Knowledge based fields were historically a “safe space” for queer and disabled people. If you are just super fucking smart and could be a wizard in a programming language, or were a genius physicist, you could get to the point where you were too valuable to fire for being trans or disabled. I may be trans and an unperson in the place I live, but I can do calculus, and there’s no way they can take that away from me.

There’s an attack on knowledge itself going on right now. A desire by the rich to control information. They want to force us into an unreality where skill and knowledge are meaningless. This hurts people who are socially marginalized, because it takes away one of our few paths for economic survival.

It goes with the attacks on DEI. What they want is a tool that can replace the need for talent, so that they can select who gets to have jobs. They want all jobs to be Graeber’s “bullshit jobs” so that skill is meaningless and they can allot them out to the people they think “deserve” them.

What topic are you trying to learn right now?

As you watch the videos, you can follow along on paper. Pause the videos to try to figure out what to do.

I’ve also found that using a mix of colors works really well as you are working problems. If you are learning composition of functions, try putting each function as a different color. Or if you are in calc and doing integration by parts, again color code each function.

Another tool is to do T chart notes. Write the math step on the left hand side, and the explanation for each step on the right. Think about why you are doing each step.

Gamifying stuff seems very appealing, but Duolingo I don’t think has shown itself as being effective long term.

The more advanced the math, the more steps and effort goes into solving a problem. I think that makes it harder to gamify. You get to the point in calc where a problem might take several pages to do.

What I would really like is daily problem/brain teaser type things. The ones I see online are either extremely easy or intentionally written in a confusing way to get engagement.

I haven’t tried Brilliant so I don’t know how good it is but that claims to do what you want.

I don’t think there’s as much money in it as you think there is. The students who struggle with math aren’t going to look for that type of resource - they just try to struggle through. The students who are interested already know about resources like Organic Chemistry Tutor and Paul’s Notes.

If an interested dev does stumble on this thread, I do frequently help students with math and would love to consult for money lol

For anything that is not politically contentious, it’s very good. Even the politically contentious stuff tries to give the most “balanced”/“mainstream” interpretation usually.

There are communities of people which hyperfixate on certain topics. Think dinosaurs and trains. If a serious Dino-head sees a mistake about the length of Diplodocus, they are going to drop everything and fix it immediately.

I routinely check wiki sources - I’ve taught a lot of college kids that as a way to quickly find sources for papers. Most of the time, topics I know a lot about from my own educational background match what I see on wiki and cite the same kinds of sources I would use.

It’s not perfect - there’s the infamous story of an American teenager writing all of Scots Wikipedia without knowing any Scots - but you have to respect the fact that there are a lot of people who are obsessed with certain topics and will watch their pet articles like a hawk.

Also - a lot of US therapists have fundamentally useless and unhelpful approaches. CBT is treated as the hammer for all nails, even when it is completely ineffective for many people. It’s easy to train therapists on though, and sending someone home with a worksheet and a Program is an easy “fix.”

There’s also the undeniable influence of fuckers like Dr. Phil. A lot of therapists view their job as forcing you to be “normal” rather than understanding you as a human being.

We need more Maslow and Rogers, and a lot less Skinner.

You’d think if they are going to being censoring things, they’d start with the full on Holocaust denial that Rowling has normalized.

Tbh it’s been terrible lately. Free services increasingly go behind a paywall, they’ve limited how many convos you can have (invisibly, they just fall off), they show you fewer and fewer people.

The fediverse could be really useful in the dating space - capitalism means they never really want you to find The One, because then you might delete the app.

Have you heard of 996? It’s shorthand for a common work schedule in China: 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week

So a typical American teacher’s schedule?

Bro - I was literally a fucking teacher during the peak of that moral panic. I spend more time every day with teenagers than half of you on this thread do. Every kid knew it was a fucking joke. A handful of children actually did it on purpose, and like every moral outrage/hysteria it became “teens are doing this wild crazy thing!”

Yes, teenagers do dumb fucking shit all of the time. It’s not the shit the media picks up on for the viral clicks.

The real shit teens are actually doing is vaping shady carts and creating massive group chats to bully each other with naked pictures. But that doesn’t sell the same kinds of ad impressions as “there’s a stupid TikTok video that when viral so we are going to assume this is a massive regular thing that hundreds of children are doing.” Talking about those issues involves parents having to, you know, parent but instead it’s gotta be about stupid shit.

The real “hiding under a rock” is being distracted by the newest stupid TikTok video instead of dealing with the things teenagers actually do.

Did you know that cognitively delayed teenagers exist?

Check real quick - I think “gullible” is written on your ceiling. Watch out, I hear human traffickers are putting fentanyl laced roses on car doors.

> How does one unintentionally eat a tide pod?

Did you see the part where only half of those ingestions were intentional?

You would be freaking out about rainbow parties and snap bracelets in the 90s.

Do creative people have viable paths to income that aren’t social media?

How does one survive as an artist or a small film maker, when there is no patronage, government funding for museums is constantly on the chopping block, and any form of art you make is going to be uploaded whether you like it or not?

Our society essentially has no paths to success for creative types other than social media - especially with C-suites deciding that they’d rather use the plagiarism machine to make slop than hire actual content makers and artists?

Making things like clip art used to be a job. You used to be able to paint signs. There was work for mid level artists. Now, your options are trying to go viral on social media/hunt for commissions.

You get this a joke?

Children were never eating tide pods either.

Isn’t it funny how Dems chased out Al Franken for that shitty photo, but Republicans rally behind their own sex pests?

Yeah, it worked so well at Alcatraz.

or even water

Already did.

We never stopped the “lol treaties with Native American tribes don’t count” bullshit.

AI written books have no value.

If it was not worth writing, it is not worth reading.

As someone who loves books, I avoid print-on-demand. Most of the time they end up with terrible, jpeg artifact ridden covers, disorganized page breaks, and terrible quality text.