And that’s why I’ve been binge watching Bug-out Bus Youtube.
As you should: You’ll Smash Your Kid’s Smartphone After Reading This
They Were Promised There Would Be No Math
it’s been an article of faith for decades that those with college degrees out earn those without. and it clearly shows up in the data.
the correlation is unmistakable. but, and this is a massive but, that does not mean what many suspect. it does not mean that “college creates earnings and opportunity.” for many, it starts to seem to mean the opposite: college is lost opportunity and vast expenditure and debt accumulation that will never pay for itself. and a lot of this comes down to bad expectations and a form of “lake wobegon fallacy” of statistical illiteracy.
the percentage of americans getting college degrees has exploded from around 4% in 1940 to the mid 37%’s now and this actually understates the issue as this is just the number who successfully completed a 4 year degree. over 70% of recent high school grads enroll in college which means that around 45% of 16-24 year olds are enrolled in college and more than half were at some point. what was once 1 in 20 is now 1 in 2. and that’s a VERY different thing and this is where the cargo cult emerges:
an institution for the top 5 percentiles of a society is a very different place than an institution for the whole top half. it must be structured differently, work differently, place different demands, and perhaps most of all: it’s output and the outcomes of those who attended are going to be different. college is not magic. it does not make people more motivated or smarter. it may select for these traits, it does not make those who attend “higher percentile” in terms of innate ability or expected outcome.
past a point, it may be inflicting harm and i would argue that based on the promises and expectations, it’s creating a mathematical impossibility.
it seems like every kid who enrolls in college is expecting to be in the top 10-20% of earners. this is sort of “the deal” that folks are buying into. but if 50% of society is enrolling, it’s obviously impossible. the real world is not lake wobegon. we cannot all be above average. half of society cannot be a top 10% earner and that’s the sort of outcome being mistaken for the marker of “went to college” a thing that used to all but unerringly signify “top decile” but that does so no longer. somewhere on the order of 3/4 of them are going to wind up being disappointed. they have to be. it’s just math. (perhaps this is why high schools and universities seem so increasingly loathe to teach it?)
It just so happens: “The average scores in three of the four subjects featured on the test – mathematics, reading and science – were below the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks. The benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores required for students taking the test to have a high probability of success in college.”
Involuntary Megaslaughter
Loay Alnaji, a computer science professor at Ventura County Community College, was arrested Thursday morning and charged with involuntary manslaughter after he was involved in a deadly confrontation with pro-Israel demonstrator Paul Kessler.
In early November, Kessler died of his wounds following “a physical altercation with counter-protestor(s),” in Los Angeles, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement afterward. “During the altercation, Kessler fell backward and struck his head on the ground. The Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office determined the cause of death to be blunt force head injury and the manner of death homicide,” the statement continued.[…]
“We are devastated to learn of the tragic death of an elderly Jewish man who was struck in the head by a megaphone wielded by a pro-Palestinian protestor in Westlake Village.”
Transgender Is A Stalking Horse For The Normalization Of Pedophilia
Related. Reduxx has learned that a trans-identified male currently working for the Berlin police force has been posting fetish content online, some of which involve themes of transitioning and sexualizing children.
Also related, and this time I won’t spoil the ending: Slade Sohmer, editor of left-wing news site “The Recount” was previously celebrated for discussing sexuality with elementary kids.
“a conspiracy of cartographers.”
This is an extraordinary piece of writing: the real dangers of the virtual life
trusting that which you cannot see but failing to trust that which is right in front of you is a kind of madness. and this is what “globalism” has on offer and why it’s so vapid and harmful. in the end, imminence is all.
joy and meaning come from that which you experience directly. the answer is always “roll up your sleeves, get dirty, touch stuff, make things, explore, find, interact tangibly.” the real risk of the virtual world is that you inhabit nothing corporeal, just a vapor of ideas and a memory of smoke. (said the internet cat, basking in irony)
Umbrage Detected
They’re upset that they’ve been asked to participate in their own survival.
You see, she should “just be able to have” things.
The Children Are Our Future
And that’s why my retirement plan includes collecting useful recipes.
Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In the US, Britain, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be seen: around the middle of the last decade, the number of young people with anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendencies started to rise sharply. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, noticed a change when students who were brought up with smartphones started to arrive on campus. They were angrier. More fragile. More likely to take offense.[…]
“It’s what I’ve been calling the phone-based child,” he says. “For all human history, millions of years, all mammals play. Anyone who has had a puppy knows it’s all about play. So we had play dates in childhood, up until around 2010.” In Britain, he says, the number of children who went on real-life playdates then fell sharply. Lockdown, needless to say, didn’t help.
“I’m calling it the great rewiring of childhood… It hit the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand in exactly the same way.” Social media is a bit of a misnomer, he says. It’s no longer about connecting people, but “performing on a platform.” Perhaps this is fine for grown-ups, but not for children, “where they can say things in public, including to strangers, and then be publicly shamed by potentially millions of people… Children should not be on social networks. They should be playing in person. Social media platforms should never be accessed by children until they’re eighteen. It’s just insane that we let kids do these things.”
Zombie apocalypse
The only upside I can see in this story is that most governments in the world are in even worse financial shape than the U.S. federal government. But that will just delay the inevitable.
What should we call a government that must borrow $1T to pay interest on existing debt & another $1T to cover operating deficit?
(FYI – companies in such situation are called "Zombies") https://t.co/Iw3o7g63mO
— Simon Mikhailovich (@S_Mikhailovich) November 7, 2023
And In Saving-The-World News
Sometimes an example of what you’re talking about comes along that seems almost too on-the-nose.
Some good news for a change…
I’m surprised that the federal government has not rushed in to bail out TVA, but in the meantime, it’s nice to see the continuing implosion of the leftist corporate media model.
The TVA Group says it is laying off 547 employees — nearly a third of its workforce — amid restructuring as the company contends with declining audiences and ad revenues.
The Montreal-based broadcaster says the shift involves overhauling its news division, ending its in-house entertainment content production and optimizing its real estate assets — including a reconsideration of the future use of its headquarters east of downtown.
What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?
How it started…
African-American bakery employee testified he saw Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo “standing directly in front of the store with a megaphone, orchestrating some of the activities of the students.”
How that went.
Oberlin College pays $36 million to Ohio bakery after its owner accused the school of refusing to pay penalty in defamation suit
And how it’s going…
One of the country’s most liberal colleges is being investigated over allegations it allowed antisemitism to breed on campus including having a professor of peace studies who has called for the elimination of Israel and the death of Salman Rushdie.
Oberlin College in Ohio could lose chunks of the millions in annual federal funding as a result of the probe, whose existence it has not yet disclosed to students, alumni and donors. Last year, the school took in more than $5 million in federal grants.
An offer he can’t refuse
As the strike by workers at Manitoba Public Insurance drags on, Wab Kinew is finding out that the very people that he thought were carrying water for him during the election are not as grateful as he had hoped. If he didn’t see this coming, then it’s pretty clear that the guy is already in over his head. If he’s not careful, he’ll be the next Bob Rae.
The MPI strike lasting more than two months will continue after the union representing the workers rejected an offer from the employer Monday.
MGEU members voting “overwhelmingly” to turn down the offer, according to union president Kyle Ross.
Isabelle M. Ayala vs American Academy Of Pediatrics
The American Academy of Pediatrics and several leading doctors are being sued for civil conspiracy, fraud, and medical malpractice!
Isabelle Ayala was just 14 years old and struggling with trauma, depression, cutting, and suicidal ideation when she was coerced onto testosterone by ideologically captured doctors who push childhood sex changes.
Isabelle has suffered from vaginal atrophy from the extensive use of testosterone; she deals with excess facial and body hair; she struggles with compromised bone structure; she is unsure whether her fertility has been irreversibly compromised; she still has mental health issues and deals with episodes of anxiety and depression, further compounded by a sense of regret; and she has since contracted an autoimmune disease that only the males in her family have a history of.
Under the AAP’s so-called ‘gender-affirmative care’ model, the charlatans named in this lawsuit advocate for the immediate, unquestioned embrace of a child’s chosen ‘gender identity.’
They also advocate for immediate ‘social transitioning’ of the child to the newly chosen gender identity, and encourage puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones.
Notably, at least four of the six members of the Committee including Defendants Dr. Rafferty, Dr. Forcier, Dr. Allen, and Dr. Sherer —worked at pediatric gender clinics that prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to patients as young as 10 and
Instead of supporting the conclusions and recommendations contained in the policy statement with scientific evidence, they fraudulently and misleadingly cited evidence that did not support any of their conclusions and recommendations, and they knowingly misrepresented the known risks and dangers of some of the medical interventions the policy statement promoted.
Doomsdays
The term “doom loop” very accurately describes what is going on in Argentina right now. Despite the chaos gripping the economy, voters seem to be somewhat favoring the Peronist candidate who pledges to keep the free stuff flowing along with the resultant chaos as opposed to a fan of Von Mises and Hayek who would institute widespread free market reforms and stop the collapse.
Demonstrating a doom-loop in which crises caused by big government prompt citizens to increase their demands for for big government, a bricklayer en route to the voting booth told Reuters, “Peronism is the only space that offers the possibility that the poorest of us can have basic things at our fingertips.”
I can think of a few other nations on that same path. Can you?
The Children Are Our Future
And that’s why I won’t leave the house this winter without my Firebox Titanium Nano Stove.
I just fired a student, a first for me. 55 minutes into our THIRD session on his college personal statement, I started seeing lines get crossed out in the Google doc, and EDITED by a third person. He said “I have someone else looking at my essay now, I’ll tell her to wait.
I asked “Who is this other person?” He said “She’s a friend of the family, a professional grant writer, and she helped her son get into University of Chicago.”
Campus Craziness
Universities have brazenly dropped their careful two-faced-gymnastics to reveal at last-unapologetically, proudly, and defiantly-the moral decay that now characterizes American universities. – Victor Davis Hanson
Canadian universities are the same or worse.
UPDATE: Ryerson students support Hamas.
Seizure Salad
In this study including 4,102,106 vaccinated enrollees from three commercial claims databases, myocarditis or pericarditis signaled after BNT162b2 (12-17 years) and a new signal was detected for seizures/convulsions after BNT162b2 (2-4 years) and mRNA1273 COVID-19 vaccinations (2-5 years).
Scratch A Climate Activist, Find An Anti-Semite
“ Her handlers deleted the embarrassing post….”
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
Flushing capital
Rising compliance costs are one big reason for the sharp increase in housing and construction prices, and while some levels of government express concern and desire to lower those costs, other jurisdictions can’t wait to saddle builders with even bigger burdens.
B.C. construction projects with more than 25 workers must have access to a flushable toilet, according to a law to be introduced by Premier David Eby.