aaplok

Except that these employees had been put on temporary unemployment (chômage partiel) [0] and their difficulties have been going on for much longer than 10 years.

Ultimately all I am saying is that other structures have not fared better than the COOP. Claiming that the potential current failure is because the COOP prevents hard decisions to be made while ignoring the fact that the previous owner lasted 3 years before failing (in spite of the temporary unemployment decisions) is not logical.

[0] https://www.novethic.fr/economie-et-social/business-model-en...

> Were they a coop when they went bankrupt?

They were not. In fact they went through series of mass-redundancy episodes that were supposed to save them from bankruptcy, soon followed by yet another bankruptcy.

The COOP might fail. Indeed the call for contributions discussed in the article was motivated by that risk. But it won't fail because it was a COOP, because every CEO who tried also failed to save it. The COOP structure is this company's last chance, literally.

> Only half correct. English is roughly 50% French and 50% German.

The article claims different proportions: "Half of all English vocabulary comes from those three Romance roots, compared to less than a third that comes from Germanic sources."

Still only half correct, but based of those proportions it is more correct than claiming English is a Germanic language.

It's not clear where the quite significant remaining proportion of the English language comes from. Colonial languages?

The real point of the essay discussed in the article is that the French origin of (part of) the English language is Norman French, which was distinctly different from Parisian French and has pretty much vanished from Normandy since. So the argument is that English might be as close to Norman French as French is. The influence of Norman French on the English language was downplayed for political reasons, argues the author.

Ultimately words of Germanic origins might be fewer but more frequently used. The grammar is also potentially closer to the Germanic origins than to the French ones? Let the linguists debate this forever I guess.

OP's point is that French prisons are famously derelict. They are overcrowded, dirty, dangerous. Regular prisoners do not enjoy the luxury of a VIP cell.

Sarkozy played no small part in making this happen.

We should absolutely wish for all prisoners to be treated decently, and it is a terrible thing that the matter is only brought up when someone like Sarkozy has to ensure a portion of what regular prisoners endure.

And worst of all, his political followers are all lamenting about the conditions he is in while remaining hardliners for the rest of the prisoners. You are right that OP should not wish ill on Sarkozy, whose distress is real and painful to see. But OP's frustration is understandable to anyone who cares even a little for the welfare of regular prisoners in France.

It is not political play. This is FUD spread by his political supporters.

The "exécution provisoire" is a measure that was introduced when his own party was in power, to make sure that terrorists were jailed immediately. He happened to be condemned for breaching the same law (association de malfaiteurs) that is used against terrorists.

I once read a comment by a lawyer that he was amazed by the number of politicians who ended up being caught by laws they had voted for. This is what happened here.

In fact when he was president he implemented another law, on minimum mandatory sanctions for repeated offenders (peines plancher) which was repelled by the subsequent administration. He would have been caught by that too otherwise.

Of course it doesn't. People are wrong all the time.

But even if they are wrong, their argument is still that racism is unethical. You can't correct a misinterpretation by another misinterpretation.

> It means statements that they perceive as having those qualities.

That is exactly the same thing. If you acknowledge that they perceive a statement to be racist then you agree that racism is what they mean.

> that perception is itself politically driven.

Isn't everyone's ?

> I love when people label politics they disagree with as “ethical” problems.

This is a disingenious portrayal of what people you disagree with are saying. It is not like someone is calling pro-capitalist or socialist views unethical.

"Politics they disagree with" means racism, homophobia and ableism. There certainly is an argument that each of those is ethically problematic, because each denies some human beings' basic rights to be considered human.

You may well argue that dhh doesn't hold those views, or argue that the community should accept that some members have toxic views and move on. It is best to avoid claiming that racism is just another respectable political opinion.

Not OP, but I typically only have 1–2 windows per workspace. I use tabs in both browser and terminal (eg via tmux). So it seems like niri's scrolling capabilities wouldn't bring much to my use case.

The elephant in the room here is that perhaps the biggest difference between the two learning experiences that OP is describing is himself.

He might just have discovered he is more mature at 30 than he was at 18...

Mastery Learning, which Bloom advocates for in the two sigma problem paper, is an alternative to 1 on 1, not a way to achieve it.

What you describe seems to be a very poor implementation of mastery learning. But if the tutor is completely disengaged even 1 on 1 tutoring is unlikely to have good effects.

You mean that you believe that Black and Hispanic kids are being blocked from taking Algebra in middle school because Blacks and Latinos are bad at Algebra compared to Whites, just as women cannot bench press as much as men?

Surely you can't be surprised that not everyone shares that belief??

They did not treat "results" as a binary "good" vs "bad" variable. In the article they take pains to justify their methodology in assessing students' chances of success in 8th grade algebra as a continuous variable:

> EVAAS is a statistical tool that could predict with remarkable accuracy which students would succeed in advanced courses.

Then

> The table demonstrates a strong correlation between EVAAS predictions and actual student performance. Students were grouped into probability ranges based on their predicted likelihood of success in 8th grade Algebra I, and their actual performance was then tracked.

So both the input (EVAAS predictor) and output (success in 8th grade algebra) are continuous variables (as shown in the first and last columns of the table mentioned in the quote), and they use this strong correlation to study access to 8th grade algebra against non-academic factors by using the EVAAS predictor as a control variable. I am not a professional statistician but honestly it looks pretty solid to me, or at least far more rigorous than most education science I have come across.

What they are then saying is that if you control for probability of success, Black and Hispanic children are significantly less likely to be admitted in 8th grade Algebra than White and Asian students. Looking at racial differences is not a particularly contentious way of studying bias in American society.

Of course they could have looked at other factors: economic and social class, gender, etc. This is the tragedy of sociology: you can't study social bias without being accused of introducing bias in how you study it...

From the article:

> Research in the 1990s found that in California, Latino students scoring above the 90th percentile on standardized tests had only about a 50% chance of being placed in college preparatory classes, while Asian and white students with similar scores had more than a 90% chance.

The data is split by community ( Black, Latino, White, ...). Whites and Asians fare the best (see also their fig. 6.1). Kids from other communities are prevented from getting the same opportunities as kids from these two communities performing equivalently.

So it is not that Asian kids don't matter, it is that the data indicates that Asian kids already seem to be treated reasonably well.

Beware the logical fallacy. "A implies B" does not mean that "not A implies not B".

Workers who earn too little to pay taxes (A) will not benefit from a tax cut (B).

But workers who earn enough (not A) may still not benefit (not B), for example because their employer indirectly pockets the difference. That is actually being argued in the article.

So this is indeed the appropriate way of formulating the statement: at least 40% of workers will demonstrably not benefit from this.

I did not mean that the words "middle age mothers" are mysoginic or ageist in themselves. I was referring to the singling out of this particular identity group within the context of OP's message.

I should have quoted a longer part of that message for better clarity. I incorrectly assumed that my full comment was enough to contextualise what I meant.

> some group of middle age mothers

With all due respect this comes across as mysoginic and ageist. It is also quite unnecessary to your point. Especially because middle aged women aren't the most powerful lobby in the US by any stretch.

> Ask students to solve harder problems, assuming they will use AI to learn more effectively.

What does this look like? Like asking children learning to read to demonstrate they can read Shakespeare?

A staple of modern education is scaffolding learning, where skills are incrementally learnt and build on previously learnt simpler skills. Much of what students learn in high school and early on at university is meant as a stepping stone to acquiring more applicable skills. Just like you can't start assessing learning abilities from Shakespeare, students simply need to be told whether they master those simpler skills before moving up. Doing away with assessing simpler skills just because AI can now perform them isn't the solution to addressing a lack of critical thinking.

What will need to happen is that early subjects will need to stop being used for gatekeeping. Rather than treating education as an adversarial game, we should make it a collaborative one and instead of trying to make it more difficult for students to pass assessments with AI (and mechanically making it harder to pass them without as well), we should give students a stake in learning what they need to learn.

Many of the students I talk to. I don't claim they form a representative sample of the student cohort, on the contrary. I guess that the typical student is typical but I have not gone to check that.

> what is fulfilling in your job as a math teacher?

Many things. The most fulfilling for me is taking a student from hating maths to enjoying it. Or when they realise that in fact they're not bad at maths. Students changing their opinions about themselves or about maths is such a fulfilling experience that it's my main motivation.

Then working with students who likes and are good at maths and challenging them a bit to expand their horizon is a lot of fun.

> When students learn?

At a high level yes (that maths can be fun, enjoyable, doable). Them learning "stuff" not so much, it's part of the job.

> When they're assigned grades that accurately reflect their performance?

Yes but not through a system based on counting how many mistakes they make, like exams do. If I can design a task that enables a student to showcase competency accurately it's great. A task that enables the best ones to extend themselves (and achieve higher marks) is great.

> When they learn something with minimal as opposed to significant effort?

Not at all. If there is no effort I don't believe much learning is happening. I like to give an opportunity for all students to work hard and learn something in the process no matter where they start from.

I only care about the grade as feedback to students. It is a way for me to tell them how far they've come.

I don't think so? I teach maths, not survival or social pressure. If a student in my class is a competent mathematician why should they not be acknowledged to be that?

Yes I think the issue is as much that open tasks make learning interesting and meaningful in a way that exams hardly can do.

This is the core of the issue really. If we are in the business of teaching, as in making people learn, exams are a pretty blunt and ineffective instrument. However since our business is also assessing, proctoring is the best if not only trustworthy approach and exams are cheap in time, effort and money to do that.

My take is that we should just (properly) assess students at the end of their degree. Spend time (say, a full day) with them but do it only once in the degree (at the end), so you can properly evaluate their skills. Make it hard so that the ones who graduate all deserve it.

Then the rest of their time at university should be about learning what they will need.

> Students don’t seem to mind this reversion.

Those I ask are unanimously horrified that this is the choice they are given. They are devastated that the degree for which they are working hard is becoming worthless yet they all assert they don't want exams back. Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions and in contrast excel in open tasks that allow them to explore, so my sample is biased but still.

They don't have a solution. As the main victims they are just frustrated by the situation, and at the "solutions" thrown at it by folks who aren't personally affected.

The article is mostly about the use of genAI in education.

It was written after the author attended a workshop where the presenter tried and seemingly failed to show how AI was able to write essays when prompted with the word "innovative" or produce a podcast on a book. The author also mentions an article by a university lecturer who claims that "Human interaction is not as important to today’s students" and that AI will basically replace it.

The subtitle of the article is "AI cannot save us from the effort of learning to live and die."

In other words, the article is about a specific trend in higher education to present AI as some sort of revolutionary tool that will completely change the way students learn.

The author disagrees and contends that pretending to replace most human interactions with genAI is a gimmick, and pretending that AI can make learning effortless is lying to students.

The way you use AI for learning language is certainly imaginative but you are not claiming that it replaces the quality of interacting with native speakers or possibly immersion in the culture. Your tool may be useful and clever but claiming it makes learning language effortless (as some AI apologists in education might) would make it a gimmick.

That Linux is less accessible than windows or MacOS may be true (I personally agree with you about windows, less so about macOS), but if an argument is not acceptable about windows, it can't be accepted about Linux either. If both OSs seem to suffer from difficult-to-fix issues when turning monitors on and off, that can't be the reason why Windows is more non-tech friendly.

I think that this is the bulk of the argument here.

> By that reasoning, no OS is suitable for non technical users.

That was the point GP was trying to make (a bit snarkily and sarcastically) in response to the argument that Linux is not suitable for nontechnical users.

> I also don’t see how foreigners (or “aliens” as US law seems to prefer) can claim protection under the US Constitution. If the latter does provide it, that’s great, but frankly it makes no sense to me.

Everybody, including the country's citizens, are also expected to follow the country's law. If you come to the US and get mauled, as a non-citizen you have the right to the same protection as anybody else. If you are suspected of mauling someone, as a non-citizen you are afforded the same rights to a fair trial as citizens. If it was legal in the US to beat up a foreigner because they are not protected by the law, it wouldn't be very safe for you.

This is the rule of law [0] and is a really important concept in modern democracy. This is why foreigners on US soil can expect some protection by the laws of the country, of which the constitution is the foundation.

> As a visitor to a country I expect to follow that country’s laws, and not expect any privileges which are afforded to that country’s citizens.

Visas indeed have additional legal requirements, typically around rights to work or study. It is unlikely that a US visa would specifically restrict speech or protests (you are welcome to check this in your visas), and so it is the rule of law that applies.

In short, what is being disputed here is not that a foreign citizen was deported for violating the law, but that the deportation was decided by the executive branch of government, which is a breach of the separation of powers.

The response by the government is that it is legal for them to rescind any visa arbitrarily. This is currently being debated hotly in the US, and is essentially the background for this article.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law

That would only show that people are ignorant of the past and influenced by what is called the national myth [0], not necessarily that their definition of fascism has changed.

To return your argument, if you poll people who call current events fascists and ask them if that 1923 Supreme court decision is fascist, would you be as confident that 95% would say it's not?

That people's view of fascism has changed after world war 2 is obvious and not particularity insightful. So has their view of antisemitism for instance.

I also should add that I agree with you on the great danger of labeling too many things fascists, including the current events. It is entirely possible to oppose Trump's second term and even think that it is a threat to democracy without resorting to calling it fascist. It is also possible to compare it with the rise of fascist regimes if one provides appropriate arguments.

I just don't think that your example with 1920s America illustrates that point particularly well.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_myth

Changed compared to when? Back in 1939 Nazism and Fascism were different doctrines, which were soon put in the same bag of "fascism" for the purpose of war propaganda from the allies. Bizarrely the equally insane Japanese racism wasn't called fascist.

Nowadays fascism has become synonymous with right extremists in popular culture, I guess because it's an easy way to discredit a political opponent.

I believe that scholars who study political science have a different and more consistent definition of fascism, though it too likely evolved to capture the essential characteristics of related ideologies.

A significant difference between Jim Crow's America and fascist regimes is the concentration of power into the hands of one man (or a small group). That means that separation of power (executive, judiciary, legislative) that existed through American history did not exist in Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. Another one is nationalism. There are likely others.

> historically no one considers 1923 America to be fascist.

Many scholars consider that Nazism was greatly inspired by American racism. Calling 1923 America fascist would be anachronistic, but also American racist policies were less related to Italian fascism than to Nazi doctrines. But plenty of scholars make the connection. Here is an example: [0].

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-American-Model-United-States/...