The ones for children are even worse. Zero accountability. Adults with no reason to ever be supervising a child.

For more context, about ten years ago a bunch of shit heels (the “sad puppies”) got mad that “woke” books were winning Hugo awards, so they started a movement to mess with the nominations. Tingle’s “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” got nominated as a troll, but Tingle is a really cool guy and turned it around on them by writing “Pounded in the Butt by my own Hugo Award Nomination.”

Kierkegaard and Fred Clark have almost got me as far as Christianity. The infinite movement/the jump does seem like it could be the answer sometimes.

Something critical to note is that help is not really out there. This is the kind of news article that usually gets people to post 988, but if you’ve called 988 you know how much of a joke it is. They will “triage” you, where you either get the cops called to take you to hell/inpatient or you spend half an hour plus on hold for someone to say “sorry that sucks :(“

Inpatient institutionalize increase suicide rates after release. You get maybe fifteen minutes of actual “treatment” while the rest of it is being treated like a criminal. Good luck keeping your job after disappearing three days without being allowed to access your phone!

It amazes me when I see TikToks and videos from patients in inpatient facilities in other countries. In the US, wanting to kill yourself means that you are a horrible criminal and you will be punished for it.

The superintendent in Mustang Oklahoma suspended all of the kids who walked out.

I remember reading like a Williams-Sonoma catalog that had several “pear of the month” clubs, and wondered how so many people were so into luxury pears.

I applied for a federal job, was given an offer, and had that offer revoked because of Trump’s EO against trans people. This government is actively hostile to my existence and provides me little in return, so yes.

Catholics aren’t opposed to it.

“God became man in Jesus in order to save us. So if there are also other intelligent beings, it’s not a given that they need redemption. They might have remained in full friendship with their creator,” he said.

Father Funes went on to say that Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice was a unique and unrepeatable event. But he said he was sure that, if needed, God’s mercy would be offered to aliens, as it was to humans.

I don’t think this is like official doctrine, but it seems to be the most common attitude I’m finding.

As far as Protestants: the flat earth types might be against aliens because that goes against their everything. I’m really only talking your KJV-onliest or freaky Pentecostal teetering into cult types that would think aliens were literal demons.

But I think most fundies would probably be fine with aliens if they were allowed to proselytize to them, and most mainline Christian churches would be fine with aliens existing.

I talked a little about Monte Carlo methods too - told them about a FORTRAN (!) program I had to write in college. Finding pi by throwing darts at a dart board and looking at the ratio of hits to misses to determine area…

That’s a good idea. I went with redoing the sim a few times and then also doing stuff with a plinko game, which seemed to help them get it.

The first couple plinko runs also were really annoying for bellcurve purposes tho.

Here’s the sim I used if you want to check it out!

Is it like Grindr (eg, mostly male + hookups)?

Even for students without disabilities, a calculator removes the cognitive demand of the arithmetic. If I am teaching algebra, I want most of their cognition to be taken up by the algebra, not the arithmetic.

I disagree.

I tutored a college student who had dysgraphia. They originally had a calculator accommodation, but this was removed at the request of the instructor.

The student was in no way incapable of learning the material in the class - a remedial math course mostly on basic statistics and presenting data. But they were incapable of remembering most of the multiplication table.

There’s no reason to force a person to do long division by hand. The student was perfectly capable of understanding the process of calculating an average, but actually doing the problem meant that they were counting out by threes on their hand to do 3x7.

I’ve worked with dyslexic students on writing assignments - they are just as capable of intelligently responding to a writing prompt if you ask them verbally. Why should they be punished because they can’t spell (especially when we had like a decade of NOT TEACHING PHONICS)?

I draw a hard line at generative AI, but as long as the thoughts are theirs, I’ve never been concerned too much with students using tools to help them.

Sure, you can do that once. Then you are out the job. Talking about politics will get you in more trouble than raping a kid.

I went into teaching because I care about making the world a better place. It cost me my marriage, it has sunk me into some of the deepest pits of despair that my mental health could take, it has meant physical and verbal abuse.

Buying pencils for kids is the kind of thing that you don’t mind too much, because at least it is a problem you can fix.

Once, I had a student ask me for a pencil. (He’d ask me everyday - usually in response to me asking why he wasn’t doing his work.) He looked me in the eye, snapped it in half, and asked for another.

I gave it to him. Who cares. I couldn’t fix the sinks which didn’t work and stunk because kids shoved shit into them, but I could fix the fucking pencil.

It’s a terrible job where you are expected to save the world and hated for everything you do. But, as a dog returns to his vomit… It’s part of my soul.

Bingo.

First week of the job: “hey, stop talking about your college experiences with the kids. These kids are never going to college, so none of it will ever connect with them.”

Canvas has a very neat “annotation” tool, where the teacher can upload a document and students can write on it and submit.

I also see a lot of canvas assignments where the answer is in an auto graded quiz, but the teacher has the students take a picture and upload to show their scratch work. This can be added as a “question” to the assignment.

There are good ways to use the tools for sure - I did really like that the auto graded quizzes on canvas could use randomized numbers. Eg, when I did speed/distance/time, I could write a word problem where it would randomize the quantities so each student got a unique quiz and couldn’t cheat.

Tools like PHeT/CK12/other simulation programs are also a godsend. Even working with college chemistry, being able to show visual representations of acid/base dissociation or how to balance an equation makes things so much easier.

The platforms are great - the work flow problems are more consequent to the way the school system is set up, especially in the Title 1 hell schools that are left to fall through the cracks.

White flight and a state that hates education.

The rest of the science department were “emergency certified” - eg, random bachelors degrees.

I know for the fact the district has put teachers in without BACKGROUND CHECKS.

Also spent several hundred just on vinegar and baking soda for labs.

But yeah, I actually had to quit teaching after my divorce because I could no longer afford to do it!

The most I dealt with was around 36. I had around 28 chairs.

However, the feeder middle school had class sizes of 60+. There were literal riots, with multiple teachers injured, that the district covered up.

Stocks would absolutely not be allowed. I had a student that spent fifteen minutes screaming and cussing me out, straight to my face in front of a principle. When she said “I wish I wasn’t in your class” and I said “me too” - I got in trouble. (She was mad because I wrote her up for literally just walking into my classroom to sell snacks. She didn’t attend classes, she just did whatever she wanted.)