Archive for the ‘education’ Category

Five Under the Fedora Truths Homeless for Fun and Profit, All Beers Look Alike to Me, Breaking a Twitter Habit, The Chosen Speeding Up and Biden Economy expectations

Posted: August 16, 2023 by datechguy in business, culture, economy, education, entertainment, tech, twitter
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Glenn Reynolds notes the shock of some that passing a law concerning homeless camps and actually enforcing it has caused camps to vanish. This is a disaster for some NGO’s in the sense that they get a lot of government and state money to solve a problem that can be solved by just enforcing the law.

Key quote:

We get urban decay because we tolerate it. And as for the nonprofits/NGOs, homelessness is far too lucrative a problem to solve.

There is no incentive to solve a problem that is both a profit center for you and allows you to claim virtue.

Speaking of profit centers there is a 2nd post at Insty today on a man who will be teaching about the Budlight fiasco at business school. It’s is certainly a subject worth scholarship but it that had a line that likely floated under the radar to most people that I found absolutely hilarious:

He emphasized that beer is essentially the same product, and what sets it apart is the power of its brand

I would submit and suggest this is pretty much true. I suspect a lot of brand loyalty in beer is all about habit. Break that habit and you break that brand.

And Speaking of Breaking the habit as of Today Tweetdeck is no longer a free service when I tried to access it today I was redirected to a screen offering me a blue subscription check for $80 a year.

The real point is Twitter’s value basically comes from addicting people to multiple streams of data and giving folks who want to reach a maximum size audience (advertisers etc) access to that stream. This move gives an incentive for people to walk away from the stream and once people are broken of the addiction your done.

While Elon Musk should of course make the best possible business decision for his product I submit and suggest this is rather foolish. Tweetdeck makes twitter useful because it allows you to view multiple streams in the same window. Without it twitter involves too many tabs and simply isn’t worth my time. I might keep a tab with my DM page available and I might answer embedded tweets I see elsewhere but if you want to get me to see something by putting it on twitter odds are starting today I’ll miss it

On a totally different note I was shocked to see that season 4 of the chosen was going to include the razing of Lazarus from the dead.

Given that this is the last big miracle before the entry into Jerusalem I figured we would see it till at least season 5, particularly since we are going to get the beheading of John the Baptist this season which comes much earlier.

That suggests that either season 7 is going to be all passion and resurrection, with season six all Jerusalem

(Don’t be surprised with the number of characters there is plenty of material for this to be the case) and Season five everything else OR that Dallas plans on moving up the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ and having a large chunk of season seven covering a big chunk of acts.

Either way it will be interesting to see how he handles it.

Finally we have regularly been getting short weeks at work. Last week was 30 hours, the week before 32 and the week before 30 which is a great incentive to burn vacation days for people and unpaid time off has been offered which can be tempting on a really beautiful summers day.

Yesterday on the drive in all of us in the car agreed that we would be lucky to end up with four hours although one of us was optimistic enough to suggest me might manage 6.

Much to my shock and everyone else’s as well there seemed there was plenty of work in my department and by moving some people to it during the day ( and letting a few go home early who wanted to ) all of us who stayed managed to our delight a full 8 hours of work which guarantees us at least a 32 hour week.

That’s how bad the Biden economy is, it’s so bad that getting a full days work in the middle of a work week on a day you’re scheduled to work a full day is a pleasant surprise worthy of note

Vito Perrone Dodges a Bullet in Easthampton

Posted: April 5, 2023 by datechguy in culture, education
Tags: , ,

Vito Perrone was looking forward to returning to Easthamption.

He was a school principal there, he had coached football there. He was even willing to take a $14,000 a year pay cut to return to the city as school superintendent and was offered the job.

But then he lucked out.

Apparently when he sent them an email concerning the position he referred to the women he addressed his letter to as “Ladies” and they had a conniption fit claiming a “microagression”.

Kwiecinski responded to Perrone saying that his use of “ladies” was “hostile and derogatory,” and that “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.” She also added that the term “ladies” was a “microaggression.”

And just like that the job offer was gone and he remains where he is.

Talk about catching a break! Could you imagine being stuck in that school system for three years with clowns like that as your bosses?

My congratulations to Mr. Perrone and my deepest sympathies to the parents of the Easthamption school district who voted for this school committee and whose kids are apparently getting the education they voted for.

The left hates the word “woke,” which is why we must use it more often

Posted: March 19, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, education, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

The left has a new mantra. Well, they always have a new one. And their newest mantra is, “The right doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘woke.'” 

As far as I can gather, the earliest use of “woke” was by African American musician Lead Belly, who added “stay woke” in an afterword of his recording of “Scottsboro Boys,” which was about the injustices faced by nine black youths accused of raping two white women in 1931. 

First, a brief side note: This is the second post in a row of mine at Da Tech Guy where Lead Belly gets a mention.

But words often change meanings. For instance, centuries ago “garble” meant “to sift.” In the spice trade “garbling” was the process of removing impurities from spices. Over time, “garble” evolved into meaning confusing, unclear, and yes, impure. For instance, someone might say, “I couldn’t understand the voicemail message you left for me, it was garbled.”

The definition of woke has similarly evolved. It appears woke made a reappearance in the public dialogue in 2016 after the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2016, but by 2020, conservatives had adopted and co-opted the word. People who are woke–this is my take–are rigidly beholden to far-left political beliefs and they will use mob action to enforce their viewpoints.

“Politically correct,” a term that emerged from the left, was similarly co-opted by the right, so liberals dropped it years ago. 

The word woke is a much more serious problem for the left, which is why libs, in a futile effort, are trying to reclaim it, or at least neutralize its meaning. After all, woke is an unpleasant word with only four letters and just one syllable, it is better suited for our contemporary sound bite and pithy headline culture, compared to the more cumbersome “politically correct.” Over the past week leftist journalists, an intellectually incestuous lot, pushed back. An opening to them was given by Bethany Mandel, the co-author of the best seller Stolen Youth, which is about the dangers of woke culture. Last week, in an interview captured on video–one that went viral–Mandel suffered, in her words, “a momentary brain freeze,” and she wasn’t able to clearly answer a question about the definition of woke.

But shortly afterwards on Twitter, Mandel was able to clarify what woke means.

“A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination,” Mandel Tweeted last week, “and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.”

Since Mandel’s verbal misstep, leftist writers have attacked the woke word. In MarketWatch, Rachel Koning Beals has tried to dial back the new meaning of woke–as has Ross Douthat in the New York Times.

Just now, as I was finishing up this entry, I watched as Jen Psaki, in the premiere airing of her MSNBC show declare, “Republicans have gone all-in on their anti-wokeness.” Psaki, a smug know-it-all, then presented a one-sided view of Mandel’s “momentary brain freeze.”

All but admitting defeat in the word war, Matthew Cooper in Washington Monthly says the word needs to be disposed. The headline of his article is, “Let’s retire the word ‘woke.'”

Too late!

The legacy media is up woke creek without a paddle.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has often said, “Florida is where woke goes to die” and vows that “we will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”

This month two woke mobs attacked in California. The Federalist Society invited a US Appeals judge, Kyle Duncan, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, to speak at the Stanford Law School. Only the mob, the led by the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity dean, Tirien Steinbach, all but prevented the judge from speaking. Diversity to the left hasn’t meant diversity of opinion for years.

Shortly afterwards, the dean of the Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, apologized for the beastly misbehavior Duncan received, which led another woke mob to disrupt her lecture hall.

In my opinion, outside of the ten percent or so of the populace who is indeed woke, no one can argue that such boorish antics are justifiable.

As is also the case of the second California campus woke outburst, when Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk spoke at the University California, Davis. “Black-clad goons” goons is how the Daily Mail described the protesters who pepper-sprayed attendees and smashed windows at the hall where Kirk spoke.

Kirk’s UC Davis address is available in podcast form. Unlike Duncan, Charlie was permitted to speak. And in his opening remarks, Kirk vowed, “Tonight, you’re going to see that anyone who disagrees with me tonight is not just allowed–but is encouraged to go ask [me] a question.” Kirk even called for his dissenters to head to “the front of the line.”

Now, that’s what I call diversity.

Those leftist protesters–I believe it’s fair to call them rioters–were probably egged on by a woke Sacramento Bee opinion columnist, Hannah Holzer, who, in a since retracted claim, said Kirk “called for the lynching of trans people.” In his remarks that evening at UC Davis, Kirk responded, “That is a lie. I have never done that,” adding, I’ve always been clear about peaceful activism.”

The unpeaceful ones that night at UC Davis were the members of the woke mob.

The great majority of Americans don’t have politics on the top of their informational diet. But this truly silent majority, the ones who decide the outcome of elections, is aware of the evils of leftist violence, intimidation, misinformation and censorship. And now there is an ugly word for that and more that is now entrenched in the mainstream conversation.

“Woke” is that word.

To my conservative writers and influencers: The other side has betrayed a weakness and a fear. They hate it when we say “woke” to decry radical policies and angry leftist mobs. What is worse than “woke?” Well, those odious things that the word describes, such as the recent outrages at Stanford and UC Davis.

Say “woke” early and often.

We will win.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The NY Times reports Fighting Back Works!

Posted: February 1, 2023 by datechguy in education
Tags: , , ,

You know for an awful long time we’ve been told that

  1. Critical Race Theory is not being taught and those who say it is are lying
  2. Governor DeSantis is banning books

Now suddenly we see this from the NYT:

Look at that headline and opening lede. Instead of screaming “Book Banning” you see an acknowledgement of CRT in the course and that topics dear to the left were in fact an option.

Here is the most important takeaway from the piece:

In January, Governor DeSantis of Florida, who is expected to run for president, announced he would ban the curriculum, citing the draft version. State education officials said it was not historically accurate and violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools.

The attack on the A.P. course turned out to be the prelude to a much larger agenda. On Tuesday, Governor DeSantis unveiled a proposal to overhaul higher education that would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity” by among other things, mandating courses in Western civilization.

In another red flag, the College Board faced the possibility of other opposition: more than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.

Fighting Back against the left’s agenda works!. Who knew? The left did, that’s why they do all they can to demoralize us.

Older Entries
Newer Entries