local coffee shop run by hippies. It’s so goddamn laughable. No one has a right to the exact job they want with all the ecoutrements they can dream up.
A handy visual aid for this and other issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5QsFYLmWuE
Some grade A derp here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/white-books-and-curriculum-damage-black-children/ar-AA1RxhGo
Cherry on top = author’s middle name is Swindler.
***
While I unequivocally do not advocate book banning and prefer to teach students criticality instead, if anything needs to be banned, it is the endemic whitified curriculum, which teaches White children that they are superior and worthy of protection while other children are not, as noted by Louise Derman-Sparks and Patricia Ramsey in their book, “What If All the Kids are White?” Following the current protocols, White children learn inaccurate, incomplete, and distorted information about people of the global majority as well as the power codes and benefits of racism early on-without even trying. At the same time, children of color are also socialized to devalue Blackness since they see few accurate, affirming portrayals of Black people in classrooms, textbooks, or media.
I often ask educators how they would feel if every teacher they ever had in K-12 schools were Black; if most texts they read centered Black life; and if nearly every image in schoolbooks reflected only Black families. Most respond with disbelief, asking, “You mean for all 12 years?” Yet this is precisely what Black children experience every day in reverse.
***
tl;dr = whycome majority writes majority of books?
Also shut up about Asians. Oh wait, we did that already.
runner-up derp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlfDKoeRJkQ
Does that mean I’m a minority now? REPARATIONS!!
In “media?” C’mon, half the judges, doctors, executives portrayed in tv shows are Black. Athletes and entertainers? And watch any newscast. See any Black anchors, weather readers, street reporters?
Second, the zero is pretty harsh. I don’t know what level the course was, (it says the student as a junior), but I very rarely give a 0 on anything. And, on a “reaction paper” well, you’re kind of asking for a reaction. I always think I know what to expect, but every year or so, a student submits something that I’d never thought of.
The TA’s comment:
using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc., is not best practice.
There are some of us who would rate those “gender affirming” studies as pretty much just as definitive as the Bible.
Him/her/it’s response wasn’t any more compelling than, “That’s just, like your opinion, man.” Except for the power of the red pen.
Even decades ago I knew to avoid subjective bullshit classes like this like the plague.
Yeah, again without knowing the exact assignment and exact answer, it’s hard to know. But, for me, anything that’s somewhat on topic and hits the length requirement will usually get no worse than a 60%.