netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
16hr ago
Agreed. I should have elaborated.
When UC and others decided to cancel standardized tests in the wake of COVID and/or Floyd, various people said it was going to harm math ability in the incoming classes. They were right, of course, and should be recognized as such.
The ones I’d rather not credit are the Chris Rufo types, who are happy to crucify the College Board for anything and everything except the SAT. Same for the overlapping group of anti-credentialists. Really, this is a big win for one of the pillars of the college application industry.
Oh, and I guess I expect the scientific racists to run with this result, too. Causation be damned.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
18hr ago
#2 seems obvious to me. The committee seems to agree, judging by their recommendations. Giving up their best predictor of math ability had consequences.
Expect this to get wielded as a cudgel against anything that might possibly be called DEI.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
19hr ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
21hr ago
Wait, 15 years? Was there a sea change after the recession, or something?
Anyway. I was putting together a response about supply vs. demand shocks, and how the change in student population really doesn’t have to represent a change in the overall one. Then I read the recommendations section of the actual report.
The majority of our workgroup recommends…a systemwide reexamination of the possible return to standardized testing.
Guess what year UCSD dropped their SAT/ACT requirements?
If you throw out the single best metric you’ve got to measure math ability, you are going to get more variance. Doesn’t matter if the population got worse or even better, you are giving up your ability to find them. You’ll have to use proxies like (inflated!) grades and made-up clubs. The workgroup was quite unsatisfied with their options.
This is rather frustrating. The SAT and ACT genuinely do have a host of systemic problems thanks to their effective duopoly on standardized testing. Apparently Goodhart’s law wasn’t one of them. But it’s not for lack of trying—you can’t drive a block in my town without hitting a Karen Dillard. Too many suburban strivers racing to the bottom. That whole ecosystem is only going to be boosted by all the dissident rightists looking to score points against DEI. Big win for credentialism.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
There’s a squeaky fan or something at my office. It sounds exactly like the ostinato strings in a certain track from Halo.
If I don’t comment in the next couple days, grab your shotguns.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
See, they also give the same training and the same name to every technician and accountant.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
I adored Sins 1’s concept, but was let down by certain aspects. Stances, squadrons, the rather important “hero” capital ships…I’d have rather delegated those choices to an empire-wide doctrine or something. Same for parts of the economy. Felt like they hit a similar pitfall to a lot of RTS in that era and included stuff because SC2 had it.
How does Sins 2 approach that?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Meaning no diacritics. I’m not gonna be upset if someone drops an umlaut.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Unfortunately, yes.
I picked this name back in the Xbox live days. My mother had seen my existing handle and asked “isn’t that kind of…gay?” Since I’d been playing (and honestly, reading about) the roguelike NetHack, I swapped out the H and damned myself to a career of scrotal comments. How ironic.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
I think you only trust DHS because they’re more obviously polishing Trump’s knob. I think “we had an election” is an excuse, because this is a stupid way to establish trust.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
I do actually think this is true.
It also makes “we had an election” into a fig leaf.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
So the 2024 election counts as a physical change in personnel, and since Trump purged his enemies, you can totally trust DHS.
But the 2016 one didn’t, because…?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
I have noticed a pattern where there is a horrible story that comes out. [Team A] passes around the horrible story…[Team B] waits for the [relevant department’s] X account to post a rebuttal, and then that becomes the [Team B] story.
Isn’t this normal? An official statement makes for an easy rallying cry.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
That…is utterly facile.
Do you think you could explain how that strategy would serve any of Russia’s goals?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
I know that feeling. I’m reminded of the mod for D:OS2 which rebalanced combat to make health more relevant. They had to move heaven and earth to let it serve as a valid resource instead of a last resort.
But then, RPGs have always suffered from that tension. Real humans have a nasty habit of dying horribly when they take one bolter round to the face. Not easy to reconcile with slower, attrition-based gameplay.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
Yes and yes.
You can have whatever opinion you want. As usual, we’re here to moderate on tone. Sometimes that makes us the fun police.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
However, despite claiming to be a timber farm, this business has never actually sold any timber, and indeed has reported no sales, income, or labor expenses since year 2011.
Correction: it sold about $490K of timber during Murphy’s tenure as forester, which ran until 2008. Without that fact, the operation sounds a lot sketchier!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
Kingdom Come: Deliverance but it’s Turin Turambar slumming it with the petty dwarves.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
This is the worst sort of internet drama. Reading Motte-discourse on gender relations already makes me want to contribute to certain male statistics, so I want to take it in an extremely different direction.
Earlier today, I saw the unfamiliar term “ECW” in the TVTropes article for Genre Turning Point. Over the next half-hour, I learned numerous facts about the insanity that is pro wrestling.
- The characters who’ve percolated into the modern consciousness via memes, etc. were working for a diverse set of rival promoters.
- Those promoters competed for talent and viewers alike.
- In the process, performers accrued a mind-bending number of storylines: mostly rivalries and revenge plots, but sometimes weirdly idealistic quests or bizarre crossovers.
- Neither TVTropes nor Wikipedia editors consistently distinguish between the fictional storylines and the real-world beefs. Something as mundane as a contract dispute could end up establishing the CEO as a character.
Which brings us to Chris Benoit. A wildly successful mid-level performer whose wiki page covers his career in agonizing detail, Benoit accrued numerous rivalries. Most notable is the fake affair with a rival’s wife which turned into a real affair, divorce and marriage. When news broke of his 2007 suicide, his promoter canceled existing events for a three-hour tribute. The aforementioned evil CEO broke character to give a normal CEO announcement.
But oh, boy, was there a twist.
Within a day, his promoter learned that Benoit had MURDERED HIS WIFE AND CHILD before committing suicide. He’d strangled first his wife, then his drugged son, and only hanged himself after two days of shambling around the house. The eulogies came to a screeching halt. All mention of Benoit was excised from future broadcasts.
So, why am I bringing this up? Take a look at that last wiki page, mainly the “Events” section. In the aftermath, people insisted that Benoit killed his son for being too small or for a secret disability. They said he’d feuded with his wife after she suspected him of cheating, and that there was life insurance fraud at play. Maybe it was a professional hit. Maybe he’d researched death by hanging before snapping his own neck with a lat pulldown machine. Maybe it was roid rage, or maybe he’d just been hit in the head too much. Anything and everything to milk more drama from an already surreal tragedy.
People demand a better story than a coroner’s report alone can offer. One can add enough maybe and suspected and no evidence against to spin whatever narrative they want. A woman writing a semi-fictional story is boring. A woman driving her ex to despair via a feminist scissor statement? Now that’s entertainment.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
that doesn't go viral by abusing weaponized empathy
How are those going viral, then?
There are ads playing on my local radio about “a Honduran convicted of raping a child” and the like. (I couldn’t find transcripts but i think they’re part of this program.) If that’s not weaponizing empathy, I don’t know what is.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
Plausibly true, but not trivially.
Depends on how many potential migrants actually learn about the policy, evaluate their odds correctly, and decide they aren’t that desperate.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7d ago
It’s almost funny comparing this to the 2016 narrative. The smart money was wrong, the local insiders were wrong, how could this happen?
OotP was my favorite at the time. In hindsight, I suspect that was entirely due to the Department of Mysteries.
More options
Context Copy link