I’m Expecting Gasps, Applause

That describes my younger brother
Lefties are, by and large, hopelessly unrealistic about intelligence – how it works, how it’s distributed, etc – indeed they’re often perverse and doctrinaire. And education is pretty much dominated by lefties, and by the ideas of lefties.
Not really ideal, to say the least.

Happy blogiversary!

But she does announce her pronouns.

The true purpose of the neck tie is to hide any slight roundness afflicting the tummy region. It won’t hide actual fatness obviously but it’s a God-send for those of us who are doing OK in that department but don’t quite have the degree of perfect svelteness required to be able to get away with wearing a suit without a tie.

hide any slight roundness afflicting the tummy region
[ Slides enormous cardboard box along bar. ]
I can do you a good price on a second-hand smoke machine. It’s not quite as portable as one might wish, but once switched on, it will conceal any unsightliness around the belt area.

“Chestfeeding”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/breastfeeding-is-now-chestfeeding-brightons-trans-friendly-midwives-are-told-pwlvmcnc7

For those of us who aren’t complete suckers with Washington Post subscriptions!
Say again all after hello ? This goes VFR direct to the article without subscription, unless maybe you are using some wonky browser.

Lefties are, by and large, hopelessly unrealistic about intelligence
A psychology professor I knew as an undergraduate was very confident that “education” could solve the racial IQ gap. And he was an exceptionally honest leftist because he admitted that there was a gap.

“During the coronavirus pandemic, alternative protein products have soared in popularity”
I’ll say it out loud: the Washington Post is lying–again. The coronavirus is not motivating people to seek out fake meat; it’s all propaganda on behalf of vegans, “green” fanatics, and veggie industries.
The increasing frequency of news items promoting “alternatives” to meat, whether plant-based synthetics or just bugs and worms, is disturbing. I recently read a novel about an ultra-long-term space mission in which the ship, as a closed ecology, had greenhouses to grow plants and bugs–intellectually interesting, but I emphatically do not want to eat fried crickets and stewed grubs and am hostile to those who would “nudge” me in that direction.

regarding bright kids, the credit that can be taken by educators is generally very limited.
I was directed into “enrichment programs” in lieu of classroom instruction between the ages of 9 and 11. My recollection is that I learned very little of anything useful, since the curriculum was the kind of thing M.Eds think bright children will be stimulated by. Had they given me the time to just sit and read the high school and college level books I was already reading, I expect it would have been more successful.
My experience with very bright children is that they seldom have any difficulty finding things to learn, and the best thing any educator can do is simply direct them away from the dangerous or illegal stuff while not actively frustrating that impulse.

I have always understood that the Vikings all around Europe and the Mediterranean and the ‘winning’ African tribes kept slavers and were major suppliers of slaves through history. The Romans and Greeks also took and kept slaves as did other ‘nations’ or empires.

Slavery has existed at one point or another in every culture.
As has cannibalism.

My wife’s 5 years experience teaching 2nd grade (don’t know what English wizarding school level that translates to) was quite enough to convince us that when the state isn’t actively, purposefully hurting children’s attainment of useful knowledge they do so unwittingly through sheer inefficient incompetence. The ‘rona panic has saved me from tiresome dinners with her former teacher coworkers and hearing them complain endlessly about a system that they will defend until their dying breath.
My (very bright, IISSM) child will be attending a school behind a paywall, as it were, where the goal of the institution is extremely clear and shared between all concerned parties. Connecting consumer directly with producer tends to focus the arrangement. Don’t fret for the government warehousing facilities – my taxes are still safely spent on their continued existence.

“African diseases were deadly to Europeans for quite a long time.”
TBF, they are still deadly to Africans, e.g.,

The WHO African Region accounted for 94% of all malaria deaths in 2018.

Given that malaria (in one or more of its forms) is prevalent in much of Central and South America and Asia, 94% in sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most lopsided stats around.
Throw in all the other parasitic and viral diseases that wypipo western medicine generally control, and the picture is worse. Fortunately I am Woke™ and know that the reason it is still out of control is structural racism, colonialism, yte supremacy, and transphobia.
I denounce myself for sarcasm and will report to the Thompson Centre For Cultural Enlightenment.

“During the coronavirus pandemic, alternative protein products have soared in popularity”
I’ll say it out loud: the Washington Post is lying–again.
They sure are. In the early days of the damnpenic (sic), when people started hoarding everything they could get their hands on, our local grocery store shelves looked bare in every section but the vegan “meat” area, which remained fully stocked through the whole ordeal.

They never figured out how he gained access to the accounting system
Unidentified collaborator who did have access?

They must be Harrison Bergeronians
It is characteristic of egalitarians that they are more interested in dragging down the high achievers than in helping the low achievers do better. (I believe this is partly a consequence of the abject failure of all those “affirmative action” reforms.)

Particularly infuriating are the “progressive” educators who strongly oppose tracks/classes for gifted children, demanding instead that the gifted children be held back so that they can “participate” in the education of the duller children. There is a special place in Hell for radical egalitarians.
The problem here lies in the idea that the child needs to be moved forward in all subjects. In the context of the usual generalization, some students excel at math and science, others at language skills, others at other stuff. Pushing children forward in things they are not ready for is just as bad as holding them back. Children do need to socialize with people their own age for various reasons. And just because a kid is “smart” does not mean that they cannot learn from the “dumb” ones, especially in more hands-on classes (again, generalization) like shop or home economics. Subjects that yes, even “smart” kids need to be taking. See also, especially, physical education.
But I fear much of this is too late. These things were apparent to me way back when I was in school. Why it is only being discussed somewhat seriously after Western Civilization has decided, I would say for these very reasons, to commit suicide is the real tragedy.
Ping arriving shortly.

Children do need to socialize with people their own age for various reasons.
My social interactions in junior high were focused on self-preservation — getting along with enough people to have a school to swim in, making friends with a couple of big fellas who could serve as bodyguards, and trying to remain invisible to the sadists.
Healthy social interaction was almost exclusively something that happened after school, whether it was shooting aliens on somebody’s computer, shooting hoops in the neighbo(u)r’s driveway, or shooting rats in the garbage pit out back. (Rural Pennsylvania is an interesting place.)

Having just written the above, it strikes me that this is a large part of the reason why I have so little patience for the Pronoun Brigade and their panoply of complaints about how hard the world is and how very downtrodden they are by people who think they’re freaks.
Adolescence *is* misery. The trick is growing out of it. It’s too bad that “grow up” and “get over yourself” never find their way on to the common lists of “life hacks” that seem to pop up all over the place.

Someday, all David’s random life event blessing snippets will be made into a movie and possibly a Broadway play.

and trying to remain invisible to the sadists.
Well here in lies another big part of the problem. A big part of the downfall of Western Civilization in general, IMNSHO. The way we allow bullying to fester where we treat the kid who fights back against the bully as part of the problem. This prompted me to do something I meant to check on a couple weeks ago and now I am fucking furious…
A couple weeks ago, whilst leaving a Office Depot or Office Max or some such store, there was an “anti-bullying” table set up. I hate these stupid campaigns as they ignore the real damage that anti-bullying efforts do to the victims. When the person there approached me I kind of lost my temper a bit and told her that the ONE thing that needs to be done, the thing that we need to focus on is this absolute BULLSHIT that fighting back is wrong. Punishing children for fighting back against bullies makes the victims victims all over again and only empowers the bullies. Adults…”adults” should understand this. Anyway, the woman gave a very convincing, off-the-top-of-her-head story about the organization “Stand for the Silent to End Bullying”. The way she told it, and I suspect in its origins this is accurate…in its origins…the organization was founded by parents of an 11 year old child from Oklahoma who fought back against bullying and was subsequently suspended from school. The child subsequently killed himself. They suckered a good bit of money out of me on that, I am ashamed to say. Oh, it’s a real organization and I’m sure it started out as stated as the first two children, chronologically, you will see on their “Those We Honor” page are from Texas and Oklahoma. But if you read the site in general, you will see very little directly about fighting back. The main point they make is “We are reaching the bullies!”. If you read their “10 strategies for bullying prevention for schools” there is nothing about fighting back. Clicking on their “expert advice” and search for the word “fight” here is what you will find. The typical boiler-plate crap.

Some kids do have the courage to stand up to perpetrators of online cruelty and to them I say, ‘Fight cruelty with kindness.’ Never sink to a bully’s level. Instead, try disarming them with a message of concern or kindness.

Fucking sickening. Seriously. What fucking bullshit. And I stupidly had a little bit of hope that someone, somewhere had gotten a clue. And I gave these bastards money. I swear to God I want to punch the shit out of someone right now. Our civilization is a fucking disgrace.

If this doesn’t convince you to wear a face diaper 24/7 nothing will.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

In for a penny, in for a pound.
*ping*
Bless you, sir, and madam. May your laundry hamper be unobtrusive. To all the senses.

@ Adam: “I hope he pulled aside 10% for the Big Guy.”
To be fair Telecom paid him a $40,000 bonus for his initiative and work rewriting their national computer billing program, flew him all around Australia so he could teach people how to use it and shortly afterwards closed their in-house IT department thus effectively dismissing him. Such is life.