Jump to content

Mole

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    2666
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Mole

  1. On some level, yes: let me steal this case of Natty light and I’ll split it with you. But grading little Johnny’s presentation on Sam Houston is nebulous in a way that a missing case of watered down beer isn’t. Of course it depends on how the payments would be made and the amount of money involved as to whether or not it would be worth it.
  2. Also, things that keep kids engaged need to be seen as essential to their education just like math and reading. That means sports, art, drama, music, scouts, and other things that don’t show up on standardized test questions need broad support especially in the most underperforming areas. Chasing the almighty test score might not be the best way to develop an educated populace.
  3. I know I brought up the fraud issue, but the general concept is intriguing to me. Some mix of parental tax credits for child school attendance, small but tangible rewards for the kids, some sort of investment towards post high school educational funding, and high school/industry vocational partnerships seems like something with potential. If a kid doesn’t see what there is to gain from school, why should they care? Incentive works. My kid isn’t school age yet, but we’ve offered toys for accomplishing various educational tasks that might take some weeks to learn and it’s clearly motivating. I’ve long thought that the plan of paying young women to take birth control would also have a clear benefit on many fronts, but I’m guessing that would never fly in our current environment.
  4. Paying kids for grades: an interesting idea that seems also ripe for fraud. Hey teacher, give me an A and I'll cut you in on some of this action.
  5. Never is probably too strong of a word and I guess there would be cases where there's some sort of clock they could run out, but if all they could do is slow things down and make a spectacle of themselves, it seems like it wouldn't be the all powerful and painless thing it is now. Even if they lined up 50 Senators up in a row, eventually that has to end as well, right? These old Senators can only keep this up for so long. I've seen Hand on a Hardbody; there are limits to the human body. I certainly don't fully understand all of the ins and outs of Senate rules, so there could obviously be something that I'm missing.
  6. Making them talk seems like the easy answer. Most people probably assume that’s still how it’s done anyway; it would make for lots of look-at-me theatrics which politicians love; and it would never kill good legislation just slow things down while still allowing the minority party a chance to make their case.
  7. I’m not sure I want to drill down here, but this sounds like a euphemism.
  8. I’m going to push back some on this. It’s overly simplistic to boil all of this down to economics, although that’s obviously a big part of it. Even if you set aside the question of why economic issues seem to impact the Black community more (which pretty easily traces back to a long and storied history of racism), there are access issues that probably can’t be fully explained by economics. There are well-founded trust issues between the Black community and government agents offering medical advice. There are all of the issues that have been brought up in this thread, which are partially economic (which again, is largely a race issue once removed) but also something more. And there’s the persistent unwillingness by “us” to do much about it or even acknowledge the obvious. I think it might be revealing to do an informal study on the history of the popular portrayal of poor people (white? black? young? old?) and how much we collectively cared. I have my suspicions that as the poor became increasingly portrayed as Black our culture became less interested in caring about or dealing productively with the problem, but it’s just a hunch right now.
  9. What did you sign up through? It looks like they recently (maybe this week?) added a state signup form on the website. Georgia messaging on this hasn’t been exactly clear.
  10. The one remaining full-Q acquaintance that I have is suggesting that everything will go down over this month and presumably Trump will be back by April. There’s progress though since it seems to be less of his identity now. I don’t expect any proclamations of “I was an idiot,” just a slow return to Q-light mild insanity.
  11. I can only speak for myself, but my esteem for Bath and Bodyworks only went up from this interaction.
  12. It looks like the “wait and see” group waited and liked what they saw.
  13. To the extent that they exist: Fatherless homes is both a cause and symptom of the problem. Drug use is both a cause and symptom of the problem. Lack of interest in education is both a cause and symptom of the problem. Pointing to symptoms of larger problems as the root cause (if “they” would just stop using drugs, etc) is nothing more than a prelude to pretending that there isn’t a problem. Likewise, pretending that these individual issues aren’t problems isn’t particularly helpful either. These bad things hurt individuals and communities but they aren’t always entirely irrational. Fatherless homes, drug addiction, and lack of interest in education might seem perfectly rational given the right circumstances. That doesn’t mean that they are good or should be encouraged, but the reason they might seem rational might point towards some sort of solution.
  14. As someone who uses surly on my phone in dark mode, I literally can’t see this to read it. This is a perfect encapsulation of the dark mode rich text issue.
  15. Since these discussions always devolve into bastardized versions of the Moynihan Report, maybe some here should read it. Particularly those who are bringing up the fatherless issue should read it. It provides some context through early 1960s eyes. We usually hear the issue of fatherless black families, education, and related subjects as sort of a “them” problem. These are the problems with the Black community, so “they” need to fix it. “It isn’t my problem” supported by graphs. It can be eye opening to read a similar story from the 60s without it serving as a prelude to ignoring the problem. Moynihan’s report is at times quite prescient and we largely ignored it. After reading it, blaming the woes of the Black family on 1960s era legislation seems simply absurd. Its a bit of a long read, but if you’re committed to discussing the issue within this framework, you should at least bother to see the origins and how distorted the framework has become. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-moynihan-report-an-annotated-edition/404632/
  16. I think this points to the disconnect. It’s easy and somewhat appropriate to come down on the parent and kid for their indifference, but their indifference isn’t irrational. If there’s no clear and apparent benefit to an education, why bother? We all say we value education, but if I didn’t see a clear path to how that education would help me, I probably wouldn’t really value it.
  17. It’s great marketing by the Dr. Seuss team.
  18. I’m open for collaboration but I just had my theremin adjusted to play best at A432 to help keep my chakras aligned.
  19. Pfizer contains more 5G but Moderna has better mind control properties. The J&J is like 90% queso so it’s better in terms of the 5G exposure, but it’s really bad for your cholesterol.
  20. I’m more comfortable with a 16 year old voting than a 16 year old driving.
  21. There goes my Stephen Foster medley.
  22. This last election, in order to request an absentee ballot in Georgia, I had submit my DL number and other identifying information. Then they mailed the ballot to my mailing address of record. I’m not sure how that could be an opportunity for fraud on any notable scale.
×
×
  • Create New...