dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
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User ID: 583
Doesn't seem like the best idea if you have declining fertility because you can't even get your own domestic original stock bloods to reproduce.
You eventually have to make up the deficit with foreigners and it's better to have foreigners with domestic great grandparents than no relation at all.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
18d ago
Too many undesirables from Brazil using it to resettle, apparently.
So! There's a tiny chance I'll be booted out of the US because 5 decades ago my parents were illegal immigrants and the SCOTUS might agree they were foreign invaders, thereby yanking my birthright citizenship.
Meanwhile, right-wing nativist Chuds in my parents' country have decided they think bloodline-based citizenship is the actual menace and are taking steps towards ending it.
I don't really want to live in the old country, but to add insult to injury it's narrowly possible I'll lose residency in the US while my kids become ineligible for residence in the old country and navigating that sounds really unpleasant.
This is really speculative of course. But for peace of mind, are there any decent countries that I can buy a citizenship in? Either cash money or via "investment"? The obvious contenders like Cyprus and Portugal seem to have scaled back the enticements recently.
Homies: Ride or Die
FINALLY got most major issues with car solved. Switched to PBR ("physically based rendering") from old school Phong-style. Really took this to the next level (pic attached).
Also the wheels now spin properly, the lighting and normal maps stay consistent, I can even select the brake callipers and steer them along with the the front wheels.
The problem the entire time is seemingly that the obj/mtl data files were garbage, and I lost several weeks worth of time using those instead of going with gltf. I cannot believe how consequential stupid shit like choice of file format is. I'm sure there are dev teams that have wasted millions of dollars from this one decision.
Anyway! I'm told the next thing I want to do is add environment mapping (having the skydome, etc reflect off the car) to really make it pop.
TRON bike lighting
Finally getting back to this. The parts arrived for the $4 PC case fan and charcoal filter and I made myself a fume extractor that impressed my daughter.
I dunno, based on interviews he seems sappy enough that he believes in the institution of marriage.
One view is he felt his sex life dwindling and his mortality creeping in and didn't want to accept that, so he started lifting and doing roids and wanting to party a bit but his then wife wasn't really into picking up that same lifestyle.
If being the richest man in the world was worth anything, surely it would be cheating old age at least a little bit.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
20d ago
He also thought it was important to get almost comically enormous biceps entering his 60s, having been a scrub most of his life.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
20d ago
There's a fairly lucid section in the article about how genius level masters didn't appear born with intrinsic motivation and the simple explanations like "they just love practicing more" don't hold.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
20d ago
Some will ship to Canada.
Not sure what the rules are for this so I don't want to give direct links here.
The general shape of it is you want to find vendors that sell peptides for research purposes only, and also ensure they get their stuff independently tested including with links to the test lab report that you can verify yourself. Additionally, they will have robust Telegram communities where customers will get together in a group for each batch and randomly pick a few to send their samples to a lab as well.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
I'm not sure what you're responding to exactly. Are you saying this seems inane and that school shouldn't focus on this, or that this doesn't seem like a hard academic competition to win. Is this even an academic competition?
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
I'm hoping that is the total for all three and not 40K each because holy crap.
Without looking this up, how much do you think the state spends per kid in a public school in a major but not very high cost of living city?
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
It's tragic the entire article is derailed by people hyperfixating on this one bit.
DUOLINGO
An Alpha School guy replied in the comments and said "We agree that Duolingo doesn’t work. The students wanted to try it last year at GT School for various reasons, but it’s not part of the platform."
This is pretty interesting.
All of the GT Workshops are focused on a measurable, legible output. They don’t learn “public speaking”, they learn how to craft and deliver a speech and then submit the performance to the Moth to be judged by external parties. The school’s “100% Money Back guarantee” is that every student who attends will be in the top 1% academically and win at least one national academic competition (for kids who start in kindergarten they guarantee 1350+ SAT and 5s on APs by 8th grade). This past year four kids placed in the top-8 in a global debate with more than 1000 entries, and two kids are competing at national championships in chess and an academic bee respectively, but not national champions yet.
Winning national academic competitions is a bold claim, but maybe there is that much alpha (ha!) to find versus conventional schooling.
Additionally
Airbnb: Maybe the most impressive one. The 5th graders learned about the economics of property management - from property sourcing, mortgages, interior design, taxes, marketing, photo shoots, etc. And then they actually bought and managed a small property as a class (yes, the 5th grade class manages an actual property with a P&L)
I find this fucking awesome. You're clearly not only paying for kids to practice Duolingo. Also, an Alpha School guy replied in the comments and said "We agree that Duolingo doesn’t work. The students wanted to try it last year at GT School for various reasons, but it’s not part of the platform."
Mostly, I just enjoy how willing they are to experiment and iterate even in the face of unpopular ideas. And apparently paying kids to read books is insanely unpopular?
Roland Fryer, who has done extensive work on what works in incentivizing students, quotes a 2010 Gallup poll that found that only 23% of American parents support the “idea of school districts paying small amount of money to students to, for example, read books, attend school or to get good grades” (76% opposed the idea with only 1% undecided).
There are not many things that 76% of Americans agree on. Only 69% of Americans believe another Civil War would be a bad thing. Only 78% agree that American independence from Britain was the right choice. People REALLY don’t like paying kids to read books.
So what do these parents think we should do instead? Mostly they believe that kids should just be “intrinsically motivated” and school should be about inspiring that internal motivation. Their concern is that if we provide external motivation for learning it will crowd out internal motivation. They worry that when the external motivation goes away (no one is going to pay a 30-year-old to read books), there is no internal motivation to keep learning happening. In this model “education” is not about educating per se, or even about teaching habits, it is about inspiring character.
The other option is that rather than use the carrot, you could use the stick. Fryer shares another poll from 2008 where 26% of parents think grade-school teachers should be allowed to spank kids (35% in the Southern US states!). As Fryer summarizes: “The concept of paying students in school is less palatable than the concept of spanking students in school”.
We homeschool our kid and while he is crushing it academically, we do notice his motivation sagging a bit in some areas. Our headline update from reading this entire post was not to move to Austin and send him to Alpha schools, but to try greasing him a bit.
We've been paying for online piano lessons because his mind was blown by Elton John videos and he seemed genuinely interested in learning how to play and we were like sure why not.
And he's been practicing pretty consistently with very little prodding from us for almost 18 months and plays really well. He's decent enough that the last Christmas party we went to he just played and kept it bumping while everyone else sang along. I find this impressive enough because I can't play piano for shit.
But! He hit this one module that has one song that he just doesn't like and his motivation to finish it fell through the floor. It's pretty surprising since it's not even a hard song, it just doesn't seem to satisfy him the way the other ones do. He's been stuck on it for months, just does not care at all to practice it. So... having just read this post we decided to offer him $1 to finish the song by Monday and he bunkered down and has been practicing it hard since.
Are we worried about ruining his intrinsic motivation entirely? Not really. There's some rationalization later about how bribing kids does not render them incapable of doing things without external motivation as adults, and indeed it might be a solid way to push them more towards having intrinsic motivation later.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
I get your conflict theory view on law.
I don't understand this part though
You accepted violation of the law to allow illegal immigrants in. On what grounds do you appeal to the law now?
Where have I accepted violation of the law to allow illegal immigrants in?
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
If might makes right is your morality: so did you. 😇
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
Fair, but I'm pretty sure Native Americans would quibble with the moral basis of your nativist entitlement.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
I don't follow. You believe Congress isn't allowed to decide violations of law are no longer violations of the law?
Framing citizenship as a "reward" is completely nonsensical.
Indeed, if citizenship is a reward why aren't we going full evolutionary humanism instead of focusing on crude bloodline?
There are like poor eighth generation Appalachians who lust for Marxism that are social dead weight compared to the most skilled and industrious red white and blue immigrants eager to come in and deepen our capital and gleefully celebrate Christmas.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
But no, you're illegitimate. I'd be willing to fast-track you through the immigration system, but you'd have to go back first
I appreciate the endorsement.
Oh, I was born to two citizen parents. Citizenship is mine by blood.
Well! My blood claim is probably as solid as yours is, maybe even moreso.
You're just a citizen and I am not in your framework by legal technicality.
No, it's actually just correct. Being a citizen of the US is a reward for anyone not entitled to it by blood. We're the best. Everyone knows it.
Just curious, since I don't often receive this kind of candor.
Have I earned it, in your opinion?
I was born here through no choice of my own. But! I've been here for five decades, speak English fluently, have two houses, was raised in the Christian tradition, have paid millions in taxes, have never been to jail, have a white wife and two white children (three including step child) who are irrefutably citizens via my wife.
Also, kindly let me know what you feel you've done to earn being an American citizen.
IMO it sounds like you only like law when it supports your POV.
EDIT: I also find the nExT admiNiStrAtIoN / white genocide argument a bit funny because it was Reagan that granted my extended family amnesty and they're all white and hardcore Trump voters.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
21d ago
You may find from time to time a simple majority that says we should stop illegal immigration but you won't find a majority that believes that means we should pull people out of homes they've made in the US to deport them.
Sure but if this is brought before the SCOTUS they may rule the POTUS only has the authority to do this because the 14th does not confer birthright citizenship to illegal immigrant children.
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