Maybe people are just afraid of bugs.

Would you work for Panda Express if they paid you with cash?

Reminds me of the Einstein jerk off skit from UCB

Ads are basically paid graffiti

Me playing Zelda needing a strength powerup be like

It’s amazing. By utilizing the time honored technique of “korosu”, this skill has been passed down from generation to generation. People don’t seem to have enough respect for tradition.

Speak for yourself, I’m interested in the sugar & molasses. Stocks are low and my family needs to hunker down for the long winter.

Definitely a question worth an interrobang. I never understood the “we need to pretend follow the law so we can break it” policy

Hey now, go easy on them

… they’re doing everything they can.

Most Americans have their talking points ready to go around certain topics: healthcare, guns etc. But if you get anything that attacks the capitalism, building the country off of slave labor, or the country being the product of a genocide, that’s when the propaganda really kicks in.

Oh and if you call it propaganda, then the denialism gets even stronger.

Same, I don’t really care what the media thinks, I’m having a good time.

I absolutely agree, I think you ahem that lead actress should win an Oscar.

But I think it’s important that we don’t let enjoying things become synonymous with liking (mindless purchasing) the corporate products that are being sold to us at a breakneck pace.

What ways do we have to still create our own ways to have fun? How can we make our own “weird barbies”?

grave thoroughly urinated on

Shit, I guess people found an alternative after all

Margaret Thatcher, is that you?

The really wild one is the Ann Coulter reading:

“God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”

(Referring to Dominionism and Genesis 1:28, on Hannity & Colmes, 20 June 2001)

I don’t live in the US. I’m adequately paid, and the summers are short where I live. Take your strawmen and throw them back whatever hole you dug them out of.

I can’t speak about US problems, but what I’m talking about is education in general. I’ll give you an example: I was teaching some students to read the other day, about 8 years old. One student clearly has the leg up on the other one. She goes to after school programs, short summer programs, the works. She can read about two levels higher than her classmate. Hey, that’s great. And actually when reading is concerned, I’m happy that she can do that. But what happens is that when I need to slow down and actually teach that other student to read (at a level that’s perfectly fine for her age), she groans, she gets impatient, she makes fun of that kid. And what happens to that other kid? She feels stupid, she feels inadequate.

And ok, you might say, an intensive reading program is good! But one thing it does not teach these kids is that they are not better than anyone else, and even if they learn more, they need to also learn to be respectful to their fellow students.

Tl;dr we’re teaching them to be competitive, not good human beings

I explicitly said that the love of learning is great.

And I’m not saying that learning extracurriculars is bad, in fact, it’s wonderful!

I’m talking about summer schools that literally just teach a class curriculum ahead of time. In that respect, yes, it is “gaming”. The only thing those students learn is to get ahead and stay ahead.

Um, yeah? Teaching is not about awarding those who game the system the best. It’s all about making sure that the “lowest common denominator” gets every chance to succeed.

It’s not a fucking leaderboard.

Signed,

a salty fucking teacher who will defend those students to the end.

Edit: I’m gonna keep going on this because it’s a subject that pisses me off to no end.

I live in a place where the rich kids can afford to tutor during the summer, and some take extra classes to “get ahead” of the school year. And you know what those kids do?

They sit in the classes, bored, because someone paid for them to do all this stuff early.

And I’m not saying that learning extracurriculars is bad, in fact, it’s wonderful! But if you paid somewhere to just take the same math class that you would have done anyway, well congrats. You got nothing. You beat Mario before everyone else.

And even that would be fine, except the attitude that comes from them – some as early as 6 years old! – is that these fucking “remedials” are slowing them down, and they are “smart” all while a mountain of money and privilege supports them.

And do those kids feel like they should help their fellow students learn? No! They just punch down harder, because no one in their families teaches them that learning is cooperative effort. Just get to the top of that fucking leaderboard and stay there at all costs. From fucking kindergarten onwards!

Thanks for coming to my fucking ted talk.

Wow thanks Captain Bootstraps!