evasive_chimpanzee

The fact that electors physically exist as real people is still insane to me. If a state has winner takes all for their electoral votes, why does a group of random people have to then travel to DC to cast a vote. It’s not 1800 when the outcome of a state’s election needed to travel via horseback to the capitol.

It’s literally Mali. Having alternate country codes is just a way to take advantage of countries with less of a presence on the internet to be able to get better domain names and at a lower price. .ml specifically was given away for free. The worst, I think, is .io since the profits of those domains should go to the chagossians, but it just goes to the British government.

This is the right answer. “Opposition leader” or a “shadow cabinet” are not meaningful terms in American politics. It’s like asking who the President of the UK is. You could go for somewhat equivalent congressional roles like House/Senate minority leaders, or you could try to point to specific political figures that seem to be trying harder to oppose the regime (who may or may not be in the federal government like governors).

Yellow jackets are generalist predators. As long as they aren’t making a nest somewhere real close to where you want to be, they are good at killing a whole lot of pests.

In America (and i fear this has spread to other countries), people like Mary Pride have pushed for homeschooling in addition to basically starting the quiverful movement. The idea is, you keep kids out of school so they are only allowed to learn your far right views, and you have as many kids as possible so you can 1) force the woman to stay at home and 2) have older kids forced to parent and teach younger kids. You then involve the kids in politics as early as possible so by the time they are adults, they have already made inroads to working with far right politicians. Some of those kids end up a certain version of smart, but the priorities are different. They might heavily focus on speech debate, both from a religious and a political point of view. On the “good” end of the spectrum, the kids end up truly charismatic and persuasive, and on the “bad” end, it’s basically tiny ben shapiros who just gish gallop you at any chance they get. Often, but not always, girls are completely neglected since “they only need to learn how to run a home”. Oftentimes kids are abused, and homeschooling is a way to hide that from authorities. To contrast with all of this, I think there situations where we should be more flexible with homeschooling. If a parent has expertise in a topic, they should be able to cover like a couple classes or something. I knew homeschooling kids who came to public school for a class or two, but I didn’t know any kids who were homeschooling for a class or two. People in this thread are saying it’s dumb to think you can teach better than a teacher, but if it’s between 1:1 tutoring and being in a class of 30, you have a big step up. Personally, I found math classes trivially easy basically up until i was like 17. Math classes till then mostly just focused on teaching how to accurately and repeatably do all the things that calculators do perfectly. I could rant about how math is taught a lot, but I won’t. If I had 1 on 1 teaching on a more diverse range of math topics, I could have learned way more. We should be helping parents/kids do that if they can.

Organizations like the homeschool legal defense association basically exist to protect child abusers.

Reading theory ≠ being highly competent, though. Dunning Kruger states that people with low competence (in specific areas) overestimate themselves, and highly competent people underestimate themselves. Reading doesnt necessarily make you better at things (though obviously it can help). A community organizer that’s been feeding the hungry for 40 years but has never read a political book will be more competent than someone who’s read hundreds of books but never gone out and done stuff.

It’s definitely a thing in American schools, but i think it’s common in some other countries as well. When learning another language, the options are to: 1) use your real name with the real pronunciation, 2) real name with different pronunciation, 3) equivalent of name in other language (e.g., John to Juan), 4) just pick a name you like in the other language. 1 doesnt flow well in speech, 2 also feels unnatural, and sometimes isnt possible, and 3 doesnt always exist. Kids also generally like the opportunity to pick a name that they think is cool. There’s no expectation that you would use that name in a real life discussion with someone in that language. Looks like it’s common in China as well. ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/view/2535