Notices by myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win), page 4

Why do schools have dances? Why do many high schools host parties, sometimes inter-school parties at the school?

A school isn't just a machine that puts knowledge into people's brains, it's an organization of people. And those people will want to celebrate together from time to time. This WILL happen. "official" events can be more inclusive.

But also for young people it's a part of social education, providing some baseline for how you interact with other people.

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@dalias

Oh that gets in the mix too. But not in the NYC city schools.

They don't really do much "romantic" dancing. They just eat all the snacks and argue about what music to play then dance in a circle.

Which is fine.

So a friend of mine was telling me about this one strange thing his wife does. Whenever they get a gift of *food* and ONLY food (eg like a basket of cheese and crackers) she immediately goes about dividing it EXACTLY in half. "this is my part of the cheddar, this is yours" he isn't bothered about it just a little confused.

She told him. "If you had siblings you'd understand."

I suggested he may eat all the cheese and not notice.

Can those with siblings speak on this? Are you traumatized?

I have discovered that teaching programming goes much better with my fifth grade students if I take the time to teach them about all the symbols I think of as "normal" that are totally new to them.

"These are square brackets, you'll find them over the 'enter' key we use them for lists. In programming we have three kinds of brackets..."

This reduced confusion so much. And I feel a little silly for not realizing that OF COURSE they don't know what they characters are or how to type them.

I've had a few conversations on here about the corrosive impact of advertising and whenever I do I always see one comment that I sympathize with, but all find concerning.

"At this point when I see ads it makes me want the product less."

I think nearly everyone has felt this way from time to time, and yet the "adspace" keeps expanding to new frontiers and levels of obnoxiousness.

Advertisers know that their ads are effective. Even on people who have promised themselves they aren't.

I had some friends at uni who studied advertising. And this was in the early 2000s so long long ago, nonetheless they were doing this thing where they cataloged total add exposure for an average person. I thought it was funny to volunteer since I have never owned a TV and have always avoided ads.

Nonetheless my minder found that I was exposed to over 100 ads per day, shop windows, branded clothing, billboards, at the ATM etc.

Their more typical subject had exposure pushing 800.

I guess I find the "ads do the reverse on ME" notion unhelpful because it seems like by saying that you won't be around to fight the growth of the ad space with the rest of us.

We could vastly limit this stuff and it could improve quality of life so much.

It could also save media from being so corrupted.

Is this geometry problem fun or is it evil?
“prove LMNO is a parallelogram” #matheducation

Of course this is all performative.

Apparently my lovely government is in a state of histrionics over... fonts. Marco Rubio, a republican legislator has issued a stern memo to reverse changes to fonts described as more readable and accessible by some disability advocates.

Conservatives regard "inclusion" and "accessible" as dirty words.

(Were #picaTheCat and I your benevolent dictators all fonts would be fixed width so the ASCII art could look good.)

Thank your for your attention to this matter.

Do you financially support the media that you enjoy most often?

If you enjoy posting on the fedi do you support your server? Other small servers?

If you enjoy watching videos do you support the people who make them?

If you read articles do you support the reporters?

What about local theatre and music?

If you have netflix money, spotify money, Hulu or Bobo or whatever money you have money that could do this.

We can talk about how it's bad that the media landscape is shaped by cash, but that isn't a reason to be complacent and tithe to six huge corporations who'd be fine without you and never sending a dime to the strange man who makes the creepy analog cat videos you watch every single day.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

There is one upside in all of this. When you support smaller creators you money has a MUCH bigger impact.

I support:

* this server
* other servers
* the wikipedia
* Karamu House Theatre
* people who sell ant art
* a ton of people who tiny youTube channels
* Pregones Theatre
* community gardens
* xerces society
* new SF authors selling their first book(it's aspirational)
* building food and supplies pantry
*

When I need more money for these kinds of things I start looking for anything corporate I can cut out. Although most of this is possible due to ditching Amazon. Best decision ever.

@arstechnica
"Of the 111 outbreak cases, 105 were unvaccinated, three were partially vaccinated, two had an unknown status, and one case was fully vaccinated."

Hm.

what could it mean.

"More Crabs Photo" ?

Thank God. I was getting worried.

I was just not aware of the concept of crab taxidermy. But it seems like it's a fairly developed art. A little creepy for my tastes, but I can see the appeal.

"Crabs Home Store" is an interesting small business out of Jiangsu China that sells internationally over aliexpress. (There are a surprising range of crafts and art on aliexpress if you know how to find them under all the plastic junk.)

They do crab taxidermy it's amazing to look at. I'm very thankful I'm not as interested in crabs as ants or this place would be very dangerous for my wallet.

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1103983039

And could we get a visual of the size of the US Navy boat next to their "targets" ... it's preposterous.

These are monstrous machines of war. The boats they are shooting are unarmed.

You want the drugs? Want the drug dealers? Point your guns at them and simply take them.

They could find out who sent out the boats. Go find that person. You know if you cared about any of this.

@alessandro @talya

I think with topics where one isn’t an expert it can be more important to know what “most people” in your social circle *think* is true than it can be to know what is really true.

Knowing an iconoclastic truth, but not having the expertise to explain it to others isn’t very useful. Moreover without that expertise you will struggle to evaluate the validity of the unpopular opinion.

So, people reach for the popular option and hope it is correct.

The most exciting and pivotal moments in research are those times when the results do not meet your expectations.

We live for those moments.

If an LLM is not reliable enough for you to trust unexpected results then it is not reliable enough to tell you anything new: it’s incapable of telling you anything that you don’t at (some level) already know.

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