dorchadas

> We have a Discord server where we all still talk and chat, but it's a cheap imitation of what we used to have.

I moved half a world away for a masters and now have a job in another country. I feel this so much. I've been tempted to go back several times just because the lack of connection. It doesn't help I'm in a smaller country which makes it hard to break into friend groups when they've all known each other since secondary school (or longer) or Uni.

Discord really can't replace in-person discussion and experiences.

This is the problem. I was a secondary maths/science teacher. 9 tried to implement a flipped classroom before the pandemic and, well, the kids did absolutely nothing. Most would come to school the next day having never read/watched (I linked videos and actual reading, trying to cover all varieties of ways kids prefer to learn) and be openly proud they didn't. It listed about two weeks before I just said screw it and went back to the normal model because I had to.

Lots of students simply aren't mature enough or lack the disciple/interest to do a flipped classroom - and this will apply to any online education as well. Tech isn't going to magically change education, sadly, at least not the way we conceive of it now.

I find handwriting a lot better than keyboards. The physical act of writing helps me remember stuff better than typing it, so it's especially useful during notetaking sessions. I also like reading pdfs on my Quaderno (another eink reader, A4 size so bigger than a remarkable), and it also allows me to easily annotate them as well. It's much better than an ereader for pdf due to size, and much less harsh on the eyes than, say, an iPad. And everything can be transferred via usb with their app.

But, I just disagree with the first premise and that's why I find mine useful, though still not as useful as actual paper which is easier to flip through, etc.

I'd be willing to bet that in most places they're not legal, there's just nobody enforcing it. They're willfully in violation of a lot of rules and regulations that are already in place. And harming the locals so entitled tourists can think they're at home.

So, again, it comes down to the entitlement felt by travellers.

It might be the solution to that, but it creates a lot more problems for the actual residents of the city. Drives up their rent, lowers their supply, makes them have to deal with neighbours coming in at all hours of the night, often without a care for the fact they even have neighbours who have to wake up and go to work in the morning. Ruins any community in a place. All the negative externalities get hoisted onto the actual residents of a town.

Now, should there maybe be an area of the city explicitly for short-term rentals, included in city planning? That's a different question; but it shouldn't be mixed in normal residential area, as all it does is make life worse for the actual residents.

There's rules and regulations against it, for one. Should locals be allowed to do whatever they want on their property with no regards to how it will impact neighbours and local economy? There's a reason we have zoning laws, etc, in place. There's lots of things we stop locals from doing because it's for the better of the community as a whole, and renting out short-term to tourists should be one (and, again, it sometimes already is but AirBnB allows them to skirt the regulations).

No, they are accounted for. The issue is entitlement on the side of tourists -- thinking they should have access to all the local amenities and stuff they do at home, while on vacation. This was a problem, but it was never a huge problem, from how I understand it, before AirBnB. Basically AirBnB changed the expectations for tourists, at the harm of the local communities.

> however there are times when you want an entire house, not an apartment.

It's not your home, why should you deserve a house over someone who lives there?

No, but it'll force them to go to places that are actually planned to accommodate them. Tourists are included in city planning, believe it or not, but they're not expected to be taking up the actual residential places of the city. That's why areas are zoned for hotels and there's regulation around them.

Started out? I believe they still are in a lot of places.

Yep. This is a huge issue often overlooked by the AirBnB apologists. Long term lets in Dublin, experiencing a huge housing crisis, doubled during the pandemic as a lot of AirBnB hosts fled back to the long-term market. Sadly I believe they're likely all back to AirBnB now.

And AirBnB also takes housing away from locals and gives it to entitled tourists. Does way more harm than the few people that get employed by them.

And AirBnB skirts these zoning laws by basically allowing hotels in areas not zoned for them. Tourists aren't locals, they shouldn't get housing at the locals' expense, which is exactly what is happening. Housing prices go up for locals, they have to deal with all the downsides of basically living next to a hotel all because tourists feel entitled to not have to stay in places meant for tourists. It's destroying cities - Dublin, for instance, is beyond ridiculous. And at one point there's more AirBnB to rent in city centre Dublin than apartments in the entire country. AirBnB is a big cause on the housing crisis because they circumvent rules and push all externalities to the locals.

Seriously. I can only hope the tide is turning and these AirBnBs will be back in the hands of the people who actually live in the cities. Sadly corporations will probably eat them up and let, though hopefully as long-term instead of short!

I think I got lucky. Late July with a school that (at the time) had a Sept 1 cutoff. There was only one person younger than me until middle school.

My kindergarten teacher, who was also a family friend, requested I do it again because I wasn't mature enough. And she was right, honestly; I'd fight against nap time, and remember no end to problems in first grade with sitting still.

However, while maturity played a roll, the problem was I was bored. I went in to kindergarten being able to add, subtract and read, and had already started doing multiplication with my mom (herself a high school teacher). Another year in kindergarten would've been torture for me. Thankfully I had an amazing first grade teacher who recognised the problem. Instead of insisting on ADHD, she gave me more challenging stuff and let me work on my own. She never called on me to read aloud, because she gave me other books to read behind the class's book. This lasted until my 4th grade year, where one of my teachers didn't like it. Thankfully by then I was mature enough to recognise what I needed to do, etc.

So really, I wonder how much of this is a mixture between multiple things and how many times kids get given ADHD diagnoses when what they really need is differentiated education. Granted, this is difficult; I was a math/science secondary school teacher (and I think it's even harder for elementary school teachers, for various reasons ranging from standards to their own competency in the subjects they teach), and it was almost impossible at times.

That said, maybe I do have ADHD. I went on an amphetamine for weight loss at one point, and there were times I noticed I could focus longer and easier. But I've always had a tendency to get bored of something easily, and I'm sure the Internet hasn't made it any better. So I avoid getting tested as it doesn't impact work or study or anything for me (anymore than the Internet itself does)

Can you give a link to how to freeze it?

I live in Dublin, and I walk (currently unemployed waiting for masters results and applying) a lot. It's not uncommon for me to spend the better part of the day out just wandering the city. There's definitely a lot of people with their heads in their phones (myself included at times, though I try not to!). I've been pushed off the sidewalk multiple times, or bumped into, by people not looking up where they're walking and just kinda zig-zagging down the sidewalk. Often, they've got their airpods in and their head still in the phone.

Maybe it's a Dublin thing though.

I'm part of a Discord server that does exactly this. It's run by a math PhD, and he takes you through proof writing and up through the basic fields (algebra, analysis, etc) checking and vetting your proofs. It's great, and I've gone through multiple courses worth of stuff in abstract algebra, linear algebra and analysis. Currently working on some geometric algebra stuff.

You can message him on Reddit if you'd like and see if he'd give you an invite: CheapViolin

> I don’t know what’s going to bring it down

Regulations, hopefully. AirBnB is partially responsible for the housing crises that we're seeing worldwide. Hopefully regulation will catch up sooner rather than later. Tourists are not more important than locals.

I'm actually worried about the look of the new Fire Emblem announced yesterday. Looks like it's perfectly made to be gacha, collecting the old heroes. Hopefully I'm wrong, or if it's gatcha it's in-game only (.i. you can't pay for it), with DLC just adding more heroes. But I'm worried they're taking way too much from FE Heroes, which has, apparently, outsold the rest of the series combined.

Adult learners of what language?

I'm an American in Europe, and really, what I've noticed here is it's natural sugar in stuff, whereas in America it's HFCS. I can't help but wonder if that's part of the difference. I list 5-10kg easily without watching what I ate (and drank much more cause there's nothing else to do of an evening in Ireland), while keeping the same activity level or slightly less. There's something different in the food, and I can't help but think real sugar and lower levels of it is a key thing.

Definitely the same sentiment in Dublin and Galway from my experiences over here in Ireland too. Though mostly AirBnB rather than golden visas.

In August 2019, ~1600 places were up for rent in Dublin. In August 2020, it was double that. Mostly from tourist hotspots with AirBnB people trying to shift to long term lets. They're back on AirBnB now, and housing is even shittier than it was before. Yes, there's other issues, but AirBnB has been a known problem in Ireland since at least 2016 when I was first looking at places to rent in the country.

The government has said they're going to start tackling the issue of short term lets this month. I'll believe it when I see it.

But how much did you comprehend? Were you able to easily go back when you didn't understand something or re-listen to a specific part to make sure you understood it? It doesn't seem very conducive to a deep understanding of any topic, let alone deep understanding.

I for one can't imagine actually getting much out of a 'deeper' book via audio, even if I could sit and listen to them with the comprehension levels I get out of reading.

Not really. I've been trying it regularly with podcasts for years and haven't gotten any better at being able to focus on it. I'm just better at achieving actual understanding through text.

Besides, I'd never try to listen to anything actually deep -- can you imagine listening to Nietzsche?

I've found I can't do audiobooks at all. My mind wanders and I lose comprehension, and I can't really do it when I do other things as background noise because, again, no lasting comprehension for me .

But maybe it's a difference of why people read, and I see a lot of comments on multiple sides assuming that there's only one correct way to read and it's theirs.

There's an argument to be made that that isn't a true future tense, as it's not an inflected verb form. Thus English doesn't have a future tense in the same way it has a past tense (-ed for regular verbs) or a present tense (-s for third person singular verbs), .i. marked by inflection of a verb. Instead, it uses an auxiliary verb to express the future. Now, whether that counts as 'tense' or not is a matter for linguistic debate.

> The educational aspect of schools is (mostly, but not entirely) redundant to the resources available for free on the Internet.

I think this overestimates it. What I've found from internet 'learning', myself and others (and the students I used to teach) is that there's more often the illusion of learning than any actual learning. Let's not equate watching a YouTube video and thinking we understand it to actual learning. I've been victim to that myself when trying to learn pure math, and with kids it'll certainly be worse.

And the same issues will carry over to any online textbook too. Teachers are there to actually assess what the kids really learned, not what they think they learned, or what they can google to get past the next question on their assignment. The internet just fosters the illusion of learning (and let's not even get to critical thinking from it).

This was basically my experience as well. I had to fight against our idiotic guidance counselor to do so. This lady told, and is still telling (she's still there and is the one I've complained about in my other posts) to take whatever class is easiest, there's no need to push yourself, etc. She also actively discourages AP for dual credit, which is beyond useless if you actually want to study a subject in university; she also told 17 year old me that taking out 250k in debt is worth it for my dream school...Like wtf! There were three things that saved me, and pushed me more in high school

(1) My mom was a teacher there, so she knew what classes were offered better than I did, and was able to help me plan stuff early on without the counselor.

(2) The curriculum director used to teach beside my mom and got hired the same year (and they retired the same year even), and had known me my entire life. She often just went over the counselor's head to make sure my schedule lined up like I needed it to

(3) I had an uncle who worked over at the central administration for the school. He got sent lots of information about summer camps, etc, and passed them on both to my mom and the curriculum director to advocate for them.

All three of them are, sadly, retired now (though my mom keeps coming out of retirement because they can't find biology teachers) and there's not many at the school who advocate for the kids in the same way. The old principal (left at the end of the 2021 school year) was horrible too. I've heard the new one is better, and is slowly trying to re-rigourise the curriculum, but he's fighting against a lot of lazy teachers and our guidance office. It's a mess, but I truly hope he succeeds. It's almost made me want to go back to help push for that and for academically gifted kids, so they actually realise what's available.