Do you think the department of education writes the textbooks, standardized tests (SAT, ACT, etc.), grading and student management software, learning management systems (Google Classroom, Canvas), or manufactures its own classroom tech (Chromebooks, tablets)?

Each one of those has a bunch of particular nuances, but in general - yeah, I think they could and should in a lot of those cases

The education system is full of for-profit businesses that can jack up the prices, and they do.

Yeah, it’s a big problem with a lot of little parts to be tackled

The DOE simply doesn’t have the resources to create these things themselves

Then government should give them the resources (actually, I think a whole separate agency that develops open source software for any government agency or anyone else who wants to use them should be established, but that’s kind of besides the point).

and would cost them far more if they tried

I don’t think that’s true, and even if it were I think we should be willing to pay premium to make sure essential systems that support the public good are being administered in democratic ways (e.g. by public agencies that are required to give public reports to elected lawmakers and be subject to citizens’ FOIA requests).

the business model has existed forever

A lot of stupid ideas hang on for a really long time. Like, we still have monarchies in the 21st century world.

Personally, I’m more concerned with the use of Google products in schools. A company that’s sole business is harvesting user data and selling it to advertisers should have no place in schools or children’s products. But they’ve embedded themselves into everything so people just accept it at the cost of privacy

I 100% agree this is a significant problem too, I just haven’t come across any good articles about it recently

They tried to do a themed Among Us game, but when they removed the ability of crewmates to criticize each others’ votes it just made the imposters win every round

e; That was a joke (probably should be obvious, but I’m not trying to spread disinformation out here)

Exactly, they’re a captive audience, and moreover they are legally incompetent to consent to a contracted business relationship like this

If this was a department of education AI or even some kind of transparently administered non-profit organization I’d be fine with this, but the fact that this is being developed for some for profit company that can just jack their rates and cut off public schools whenever they want to is bullshit. Like, I’m not opposed to the technology of LLMs at all, I think they’re actually pretty neat, but our social and economic systems have a lot of exploitative trash in them that cool technologies can inadvertently exacerbate.

An American security contractor and a Chinese embassy employee are at a bar. The American says, “I gotta say, your propaganda is impressive. You sure know how to keep your people in line.”

“Oh, you’re too gracious,” the embassy worker says. “And besides, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda.”

The contractor chokes on his drink and gives his friend a bewildered look.

“What are you talking about? There’s no propaganda in America.”

I didn’t realize the anti-immigrant sentiment had gotten to this level in so much of the population

I think the causation is backwards here, a lot of low engagement voters just assume that the best policies are somewhere to the left of whatever the GOP wants and to right of whatever the Dems are pushing for, but they keep thinking that even as the Dems move to the right.

Dems were thinking if independents saw that they’d respect the Dems willingness to compromise or whatever, but Indies saw that and just decided “Oh, I guess immigration really is a problem like the Republicans were saying all along, even the Democratic party thinks we need a border wall now.”

e; an attempt at better phrasing

Survey methodology is described in detail here - https://www.prri.org/research/challenges-to-democracy-the-2024-election-in-focus-findings-from-the-2024-american-values-survey/#page-section-12 (archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/FtPGJ)

MARTIN: It’s interesting, 'cause I covered the White House in the administration of George H. W. Bush, and I knew about it. But then when I’ve talked to colleagues about it, they didn’t know about it, and people are continually surprised.

Maybe because news publishers like NPR and CNN never put that detail in the headlines of their stories that brush up against this open secret

If the Wikipedia page on expungement is accurate there is some sort of process where it will get sealed from public view after a certain amount of time has passed.

I do agree if this is a one off thing it shouldn’t haunt the rest of her life, especially given the fact that we’re talking about a thirteen year old who was a victim of (at best) extremely negligent caregiving.

Conservatives when a criminal justice system is punishing someone they don’t like: “Blood for the blood god!”

Conservatives when someone’s held accountable for a hate crime: “What has happened to our humanity?!”

FWIW, the article author also wrote a book called “Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food”

Campaigners say further physical and mental harm could be inflicted under Labour home secretary Yvette Cooper’s plan to increase deportations to 2018 levels – with a goal to remove thousands of migrants and refused asylum seekers by the end of the year.

I hate how many people seem to be fighting for this title

Unfortunately the US Department of Justice says they agree because they are (yet again) bending over backwards to protect right wingers from being held accountable for their actions to harm our country

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Yeah, I’m not a Texan but I also disagree about this. Also, Austin has produced some amazing music over the years (for example, random Austin band I’ve been in love with recently is Being Dead).

You think Palestinian lives weren’t being threatened and taken by Israeli violence before October 7?

Boo Radley weird vs Bob Ewell weird

Also, it’s not exactly clear where “there” even was

A video shared on social media shows protesters holding Palestinian flags and accusing theatregoers at a cafe next to Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre of “Zionism”.

…

A spokesperson for Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre said: “The videos that emerged on social media were exchanges that did not take place at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. Last night’s performance went ahead as planned.”

Was this demonstration actually in response to the play performance or did they just happen to be near each other?

The fact that the commissioner has this power in the first place and that they even have to ask is ridiculous to me, it’s like “Camp Crystal Lake residents suggest disarming Voorhees’ artillery”

“If we aren’t promoting the most skilled people in our society, how am I supposed to figure out where to invest all this money I inherited?”

I think I agree, but I’d phrase it a bit differently. The problem in our country isn’t division, it’s that there’s an energetic fascist movement that needs to be stopped. The problem with assassinating Trump is that it gives that movement a martyr and would very much energize them (disorganize them too, since they wouldn’t know for sure who to follow anymore, but they’ve never needed to be too organized to do damage and they could do plenty before succession fueled infighting really started to take a toll).

Killing Trump won’t kill his ideas, the only way to do that is to embarrass Trump and Trumpism badly, so I think the best series of events would be a) Trump loses the election, b) prosecutors explain Trump’s many crimes in meticulous detail to a series of juries who sentence Trump to years and years behind bars, c) Trump dies of a heart attack while taking a shit in prison.

The fact that the voters already did a) once in 2020 and the system’s let us down on b) is deeply frustrating and worth acknowledging for the sake of identifying the country’s underlying problems (it’s the politicians and lawyers more than it is the voters), but it doesn’t change the fact that assassinating Trump is the last thing we want to do at this point.