Well, I managed to finish all the finals grading, now it’s time to compute and upload final grades. Most of this was misery, but near the end of the pile, something showed up that put a smile on my face and gave me a feeling of satisfaction. Yes, my freshman course is supposed to be chemistry but I try to teach larger lessons about how the universe works and how we dig into it to understand it better and use the knowledge. One of the questions on my exam (a gimmee) was “What was your favorite part of the course?” My thought here was to get feedback going beyond the numerical scores of the course evaluations and see what things worked to increase student engagement. Most of the answers were predictable: “I liked that the exams and quizzes were open book and open notes”; “I like the in-class group exercises” ; “Thermodynamics was interesting”; “Electrochemistry was the best part!” (clearly trying to butter me up because I mentioned that it was a particular interest of mine); and so forth. But one student got it, I mean really got the big picture as opposed to the details of calculating equilibria or titrations. Put aside his inability to spell or write with pen and paper.
I spent a lot of time encouraging students to THINK about their answers; how much roughly should something be, what’s a reasonable value, are things going up or down? And this kid glommed onto it perfectly.
This made it all worthwhile to me.
Birthdays are also worthwhile including proof that economics can kill; the philosophy can bore; that white men can do black; that fat gay guys can cook; a guy who inspired Goldfinger; a guy who was the perfect retailer; and further proof that one-name singers suck. OK, brief, but I still have to get these grades submitted.
And I need to submit Links.
“THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!”
I’m a fan of not having to deal with humans.
Judith Curry is always a voice of sanity. And here’s the slide deck that goes with that talk.
You know what? It’s been too long since Old Guy Music featured Drive By Truckers. Herewith is my make-up.
Obiouness?
😕
Chemistry, not English. Anyway, I get OM‘s feeling. When I did software training there was always a little dopamine hit when I saw the dawning realization on someone’s face. That is why I thought of teaching part time as a retirement gig for many years – though not in the last decade or so.
Stop being anal, it’s obious what he meant.
If we keep thinking like this, just gorging on the Old Mans thoughts, we will all become Obies.
Hey. That’s some folks’ thing. The kid’s meaning was indeed odious.
Should a drop in crime that’s a drop from a decades high peak really count as a drop when it’s still higher than when the uptick began? I’d argue no but it’s really all in how you spin it.
Kinda like “The inflation rate is lower, so stuff is getting cheaper!! 😃”
Also, the FBI has complete confidence in the statistics that they estimated themselves.
“THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!”
You know we’re going to be underwhelmed.
Okra is not a food, queer or not.
ZWAK does not identify as southern, even just a little.
Fried okra done right is the freaking bomb.
I will take my gumbo with file powder!
(also, eggplant is not a food. Indeed, it ruins all food items it touches.)
Considering that our word gumbo is derived from a West African word for okra, I would argue that a file based soup is only identifying as a gumbo. Pickled okra is a great gateway into the okra world. Make a great snack stand alone or garnish in a Bloody Mary. Stewed okra and tomatoes is one of the highlights of summer.
In a Bloody Mary?
YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH!
(all joking aside, I am just not a food person. If it tastes good, and doesn’t come off as weird in my mouth, I am all good. And it really is binary to me; either it tastes good or bad, and I don’t differentiate between, say, McDonalds or The French Laundry, except on price and service.
Also, tomatoes are sub-food. While they can be made into food, they are not edible by themselves.)
How can this not be parody? #1
First, that author has face that was meant to be punched. Second, isn’t the answer one of the birthday boys?
I thought the picture was Ronald McDonald teaching a class.
Pic at the author byline, but otherwise you are correct.
The mostly Millennial and Gen Z attendees considered food (pie, seaweed), food culture (potlucks, cookbooks) and food spaces (a co-op, clambakes) through queer, Marxist, feminist and anti-colonialist perspectives.
This almost sent me into a towering rage.
Fortunately, I’m a mature well rounded adult, and resisted the urge to track these people down and club them like baby seals. These people could and will ruin everything.
Pritzker looks like the love child of Chris Christie and Richard Trumka, give him a few more years and he’ll be washing himself with a rag on a stick. The man’s a walking metaphor for gorging at the political trough.
Don’t leave out Walz as Minnesoda’s contribution
https://genius.com/Jonathan-edwards-sunshine-lyrics
Ah! That was a favorite sing-along on the bus on junior high field trips ’cause it had a swear in it!
Is that Freedom Rock, mannnn? ☮️ ✌️
I’ve gotten used to self-checkout, but with a typical large order at my grocery, I try to get the open slot closest to assistance from presumably-trained human professionals. That way I can jump up and down and wave my arms for help when I invariably accidentally scan something twice or when the machine fails to detect that yes, I HAVE inserted one of my few (personalized!) coupons.
On the rare occasions that I have a small order, I like to check out six items at the “Limit 5” express lane, ’cause I’m a rebel like that.
If it is less than 10 or so items, self checkout. Otherwise, online order and pickup.
I always like to stand in the full service line and bitch about the slow service with the person waiting in line behind me.
I don’t trust the grocery store shoppers to pick out my produce.
Yah, my HS chem & physics teachers drilled that into us too. “Does this answer make sense?”
Mayor does imitation of running man.
OK, I’m going to take the position that if you use a feminine honorific, you can’t call yourself “nonbinary,” and if you’re “nonbinary,” you can’t call yourself a lesbian. And at this point, I have no idea which way the “trans” in “transgender” is supposedly going. 🙄
So a guy who identifies as a woman and as such is a lesbian but it’s really a guy who likes females? Whatever it is I don’t like it.
“I used to think I was a cowboy, but I just found out I’m a lesbian.”
Asshole. It simply means asshole.
The whole thing is a sticky trap. The real message is “look at me, look at me” along with “I’m fifty-leven kinds of victimy and if you don’t address me in the ridiculous complicated manner I demand I will make your life hell.”
Social leverage and status, as Lorenzo Warby puts it. Unpin the victim glorification mentality (which rides on slave morality per Nietzsche) and it all unravels.
The only workaround is to not address such a person, at all.
Works for me.
Mmm-hmm. This.
I really have no objection to trannies, cross dressers, and/or reasonably attractive femboys. But calling yourself non-binary is attention seeking, full stop.
Well, nonbinary is pretty much a semantic nullity, so you can disregard it.
Transgender means fake (a trans woman is fake woman, etc.).
So, this person is a fake lesbian, which I take to mean a dude who wants to have sex with women, only not using his penis. Possibly because it’s in a jar.
If I’ve guess wrong, I don’t really care.
Oh, no. It definitely wants to use its penis.
Who is it for-r? 🎶
Others, including Target, Dollar General and the regional grocery chain Schnucks, have limited how many items customers can bring to self-checkouts
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but so much this.
The kiosks at the local Hannaford are marked “self-checkout express”, and don’t have conveyor belts. They *should* have the same expectation as a traditional express lane of XX items (at the Hannaford I think it’s 14) or less. People trying to bring a week’s worth of groceries through self-checkout, and only bagging stuff after ringing everything up, really slows things down.
Fewer.
I think the signs use “less”, even if that’s incorrect.
Not the ones around here. They got yelled at enough.
Deep derp.
“Star Wars” seems only to increase in popularity over time”
I had to check to make sure this wasn’t written 10 years ago. The best thing about the new SW properties that come out is watching the various YouTube antiwokesters shitting on the invariably bad writing (and even that is getting to be blase to tell the truth).
Considering the next movie is a spin off of a Disney+ series, and the last MCU movie was a spin off of a Disney+ series (which was one of the reasons given for it bombing), it’s not looking good for Star Wars.
Happy Children’s Day.
“Armed Gazan gangs, some thought tied to Hamas, steal $70 million from Bank of Palestine”
It would take a heart of stone, etc.
Hollywood, you’re missing out, this is scripting out like an A Team reboot. Except these guys really did rob the banks and they want to kill people but should be fairly easy to make it work.
The
ItalianGazan Job. I can just see them driving Prii around bomb craters, practicing blowing up buses, er, armed cars, and talking like Michael Cain.I was thinking more like Three Kings.
One round of lettuce already harvested woth next ones coming up nicely. Spinach looking strong along with all my herbs.
Happy Sunday folks
Yay.
I got some time out here yesterday afternoon after sweeping last autumn off the back patio and doing battle with the Great Mildewed Marshmallow, but this is my first morning at Tranquility Base, and a lovely morning it is. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, tree rats are frolicking, and I have my hot chai latte and choral music (Happy Easter, Pie!) I can feel my mental health improving by the minute.
I wish you all your own Tranquility Base, whether indoors or out.
Gonna be a good day, cool so the bees are sleeping in on their first morning at their new home. Hope to start tilling the garden a little later.
#metoo
The machines are better than they used to be, too. I have had zero problems with them at Wegmans or Target lately.
“What is ‘Queer Food’?”
*taps out*
Okay, I got this far:
“queer, Marxist, feminist and anti-colonialist perspectives”
Thus proving my point that “queer” is just another word for “radical leftist” now.
Any time I see the word “queer” used, I mentally replace it with “queef”.
Winner, right there.
“I’m a fan of not having to deal with humans.”
The check out people are nicer than my family or friends So I welcome a couple minutes of respite.
I spent a lot of time encouraging students to THINK about their answers; how much roughly should something be, what’s a reasonable value, are things going up or down? And this kid glommed onto it perfectly.
“That can’t be right.”
Speaking of movies with cardboard-cutout characters, lame obvious cliches, absurd premises and spectacularly awful cgi monsters- I watched “rampage” last night. It says a lot about the current state of Hollywood when a cgi giant monkey is by far and away the best most believable character in the movie.
Thus proving my point that “queer” is just another word for “radical leftist” now.
Queer Marxist is definitely redundant.
I’ve been refining my thoughts on how to deal with the campus demonstrations, specifically the camp-ins or whatever they call them.
(1) Mix up some skunk or corpse odor (maybe both, why not) in the lab. As concentrated as possible, of course.
(2) Rig a drone with a tank and a sprayer. You’re probably not going to be able to put much weight on it, so, “as concentrated, etc.”
(3) Fly it over the campers at night. Be smart – launch and recover out of sight. You might be able to do multiple passes.
It would be completely harmless and with any luck make the camp uninhabitable, with the bonus of ruining all the tents, etc. It could easily be done by a group of college students (maybe need a grad student or two).
Literally worse than Hitler.
Weaponizing a drone will get the Feds up your ass with a quickness.
Not saying it’s a bad idea, but I am saying it’d be a bad idea to get caught…
“Weaponizing” with harmless stank?
But, yeah, run the op at night, don’t run your yap about it, etc. No upside in getting caught.
Remember who we’re talking about here. It would be classed as ‘deploying a chemical weapon’ or some shit.
Walk through the camp in the day time, spraying for , a, err, umm, “mosquitoes”
Walk through with you emotional support skunk on a leash.
There have been complaints about that happening already, at least one group specifically mentioned something called “Skunk” being used on them.
And claimed it as a “chemical weapon attack”.
“Utah trolled with 4,000 hoax reports of trans bathroom ban violations within days of reporting form launch
Less than 72 hours after the launch of a reporting form to help Utah enforce its transgender bathroom ban, the Utah auditor’s office says it has received nearly 4,000 complaints — and all of them appear to be “bogus.”
We didn’t see anything that looks credible,” Utah Auditor John Dougall said in a phone call, noting that the claims have been “pretty easy” to screen. “For example, if they have my name as a complainant, you know, I’m not complaining.”
His office created an online reporting tool to comply with Morgan Republican Rep. Kera Birkeland’s “Sex-based Designations for Privacy, Anti-bullying and Women’s Opportunities,” or HB257.
After being rushed through the Legislature and quickly signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in January, the now-law changes the legal definitions of “female” and “male” to categorize Utahns by the reproductive organs of their birth, and restricts which bathrooms and locker rooms trans people can use in government-owned buildings.”
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2024/05/03/utah-trolled-with-4000-hoax/
What were the previous legal definitions of “male” and “female”…?
I’m sure it was just assumed that everybody understood what those words meant.
Bullet-riddled body?
A driver died after a vehicle crashed into an outer perimeter gate of the White House complex, and the incident late Saturday was being investigated as a traffic crash, police said. President Joe Biden was spending the weekend in Delaware, and the Secret Service said there was no threat to the White House.
The male driver, who was not immediately identified, was found dead in the vehicle following the crash shortly before 10:30 p.m., according to a Secret Service statement.
“White House Complex”? WTF?
Well, my day is ruined. I ordered two eggs over easy, and got one egg over easy and one over medium hard.
Pancakes were great though.
But was the syrup on the table?
Breakfast burritos chez moi.
“California mocked over $11 billion high-speed rail bridge to nowhere that took 9 years to build
“0.3 miles completed. After 15 years. After $11.2 BILLION. $36.96 billion per mile,”
https://nypost.com/2024/05/04/us-news/california-mocked-over-high-speed-rail-bridge-to-nowhere-that-took-9-years-to-build/
That’s oddly impressive.
Right up until you look at the kind of vile assholes getting rich off this shit.
Only thing that rail line will do is train us to make more jokes.
That pun is right on schedule
California rails taxpayers, causes STEVE SMITH much envy.
It’s impressive thievery, kind of like Goodfellas but with less violence.
Inexplicable
Both government and opposition parties say their members and supporters have faced a wave of physical and verbal attacks in recent months and have called for greater protection for politicians and election rallies.
Mainstream parties accuse the far-right Alternative for Germany party of links to violent neo-Nazi groups and of fomenting an intimidating political climate. One of its leaders, Bjoern Hoecke, is currently on trial for using a banned Nazi slogan.
Alternative for Germany, which campaigns against immigration and European integration, is expected to make gains in the European polls as well as in elections in Saxony and two other eastern German states in the fall.
Why would anybody hate us? We’re just making the world a better place. Nazi populist nationalism is the problem, not our policies.
That’s an impressive implication with zero evidence whatsoever.
Oh well, at least the link in put into people’s minds.
I remember how The Goodthinkful laughed when Rand Paul had his ribs broken.
Sharper than a serpent’s tooth
University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce said the school was aware that “some statements made were offensive, hurtful, and unacceptable, including actions that conveyed hostility and racist overtones.”
Boyce said the school has opened a student conduct investigation into one student, but couldn’t name who under privacy laws. He said some individuals acted in ways that conflict with university values.
You can’t say that. This is a free speech rally.
That is literally worse than the rapings and hostage-takings that the protesters claim didn’t happen.
I saw that vid and it’s not clear that it was racial animus although the usual suspects are making that assumption. The kid just appears to be hooting in the old Arsenio Hall Show fashion, not necessarily a racial statement at all. It does look stupid but who cares?
Very nice…
Well they weren’t going to just declare victory, pack up, and go home, were they?
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, again.
Transing the gay away – i.e. taking over all the gay groups – was a deliberate act by a specific group of Marxists for the purpose of “smashing the system”. All the grim details were in a long article someone posted a while back and which I can’t find anymore.
I’ve posted about it many times before. Almost all the gay orgs were already very left.
All oppressed people must be liberated!
Grand plan
The US is currently negotiating one mega-deal involving three components, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday.
The first component includes a package of agreements between the US and Saudi Arabia, another component has the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and a third component for a pathway to a Palestinian state.
“All of them are linked together. None go forward without the others,” Miller said.
For normalization to be realized between Saudi Arabia and Israel, there has to be a pathway for a Palestinian state and “calm in Gaza,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a panel at an economic conference in Riyadh this week.
Joe has a plan.
Since then, the Biden administration has made Israel-Saudi normalization central to its Middle East policy. The US and Saudi Arabia had continued discussions on the pact in 2023, and Blinken was expected to fly to Riyadh on October 10 last year to discuss the details, just three days before Hamas attacked Israel, postponing the effort.
That’s an interesting, and poorly written, tidbit of information.
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 05/05:
*20/20 words (+3 bonus words)
📖 In the top 3% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com 05/05:
*62/62 words (+15 bonus words)
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🔥 Solve streak: 298
I played https://squaredle.com 05/05:
62/62 words (+18 bonus words)
📖 In the top 3% by bonus words
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I played https://squaredle.com/xp 05/05:
*20/20 words (+2 bonus words)
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I played https://squaredle.com 05/05:
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🎯 In the top 16% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 249
If by “surprising” you mean….
President Joe Biden has been dogged for months by pro-Palestinian protesters calling him “Genocide Joe” — but some of the groups behind the demonstrations receive financial backing from philanthropists pushing hard for his reelection.
The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Gates, Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker, according to a POLITICO analysis.
Two of the main organizers behind protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change. (Gates did not return a request for comment, and Soros declined to comment.)
Another notable Democratic donor whose philanthropy has helped fund the protest movement is David Rockefeller Jr., who sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 2022, the fund gave $300,000 to the Tides Foundation; according to nonprofit tax forms, Tides has given nearly $500,000 over the past five years to Jewish Voice for Peace, which explicitly describes itself as anti-Zionist.
Social change, good and hard.
Maybe it’s time to rethink charitable organizations. Imagine cutting off the water to all of these?
The complex funding system in the nonprofit space sometimes means that groups are funded by grants — or even subgrants — from a larger organization that isn’t involved in granular, day-to-day management of an activist group’s work. In a statement to POLITICO, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund noted it cannot support political activity or campaigns and is not involved in the personal political giving of trustees.
It’s a giant money laundering scheme. We can’t be bothered to keep track of what those people actually do.