Something like 80% of print books are now unreadable for me as the font is too small. I can still technically read them — my eyesight is about the same as it was at 18 — but I’ve been spoiled by e-readers so just can’t tolerate it anymore.
Why would I want to squint at six-point font intended for ants when I could read some other book available in a format where I can easily change the font size and everything else? I do not and will not.
The US Green Party is completely unserious about winning or building working-class political power and should not be encouraged by serious leftists. Don't @ me
— Jonathan Smucker (@jonathansmucker) August 19, 2020
If you replace the “US Green Party” with the “US Democratic Party” the sentence is equally true.
We are surrounded by morons.
This is a good one for the people who refuse to concede that “crime” is socially constructed. https://t.co/W1NIatUTtr
— Nick Encalada-Malinowski (@nwmalinowski) August 20, 2020
Every hourly worker I’ve ever met in a service industry has experienced wage theft. Every single one. And yet no one goes to jail for this.
Bernie or even Elizabeth Warren would’ve won in a landslide.
That Biden still might lose to Trump (legitimately lose, not due to election tampering) shows what a terrible fucking candidate he is.
Genuine question:
What human population could a +4C world support?
— Richard Lawson (@DocRichard) August 19, 2020
I think about 100-300 million, but certainly not greater than a billion. Since a +4C world seems about what we’ll hit, I’d say by 2200 if we don’t completely apocalypse ourselves (also very likely, due to nuclear war), there will be 300 million people alive on earth.
If we do nuke ourselves (I give this a 60% chance), possible extinction, but I’d say 2-3 million alive on earth as most likely, with about 50/50 chance of extinction.
I silently still laugh at the fact that teachers told us we wouldnt be carrying around calculators
And now we have smart phones, and I havent done math since high school, and all things numbers I pay other people for
“You’ll see”….yeah fucking right
— Alexander “Chadicus Rex” Cortes PhD (BroScience) (@AJA_Cortes) August 19, 2020
That is funny. My teachers told me the same thing. It was a lie, and I knew it even then.
This is apart from my dislike of doing math, but I can almost guarantee that math education will become less and less relevant over the next 20-50 years. It’ll all be handled much more competently and quickly by AI/expert systems and beyond understanding the basics in 50 years, even 99% of scientists won’t actually use much math directly. It’ll decline in teaching and importance and the “M” in “STEM” will come to stand for “Machine Learning.”
Most math education is an utter waste of time and is just busywork anyway, so no great loss.
All you need is a basic stats course plus #rwri to understand fat tails
— James Marsh (@JamesMarsh79) August 19, 2020
You don’t need that at all. Just don’t be a fucking dumbass is all it takes.
the trick to avoiding completely failing at building your own cabin: be so utterly shit at DIY that the thought would never even occur to you https://t.co/FisOMsdjuf
— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) August 18, 2020
Same here. I’d be so abysmally terrible at this. I’d also probably die. It’d never occur to me to even try anything like this because the only outcome would be abject failure. Just as with math, it’s not a lack of confidence. No. Just a complete and utter lack of ability.
Me: My MacBook is so heavy.
Then watch McIntosh 1984 promotion video… pic.twitter.com/VdwVBlKVsX
— tkasasagi🐻@女子熊 (@tkasasagi) August 19, 2020
Oh, shit, I remember those cases for carrying the early Macs. I hadn’t thought of those in 30+ years. Huh.
So everyone is talking about UNC's COVID-19 mess – and all that criticism is perfectly valid.
But we also need to talk about why the uni-administration probably had no choice.
Buckle up and let's talk about university finances and the 4 horsemen of the academipocalypse. 1/lots?
— Bret Devereaux (@BretDevereaux) August 19, 2020
Good thread, but ignores one of the most — if not the most — important economic cause of this: student loans! Loans cause inflation, because in many cases (including this one), inflation is just a surfeit of money in a certain market.
For the past three decades, student loans have been easier to get and more prevalent than ever in history. Part of that is lower interest rates, part of that is subsidies, and part of that is just a cultural change. However, just a simple economic truism is that an increasing pool of money leads to an inflationary spiral.
And available money will not go unused, even if it doesn’t go to teaching. And that’s exactly what happened — it didn’t go to teaching. Instead, it was devoted to instantiating the administrative apparatuses that are now destroying universities, and those climbing walls, those deluxe gyms, all those amenities that are now de rigeur but were unknown even in the 1980s. It also becomes self-sustaining: as more money is available via student loans, universities add more admins and amenities as they realize they can raise tuition which will be covered by loans. As they then need to pay to maintain these new cost burdens, and to improve it to compete with other colleges, tuition rises again. As tuition rises, universities can then fund more of this useless stuff. But that then requires more and larger loans to pay for this increased tuition. And on and on, ad infinitum.
That’s just basic inflation, and a lot (I’d estimate 70%) of the rise in college costs are due to this loan-created inflationary spiral.