I encountered this little message on Shitter, and was appalled at all the comments that enthusiastically agreed. This is not a curriculum. It’s a hodge-podge of random topics that the creator thinks they have mastered, and shame on you if you haven’t.

Look, what educators do is design a program of instruction that builds the basics first, that the student can then build on to reach more complex topics. It’s a tree, where attention must first be paid to the trunk, and then the branches. The stuff in this cartoon is a collection of twigs…some useful, others specialized, others mostly irrelevant.

Look at the first one, for instance: taxes. You have got to be kidding me. Doing your taxes is an exercise in following somewhat arbitrary instructions, doing basic arithmetic a step at a time. In a sense, most education is already all about obeying a series of instructions, are you seriously suggesting that tax forms are an important or interesting part of your schooling? Fuck off.

Then, coding. I’ve noticed that a lot of programmers have an inflated sense of the importance of what they do — it’s useful, but not essential for most people’s lives. This is basically vocational instruction that’s not going to be at all useful unless you get into a career in IT. (I’m not an outsider looking in here: I spent about fifteen years of my life doing lots of coding for laboratory work. I enjoyed it, but I haven’t had to fire up a compiler in an even longer period of time.)

Cooking? Really? Schools already offer classes in cooking. It’s called home economics. It’s usually optional; in my education you could take either home ec or a shop class. I did both because I wanted to. I spent a year learning the skills I’d need to be a line cook (vocational ed again), and another year in shop, which at my school was largely about drafting and printing. Both were cool, I’m glad I took them, I acquired some simple skills I use even now, but mandatory? Students don’t have infinite time.

The rest are similar tiny twigs on the tree of education. Isn’t high school basically already a gauntlet compelling you to learn a combination of survival skills, social etiquette, and stress management? You think a class would be more effective than navigating the protocols and cliques of your first prom?

I notice what’s missing here: math, history, literature, art, science. Maybe they just assumed they’re already teaching those, but sometimes standards are terribly low. I remember learning US history, which is an important subject, but some of the students were lucky enough to get a teacher who was actually qualified to teach it (Hey, Mr Richardson, I saw what my peers got in that class, and I was jealous.) I got the basketball coach, and the class was a semester of pure jingo and superficial memorization of dates.

Forget this uninformed list of random topics, which was probably cobbled together by a programmer, and instead teach what educators say forms a good framework for learning, and maybe instead give teachers the resources they need and enforce good standards.

This looks like something an unqualified home-schooler would assemble, and that’s what I’m afraid of — that there are a lot of people thinking “basic home repaire” trumps spelling and math and civics.

They’d probably fail the vocabulary section of the SAT.

Many students have no choice about working with the College Board, the company that administers the SAT test and Advanced Placement exams. Part of that relationship involves a long history of privacy issues. Tests by Gizmodo found if you use some of the handy tools promoted by College Board’s website, the organization sends details about your SAT scores, GPA, and other data to Facebook, TikTok, and a variety of companies.

Gizmodo observed the College Board’s website sharing data with Facebook and TikTok when a user fills in information about their GPA and SAT scores. When this reporter used the College Board’s search filtering tools to find colleges that might accept a student with a C+ grade-point average and a SAT score of 420 out of 1600, the site let the social media companies know. Whether a student is acing their tests or struggling, Facebook and TikTok get the details.

No one should be surprised that Facebook and TikTok are stealing their users information. No one should be surprised that the College Board is pulling this crap, too. It’s cute that they were flat out caught lying.

“We do not share SAT scores or GPAs with Facebook or TikTok, and any other third parties using pixel or cookies,” said a College Board spokesperson. “In fact, we do not send any personally identifiable information (PII) through our pixels on the site. In addition, we do not use SAT scores or GPAs for any targeting.”

After receiving this comment, Gizmodo shared a screenshot of the College Board sending GPAs and SAT scores to TikTok using a pixel. The spokesperson then acknowledged that the College Board’s website actually does share this data.

Yeah, that’s the College Board all over the place. They’re a for-profit company(it claims to be a non-profit, but keep in mind the CEO makes over a million dollars a year) founded during the era of eugenics on the lie that a standardized test can be used to quantify the intelligence and ability of young people.

Hey, remember the Fyre Festival?

The original festival promised luxury villas, a lineup with Blink-182 and Migos and advertised with models like Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber. But when people got there, they found no Jenner, no Biebers, no Blink-182; just “FEMA tents” and stacks of construction materials.

It was legendarily bad, so awful that two documentaries were made about it, and the organizer, Billy McFarland, went to prison over it.

Billy McFarland is out of prison already, and guess what? He’s planning a Fyre Festival II.

After teasing the follow-up festival earlier this year, 100 presale tickets went up for grabs on Aug. 21 for $499 apiece (technically $549.89 after taxes and fees). Tickets will continue to increase incrementally, with the last round selling for $7,999 each. For $1,500 less, you could get four VIP tickets to Coachella with accommodations in a “ready-to-go Lake Eldorado Tent.”

Those 100 tickets have sold out, according to an email from organizers and McFarland’s social media, despite the event having no lineup of artists, exact date or location.

I don’t think prison reformed Billy at all, and why should it? The marks are still out there, happy to be fleeced some more. They haven’t learned anything either.

That didn’t stop Victoria Medvedenko, 20, a nursing student in Arizona, from buying a ticket. In screenshots of a receipt shared with The Washington Post, it shows Medvedenko purchased one of the “The First 100” tickets for $549.89.

“I really don’t think Billy would want to go back to jail and he’s had a lot of time to think about it and prepare this time,” she said of her decision. “And I think the first time around it had a lot of potential. He just didn’t have enough time or the right mind-set.”

We can’t get people to support climate action that threatens their lives, but sure, we’ve got people who’ll spend hundreds of dollars on a ticket and thousands of dollars for travel, all for the promise of a bad cheese sandwich.

Whoa. Cautious, fair, thorough…Ronan Farrow reviews Elon Musk’s life. Imagine an angel of utmost probity assessing his soul at the doorway to heaven, nodding kindly as he summarizes each decade, and then, sadly, pulling the lever that drops him into a blood-drenched flaming tunnel to Hell. It’s so satisfying.

Here’s a short sample.

“Given unprovoked attacks by leading Democrats against me & a very cold shoulder to Tesla & SpaceX, I intend to vote Republican in November,” he tweeted last year. By the time he bought Twitter, he was urging his followers to vote along similar lines, and appearing to back Ron DeSantis, whose candidacy he helped launch in a technically disastrous Twitter live event. Although Musk’s teen-age daughter, Vivian, has come out as trans, he has embraced anti-trans sentiment, saying that he would lobby to criminalize “irreversible” gender-affirming care for children. (Vivian recently changed her last name, saying in a legal filing, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”) Musk started spreading misinformation on the platform: he shared theories that the physical attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the former Speaker of the House, had followed a meeting with a male prostitute, and retweeted suggestions that reports accurately identifying a mass shooter as a white supremacist were a “psyop.” Some people who know Musk well still struggle to make sense of his political shift. “There was nothing political about him ever,” a close associate told me. “I’ve been around him for a long time, and had lots of deep conversations with the man, at all hours of the day—never heard a fucking word about this.”

See what I mean? Farrow doesn’t pass judgement, he just calmly describes Musk’s appalling history of imposing his awful ignorance on everyone around him.

Read the rest. You won’t enjoy it, but much respect to the writer’s skill.

The semester has genuinely positively started. It’s happening. Can’t turn back time now.

By the way, I seem to be the only person on campus masking up anymore. I will continue to do so. I missed Skepticon this year, so I escaped some consequences there: Three attendees have come down with COVID so far. The pandemic is still around, be careful out there!

I’ve pointed out before how creationists like to butcher quotes from scientists to completely change their meaning, in a practice called quote mining. Guess who else does this?

Jordan Peterson. Tell me you’re surprised.

He and his publisher spattered the back cover of his latest book, Beyond Order, with blurbs from reviewers that praised it highly…or did they?

Another objection came from The Times reviewer James Marriott, because the blurb included from his review quoted him calling the book “A philosophy of the meaning of life… the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has ever written.”

In a now-deleted X post, Marriott noted that the ellipse covered up that his full sentence was “A philosophy of the meaning of life which is bonkers.”

“My review of this mad book was probably the most negative thing I have ever written,” Marriott said. He later added that he was amused by the situation, “Though my amusement is tinged with annoyance at being misrepresented to the tens of thousands of people who will buy that book in paperback.

Oh man, you can’t trust Jordan Peterson? Shocking.

Remember this guy? Bryan Johnson is a millionaire who has dedicated his life to obsessively striving to become ‘younger,’ sort of, and only seems to have become a boring monomaniac.

His quest is surprisingly granular, and won’t shut up about his little idée fixe. Guess what little thing he’s focused on now?

I’m done. I don’t want to know any more.

I will never attend another meeting in person again.*

I have a day of meetings scheduled for the rest of the day, but the first one nearly killed me. It was two hours long. We had a detailed 5-page agenda that had been emailed to us, and that should have been all we needed. I dutifully attended, ankle wrapped up and immobilized, as the pain continued to raise, despite the brain-addling drugs I’m taking, and worst of all, I’m taking a diuretic. Breaks? No.

It was fucking agonizing, a thoroughly unpleasant meeting in which I learned nothing I hadn’t already learned from a few decades of experience and reading the agenda ahead of time. I got to listen to a parade of administrators while squirming and almost breaking down and praying to a benevolent god for a merciful ending. I knew my prayer for a lightning bolt to end my suffering wouldn’t be answered, though. Jumping out a window was tempting, but the room was on the ground floor.

I’ve got more meetings scheduled, but screw it, I’m not going unless they’re over Zoom.

I’m two years away from retirement, and I swear, this experience confirmed my commitment to getting out in Spring of 2025. I just can’t handle it anymore. Maybe if I were in good health, I’d be able to cope, but I’m right on the edge of erupting and melting down, and it was too much.

Classes start next week, and that’s going to be interesting. Lectures are one hour, not two, so that helps, but I’m also going to have to give up on the medication, which makes me drowsy and stresses my kidneys. Isn’t it great when a job is a compromise between getting the work done and your health?

*Student meetings excepted. I like those.