dfitzo53

This dude. Not that changing the title is going to hide much from forensic IT people, but come on. You called it "Important Information to Share with Chinese Government"?

Yeah it defies belief. I just can't believe this actually true. I can see two possibilities. One, he believes it's true even though it's clearly not. Two, he's in on the joke. If you replaced Al Michaels with Norm Macdonald and filmed the bit over again this would make total sense.

I think you're over estimating the average person's math skills and awareness of what the federal reserve does.

You keep saying "talk about the bad" and such, but you haven't made one coherent claim about something he's done that was bad. I don't mean "immigration", I mean what he did, why it was wrong, and what you think should have been done instead. If you aren't prepared to answer that, I'm not sure how we're supposed to take your point of view seriously.

But I was told by oil companies that fracking fluids can't get into drinking water!

Man I totally forgot what thread this is and that the guy is a candidate. If he smeared **** on their kids' daycare, they'd want his head. Since he is running with an R next to his name, they'll jump through any hoop to justify it.

Yeah that's the thing, it wouldn't surprise me if he had a legitimate gripe. Now you're just the guy who smeared poop on a day care center, and nobody will believe you or defend you. Way to go.

**** around and find out, I guess.

Lol hip firing a Barrett doesn't make you look cool, it just confirms you have no idea what you're doing.

Sure, though life expectancy has always been a tricky metric to use. A big chunk of the increase in life expectancy is massively reducing infant and child mortality.

Musk looking more like a Bond villain than ever.

Bro don't let the prude get you down.

Yeah Scooby-Doo would clearly be roo be roo be roo.

Roads have gone woke!

If you decide to go more seriously down this route hit me up. If I can teach 10 year olds to build PCs I can probably teach you.

So, I promised I'd come back to this. Apologies in advance for making a bulleted list out of this, but it felt like the best way to keep it organized enough to be readable. First, as always, I'd take anything I see in some TikTok compilation with a grain of salt. What's going to get you more clicks, saying your class is going well or saying your middle schoolers read at a 4th-grade level? Is the average middle school kid in Fairfax County reading at a 4th-grade level? No, definitely not. Is the average Baltimore City Public Schools student reading at a 4th-grade level? Probably something like it. Sad but true, and people don't seem to have the intestinal fortitude to make necessary changes. There are a lot of things at play here. The first is pretty obvious - we're still in the aftershock of the pandemic, educationally speaking. Probably not a ton that needs to be said about that at this point. Second, I'd argue this has been the state of things for a *long* time, longer than anybody cares to admit. A long time ago, my wife and I belonged to a church for a while that served a big blue-collar population. Truckers, tradespeople, mechanics, and the like. There were some bible studies where I was one of the only adults who could read fluently. A room full of grown-ass men and they had to sound out short passages. (I'm not knocking those professions, and I know some very smart electricians and carpenters, I'm just sharing my experience with one slice of society.) There's also a phenomenon I think people don't acknowledge where we've self-selected educated circles of friends. Look at the Tailgate - it feels like a cross-section of society, and it sort of it, but who are the usual suspects? Teachers, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, engineers, IT professionals, etc. People who by and large already did well in school and likely did not fully grasp as kids how badly the school system was failing some of their peers. There's an enormous segment of society that isn't really represented here. It's easy to forget that we all had a group member in college who we didn't trust with any of the work. Now, as far as the whole idea of holding kids back if they don't pass, the problem is that it doesn't work. It doesn't matter whether we want to think it should work, or whether it feels fair or appropriate, it just doesn't work. Educational research has borne this out again and again. Failing isn't the disease, it's the symptom. Holding kids back is an attempt to treat the symptom without addressing the underlying disease. If a kid doesn't learn to read as much as he should in Ms. Jones's class, putting him back in that class for another year with no other interventions is exceedingly unlikely to get him the help he needs. On top of that, he's now stigmatized for the rest of his time at that school, if not the rest of his K-12 career. Kids have trouble at school for all kinds of reasons. They may have an undiagnosed learning disability, they may be dealing with mental health issues that are not being treated appropriately, they may be food- and/or housing-insecure. The adults at school may be the only stable grown-ups some kids have in their lives. Some kids sleep at school because they don't feel safe enough at home to get enough sleep. There is a very real problem of resources. School systems (and by extension the public and the future of our country) would be greatly served by increasing educational spending in some specific ways. (Read: Not by buying more technology, or the flavor-of-the-week curriculum that is almost certainly a repackaging of ideas that are available free on the internet.) Pay teachers more and hire more teachers. Just do it. Making class sizes manageable and giving every kid who is behind access to appropriate intervention services and every kid who is ahead or on grade-level access to appropriate enrichment is crucial. That just literally isn't possible right now. (Last year I had 33 students in several of my classes. I would love to stick some of the people who vote against educational funding in front of my class and just see how they do. I'll even spot them a good lesson plan.) Increase the amount of social work done in and through schools. This is for everything from making sure homeless kids (and boy, that's a whole other problem to solve) have clean clothes to wear, to working with families to increase their trust of and investment in the school system. There are lots of families who do not trust the school system or teachers (even if they wouldn't say so out loud) and actively work at cross purposes. (As an extreme example, at the school where I taught in Baltimore we had the parent of a student assist in jumping another student. Yes, they faced charges, but the idea that it even occurred is heartbreaking to me.) Give teachers more time and money for professional development and mentorship. For most teachers in most schools, you are dumped in a classroom your first year with 30 x-year-olds and that's that. That's evolving somewhat, but like anything else in public education, change is slow, and the money to really implement improvements just isn't there. It's no wonder there's a high attrition rate, especially in the schools most in need of quality teaching.

Looks like they were Jonesing for an avocado.

Starfield?

I don't have time right now, but if I get a chance later this weekend I'll give you a reply from my perspective as a teacher. I've worked in one of the richest and one of the poorest school systems in the country.

Don't you just love it when you put on an old jacket and you find a gold bar in the pocket that you forgot all about?

How about all of them? That would be good.

Wait what? You think corporations are paying Republicans to keep the country running smoothly?

When mom says we have aliens at home.