jericho
2d ago
I don't know what the rest of them were doing. I took AP History, the only AP class I didn't pass the AP test for, and once again it was taught as memorization of trivia. The teacher would meander through irrelevant nonsense.
That's wild, given the low priority the AP history tests place on dates (generally just wanting students to know the general order and timeframe of events). Absolutely setting her students up for failure.
My understanding is that at a lot of American high schools they'll hire people for the purpose of coaching then shove them into teaching history courses because those aren't part of state standardized testing.
I was lucky enough that most of our teams were such a low priority that it tended to be the other way around, with teachers getting roped into coaching something.
jericho
2d ago
And no, the kids aren’t going to do their required history reading, so that’s not going to help. They’ll also use ChatGPT to write their papers (this is already happening), so their writing skills will atrophy as well.
Understand the concern, but I'm unclear as to why this is a problem for reading and writing about World War I and not for reading and writing about, say, The Scarlet Letter.
Would the students not wish to skip the reading and use ChatGPT to write the papers regardless of the subject matter?
jericho
4d ago
You've made me yearn for a terrible, terrible cover of We Three Kings by George Clooney, Ice Cube and Mark Wahlberg.
jericho
4d ago
jericho
11d ago
Is it because the accusations came from outsiders? Is it because these particular accusations are not considered as awful as others?
Almost certainly the former. If these screenshots had been dug up and passed around by someone with progressive bona fides as a result of some internecine dispute, this would have gone done much differently.
jericho
12d ago
Oh, I absolutely would be. Though I'm unsure how much of that is due to me being a lightweight (both literally and figuratively) and how much of that is just having a lower cutoff for what I consider to be "drunk."
jericho
12d ago
I've had Eagle Rare and quite liked it, but spot-on in terms of availability. I've only snagged it as a consolation prize in a Blanton's raffle.
jericho
12d ago
Really? I would be absolutely shocked to hear the writer sides more with Cleanthes than Philo.
Cleanthes allows too many major assertions by Philo to go unquestioned, and those that are pushed back against are only done after conceding ground.
That being said, I do genuinely believe the author is trying to fairly portray his more moderate opposition and does a better job than most at doing so.
jericho
12d ago
Interesting - there seems to be some regional pricing going on with that one. Where I lived before, it was (and double-checking, still is) a full $20 pricier than Bulleit, but here it is only about $10 more. I'll have to check it out.
jericho
12d ago
But hey, I'm not a person of drunkeness. Never been drunk in my life. I get a feeling of pressure inside my forehead after say 200 ml of hard liquor or equivalent, and never feltl like drinking anything more to find out.
Sounds like you do have a decent tolerance, though! 200 ml of hard liquor would have me well into drunk territory.
jericho
12d ago
For hard liquor, usually bourbon, usually Bulleit or Woodford Reserve. I've found $20-50 is my sweet spot for 750ml bottles of liquor.
For beer, usually a local lager, pilsner or wheat ale.
I tend to semi-binge drink- I will go weeks/months without having anything, then I'll get in the mood to buy a bottle, then have at 1-2 glass each week night, 2-3 each weekend night until it is gone.
If for whatever reason my pattern gets broken (I get sick or have plans that preclude drinking) I'll stop early and then pick it back up weeks/months later when I get the urge.
Honestly it is the same pattern I follow with games/books as well, like a very specific kind of addictive personality.
jericho
16d ago
For the 1920s and 1930s, I was just going off of this which is just the source from the Wikipedia page.Since that data was from the NCHS, I then compared it to the rates for 2021 and 2022 from their dashboard, which showed 2021 and 2022 as being a bit lower than the averages for the 20s and 30s.
The numbers I saw from the first link seemed ballpark with the other ones I could find (The FBI crime data explorer only goes back to 1985 and tends to show lower rates across the board than the NCHS data, but is in the same ballpark and trends in the same direction by year).
Once again, just what I could find quickly off Google, not a rigorous analysis.
And yeah, not a commentary on rates of violence, just in terms of folks going in the ground.
jericho
16d ago
That seems highly relevant when discussing the murder rate in terms of violent crime, but less relevant when discussing the murder rate in terms of life expectancy.
Unless the argument is the life expectancy lost by the increased # of aggravated assaults outweighs the life expectancy gained by the decreased # of outright murders. Though I would not phrase that as life expectancy lost due to increase in murders.
I'm afraid to think what kind of taboo content people that have created this include in their sessions.
I cannot speak to the history of it and I'm sure these are used in some campaigns that explore more extreme stuff, but the tables I've heard of where these are used are on the opposite end.
That is to say, they have these cards in case a player is uncomfortable with situations that are pretty bog-standard for fantasy settings (fantasy racism, religion being portrayed either positively or negatively, sexism, classism, etc)
jericho
16d ago
Increase in murders
What numbers are we looking at here? Googling around the murder rates per capita for the US as a whole during the 1920s and 30s seem to generally trend higher than murder rates today, but those are just the easiest ones I've found and I could accept the methodology has changed to such an extent it is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
jericho
22d ago
I agree with you broadly but:
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson held people captive and forced them to work by threat of violence. Does that mean all of their social/political/economic views are suspect as a result?
I have absolutely encountered people making basically this argument.
jericho
22d ago
My understanding is that while there is not a shortage of prospective adoptive parents for babies, there is one for children.
jericho
1mo ago
Also my experience. Even Newt Gingrich, possibly one of the least charismatic politicians I can readily think of, was quite a bit more charming than the average Joe when meeting him in person.
jericho
1mo ago
I have one family member who has steadfastly refused to change from a flip phone to a smartphone, but everyone I know who owns one keeps it with them whenever out and about.
Setting aside the question of whether it is or is not a poem for a moment, reading this really drove home to me how much my appreciation of works of art is context-driven.
My opinion of whether or not this writing was worthwhile was entirely wrapped up in how how old it was- you summarized some of the main thoughts as
Today we have dishwashers! And buy products that come from all over the world! And can easily afford them so what was exotic or scarce in the past is now something to be had everyday
And there's a big difference to me between someone putting down those thoughts during/shortly after the boom in modern household appliances and globalization versus last week. My opinion of the piece dropped precipitously when I found the date it was published.
That's not to say that art only has value if it is truly novel, but if you're doing something that has been done a million times before, you have a higher bar to clear and if you're trying something brand new you'll be cut more slack.
jericho
1mo ago
IIRC, some of the Great Awakening utopian cults were explicitly abstinent; not "no sex before marriage" abstinent, absolute abstinence. Sex is sinful, and the end of the world is right around the corner, so having children isn't important compared to being right with Jesus. They aren't around anymore, for mysterious reasons.
Believe you are thinking of The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing aka The Shakers. I also thought they were fully extinct, but it seems they're merely functionally extinct, with either 2 or 3 (seeing conflicting reports) remaining in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.
jericho
2mo ago
If, on the other hand, you have people willing to go the extra step to solve a problem, help a customer, or fix something that is not working - well hey there, your customers have a better experience and don't go away planning to switch to your competitor!
The issue is often that their competitors are not any better in this regard. Or, even when they are, any advantage from customer service is absolutely swamped by other considerations.
I travel a lot and have had a range of experiences with hotel front desks, but I can't say any of them would ever trump even a small difference in price or location. I think the only exceptions I could imagine would be those bordering on the actually criminal.
Especially in the era of travel aggregators, a lot of folks are looking at just the price tag and maybe a map.
jericho
2mo ago
I love the irony that baseball cards from your father's era are valuable because kids played with them (and ruined them) and Moms threw out the collection later, while baseball cards from my era are still totally worthless because everyone from my childhood saved them in archival quality protetive materials (I still remember kids arguing about the merits of various cardboard boxes and plastic pockets sheets) for long term storage.
The exact same thing happened to comic books, of course. At least that has the advantage of it not being too expensive to read old (but-not-too-old) series.
Given how the AP History tests are formatted, even just teaching to the test would be a significant step up from rote memorization of dates and names.
It's disappointing that I hear about so many classes not even meeting that low bar.
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