timst4

This is one fast coup! Congrats, Putin! You won

This is the war on Science. Next comes the war on Education. The obliteration of democracy comes next. If you imagine Trump gives up this level of power without bloodshed in the streets you are deluding yourself.

And Facebook and X are not advocacy organizations vehemently pushing an agenda? The fact that there is an organization looking to speak for teenagers and their rights to privacy in the face of the aggressiveness of FAANG lobbying should be the best news you hear today. Organizations like CSM and EFF are the last points of light in an ocean of darkness.

Elections have consequences

I see the Disrupt movement has matured. Too bad the plan all along was to stick someone else with the externalities.

OLWEUS most likely

The future iterations of this are purely terrifying. This is so elegantly demonstrated by the Oscar Nominated short film “Please Hold” from 2022. Picked up by mistake by a roving police drone, a young man is incarcerated autonomously and has no way of release outside of money or time.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11383280/?lang=en&ref_=ext_shr_ln...

The fact that Tiktok wholesale bought the user base for musical.ly, largely preteen children, and converted them to an entirely different app meant to addict them and harvest their data seems pretty unconscionable.

So as someone who teaches robotics to middle school Students, FIRST lego is still the best program for kids. If you would like to learn CAD, EE, 3D printing, and microcontrollers, then certainly go the battle bots route. However, this will be a steep learning curve for your son and he may get frustrated. With FIRST, he will move from FLL to FRC in late middle school which has much more open road. He will also learn to work as a part of a team and solve problems in concert with peers which is different than a father son team. FLL is intense and almost a year round pursuit. Find a good home school team for him to join and he’ll get the best experience.

Chief Seattle had it right all along it seems[0]. We should have been aggressive about considering the impact of technology on the next seven generations. It’s not too late to start of course, but it is too late to avoid dire planetary changes.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainabil...

As if anyone had a choice about climate change. Cigarettes, oxy, sugar, and carbon are all alike in that their detrimental effects were hidden, downplayed, or denied for decades. Now, here we are with a destroyed ecosystem and rampant addiction. Choice is a meaningless word in the context of capitalism. There is only manipulation.

Regulation was needed 60 years ago, and now we are the ones left holding the bag.

This is one of the most flawed arguments that get made. I’ve been to many places in North America and Europe. Everywhere you go, direct sunlight above 65F is nearly unbearable. Air temperature is one thing, but we are super heating the entire air column between you and the outer atmosphere. Places that used to be pleasant with lots of sunshine like the SFs East Bay are now searing hot in direct sun. Yes, Maybe Quebec is more pleasant than it used to be, but it will be uncomfortable most of the summer in 5 or 10 years. Humans will certainly migrate North but Eventually we will just run out of latitude. Climate Change isn’t linear. Each year will be getting hotter faster than it did the year before. We’re toast.

Middle School educator here. I can assure you that your daughters will not be alone when it comes to a moratorium on social media. However, the girls they may very well want to be friends with may be very much into social media and group chats. My advice is to be firm but also take steps to create social opportunities for your daughters. I have a 12yo and I host board game nights with amazing snack trays. I help her to play video games socially using air console.

You have to play defense. These apps are deleterious to your daughters self worth. I’ve seen too many hospitalizations and suicides to believe otherwise. But you also have to play offense. They will need guidance on how to be social in a world coopted by manipulation and deceit. Parenting these days is challenging but it’s possible to raise girls who thrive without phones.

Catan or DND has a similar competitive yet low stakes vibe.

Here’s my secret: I host a night about once every two months and I bake soft pretzel bites with varying dipping sauces. People know I’m going to bake pretzels and this familiarity is comforting, but they also come to see what sauces I’m gonna have. I try to make them exotic at times

This is a great project by CMU; however, it is designed for high school students specifically. An analogue to this would be Code.org. It is not related to their undergraduate CS curriculum which is rather rigorous.

Cool. They’ll bounce back fast after this mass extinction that’s happening right now. That is, unless humans succeed in terraforming Earth into a Mars clone. Then all life is screwed.

The slow moving disaster that is the Colorado River is a particularly American disaster. The manifest destiny mindset coming to an abrupt end. In the book Cadillac Desert Marc Reisner asserts that this could be the albatross that contributes to the downfall of the US. The more I learn, the more I’m inclined to believe him.

Certainly you are right. If all the golf courses are closed and agriculture is transitioned to more stable locales, the Southwest would have a fighting chance.

However, when you take into account human nature, especially American human nature, the forecast seems darker. More and more, I believe that Collapse seems to be hard-wired into the human collective. It almost seems as if there is a number of humans (n) that serves as an under/over for inevitable collapse. One person can have foresight. Two people, 10 people, 1000 people even. But once you hit 10,000 or so the ability to sway public opinion with money and media becomes too strong. All it takes is a certain percentage of people to be convinced the problem is a conspiracy or a mirage. That is enough to sow doubt more widely, and to sink any efforts towards a reasonable conservation of resources.

The Southwest will collapse, and soon. And the number of people denying the existence of a problem will be non-trivial even as the last reservoir dries up. It’s a shame, but it was as Cadillac Desert proves imminently avoidable.

Anthropogenic warming is increasing at a non-linear rate. If you are not preparing practically, financially, and emotionally for this fact, you are being myopic. I still hold out hope for fusion-based geo-engineering or radical innovation to battery technology. However, with every day that passes the potential for these solutions seems to further elude us.

Ah, sad to hear it. As much as he was shackled to the 60s, some of his more recent work [0] was fascinating. For someone who fell backwards into fame, he was devoted to his art until the end. Peace to you, Croz

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=lD6Hr9KMGbc

I used to work on a coffee plantation of about 1000 trees in Kona. The owners ran a very lean operation. Coffee doesn’t require much maintenance outside of picking season. They had one farm manager and a handful of WWOOFers (work trade volunteers) to help with keep up with farm work and mowing. During picking season they would hire pickers from Ecuador and the Philippines to come pick the cherries. There was a co-op that weighed and processed the raw cherries on the island. The co-op also handled warehousing. They would sell raw beans to a bigger fish for roasting and shipping. Three employees total and they did quite well. Kona is out of the ordinary though. It is well regarded and fetches a decent price wholesale.

They need to develop strong boundaries against predatory tech. FAANG et al are narcissistic and uncaring towards an entire global generation of children. You teach them to stay away from strangers? Teach them to stay away from harmful technology as well.

I strongly recommend this [0] lecture by Abraham Maslow on the nature of purpose. TLDR: Puepose is the defining motivation behind self-actualization.

[0]: https://www.esalen.org/podcasts/abraham-maslows-1966-lecture...

Buy an EV3 kit (maybe at a reduced cost) and flash micropython onto the brick.

Hummingbird robotics kits are great for creative or STEAM projects

I enjoyed seeing that Al Franken was the writer of this. Platinum level satire it is.

I agree full-heartedly as a dutiful member of Citizens Climate Lobby. However, if we can’t pass this legislation with a Democratic political stack in place, then when?

This is already off. I would add a week or more to the prediction. We are in the middle of a cold snap but I haven’t seen it affect foliage that much.

Yes. I am your age and feel similarly about YouTube. However, I teach young people and they have zero boundaries with technology. Worse is that their cognition has evolved with technology such as YouTube, at its core. Turning off YT would be like turning off a section of their brains.

This is such a myopic take from The Atlantic. The ebike is a monstrosity IN AMERICA where there is little infrastructure for bikes. In Europe, it is changing the face of mobility for many for whom car ownership is out of reach.

Americans live in a world of subsidized petrol - a world that will come crashing down sooner or later. If gas is $10/gal maybe you won’t be so concerned about how cool you look with a battery on your bike frame.