2025-03-30
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What should one do? That may seem a strange question, but it's not meaningless or unanswerable. It's the sort of question kids ask before they learn not to ask big questions. I only came across it myself in the process of investigating something else. But once I did, I thought I should at least try to answer it. So what should one do? One should help people, and take care of the world. Those two are obvious. But is there anything else? When I ask that, the answer that pops up is Make good new things.
Horseshit
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Far-Right Influencers Are Hosting a $10K Matchmaking Weekend to Repopulate Earth
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Pen and paper takes 67 year old Susan top of 11M fantasy football league
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Game of clones: Science is immortalizing Argentina's top polo horses
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The Gen X Career Meltdown - The New York Times
“I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,” said Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles. Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights — or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles — and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything. More than a dozen members of Generation X interviewed for this article said they now find themselves shut out, economically and culturally, from their chosen fields.
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Wild marmots' social networks reveal controversial evolutionary theory in action
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A Near-Miss with a City-Killer Asteroid Highlights Gaps in Earth's Defenses
celebrity gossip
Musk
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Yale places scholar on leave for alleged ties to terrorist organization.
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Kermit the Frog tapped as University of Maryland commencement speaker
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Oil and gas money shapes research, creates 'echo chamber' in higher education
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The average college student today: How things have changed.
I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read, and most certainly not the attention span to finish. For them to sit down and try to read a book like The Overstory might as well be me attempting an Iron Man triathlon: much suffering with zero chance of success. Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound out any words whatsoever. Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training. Students get exam questions wrong simply because they didn't even take the time to read the question properly. Reading anything more than a menu is a chore and to be avoided.
Their writing skills are at the 8th-grade level. Spelling is atrocious, grammar is random, and the correct use of apostrophes is cause for celebration. Worse is the resistance to original thought. What I mean is the reflexive submission of the cheapest cliché as novel insight.
The average student has seen college as basically transactional for as long as I’ve been doing this. They go through the motions and maybe learn something along the way, but it is all in service to the only conception of the good life they can imagine: a job with middle-class wages. I’ve mostly made my peace with that, do my best to give them a taste of the life of the mind, and celebrate the successes.
I don’t blame K-12 teachers. This is not an educational system problem, this is a societal problem. What am I supposed to do? Keep standards high and fail them all? That’s not an option for untenured faculty who would like to keep their jobs.
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US investigates Stanford, UC schools over affirmative action
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Garmin Ticked Off Smartwatch Users with Its New Subscription Fee
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Broadcom raises minimum requirement for VMware licenses: from 16 to 72 cores
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The performances were another sticking point for critics. Bruce Willis played things straight, but Gary Oldman gave an almost cartoonish villain, and Chris Tucker’s Ruby Rhod was a full-throttle burst of madness that divided critics immediately. For some, that kind of energy was part of the fun. But for critics expecting a more serious or traditional sci-fi epic, it was unbearable.
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New Windows 11 build makes mandatory Microsoft sign-in even more mandatory
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Did you really think that Amazon was not listening to you before that? Did you really buy an Alexa trusting Amazon to "protect your privacy"? Recently, I came across a comment on Hacker News where the poster defended Apple as protecting privacy of its users because "They market their product as protecting our privacy". I mean, once again, come on! Did you really think that "marketing" is telling the truth? Are you a freshly debarked Thermian? (In case you missed it, this is a Galaxy Quest reference.)
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Kink and LGBT dating apps exposed 1.5M private user images online
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Left Angst
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US warns French companies they must comply with Trump's diversity ban
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Trump's attacks on universities get darker, with shadows reaching our shores
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Airbnb cofounder says DOGE is pushing for an 'Apple Store–like' government
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NASA terminating $420M in contracts not aligned with its new priorities
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ICE detains Harvard researcher from Russia who protested Ukraine war
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US scientists lost $3B in NIH grants since Trump took office
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Mexico slides towards recession amid Trump turmoil
Mexico’s economy is slowing sharply and will soon fall into recession, several economists predict, as Donald Trump’s changing tariff plans cast uncertainty over the relationship with its largest trading partner. Mexico is one of the countries most vulnerable to the US president’s drive to reshore investment and close trade deficits. The country’s economy was already fragile, with the government cutting spending due to a gaping budget deficit and investors spooked by its radical judicial reforms.
- Mexico's troubles are Trump's fault now? Trump's power continues to grow...
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Targeting of Tufts Student for Deportation Stuns Friends and Teachers
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Alarm as Florida Republicans move to fill deported workers' jobs with children
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The Retired J.P. Morgan Executive Tracking Deportation Flights
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International students wake to an email asking them to self deport
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When the physicists need burner phones, that's when you know America's changed
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Ex-FCC chairs from both parties say CBS news distortion investigation is bogus
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Trump's Police Are Now Disappearing Students for Their Op-Eds
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Health / Medicine
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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An August 2024 study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Virology confirms the measles vaccine virus sheds in recently vaccinated children for 29 days, meaning the vaccinated can spread the virus to the unvaccinated for about a month. A 1995 CDC study found that 83% of vaccinated children had measles virus shed in their urine. With a genetically modified vaccine virus capable of shedding for nearly a month and entering a broader range of human cells than the wild-type strain, the question becomes harder to ignore: Is the vaccine itself playing a role in the surge?
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Nearly 500 confirmed cases of measles across 19 US states, says CDC
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The CDC buried a measles forecast that stressed the need for vaccinations
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Measles outbreak worsens as Texas, New Mexico cases rise 20% in 3 days