socrates1998

Homeschooling is mostly awful. Parents don't have the time or skill to teach students properly.

You don't really propose anything that can help, you just say everything is "trash".

If a man meets one asshole, then that's unlucky, if a man meets a 100 assholes, then maybe he's the asshole.

If you went through 4 years of high school and had only "trash" experiences, maybe the school wasn't the problem.

If you can't propose anything of value or any real ways to improve our flawed system, then you opinions are essentially useless.

Don't use public schools? What do you propose instead? What should teenagers do instead of learn how to read, write and do math?

Sadly, it's insanely common to have advanced degrees plagiarized. I worked as a high school teacher and the number of co-workers who phoned it in for advanced degrees just to get the pay increase was insane.

I can't think of one person who did it to actually learn anything.

The worst was a couple of "Doctors", who essentially bought their way to getting EdD's. It was just disgusting. Our admins and leaders CHEATING their way to getting advanced degrees and then expecting us to respect them as educators.

And they had the gall to make people call them "doctor". One of the many reasons why I quit working for them.

I honestly haven't read more than three articles since most of their content went behind a paywall when I used to read one or two a day.

I wasn't aware that the publisher got to choose if they wanted to put up a paywall or not.

>Esports diehards spent $5.00 each last year on esports, according to NewZoo, with mid-level fans generally spending half of that.

Ouch. That's nothing.

I remember this, but I wasn't sure if it was real or not. It seems like Yeltsin really did want to abandon communism after he visited a grocery store. Crazy.

Cool article.

Jesus, you would think a billion dollar company would give a shit about it's customers.

What's really interesting is to the common Japanese person, their are two threats, China and the Japanese military itself.

Clearly, they worry about China, but they really worry about how the Japanese military answered to no one in the last decade of Imperial Japan.

This is what concerns a lot of Japanese people. The military wrote a check that the Japanese people had to cash.

Kind of interesting, but it feels like Girard makes things more complicated than they need to be.

The observation that people want "to be things" not "own things", is very true.

People want status. Status has been important since we started collective action by throwing rocks at lions.

If you didn't throw rocks, then you were out cast and were probably eaten by lions. High status within human groups ensures reproductive success and security.

I found the rest of the article unnecessarily complex in describing humanity.

If you want a much more enlightening and much easier to read book, try "The Social Leap" by William van Hippel.

I lived in Japan in my 20's for several years and I loved my tiny studio in the middle of the city.

It was perfect for me. I lived in Tokyo not have a roomy house, but to be in the middle of the action. The closer I lived to the center, the better.

These apartments are the same thing. They are great for young professionals in their 20's, but if you want a family, they aren't feasible.

This is just all so weird.

If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them.

It's not really a protest, it's a tactic to wrestle control over the company and win social points with their "victory".

They want the social status of having protested something, yet with zero of the fallout.

They still collect google paychecks, collect google 401k money, still have google health insurance AND want to be able to say they "stuck it to the man"

It's just so odd all the way around.

They had a google walkout, then google didn't change anything, then the protesters went back to work.

It was all just a stunt.

I never said it was doing worse once. And it absolutely does snowball. A student who is a poor reader in grade school often falls further and further behind.

And grades are not "bell curved" shape. That's ridiculous. Do you know the average grade at Harvard for every class, it's an A.

That's definitely not Guassian.

Man made things like income, grades, stock market prices and home prices are not "bell shaped".

They are heavily skewed one way or another.

I would recommend you do a little research before making such patently wrong statements.

>average they would do better the next year because of reversion to the mean.

I don't think it works like that. Students who do poorly often do WORSE the next year. They tend to get more and more behind and eventually just drop out.

The only way to reverse this trend is to identify them for more academic instruction, like an extra math or reading class.

Even then, it often doesn't work. It's really really hard to turn a low performing student into even an average one.

"Reversion to the mean" has no meaning when you are talking about one student from one year to the next.

It's great to see this. The only issue I have is how replicable this formula is.

I think you can apply a couple of programs and concepts on a large scale to whole communities, but this is a very expensive school with a lot of resources behind it, not to mention a very powerful celebrity endorser who has a lot to lose if this school fails.

There is a small private school that just opened up in my area (about 4 years old). It has a powerful businessman who is the founder. Class sizes are less than 10 kids with two teachers per class. That's about a 5:1 ratio, most public schools would kill for anything better close to 10:1 with most academic classes are 20-30 students for one teacher.

This small private school also has a lot of amenities, like a ton of tech for the students.

While this is a great school, it's just a place for elites to educate their students.

I applaud everyone in this private school and Lebron's school.

I hope we can use some of their ideas and programs to a larger scale.

Wow, good to know. I won't be going anywhere near a 787.

Snapchat is hands down the number one used app by the teenagers I teach. Then instagram.

Anecdotally, I work with teenagers and none of them have a Facebook pages. It's viewed as a place for old people and parents.

For me personally, it's almost impossible to deal with. Way too many political posts from my friends and family.

It's probably best use for me is local events and an occasional major event from a friend/family member.

Still, I find myself going there less and less.

From a small business standpoint, it's just not worth the time, effort and money to advertise there. It's much more effective to focus on getting referrals with my current clients.

I really wish there was a paid social media service that everyone used. I would gladly pay $5-$10 a month for something that didn't sell my data.

It's hard for me to understand because after I was about 19 years old, I learned to not trust people who tell me everything I want to hear.

The Cash App is very popular with working class people, which is a huge audience with Rogan. It's always in the top five finance apps.

But, yeah, some of the shit he has advertised is off the wall.

It's not surprising that she lied to everyone. Lots of people lie all the time. It's amazing that people BELIEVE her.

I just don't get why people are convinced by these pathological liars whose only skill is confidence?

Con-men tell people what they want to hear. It's not shocking that she is a con-man, it's shocking that she was able to con people who are so rich and powerful.

I remember her Forbes article and I was like "there is something wrong here". It takes DECADES to make breakthroughs in medical science and she did it in as a 19 year with a couple of into to bio classes?

If could have shorted Theranos then, I would have.

The only good thing about this is there are a few horrible people that lost a lot of money investing in her, so that has been entertaining.

I love podcasts. As a self-employed person who needs some light distraction but can't walk to a water cooler and just kill some time, they are perfect.

I tried going back to the radio yesterday for a moment and almost threw up with the quality.

Not sure if a "Netflix for podcasts" would work. Unless ad money dries up because advertisers think people skip them too much, then I am not sure what the advantage would be.

I do skip some of the commercials, but I feel like enough get through to make worth their while. I have legitimately bought stuff because of them.

I saw an article about how much Joe Rogan's podcast makes and it was insane, over tens of millions of dollars per year.

The guy does zero advertising and probably has less than 5 people working on it. Fucking ridiculous.

Not a great article, but it certainly does illustrate the idea that we are helped to a certain extent.

It's hard to measure one's success accurately.

A $15k loan paid back almost immediately is really nothing in the grand scheme of things, she probably could have gotten a regular loan or at least used some credit cards to float her for it.

A much bigger help was her parents paying for college. THAT's significant.

It meant she knew that starting a business was an option because she could live cheaply after she graduated instead of being forced to get a job.

For the most part, the most successful people in America have been helped significantly by their parents, in my opinion.

Whether it's through paying for an education or networking or outright buying them a business (like a franchise).

Growing up upper-middle class in America puts you way ahead of almost everyone else on the planet as far as advantages goes.

Yup, very true for small businesses. I get almost 100% of my clients through client referrals (I own a test prep company).

While I am not rich, my businesses is growing really well and I feel confident that we will reach my goals for the company in the next year or two.

And all of this without almost any presence digitally.

We have a website that is actually more extensive than most tutoring/test prep companies our size (I did some freelance Wordpress stuff), we get almost no business from it.

I tried doing some Facebook ads a while ago, but it just seemed like more work than it was worth. It's better for me to focus on making sure my students get their scores than to drum up business from spending money on Facebook or whatever other social media.

I feel like getting business through Facebook or Google or Instagram would just take way too much effort, time, energy and money for me.

I would rather keep improving my test prep courses than do that.

And if you get students the scores they need, not only will it change their lives, they will give your name and number out to everyone they know.

While this company is doing some pretty shady shit, it's actually not worse than what traditional electric companies do.

Talk about corruption and dishonest practices.

In Florida, FPL, the electric provider for half of Florida, complained for about a decade (from 2004-2014) on how how they needed to keep raising rates so that they could continue to "upgrade the infrastructure" so that they could be prepared for the hurricanes that inevitably would hit the coast.

Some estimates that FPL made a few extra billion dollars on the price increases that went beyond normal inflation.

What do you think happened when south Florida got hit with the next major hurricane in 2014? Yup. same outages that we saw in 2004.

And the hurricanes weren't even worse.

10 years and billions of dollars in "upgrades" resulted in the same exact problems.

FPL took our money and didn't do anything with it.

AND they have been vehemently against people owning solar panels, even going as far as blocking legislation that would allow people to install them on their own homes without special permission from "FPL approved" companies.

And you can guess how many "approved" companies they would actually approve.

I have yet to see any major utility company operate with any decency, so while this solar panel company is doing some shady shit with their salespeople and leasing terms, it at least didn't scam millions of people for billions of dollars like FPL.

Florida should have the cleanest electricity in the world. Sunshine almost every day, but we don't have it because:

A) We don't price in the environmental impact of non-solar producing coal and natural gas plants, thus keeping solar "more expensive" than fossil fuel electricity.

B) FPL actively blocks the widespread adoption of solar panels on people's homes.

C) Politicians are happy to take money from FPL and other interest groups that don't want to adopt solar.

There a multitude of easy fixes for this. I believe in London if you drive into the center, you have to pay a road fee or something like that.

Seems to me that this would fix the issue.

Also, I think that self-driving cars will have people sharing cars rather than owning one themselves, this will lead to fewer cars being owned overall, but not necessarily leading to less traffic since when you own a car it mostly just sits in your parking space.

Fewer cars means that those self-driving cars will probably be always on the road, which won't lead to any traffic savings.

What the hell is wrong with you? Children don't know what they are doing.

That's why they aren't allowed to gamble among a multitude of other things that their developing brains can't handle.

Sure, they are some people who are okay with being alone and would be okay with living on a desert island without other people around, but I think these are much fewer people than most people think.

Even people who claim to hate other people find it very difficult to work in environments where their work is unappreciated or useless.

Almost no one in the world would be happy digging a ditch and refilling it the next day and repeating it even if they were paid $1000 a day to do it.

Why is that? Why would a programmer who isn't very social want only work on stuff that is useful to other people?

It's because the vast majority of us are hard wired to be useful to society and other people. We desperately need to feel some connection to others.

The only way digging a ditch and filling it in would be satisfying is if you knew you were taking care of your family by doing it.

>Cohesion in large groups are aided by strong personalities that create and sustain larger groups(hierarchies) and than in turn enables larger groups.

I completely disagree. Cohesion is stronger in small, less hierarchal groups.

The key is grouping groups together.

Why did the American states unite and form the USA and the Greek city states before the rise of Macedonia not?

It's not an easy question to answer, but strong man personalities doesn't seem like it's an answer.

My unscientific guess is that the mutation allowed for greater group dependence and cohesion. This article and Harari's book sort of dance around this, but I think it's some type of emotional gene that we are emotionally hard wired to NEED to connect with people. Like a tiger stalks with your back turned to it, people emotionally need to be connected to other people in a deep, meaningful way.

Humans are not only unique in their abilities like problems solving and language, but also in their 100% dedication to the tribe.

I think it is this combination that allows for us to work together in such large groups and successfully.

Harari calls it "fictions" that bind us together, but that doesn't quite seem to work for me.

The question I ask is WHY do these "fictions" work so well?

Why would a Nebraska farmer go half way across the world and climb French beaches with German guns shooting at him?

Why are we so compelled to identify with a group?

A comedian has a great joke about this. Essentially, the WORST thing you can do to a person is put them in solitary confinement. Even being surrounded by criminals and prison guards is infinity better than being forced to be alone in a room. We desperately need to connect with people. It seems hard wired genetically to me.

I think culture helps serve this purpose of binding us together.

Art, music, theatre, and even sports are all a part of the process of group cohesion.

Group cohesion and dependency is so powerful that it's often the number one factor in determining which societies/countries/groups come out victorious with intergroup conflict.

A great book called "War and Peace and War" by Peter Turchin is a fantastic book to read if this concept interests you.

Another one, "Tribe" by Sebastion Junger also explores this topic.

I should have clarified that when I say unstructured, I meant without any screens. Basically, you tell the kid they can do whatever they want without screens.

Be creative, play a sport, walk around, read a book, go explore.... whatever, as long as it isn't tech related.

Yup. Parents think that they are helping their kid by doing everything for them, but really ,they are hurting them.

It should be a gradual process of teaching a kid how to be independent and have independent skills from the time they are toddlers.

Kids really appreciate being taught patiently how to do a life skill.

And if they don't want to learn how to do laundry, you make them learn.