beezlebroxxxxxx

This is not hitting the problem. Most students in universities are completely fine with awful grades or expect comical levels of grade inflation. Ask a professor or TA and you'll hear about an insane level of entitlement from students after they hand in extremely shoddy work. Failing students is actually quite hard or extremely discouraged by admins.

The real problem is students and universities have collectively bought into a "customer mindset". When they do poorly, it's always the school's fault. They're "paying customers" after-all, they're (in their mind) entitled to the degree as if it is a seamless transaction. Getting in was the hardest part for most students, so now they believe they have already proven themselves and should as a matter of routine after 3-4 years be handed their degree because they exchanged some funds. Most students would gladly accept no grades if it was possible.

Unfortunately, rather than having spines, most schools have also adopted a "the customer is always right" approach, and endlessly chase graduation numbers as a goal in and of itself and are terrified of "bad reviews."

There has been lots of handwringing around AI and cheating and what solutions are possible. Mine is actually relatively simple. University and college should get really hard again (I'm aware it was a finishing school a century ago, but the grade inflation compared to just 50 years ago is insane). Across all disciplines. Students aren't "paying for a degree", they're paying to prove that they can learn, and the only way to really prove that is to make it hard as hell and to make them care about learning in order to get to the degree - to earn it. Otherwise, as we've seen, the value of the degree becomes suspect leading to the university to become suspect as a whole.

Schools are terrified of this, but they have to start failing students and committing to it.

Decision making is really important for people that can play golf well. I've played with a buddy a couple times and every time it's eye opening to see how he is practically playing a different game than me. I'm just trying to get the ball in the hole, get par if I'm lucky. On the other hand, he knows, most of the time, that he can get par quite easily. Instead, the game becomes about positioning, club selection, and approach; if I'm being honest, though, those concepts aren't even part of my game. I'm just trying to finish, to play the course, while he's trying to beat the course.

Android has frequently been ahead of Apple in terms of features for years at this point. But Apple's overall "ecosystem" is (or was) much more cohesive, so everything felt very Apple, while Android's has (for better or worse) been something of a wild west situation; and iPhone's have excellent cameras. If you go with a flagship Android phone, though, you're now getting an equally good camera (if not better in some cases) and the benefit of Android's more freedom, in relative terms of course.

NA seems to really fixate on the luxury and social significer aspect of having an iphone though. But I think this update is finally ending that for some people. I have many friends who were diehard iPhone users that are now thinking of moving to Android. There's also a growing sense that new gens of most phones are making only marginal advances. Keeping a phone for 3 or more years is much more common and some mid-tier phones are now getting long security and update commitments.

If you liked Andrei Rublev, you should check out Alexei German's adaptation of the Strugatsky brothers "Hard to Be a God." It's insane, gorgeous, disgusting, teetering on the edge of madness, and monumental.

German's "Khrustalyov, My Car!" is also the purest cinematic distilation of paranoia I have ever seen.

I wish cegep, or an interstitial school where you have a year or 2 to just take tons of unrelated courses, was more common. So much focus is put on universities as job training that they lose a part of what historically has long made them special --- learning for the sake or learning.

They I understand it: There was a deal to ban TikTok unless ownership changes --- the original intention was no Chinese involvement, but now it seems "ownership change" means the ownership is amicable to the current president. There was also something of a grace period for when that ban went into effect if TikTok could show they were actively in the process of finding a new owner. The current president basically just kept insisting that grace period was in effect while he constructed a bid for ownership that aligned with his and his friends (business) interests.

Basically, Congress did not do its job and ignored the very law they voted for.

> a transparent ledger

The only useful application of crypto/blockchain tech I've ever seen simply takes advantage of the transparent ledger as a way of tracking receipts.

One of the perfect applications is in shipping and logistics where receipt validation, transparency, and certification, is an essential part of the business.

Yeah, anyone in Canada has seen AI image ads and AI video ads on youtube purporting to feature or include prominent Canadian politicians (current PM and party leaders). Youtube seems to have just wholesale given up on moderating their ad content.

> You gotta ask yourself whether we really want a society where people have to already know the job before they get their first job. Where everyone is like a doctor: already decided at age 16 that this was the path they wanted to follow, choosing classes towards that goal, and sticking with it until well into adulthood. And they have to essentially pay to get this job, because it comes at at cost of exploring other things (as well as actual money to live).

With the way higher-ed works in the US, and the way certain schools opportunity hoard to an insane degree, that is effectively already the case for whole industries and has been so for decades at this point. It's practically an open secret that getting into some schools is the golden ticket rather than the grades you earn while there. Many top schools are just networking and finishing schools for whole "elite" industries.

If software engineers want to be referred to as "engineers" then they should actually learn about engineering failures. The industry and educational pipeline (formal and informal) as a whole is far more invested in butterfly chasing. It's immature in the sense that many people with decades of experience are unwilling to adopt many proven practices in large scale engineering projects because they "get in the way" and because they hold them accountable.

The scale of money is crazy in this example, but the same thing happens in the pharmaceutical/bio-tech industry.

The amount of money in US politics and elections in particular is staggering when you think about it. In 15 weeks Kamala Harris' campaign spent $1.5 billion. That's just insane. Especially when you find out that a lot of that spend goes through "media consultancies" and PR firms...run by former DNC staffers. And the same is true for the RNC. The two parties are basically a giant revolving door and network of jobs with access to this enormous slush fund.

Well, you hear a lot about how AI will "empower" employees and generate new "insights" based off of data for analysts and execs. In reality, most executives aren't really interested in that. They'd like it for sure, but really what they want is automation. They want "efficiencies"; they want cost cutting.

Anyone that's been involved in data science roles in corporate environments knows that "the data" is usually forced into an execs pre-existing understanding of a phenomenon. With AI, execs are really excited at "cutting out the middlemen" when the middlemen in the equation are very often their own paid employees. That's all fine and dandy in an abstract economic view, but it's sure something they won't say publicly (at least most won't).

In terms of potential cost cutting, it probably is the most recent "new magic". You used to have to pay a consultant, now you can "ask AI".

Every AI company is probably desperately trying to become the next "ad industry." AI is just another conduit for mass data vacuuming for "targeted" advertisements. Or they're trying to become a defense contractor.

This is true. Also, over time, well-usable but not exactly the best looking can become the "standard" for good-looking after a while because the design becomes so ubiquitous. You could easily make a beautiful or good looking suite of airplane controls (call it a "rebrand"), but most pilots would probably call it disgusting because it violates the common standards and aesthetics that they rely on.

If anything, "yellow journalism" has been the norm. Being a journalist used to be a step above parasite and ambulance chaser in popular opinion. You didn't need a college degree, let alone an Ivy league degree like today, to do it. Most papers were blatant mouthpieces of owners or certain political parties. Everyone knew that. "Objectivity" was laughed at by reporters.

That shifted with Watergate, which, afterwards, journalism began to have a certain prestige as "crusading truth seekers." Journalists doubled down on that view, cultivated it, and began to believe in it. Nowadays, journalism (at least in major markets) is more about prestige and access to power. Some journalists have a complex and believe that they have the access to the truth, leading to much handwringing about its "professionalism".

In reality, journalism is closer to writing in a journal after a party: they just offer accounts of events. That we expect better from them is, in part, a creation of their own making that is now starting to bite them in the ass.

I'm sympathetic to your reasoning, and I actually think your conclusion about how people wfh is probably true (a minority finding it wildly more productive) but the problem I see is that most execs don't understand what a lot of their employees do on a day to day basis, nor do I think they could properly understand the data even if they had it as a result. And, if they did have it, why don't they show it if the conclusions are so self evident?

In reality I think it's much simpler: the work that executives (and some upper level managers) do relies on a certain amount of theater. They need to be seen (in person) and they to be seen doing work (in person). That's part of the "deal" with being an exec --- you need to be able to act the part. Then, they just assume that's how it should or needs to be for everyone else.

I work a 2 in 3 out style schedule.

During the 3 days I wfh, I get the most work done. I can focus and organize my day around executing a plan.

During the 2 days I'm in the office, I can get answers from people much quicker. Some people (new hires in particular) don't know how to describe their problem, or they're just really bad at it. My solution to endless teams convos is to just say "I'll head over to your desk" and then we work it out in person.

I think working with people in person can be very powerful. Is it essential though? No. Most corps don't even bother though. And most managers are bad at management. Working entirely wfh requires good managers with actual project management skills. Most corps are unwilling to train or prioritize hiring for that.

Most writers kinda skip chapters. Instead, on early drafts, they focus on scenes, which might be 1:1 with a chapter, but are often 2:1 or even 3:1 with a chapter. The relationship between paragraphs, scenes, and chapters, is one way of thinking about and manipulating pace in a story.

The ideas in it are fascinating (if also dated). The characters, though, are insanely 1 dimensional. It's very obviously a 1 micron thin story layered over the scaffold of ideas. After looking at it that way, I could get through the series without groaning or laughing a lot.

As a career, working in aviation is extremely hierachical and seniority based. If you're old, chances are you started making an okay amount of money and now are making absolute bank. Years of collective agreements and contracts have seniority king. If you're a new employee though it seems to be really shitty. The system is entirely tipped against you.

Every flight I have taken in the last 5 years in Canada has been delayed. They simply cannot run any of the routes on time.

The real curveball is sending smoke signals to request pricing info.

Most, if not all, Canadian admissions are holistic. All the universities are pretty easy to get into as long as you have the grades, especially for undergrad. As a result, for undergrad at least, no one really cares what school you went to.

From outside looking in, the American system has a hilariously unequal system. Certain opportunities are hoarded by an insanely small set of schools, almost entirely based on "prestige" and financial dominance. And it's this crazy arms-race/pressure cooker to get in. But once you're in, grade inflation is everywhere and people aren't actually working super hard. No one freaks out about admissions to "mid-tier" schools. It's entirely about a select coterie of schools who people rightly perceive as gatekeeping to an incredible extent.

None of the schools actually emphasize being accessible and hard to graduate from. The incentives are all weird and cater to a small elite population. The name on the degree is more important than earning the degree.

Part of the problem is many academic institutions, even prestigious ones, simply don't prioritize teaching. They don't even really prioritize challenging education. They prioritize prestige and opportunity hoarding. The hardest part about many of these schools is getting in. Once you're in, then grade inflation and the desire for the institution to retain it's prestige brand means the classes aren't particularly hard --- graduating is particularly easy and most students actually barely put in effort. Getting in is the golden ticket more than graduating.

One solution, is for an institution to prioritize accessibility (easier to get in) but also prioritize difficulty (actually hard to graduate). This would reorient incentives around challenging education that pushes students to excel rather than coast after striving just to get in. Unfortunately, the priorities are the exact opposite today.

It's incredible how little interest these ghouls have in the concept of "public good." Things like the conserving the environment or public health or even something as simple as free tax filing, are just seen as aisles for scoring ideological points or maximizing the interests of profit seeking entities.

You can use 'circumvent' here, but the meaning is a little odd. That's more like heading from Mars to the Sun and finding a way around the Earth to continue to your destination. Usually, people use 'circumnavigate' instead, which is used to describe vehicles (boats, planes, bicycles, etc.) making their way all the way around Earth.

There already are debates about "drive by wire" in racing today, I can't imagine how bad it'll be when it's "drive by copilot."

One of the best plugins I have in my browser automatically works through those cookie banners to select the least invasive option. The speed and way that it simplifies the process is fantastic.

It looks like he was using a very long and rather narrow kayak. Those are easier to tip. I once used a friend's friend's sprint kayak. I've never tipped a kayak, but it was very easy to tip the sprint kayak. Any waves and that thing was almost unusable.

Most recreational kayaks are, like you suggest, almost idiot proof and can only be tipped if you're really trying.