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msie

Sigh, why can't we have nice things?

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Because Bill Gates was an ass

It's unlikely he changed, he just stepped away from business management and so doesn't need to don that cap any longer.

Personality compartmentalization is a fascinating thing.

He hasn’t changed at all. He pulled the exact same bullshit with opposing efforts to waive intellectual property rights for vaccines during the pandemic, using Gates Foundation money and influence to block anyone who attempted. If anything, he’s even more of a monster, now playing his malevolent games in the domain of global public health.

While portraying a "retired and calmed down rich man" with his blog posts and "books of the year" lists.

Ugly.

For a look at what his non-retired, non-calm management style was like see:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...

That's a good tale, but I also read "The Halloween Documents", so that's more than enough knowledge about that guy's ethics.

Ah, and the "hidden Microsoft Trademark" in every BASIC image. I think Apple guys found and nullified in theirs, and pissed off Bill a little.

The billions Gates has dropped on "education reform", including support for Common Core, is the sort of thing a rich ass convinced of the rightness of his techno-managerial views would do.

Is Common Core really that bad? It seems to be yet another globalist boogeyman for the online ultra-independent-personality types like "15 minute cities" and similar quips.

It's pointless numbers which don't provide any insight into a student's learning while on the school level are used to punish schools rather than provide more support.

Since it isn't meaningful to learning, students won't actually care about the test unless there are severe consequences, like taking away the ability to graduate, for not doing well.

Since it's high-stakes for the school as well, they develop lesson plans around teaching for the test (eg, taking time away from subjects which aren't tested), and setting up school rally events to add emotional reinforcement.

This is all opportunity cost taking away from actual effective teaching.

I don't know how you turn that into 'globalist boogeyman'. It's techno-managerial blind faith in measurement rather than trust in educators, combined with the classist view that most people should be trained as meat widgets for corporations, not citizens.

Are you sure you mean No Child Left Behind (HW Bush 1)/Race to the Top (Obama 2)'s emphasis on measurable objectives backed by standardized tests? The Common Core is a program/sequence of Grade 2-12 curriculum objectives.

https://corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ELA_Sta...

https://corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Math_St...

I say this as someone who hates exams as assessment in general, because I'm simply not wired to do any meaningful thinking given a piece of paper, no ability to walk around and think, and always just too little time to gather my thoughts. (I always enjoyed tough problem sets instead.)

I could well be wrong on the details, but note that Bill Gates and his foundation funding enabled Common Core to meet RttP goals, in a way that https://dianeravitch.net/2014/06/08/the-inside-story-of-how-... describes as a "coup".

Curriculum standards only work if people follow the standards, which for the US means tests, along with the artificial high-stakes I mentioned.

(Ooops! RttP should be RttT, for Race to the Top, not toP!)

Don’t worry - I’m not innocent here either - I forgot that it was George W Bush, not HW Bush!

For more of this, see the book _StartUp_ by Jerry Kaplan, which basically devolves to the story of how Microsoft killed off Go Corporation and PenPoint:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3826418-startup

Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, sharing the story of how Gates and Ballmer tried to screw Allen out of his equity in Microsoft while he was distracted by his first cancer diagnosis really tells you all you need to know about what sort of person Gates was back then.

https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/microsoft-co-foun...

It’s a shame he didn’t set up a foundation to keep his computer history museum open.

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