#Law School Predictor

[seriousposting]

The Crime

Nex Benedict (they/them) was a 16-year-old nonbinary youth living in Oklahoma. They endured a reportedly vicious beating in a high school bathroom of Owasso High School, Nex died the next day in the hospital. They were a sophomore. This was February 7 and 8th. Last week, Nex was in high school. This week, they were buried.

According to KJRH

Three older girls were beating on the victim and her daughter in the girl’s bathroom. “I know at one point, one of the girls was pretty much repeatedly beating their head across the floor,” she said. That’s when she said a teacher walked in and broke it up. “Nex couldn’t walk to the nurses’ station on their own, and staff didn’t call the ambulance, which amazes me,” she said.The woman told 2 News the victim’s grandmother, who they primarily lived with, brought them to the hospital after the fight. She said the victim was released that evening but was brought back the next day and died.

Local police are investigating, but have not issued a statement or identified the victim. There is also no confirmation may of the details – how many students were involved in the assault, how many victims, what was the sequence of events, what’s been Nex’s school experience. We don’t know that being nonbinary is what triggered the assault.

We do know that nonbinary identity is often a factor or predictor of vulnerability to bullying and abuse.

Honoring Nex

Nex was born on January 11, 2008, in El Paso, Texas. They grew up in Owasso, Oklahoma. Nex was a sophomore at Owasso High School. According to family, Nex identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns.

According to the obituary, Nex was a nature lover. They enjoyed caring for cats but particularly loved their cat, Zeus. Nex also enjoyed watching the Walking Dead, drawing, reading, and playing Ark and Minecraft. During the funeral, their family said they loved to cook and would often make up their own recipes. Nex was also a straight-A student.

I have not yet found any online presence for Nex.

Funeral Service were at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, February 15, 2024, at the Mowery Funeral Service Chapel in Owasso. You can read Nex obituary, but note that it refers to Nex using she/her pronouns

The Context

We also do not yet know the school’s policies, BUT it is fair to assume that they have a policy of some type that requires them to file incident reports around student violence. Furthermore, the decision to send a school based police officer to take the report at the hospital reinforces that conclusion. I expect any student experiencing that level of violence would stay with medical personnel until a family member picked them up or they were transported to the hospital. Those are basic liability issues, not unique to trans and queer students by any means.

Tell me again how in-school resource officers are effective if they don’t respond to this level of vicious violence until they get a call after school hours? Not these particular officers, per se, but the whole concept. Who was protecting Nex?

These are not extreme policies. They are pretty common. But we can definitely expect that school personnel had an obligation to address the situation before Nex went home.

Nex’s sister-in-law created a GoFundMe to raise $15,000 for the funeral scheduled for February 15.

Also unclear is why this teacher who allegedly broke it up didn’t ensure appropriate medical care on-site OR notify the police. Or the school nurse. Maybe they did? The ways that this situation deteriorated once the school was aware are endless.

Owasso Public Schools released the following statement regarding the student’s death:

“The Owasso Police Department has notified district leaders of the death of an Owasso High School student. The student’s name and cause of death have not yet been made public. As this is an active police investigation, we will have no additional comment at this time. Further inquiries should be directed to the Owasso Police Department.” “The district will have additional counselors at the school to provide support to students and staff beginning on Friday.” Owasso Public Schools

How is that not national news? A 16 year old beaten to death in a public school bathroom? By other students. All these unanswered seemingly obvious questions about what transpired, and how the adults involved acted. That should be every headline.

In fact, almost every local outlet covering the story misgender and deadnames Nex, using their same assigned at birth. The indignities pile on.

We don’t yet know if Nex’s nonbinary identity is directly tied to this incident. But, my God, it sure matters to me that this would happen to any child. A nonbinary kid assaulted in a girl’s bathroom. That outcome from the narrative of anti-trans rhetoric these past years.

Still why wasn’t this story breaking news? It involves a nonbinary student in a public school. And school violence and school police resource officers. It involves the deep fear so many trans youth have shared with me about their schools.

But false reports that the now dead shooter who invaded Joel Olsteen’s megachurch was transgender have consumed the headlines. That shooter was killed by police. Her 5 year old son was injured in the shooting. No other fatalities reported. Her identity as a cisgender woman has been clarified repeatedly, but that hasn’t stopped the false narrative.

That woman went into a church with an assault weapon and her young child. That’s horrible and newsworthy on its own. Still, the headlines fixate on the allegation she was a trans person. She was not a trans person, but the headlines stay fixated. The juxtaposition is jarring, but not new.

The shooting took place on February 11. Nex died on February 8.

Where are the these people when it comes to demanding truth about Nex’s death? Where is the outrage that any child has this experience? Who the hell is protecting other kids in that school from this outcome?

Does the media really prefer to spread misinformation about the trans community and turn a blind eye to trans victims of violence? Of course they do.

Rest in power, Nex. You endured a lot in your short life. We repeatedly did not show up for you. But you deserved better – a long, healthy, and happy life. The opportunity to simply grow up. An education setting where you didn’t fear for your life. And you deserve to be acknowledged and validated for your true identity, in your own words. I can’t imagine your terror during this assault and afterwards as your life drained away. I hope you find peace and justice now.

May your memory be a revolution.

Update – this post has been undated to correct a misspelling of Nex’s name and a reference to their name assigned at birth. One was simply a typo, but the other was inaccurate and I very much regret the harm that caused.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aaron Kimberly

Published: Feb 21, 2023

I’ve been so emersed in everything “trans” the past couple of years, I often forget that most people aren’t, and most people are unaware of what’s happening. Most people have no idea what is meant by “gender ideology” until it impacts them personally and may be confused about what the fuss is all about. Like most people, I wish trans was something everyone would stop talking about so we can get on with our lives but, there’s a BIG problem, which more and more people from a variety of backgrounds and political leanings are waking up to.

Here are some example on ramps by which people are understanding the “fuss”:

Parents & teachers

Parents and teachers may encounter this issue because of the policies and resources being suddenly implemented in the public school system. Children are being taught that boys and girls don’t exist - that sex is a spectrum. Kids who identify as trans are allowed to use opposite sex bathrooms and changerooms, and there have been sexual assault incidents in schools as a result. Schools are socially transitioning children (new names and sex markers) without the parents’ knowledge and consent, and may make referrals to some gender clinics without parents’ knowledge and consent. Highly sexualized books are being placed in school libraries in the name of “diversity and inclusion”. Teachers, parents and administrators who have reasonable questions or concerns about specific policies, lessons and resources are being censored and immediately labelled “bigots”.

Parents have also become alarmed when they take their child to a gender clinic and find their child on puberty blockers or hormones on the first visit without much of any assessment, exploration, or education. Parents are told their kids will commit suicide otherwise (there is no evidence that’s the case) and any parent who questions how quickly their children are medicalized are labelled “bigots”. Families are being torn apart by the system, though there is ample evidence that one of the best predictors of these kids’ wellbeing is family involvement and support. Families in opposition to immediate irreversible medical interventions are still capable of supporting their children.

Women and children

New “Self ID” laws and policies mean anyone can declare they are the opposite sex, without any evaluation, diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria or an intersex condition/DSD, documentation, or any medical interventions. This creates a wide-open door of opportunity for predators to abuse the system. Which is happening. For example, male rapists and murders can “Self ID” into women’s prisons, regardless of how they identified prior to their conviction. In Canada, a male who was convicted of viciously raping a 3 month old baby, who started identifying as a woman once convicted, has been transferred to a woman’s prison that has a mother/infant ward.

Self ID also has grave implications for public washrooms and changing rooms. For example, there was an incident in the Los Angeles Wi Spa in which a male with a known criminal history of sexual indecency, exposed his semi erect penis in a woman’s changing room. More recently, in Nanaimo, Canada, a mother noticed a man peeping at naked underage girls in the rec centre changing room. The mother complained and is being dragged over the coals for her “bigotry”. Police are investigating, but it’s unclear if they’re investigating the man or the mother. Canada is that confused about what constitutes decency and criminality.

The implications for children and women are obviously alarming, but these stories rarely make the news because of activist coercion to control the narrative. Journalists who work for government-controlled media aren’t allowed to report these stories. Many prominent journalists are members of the Transgender Journalist Association and follow their Style Guide which outlines what they can and can’t say.

These overreaches in political activism also have devastating implications for trans people themselves, as we become associated with sadistic, predatory, abusive, coercive, and irrational behaviour and ideas. We are seeing greater hostility and estrangement, though the average trans person is just as unaware of what’s happening as the general public.

What is going on?

Gender Ideology

Gender ideology is a shorthand description of a set of well-meaning postmodern political-philosophical ideas that emerged in academia in the early 1990s, recently repackaged and amplified with government and corporate interests. The theory – originally about literary criticism and cultural philosophy – asserts that “male” and “female” are learned performances which can be learned and performed by either sex equally well, thus making biological sex irrelevant as social categories. This is strategic. It’s rooted in the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault who wrote that social categories were invented by an oppressor class in order to oppress groups of people, such as “gay” and “women”. The political strategy developed by academics since 1990s (called Queer Theory) intended to protect the oppressed, is to linguistically dismantle these social categories, confusing our understandings of what gay/straight, male/female means. This is called “Queering” a culture. The left has fully embraced this philosophy as Diversity and Inclusion, often-times not realizing what it is or where it came from. We’re being taught that we are all “assigned” a sex at birth, but we all have a “gender identity” that is somehow both fluid and innate, and may or may not match our assigned sex, thus making our assigned sex incorrect and irrelevant. By presenting a gender spectrum, with GI Joe on one end and Barbie on the other (both extreme stereotypes of maleness and femaleness) anyone who plots themselves along that spectrum is some type of “trans”, not quite male and not quite female.

No wonder we’re seeing a startling 4000% increase in young people showing up to gender clinics wanting to change sex!

This is a marked departure from the science of what Gender Dysphoria is – a rare condition with multiple, well studied pathways to it – which can cause great distress and compel some to medically feminize or masculinize their bodies and are provided the legal fiction of a sex change.

Queer Theory has NOTHING to do with Gender Dysphoria.

In addition to the grotesque societal problems emerging from Queering our culture, disproportionally impacting women, children and marginalized people, trans people are internalizing Queer Theory as a self-defining psychology. Many clinicians themselves are actively Queering patients and not providing patients with any of the evidence about Gender Dysphoria. I believe this is having a destabilizing impact on trans people, because Queer Theory is meant to destabilize. It’s meant to dismantle societal structures which, when internalized, also dismantles psychological structures about biological sex, identity, and sexuality. This is not the fault of the patients who are indoctrinated by the clinicians and institutions. Queer activists have pushed almost all evidence-based clinicians out of the field.

Queer theorists, in their ever-expanding scope of “diversity” keep inventing new categories and identities. There are now hundreds of new “genders” and neopronouns as bizarre as “cloud” and “colour” genders. The international agency that writes the guidelines for providing care (WPATH) now has a chapter for Eunuch gender identities for castration fetishists. The chapter links to a website called the Eunuch Archives that contains pornography about castrating young boys. One of the authors of that chapter, Richard J. Wassersug, urges Islam to stop beheading captives and castrate them instead.

Though many Queer activists deny the reality that Gender Dysphoria is related to sexual orientation, they also champion the inclusion of all atypical sexualities, including pedophilia, which has been rebranded “Minor Attracted Person”.

Since 2022, under Canadian law as elsewhere, it’s now considered illegal for any counsellor to attempt to change a client’s “gender identity”, which would include all of the hundreds of new gender identities thus coding Queer Theory into law and criminalizing any opposition to it.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

If you have a child that identifies as a cat-gender who has taken to meowing instead of talking, your government is telling you to “roll with it or you’re a bigot” and any counsellor who tries to challenge such a self concept could go to prison for 3 years under our poorly worded Conversion Therapy law.

People with the condition Gender Dysphoria are few, and are being used in this activist movement that’s being backed by governments and big business at the federal and international level, driving greater hostility towards the people who have Gender Dysphoria.

And this barely scratches the surface of what’s happening under everyone’s noses.

This is why I’m so passionate about educating about Gender Dysphoria, despite subjecting myself to both real transphobia, personal losses, and hostility from the Queer lobby.

These are not our crimes.

We don't need Queer Theory to achieve an inclusive and safe society.

==

I will post this again and again and again until people understand it:

https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms

Transgender | An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth.

It has nothing - literally nothing - to do with actual gender dysphoria. It's about tricking people, and particularly kids, who are completely normal (gay, GNC, anxiety about puberty), or who have specific problems (trauma, autism, depression) into thinking they were "born in the wrong body."

[ajmakoko]

Okay I get where you're coming from but there is some truth that IQ and privilege relate. And not just for reasons like consistent access to food and good living conditions (which many rich/privileged kids do not have, many are starved and abused by their parents. Not due to lack of money, but due to the parent's issues regarding weight etc). Implicit bias and cognitive priming are HUGE predictors of academic success.(1) And the language/voice used on IQ tests (and academia in general) is specifically a white, wealthy, "healthy," male "in group" one. We automatically read that verbiage and assume it's not "for me" and assume we will do bad on those tests, so we don't try as hard. That's also why resilience and IQ are correlated - because most people generally have the same amount of intelligence. Humans are pretty smart and rich people are pretty hubris.

And autistic people (and other neurodivergents) tend to not pick up on the nuance of these social cues for in group/out group, or ee may skip or misunderstand the more subtle ones but not the obvious ones. So the verbiage around academic tests may not feel exclusionary - for me, the voice I use for academic works is like a character I play, I understand the vibe of it and don't feel outside of it. Just like for my reception work emails, I used "corporate speak," another part to play. Some autistic people talk about having a customer service voice too, for instance. We are so used to not fitting in that these IQ tests and academic tests blend in to every other ostracization we face. We are so used to making masks that different voices are usually simple. That is, IF we have a special interest or really want to, and if there's not some other learning disability (APD, dyslexia, etc) or sensory issue making it harder to absorb information.

Elle Woods is a good example here of that mix of genius and inappropriate. She excels specifically because she doesn't pick up the social cue that Harvard isn't for girls like her. Even her video for admissions was inappropriate for Harvard at the time. People in the movie are often pointing out how she doesn't fit in and doesn't play the part. But she doesn't feel like that, she feels like law school is where she belongs. And she excels there. A different example would be Temple Grandin, who didn't feel excluded from the topic of slaughter, even though she had to play a part as a man to be accepted by others. She didn't understand the language itself was meant to be exclusionary and didn't pick up on that more subtle cue, but she did understand the men themselves were angry with her for not acting the part. That disconnect is exactly what allows neurodivergent people to excel in their special interests. Our ability to ignore the status quo, essentially.

So yeah, you're right. None of us were ever really "remarkable" to begin with. It was all projection from the "greatest" generation and boomers, leftover ww2 ideas of a "perfect" human form, a "superior" genius mind, delusions of grandiosity that necessitate alienation from your peers to be "special" - hyperindividualism.

All of this to say that pedagogy should lean towards adaptive learning for each child, our parents were also deeply fucked up and we shouldn't repeat their shit thinking patterns, and IQ is a tool to enforce oppression and is super creepy at its heart (so it's really sad as kids we were exposed to that)

(1) Sex, Lies, and Brain Scans

ohhhhh I get it now. the "gifted kid" discourse exists because people see it fundamentally as a sign of Privilege and not as a largely meaningless category that puffs up weird children before setting them up for the same unremarkable lives as everyone else; thus they interpret people going "the educational system gave me false expectations before ultimately abandoning me to the same heartless world as everyone else" as "why am I, The Main Character, not getting everything I ever wanted."

[lexinter]

Understanding Law School Admission Predictor: Insights For Aspiring Lawyers https://www.lexinter.net/law-school/admission-predictor

[thatmcgwords]

Free and Equal by Daniel Chandler

Freedom is a cornerstone of fairness. In a fair society, we should all be free to live according to our own beliefs, to love who we want, to practice our religion, and to express ourselves without fear. How close are we to realizing this ideal?

 We don’t need to criminalize hate speech, but we don’t need to tolerate it either. Public officials should vigorously condemn bigoted views as incompatible with democratic values. Schools should instill open-mindedness and respect for differences from an early age. In this way, we might be able to unite around shared human ideals rather than be divided by sectarian dogma.

In many of today’s supposed democracies, wealth determines political influence. Billionaires bankroll the campaigns of politicians who do their bidding. Corporate lobbyists draft laws that benefit their bottom lines. The preferences of the rich shape policy, while the voices of ordinary citizens are drowned out. 

Imagine two children born on the same day in the same country. One is born to wealthy, highly educated parents. The other is born to a poor, single mom living paycheck to paycheck. Fast forward 18 years – which child do you think is headed to a top college and a lucrative career? The rich kid, obviously. But does that seem fair in a society that claims to believe in equal opportunity?

Studies show that parental income and education remain powerful predictors of children’s outcomes in life.

Early childhood is where the seeds of inequality are sown. By age five, kids from low-income families are already far behind their affluent peers. So public investments in high-quality preschool education and parenting support services is crucial for narrowing these initial disparities.

Sadly, our current education systems often end up exacerbating rather than correcting for children’s unequal starting points. The existence of private schools enables rich families to buy educational advantages. Some countries like the US have systems where school funding is lower in poorer neighborhoods compared to their richer counterparts. Add in the ever-rising cost of college tuition, and it’s easy to see why low-income students are drastically underrepresented at elite universities.

To equalize opportunities, we should consider bold reforms: What if we banned private schools and increased funding for public ones? On top of that, funding shouldn’t rely on local property taxes. Low-income students should have broader access to financial aid. And college education should be free for everyone. Essentially, education should be set up to compensate for, not reinforce, inequality outside the schoolhouse door.

Class isn’t the only barrier to opportunity – so are race and gender. Even when controlling for income, racial minorities face discrimination in education, employment, and housing. Meanwhile, women continue to earn substantially less than men. Combatting these inequities requires attacking discrimination head-on through enforcement, positive action, and shaping cultural norms. It also means recognizing how class, race, and gender intersect to constrain life chances from the start.

John Rawls argued that in a just society, your prospects in life shouldn’t be determined by arbitrary factors like the family you’re born into. Creating such a society is both an ethical imperative and a practical necessity for social cohesion. True equality of opportunity remains a distant ideal – but clear steps can bring it closer to reality. 

For Rawls, economic justice isn’t only about making sure everyone’s basic needs are met. It’s about ensuring that if there are inequalities, they actually benefit everyone – especially the least well-off.

For starters, it means investing in people by providing high-quality education. In a fair society, everyone, not just elites, should be able to develop their talents and realize their potential. It also means strong minimum wage laws and empowered unions to ensure hard work pays off. And it means tackling the intergenerational transmission of advantage that gives children from rich families so much better outcomes than children from low-income families. 

Rawls had the idea to give every citizen a “universal minimum inheritance” as a birthright. Funded by taxes on very large inheritances, it would guarantee that everyone reaches adulthood with a meaningful stake in society. Or we could pool society’s wealth into a sovereign fund, paying out the dividends to all as a universal basic income.

Underlying this must be a tax system that can tame great fortunes and generate serious revenue to invest in public goods. This likely means taxes on the order of 45 to 50 percent of national income – higher than today’s levels in many countries, but not without precedent in some European nations. This doesn’t mean the average office worker should get just half of their paycheck at the end of the month. The bulk of these taxes should fall on corporations, capital income, and large stocks of wealth. With the right policies, we can raise this revenue without sacrificing economic dynamism.

This Blink to Free and Equal by Daniel Chandler sketched out the blueprint for a fair society, based on philosopher John Rawls’s theory of justice. His thought experiment of designing a society from scratch leads to two key principles: protecting fundamental rights and liberties for all, and ensuring inequalities benefit everyone, especially the least advantaged.

Rawls’s ideas have profound implications for how we should structure our political and economic systems. They call for strengthening democracy by getting money out of politics, empowering citizens through participatory budgeting, and fostering a free and diverse media landscape. On the economic front, we need to implement bold measures like universal basic income, wealth taxes on the super-rich, and employee ownership to create more shared prosperity.

While ambitious, many of these reforms have precedents in various countries. They provide a roadmap for a more just society that respects individual freedom while ensuring everyone can live with dignity. 

[fishmech]

Like honestly though do the people freaking out about most Tumblr users never having smoked cigs not get that that's normal in the US? Sure these are all limited to high school ages, but that tends to be a good predictor of future behavior.

The median Tumblr user has been stated to be about 26 years old. Run that back and that means they graduated 2016. Look at the 12th grade figures: ~29% ever smoked cigs, ~9% regularly smoked (defined as using within the past 30 days at time of survey) cigs.

Separately, other studies found in that year that about 16% of high school students were using vapes within the past month. That would eventually peak at 27.5% in 2019 and drop back down to 14% by 2022. We don't have reliable data for ever-tried on vapes but it presumably would show similar ratios between ever-tried and regular user as cigs, if not more because it's overall easier to share vapes.

Separate from this, the figures for regular cig smoking among 18-24s went from 26.8% in 2000 to 7.4% in 2020. We also have further age group breakdowns from 2011 to 2022 like so:

18 to 24: from 19.2% in 2011 to 4.9% in 2022

25 to 39: from 22.4% in 2011 to 11.4% in 2022

40 to 64: from 21.2% in 2011 to 15.2% in 2022

65+: from 8.7% in 2011 to 9.4% in 2022 (the only, if slight, increase)

all adults: from ~19% in 2011 to 11.6% in 2022, heavily weighted to middle age compared to relatively even prevalence before 65 in 2011

Nobody wants to smoke anymore!

Some other notes here: you'll see a post 1991 (when detailed frequent stats started) peak in 1997 for use, followed by the ever-tried starting to drop in 2000. The declines follow contemporary further restrictions on tobacco sales, advertising, and general promotional work. There were also higher spends on anti-smoking ads past this point but honestly that probably didn't matter. And of course many states really started hiking their tobacco taxes in the late 90s and early 2000s, further killing demand.

There was also the transition from national 18 to buy tobacco products to national 21 to buy, which further reduced supply to high schoolers and thus probably reduced future lifetime smoking. Hawaii moved to 21 first in 2015, by 2020 it had become federal law with all states matching.

[friend-clarity]

Canada's woke nightmare: A warning to the West 

The Preamble to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms starts as follows: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law ...”. Canada was founded by the English and French under Biblical values (the other so-called founding nation, the indigenous peoples, were mainly nomadic). Many years ago, Canada used to be a stable middle class country with reliable institutions of justice and a well run economy. Even the CBC did not tell patently false narratives although it always tilted left. That was until the Trudeaus.

Perhaps ordinary citizens are appalled at Canada’s surrender to drug dealers, its contempt for freedom of speech, its enforcement of gender ideology on children, its breezy willingness to terminate the lives of its own citizens, and its woke pursuit of green ideology at the expense of energy independence. But for now, we are living in a post-modern, post-democratic post-religious leftist authoritarian neo-Marxist state.

Under Justin Trudeau, Canada has sought to position itself as the global bastion of progressive politics.

"In a Telegraph documentary, seen above, I went to the former British colony to find out how Canadians are dealing with Trudeau’s radical reforms; from the promotion of gender ideology in schools and the mass legalisation of drugs, to his extreme new suicide laws and clamp downs on freedom of speech." [see below for the rest of the description]

Below, Dr Jordan Peterson discusses his home country of Canada, which the professor believes has been taken over by Left-wing authoritarians and predatory psychopaths.

Peterson says that in 2016 (when he started looking into it), social psychologists (who are a pretty woke bunch) denied that left-wing authoritarianism exists. At that time (2016) the idea that there was such a thing as a politically correct corpus of leftist beliefs was derided as a right-wing conspiracy.

The way you study this is with a corpus of questions about political attitude (several hundred) and you subject them to a statistical analysis that tells you how they sort. If you're likely to agree with one question then you're more likely to agree with another related question, and likewise if you disagree. Then you can tell if there's a clump of them that indicate certain dispositions.

So Peterson decided to test that, and it was clear that you could identify a group of beliefs that were leftist authoritarian, which is really the willingness to use fear and power and compulsion to force leftist dogma. So then there's an alliance between compassion and force and that makes one a left-wing authoritarian.

The biggest predictor was low verbal intelligence with low academic performance. This was surprising: but, when you ask yourself how can people be clueless enough to buy the politically correct line? The answer is: they're not very sophisticated verbally, and so if you offer them a solution that's a one stop fits-all solution they easily buy into it, as they have a low capacity for critical thought. The second best predictor was being female or having a feminine temperament (independent of whether you were male or female), and the next best predictor was having taken a course that was explicitly politically correct in its aims. Peterson was well on the way to publishing that research, but that's when his career blew up. So the research was only published as a master's degree thesis. But since then, there's been a lot of additional work done on left-wing authoritarianism.

Continuation from first Telegraph video:

I began my investigation in one of the country’s most liberal cities, Vancouver. Possession of up to 2.5 grams of hard drugs, including heroin, cocaine and fentanyl, has been legalised in the city as part of a three year experiment which began in January of this year. If the aim was to combat the opioid crisis that already beset the city then it appears there is still much to be done as vast tent sites line the streets, patrolled by roaming zombie-like drug addicts. As we filmed on Hastings Street, infamous as the epicentre of Vancouver’s homelessness crisis, I witnessed a topless man shoot a needle into his arm five feet from me. Though it wasn’t quite as bad as San Francisco, where my cameraman and I came under attack from angry vagrants, the scenes were still shocking.

It’s not just the homeless who patrol the streets of Vancouver. Chris Elston, better known online as Billboard Chris, campaigns against the imposition of gender ideology on children, whether through Canada’s education system or via dangerous operations to “transition” young adults. As his nickname suggests, Chris walks around Vancouver wearing signs protesting gender ideology, encouraging lively debates with passers-by which he puts on YouTube. Chris kindly allowed our crew to join him on a walkabout, where we found many Canadians horrified by the use of puberty blockers in children and the promotion of biological men in women’s sports. We did encounter some opposition of course, mostly through the odd shout or flicking of the finger. So much for Canadian politeness. One aggressive gentleman, tall, ageing and angry, began a tirade against Chris with the rather bizarre singular message that he is “queer”.

Part of Canada’s social revolution can also be witnessed in its extreme new euthanasia laws. In 2016, the ruling Liberal Party passed legislation enabling assisted suicide for terminally ill Canadians. Next year the legislation will be expanded to include those with mental health problems. As Christianity declines across Canada, and the liberal obsession with “bodily autonomy” and “personal freedom” reaches its logical conclusion, a new dystopia is forming. As Dr Konia Trouton, a euthanasia advocate, told me, “we are an organised society but within that organisation we have to allow some freedoms and opportunities, this is not a communist system where we can try and reign that in”. The campaign group Euthanasia Prevention Coalition estimates that 13,500 people chose state-assisted suicide last year.

To prevent wokeism from spreading it is important to have a strong opposition party. Canada’s Conservatives have been historically weak in pushing back against Trudeau, however, their recently elected leader, Pierre Poilievre, has injected fresh energy into the party. Whilst there are some who still question Poillievre’s conservative credentials, his strategy seems to be working; one recent poll gave his party a twelve point lead over Trudeau’s Liberals. However, the most successful opponents to Canada’s social revolution have so far not been politicians but members of the public. Our film highlights some of these brave individuals, including Dr Jordan Peterson, perhaps the most high-profile Canadian in the world other than the country’s leader. During my travels I found ordinary people appalled at Canada’s surrender to drug dealers, its contempt for freedom of speech, its enforcement of gender ideology on children and a breezy willingness to terminate the lives of its own citizens. However, for all the depressing stories of people losing their jobs, or being hounded by the government, these cases were equally inspirational. Whilst Canada is a warning to the West, there are also individual messages of hope from those brave individuals fighting for their freedom.

[rohitgurumith]

FOREFRONT 3 : WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING (2023)

This is another film that I wanted to talk about as one of my forefront posts, but for reasons you wouldn't expect. I haven't tried anything of this concept or art style in my works before but I definitely have plans to develop a story that sketches the horrors of today's reality. so this film has captured all of that perfectly and has indeed opened a door for me in terms of inspiration because, for the longest time, I've been trying to find ways to make films with a very simple yet engaging approach since that's one of the many things that I challenge myself of as an animator, and this film made me realize and showed me that deep messages can also be conveyed with not too much animation and still be engaging to watch. I also loved the little details like how the sheep's legs stopped swinging when the wolf asked it to come over. I was also able to relate to the fact that it's very easy to fall under the worst kinds of traps in the most simple ways since I have also been a victim of similar incidents that happened to me when I was being careless and taking things for granted. As someone who wants colors to play a vital role in my films, I loved how significant the colors were in this short animation. Black - the color of the wolf's messages, his fur, and the background. White - the color of pureness, the sheep's fur and messages. This should be shown in every school and by every law enforcement agency when they teach online safety! This is incredibly well done and gets the message across in a unique way thanks to the art style. It makes an already dangerous situation more eerie and threatening.

REFERENCES :

An, Y. (2023) Wolf in Sheep’s clothing, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/TpWSntxxiZw (Accessed: 23 August 2023).

Lauder, C. and March, E. (2023) ‘Catching the catfish: Exploring gender and the Dark Tetrad of personality as predictors of catfishing perpetration’, Computers in human behavior, 140, p. 107599 (Accessed: 23 August 2023).

[trentteti]

How to Use Law School Predictors

Finally, finally, there’s a nip in the air. The leaves are changing colors and the semester’s first solo cup pyramids have collapsed under the weight of mid-semester exam prep. You know what that means. It’s pumpkin spice season! Also, time to get working on those law school applications.

“But, but … how do I know where to apply?” you might be saying. You may also be saying, “Actually, I’ve been dreaming of going to Harvard Law since I saw Legally Blonde as an impressionable youth. How hard could it be to get in?”

We can help answer both of those questions with one simple tool: the law school predictor. Let’s get into it.

Law school predictors — and I say predictors, plural, because there’s a few out there — are tools that curate data from law schools about the statistical breakdowns of their accepted students’ undergraduate GPAs and LSAT scores and allow users to plug their own info in to see how they might match up. Essentially, they let you get an idea of how likely it may be for you to be admitted to a series of different law schools, based on the raw numbers alone.

A note: Data give guidelines for what might happen in the future, but statisticians are not unfailing oracles — ask any data analyst and they’ll say the same. Just because something is likely doesn’t mean that it’s guaranteed. (That’s something you should remember for Must Be True questions 😉) This is particularly true when you’re looking at top law schools, where towering LSAT scores and near-perfect GPAs are more of a necessary factor than a sufficient one. But when you’re first starting to seriously pull together a list of schools to consider applying to, a numbers-based approach is a good way to narrow your choices to a more manageable set.

Ahem. Back to predictors. Different predictors have slight differences between them. LSAC’s calculator bases its predictions on data from different law schools’ 2017 admissions data. Blueprint’s law school predictor uses information from that latest U.S. News and World Reports rankings. Of course, not all predictors are created equal. Hourumd, another popular predictor, is on slightly shakier ground. They draw their information from largely self-reported data, which may lead to biases in results.

Perfect fortune-tellers or not, law school predictors are good tools to keep in your back pocket. Play around with some to see how your chances change if you switch up the numbers. If nothing else, they serve as reminders that even a few points on the LSAT can make a big difference to your application.

Once you find your LSAT score sweet spot, your next step is prepping for the LSAT to achieve that score. While we don’t have fairy godmothers on our payroll, we do have a team of Academic Managers who are skilled at helping students figure out how to reach their LSAT score goals be it through tried-and-true LSAT classes, private LSAT tutoring, or other personalized LSAT prep. Schedule a free LSAT consultation today!

How to Use Law School Predictors was originally published on Blueprint LSAT Blog

[thenuclearmallard]

‘Everyone knew it was coming’A dispatch from Russia's Republic of Buryatia, where mobilization is already underway

12:11 pm, September 22, 2022

Source: People of the Baikal

Storyby People of the Baikal. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.

According to available data, the Republic of Buryatia has been losingsoldiers at a higher rate than almost any other region of Russia since the start of the war against Ukraine. An analysis from the independent outlet Mediazona suggests that’s no coincidence: Buryatia residents, roughly 30 percent of whom are ethnic Buryats, make well belowRussia’s median salary on average, which has been a reliable predictor that a given region will have high losses in this war. Vladimir Putin’s September 21 mobilization announcementlooks unlikely to reverse the pattern: conscription-eligible Buryatia regions began receiving draft orders that same day. A new report from local outlet People of the Baikal describeshow the men were picked up from their homes early the following morning and taken to the military commissariat’s assembly point in the regional capital, Ulan-Ude. With permission, Meduza is publishing a lightly abridged translation of the story.

On Shumyatsky Street (Editor’s note: in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia), an elderly woman in a woolen headscarf holds a plastic bag containing five cartons of Peter the Great cigarettes. She’s waiting for her son-in-law to be brought to the recruitment center. Last night, the 35-year-old was served a military summons in his home district of Barguzinsky, and he should be arriving in Ulan-Ude soon.

“I have three sons who are there already,” the woman says quietly. “Now they’re taking my son-in-law. They all want to fight. All of them. Men have something wrong with their heads.”

The woman’s phone rings and she answers. First she's calm, then she breaks into a shout: “Pasha, are you here? Yes, I brought the cigarettes. Tell everyone there that you have four kids, you hear me? Tell them all! Maybe they’ll release you.”

Buses of conscripts have been arriving in Ulan-Ude since the morning. The men are brought to the Military Commissariat of the Republic of Buryatia’s assembly point on Shumyatsky Street, a large, fenced-in territory directly adjacent to a tall apartment building. Just a 10-minute walk from here is the city’s archery hall, where memorial services for soldiers killed in Ukraine are held.

TUVANS IN THE WAR‘They’re mostly after loans’Tuvans, trying to scramble out of poverty, are dying in a foreign war

11 days ago

The first conscripts to arrive are from the Tunkinsky district. According to a local government official, 130 people were picked upfrom the district, which has a population of about 20,700 residents. The entire Republic of Buryatia has about 980,000 people, and about 6 to 7 thousand of them are eligible for the draft.

According to a local government official who asked to remain anonymous, none of the people who have been conscripted so far have objected or complained. “Everyone knew mobilization was coming, and everyone was internally prepared for [the conscription authorities] to come for them,” he said.

It takes about 6–7 hours to reach Ulan-Ude from the Tunkinsky district. On the bus ride, the conscripts are given a lunch of buuz, a type of steamed dumpling popular in the region. “Each person ate 10 of them,” said one woman in a messaging group for soldiers' wives in the district. Members of the group have already begun collecting money for things like cigarettes and warm hats for the future soldiers. They’ve also discussed giving their husband bags of sacred sand from the Burkhan Baabai datsan, a Buddhist monastery in the district.

The Tunkinsky district residents arrive in two white Ford vans and two yellow school buses. When the vehicles stop in front of the gates of the assembly point, the conscripts — almost all in camouflage military uniforms — get out for a smoke break. Many of them are carrying bags packed by their wives or mothers.

People of the Baikal

“I’m 45 years old. I served a thousand years ago, and I wasn’t sent to a single hot zone,” says one heavyset, unshaven man. “But hey, I guess it’s my turn to do some shooting.” After the men finish their cigarettes and return to the buses, they’re driven through the gates to the assembly point. One of them shakes his fist and sings an upbeat song in a minor key as he waits for the others.

Ten minutes later, another batch of conscripts shows up, this time from the Yeravninsky district. Then buses arrive from the Zaigrayevsky, Kurumkansky, and Barguzinsky districts. Sergey, who hails from the Yeravninsky district, steps out of his bus with a bottle of cheap beer. He stands there for a moment in his plaid shirt and puffer vest, wobbling and smiling at a group of Kurumkansky residents. They stand in a circle, drinking vodka straight from the bottle. “Hey, come film me,” he says, waving his arm. “I think our country, or Buryatia, will crush old China — I mean, uh, Ukraine.”

Sergey is 49 years old. He served in the army once, but that was “a long time ago.” He has a wife and two daughters, the youngest of whom just entered the first grade. He says he’s not afraid of death. “Though I did tell my wife goodbye, and my daughters, too,” he adds, tears welling in his eyes. “But here we are: I’m headed to the front.”

All of the men being mobilized from Buryatia will be sent to either Chita, a city in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai, or Blagoveshchensk, in the Amur region, for training. From there, they’ll go to Ukraine.

[saleintothe90s]

454. Seventeen, Prom Edition, March, 1995

Okay so this issue is a HUGE one for me. This was the first issue of Seventeen I ever bought when I was 11 years old. This is the actual copy, no rebuying off eBay! Somehow she survived, and I found her in the storage unit a few summers ago.

I remember flipping through this thinking that I too would go to prom one day. I've mentioned before that I did not since I was a fat, ugly, social pariah by 2001.

We're still in that era of "this ran in a TEEN magazine?!" like last time.

Look at that list of all those dead department stores.

Ha, Courtly Love. I just got that.

We all know that only Pam Beesly wore Keds after the 5th grade:

FINALLY, after 27 years and thanks to archive.org, I'm finally able to see this "grabbing boob" shot Julie & Erin noticed from the December, 1994 issue:

Speaking of boobs --- this is one story that is still seared in my memory.

and these waitress dresses are seared in memory! I wanted these so bad, but you know, they wern't selling these in plus size back then.

I nearly had this reaction when I saw the red outfit. I remember it so well! I thought that slip thingy....looked better than that red dress. Those black accessories are fire, but that dress (you can barely make it out, but its white on top) isn't it.

As a kid, I thought that pink dress was redid, but now I LOVE it.

All of the steps we had to do because setting spray and makeup primer didn't exist back then.

Yas, let's all go out like this tomorrow.

This look involved an eyeliner and three, t h r e e lipsticks.

This young lady was predicting the future with this makeup look.

I've mentioned before that I was a pretty dumb kid. 11 year old me legit thought Loralie was suggesting that you wear that bustier and jeans to the prom. 'cuz anything went in fashion back in 1995.

I adore Winnie, she looks like my niece in law. Also, another predictor of the future of fashion. It reminds me of the Gwenyth Paltrow dress at the 1999 Oscars.

Dear lord, I had completely forgotten about Stella's candy wrapper red dress with those amazing shoes with the socks. This was my favorite look from these girls. I wish I was more talented with the sewing machine to recreate that dress. I need it in a size 18.

This dress is cute, but it looks a little too causal for prom.

Oh wait, never mind, this is too casual for prom.

1. she's 14

2. 'Pretty sure I saw that dress at Deb a few years later.

3. that backpack purse looks handmade and tragic.

4. I thought hat MAC sequin lipstikck was still being made, it's not.

Those ribbon flowers are very ... elementary school.

This is another page I remember vividly, even the little "bad guys might watch tv, but they never read seventeen" footnote. Hidden Edge, the cell phone look a like, isn't fooling anybody. More on the product:

Hidden Edge from Defenders Network, Inc. is chock full of interesting features. It is a combination siren and spray device disguised as a radio, camera or cellular phone. The pepper spray has a range of 10 to 12 feet and the siren screams at an ear piercing 130 dB sound level.

One of the most common fears of those who carry any sort of personal defense is that it will be used against them. The makers of Hidden Edge have taken this into account and furnished the unit with a “safety pin” that disarms the spray if the attacker attempts to use the device against its owner. If the attacker grabs the unit away from the owner, the wrist strap is connected to a disarming pin that drops the spray canister into the body of the device, rendering it inoperable. 1

Yes, that drawing does look like Jenna Marbles that time she tried being an e girl. Did Austin start that short lived trend in the late summer of 1996 where Claires and Spencers sold all sorts of Pillsbury Doughboy stuff? I had the keychain, but I wore him like a necklace at the beginning of the 8th grade.

It's a no on that Jacket. It's very Peggy Hill:

That middle dress is sad too. That looks like the dress us plus size girls would have as our only option.

I wanted to be Annie so bad. That STYLE.

Tanya Donelly was fascinated by CD-Rom.

These ideas are cute, but stupid.

Sadly, I tore out this page out of my issue and put it on my wall when I was 12. I believe the model's dress was a copper color.

I love these stories about young girl inventors. I found a couple of Double Decker Cookie Bakers on eBay:

Predicting the future, yet again.

Finally, in closing there are two articles that I have copies of that are way too big to post:

I just had this memory of bringing this issue with me to either a Girl Scout meeting or a Girl Scout field trip, and one of the younger girls laughing at the Midol ad and pointing at the girl's butt.

The rest of the zine making article is above, where the breast removal article ends.

IndexArticles. ‘It’s a Phone, It’s a Pen … No, It’s Pepper Spray’, 1994. https://indexarticles.com/sports/shooting-industry/its-a-phone-its-a-pen-no-its-pepper-spray/.

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[apenitentialprayer]

I hit the breaking point as a parent a few years ago. It was the week of my extended family’s annual gathering in August, and we were struggling with assorted crises. My parents were aging; my wife and I were straining under the chaos of young children; my sister was bracing to prepare her preteens for bullying, sex and cyberstalking. Sure enough, one night all the tensions boiled over. At dinner, I noticed my nephew texting under the table. I knew I shouldn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help myself and asked him to stop. Ka-boom! My sister snapped at me to not discipline her child. My dad pointed out that my girls were the ones balancing spoons on their noses. My mom said none of the grandchildren had manners. Within minutes, everyone had fled to separate corners. Later, my dad called me to his bedside. There was a palpable sense of fear I couldn’t remember hearing before. “Our family’s falling apart,” he said. “No it’s not,” I said instinctively. “It’s stronger than ever.” But lying in bed afterward, I began to wonder: Was he right? What is the secret sauce that holds a family together? What are the ingredients that make some families effective, resilient, happy? It turns out to be an astonishingly good time to ask that question. The last few years have seen stunning breakthroughs in knowledge about how to make families, along with other groups, work more effectively. Myth-shattering research has reshaped our understanding of dinnertime, discipline and difficult conversations. Trendsetting programs from Silicon Valley and the military have introduced techniques for making teams function better. The only problem: most of that knowledge remains ghettoized in these subcultures, hidden from the parents who need it most. I spent the last few years trying to uncover that information, meeting families, scholars and experts ranging from peace negotiators to online game designers to Warren Buffett’s bankers. After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative. I first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a colorful psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual in American families.“There was a lot of research at the time into the dissipation of the family,” he told me at his home in suburban Atlanta. “But we were more interested in what families could do to counteract those forces.” Around that time, Dr. Duke’s wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities, noticed something about her students.“The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges,” she said. Her husband was intrigued, and along with a colleague, Robyn Fivush, set out to test her hypothesis. They developed a measure called the “Do You Know?” scale that asked children to answer 20 questions. Examples included: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth? Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and taped several of their dinner table conversations. They then compared the children’s results to a battery of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness. “We were blown away,” Dr. Duke said. And then something unexpected happened. Two months later was Sept. 11. As citizens, Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush were horrified like everyone else, but as psychologists, they knew they had been given a rare opportunity: though the families they studied had not been directly affected by the events, all the children had experienced the same national trauma at the same time. The researchers went back and reassessed the children.“Once again,” Dr. Duke said, “the ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress.” Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child overcome something as minor as a skinned knee or as major as a terrorist attack? “The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,” Dr. Duke said. Psychologists have found that every family has a unifying narrative, he explained, and those narratives take one of three shapes. First, the ascending family narrative: “Son, when we came to this country, we had nothing. Our family worked. We opened a store. Your grandfather went to high school. Your father went to college. And now you. ...” Second is the descending narrative: “Sweetheart, we used to have it all. Then we lost everything.” “The most healthful narrative,” Dr. Duke continued, “is the third one. It’s called the oscillating family narrative: ‘Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in our family. We built a family business. Your grandfather was a pillar of the community. Your mother was on the board of the hospital. But we also had setbacks. You had an uncle who was once arrested. We had a house burn down. Your father lost a job. But no matter what happened, we always stuck together as a family.’ ” Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he and Dr. Fivush call a strong “intergenerational self.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves. Leaders in other fields have found similar results. Many groups use what sociologists call sense-making, the building of a narrative that explains what the group is about. Jim Collins, a management expert and author of “Good to Great,” told me that successful human enterprises of any kind, from companies to countries, go out of their way to capture their core identity. In Mr. Collins’s terms, they “preserve core, while stimulating progress.” The same applies to families, he said. Mr. Collins recommended that families create a mission statement similar to the ones companies and other organizations use to identify their core values. The military has also found that teaching recruits about the history of their service increases their camaraderie and ability to bond more closely with their unit.Cmdr. David G. Smith is the chairman of the department of leadership, ethics and law at the Naval Academy and an expert in unit cohesion, the Pentagon’s term for group morale. Until recently, the military taught unit cohesion by “dehumanizing” individuals, Commander Smith said. Think of the bullying drill sergeants in “Full Metal Jacket” or “An Officer and a Gentleman.” But these days the military spends more time building up identity through communal activities. At the Naval Academy, Commander Smith advises graduating seniors to take incoming freshmen (or plebes) on history-building exercises, like going to the cemetery to pay tribute to the first naval aviator or visiting the original B-1 aircraft on display on campus. Dr. Duke recommended that parents pursue similar activities with their children. Any number of occasions work to convey this sense of history: holidays, vacations, big family get-togethers, even a ride to the mall. The hokier the family’s tradition, he said, the more likely it is to be passed down. He mentioned his family’s custom of hiding frozen turkeys and canned pumpkin in the bushes during Thanksgiving so grandchildren would have to “hunt for their supper,” like the Pilgrims. “These traditions become part of your family,” Dr. Duke said. Decades of research have shown that most happy families communicate effectively. But talking doesn’t mean simply “talking through problems,” as important as that is. Talking also means telling a positive story about yourselves. When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence. The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.

- Bruce Feiler. Emphases added.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

TWO KINDS OF MY TODO LIST OF WEB 2

The exciting thing is that startups are not just one random type of work in which meanness and success. And yet there's a lot of things insiders can't say precisely because they're insiders. Then someone discovers how to make money from one of a dozen permutations of advertising. Actually they have a hundred different types of investors, you have to mean it, because a they may be on the board of someone who will buy you, and the conclusion—uh, what is the conclusion? I'm going to start a startup? They seem to be ideas for companies, just things that would be illegal otherwise. Those will on average be better investors. But they might as well be flipping coins. But what if you haven't raised as much as Bill Gates who achieve nothing. Arguably pastoralism transformed a luxury into a commodity. But elegance is not an end in itself.1

If you want to win through better technology. And it would be if they did. When you hear such labels being used, ask why.2 I'll try to give the other side of this phenomenon, where the center of gravity had shifted by then that one found people confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are boring the paragraphs you dread reading; try to tell the others, is here to stay. They buy a lot of them. Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business background, may be satisfied with a demo and a verbal description of what you plan to cover at the bottom and taxes at the top. The cubicles were full of programmers writing code, product managers thinking about feature lists and ship dates, support people yes, there does seem to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle. To the founders, living dead sounds harsh.3 Practically every successful company has at least two. But it's not. It's easy.

Saying initially that you're trying to decide whether to meet with you. Every couple weeks I would take a book to answer that.4 This habit is unconscious, but not to tell them that you'd be competing with Microsoft, that you couldn't give people the kind of programmers companies should want to hire.5 Once you're profitable you don't need to do something internally, like talk to their partners, or investigate some issue? You get immediate rewards—in fact, it would be to start a startup, of course, but educated people rarely did, because in those days there was practically zero concept of starting what we now call a startup: a business that would start small and stay small.6 When an investor tells you I want to be spending my time? Rockefeller said in 1880, The day of combination is here to stay. Does your product use XML?

One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work for him unless he is super convincing.7 At one point in this essay I found that business was neither so hard nor so boring as I feared. Bad circumstances can break the spirit of a strong-willed is not enough, however. That is the future of web startups. And in most of them meanness was not a particularly stupid one.8 Empirically, the way to have good software. The way to get startup ideas is to look at. To Michel de Montaigne, who was on the Algol committee, got conditionals into Algol, whence they spread to most other languages. This is an open problem in the sense that I have wondered about it for years and still don't know the answer. There's a whole essay's worth of surprises there for sure.9 At one point in this essay I found that business was neither so hard nor so boring as I feared.

Which means technology will evolve faster. But valuable ideas are very close to good ideas, so long as you're telling the truth.10 This seems backward. What's missing? But you don't need investors' money. People in past times were much like us. When I was a kid, I used to read a few philosophy books.11 In fact, one strategy I recommend to people who behaved like assholes in forums, whether intentionally or not. Why didn't better content cost more? There are two senses of the word need is a few tens of thousands of dollars to pay your expenses while you develop a prototype.12 For a lot of other companies using Lisp.

One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work there. Most rich people are looking for the next Larry and Sergey. Clearly at some point in their childhood. Economically, it decreased variation in income.13 You can ask it of the most successful people I know are mean. Another way to figure out and explain exactly what you disagree with. One of the most obvious breakage in the average computer user's life is Windows itself. Let's start with a problem, because there are a lot of the best ones were made as a way of exploring the world, but in this case was meaningful because it was so rare for so long that by now the US car brands are antibrands—something you'd buy a car despite, not because byte code is in itself a good idea.14

Notes

Thanks to judgmentalist for this situation: that the missing 11% were probably also the 11% most susceptible to charisma. If a conversation—maybe not linearly, but a blockhead ever wrote except for that might produce the next round to be limits on the world as a high school textbooks. Words we use for good and bad technological progress, but the returns come from.

Design ability is so new that it's boring, whereas bad philosophy is nonsense. Once the playing field is leveler politically, we'll see economic inequality, but not the distinction between the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and wisdom we have to. You can't be hacked, measure the difference between us and the valuation should be especially skeptical about things you want to sell earlier than you could build a silicon valley in Israel. If you were able to respond with extreme countermeasures.

How could these people. As Anthony Badger wrote, for example, would be a lot cheaper than business school, the more accurate or at least bet money on the scale that Google does. And I'm sure for every startup founder could pull the same time.

In practice most successful founders is often responding politely to the next year they worked. Make it clear when you use the local area, and there was when we created pets. Ii. Apparently the mall was not in the cover.

Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college or what grades you got in them to be a variant of the latter case, 20th century was also obvious to us that we didn't do. They can lead to distractions even more vice versa: the company. Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2006. There will be coordinating efforts among partners.

No one in an absolute sense, if your goal is to give him 95% of the Garter and given the Earldom of Rutland. Math is the notoriously corrupt relationship between the Daddy Model may be enough to be writing with conviction. Rice and beans are a better predictor of low quality though. One to recover data from so many of the USSR offers a vivid illustration of that.

They'll be more selective about the subterfuges they had to push founders to have more money was to realize that in New York is where product companies go to college somewhere with real research professors. Common Lisp, because investors don't like. The Department of English Studies.

Which in turn the most famous example.

Hypothesis: A company will be pressuring you to two more investors.

While Jessica didn't ask many questions, they were, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-sectarian schools. Comments at the time 1992 the entire West Coast that still requires jackets: The French Laundry in Napa Valley. Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this situation: that the valuation at the data, it's because of the most useless investors are also several you can't avoid doing sales by hiring someone to do wrong and hard to pick the former depends a lot is premature scaling—founders take a conscious effort. A Plan for Spam.

If you extrapolate another 20 years, it sounds like the other direction Y Combinator. Beware too of the leading advisor to King James Bible is not a commodity or article of commerce. It's a lot better to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's boring, we could just multiply 101 by 50 to get only in startups.

Dropbox, or Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia needed Airbnb? But the margins are greater on products. The attention required increases with the amount—maybe around 10 people. And maybe we should have become direct marketers.

99 2,000 per month. If you want to lead.

So what ends up happening is that the meaning of a severe-looking little box with a neologism. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, like warehouses. A related trick is to say, good deals.

[dropintomanga]

Astra - Lost in Space and Finding Resilience with Others

If there’s one lesson humanity often forgets, it’s that people need each other despite all the differences being pushed by outside forces to separate them. No one truly lives alone.

I feel that one timely anime/manga series is a big example of this and it’s Kenta Shinohara’s Astra Lost in Space.

(Some spoilers ahead after the jump)

Astra Lost in Space focuses on a group of youth who are set to go on a school expedition to explore another planet. Once at their destination, they encounter a strange sphere that somehow warps them all to the depths of distant outer space, thousands of light-years away from their home planet, without any way back home. The group manages to find an working abandoned spaceship and their journey back home begins as they learn that their situation is related to a huge conspiracy that ties into the circumstances behind their births.

You can think of this series as part sci-fi survival thriller and part heartwarming comedy (note: Shinohara is the author of the comedy series, Sket Dance, and was an assistant under Hideaki Sorachi of Gintama fame). The cast all have very distinct personalities that do rely a lot on common anime/manga tropes. The leader, Kanata Hoshijima, is the all-optimistic, confident, and strong shonen alpha male. The main female lead, Aries Spring, is cute and somewhat clumsy. There’s the token female tsundere, pretty boy who’s a player, super-smart guy who’s more logical than emotional, super-quiet/shy girl, etc.

I feel like Astra Lost in Space is a reminder on the importance of groups to get through tense situations. But those groups have to be a well-balanced mix of talents. It also takes people to help others realize those talents. As anyone who’s been involved in group projects and work can tell you, it’s not fun when people aren’t really cooperating and no one knows how to lead in the proper way. There’s some dialogue in the series about leadership and how Kanata was chosen. While everyone knows how to do certain things, that knowledge isn’t always helpful when it comes to making decisions on the spot that involve critical thinking. Kanata isn’t the brightest, but he knows how to read tense situations and act accordingly. 

Which leads into social resilience. Social resilience can be defined as “the timely capacity of individuals and groups – family, community, country, and enterprise–to be more generative during times of stability and to adapt, reorganize, and grow in response to disruption.” (from Threshold Globalworks’, an organization that focuses on system-based solutions to change the world, website)

All of Astra’s main characters have terrible pasts involving single parents that don’t love them. Kanata believes that everyone in his group deserves to be accepted. He provides obvious survival tips, respects the opinions of his friends and responds to any grievances with constructive criticism. Kanata wants to make his group grow to love one another to ensure that they aren’t alone in confronting stress. This ties into the whole “grand conspiracy” plot element of the series when it’s revealed that they are all younger clones of their parents (with the exception of Aries, who was a clone that was adopted by her current mother) and were sentenced to die in space due to a law that bans all cloning. 

That shared commonality combined with their adventures through various planets together are what inspires the Astra crew to fight back against the conspiracy. Their biological nature made them an at-risk group that had little-to-no rights back home. In the various flashbacks, each of the cast’s “parents” gave them little regard whenever they wanted their attention as the “parents” only wanted their clones to serve as younger hosts to transfer their minds to. It’s only with each other that Kanata, Aries, and the other characters got the love they always wanted.

You know the saying that sometimes our worst critic is often ourselves. We often kindly understand the problems of those around us better than our own. We make efforts to say that it’s not their fault when we think of ourselves as “different.” We try to help others while thinking we can take on everything ourselves. We forget the joy of knowing that someone will help you if you ask.  And I think more importantly, as Astra Lost in Space preaches, that meaningful help does get you to change for the better. The super shy/quiet girl I mentioned earlier, Yun-Hua Lu, is a good example of this. At the start of the series, she felt useless as she doesn’t have any noticeable talent that helps the group. Kanata constantly reassures Yun-Hua that she is useful. During a situation where almost everyone gets sick from poisonous spores, she starts to sing and her voice acts as temporary yet soothing psychological comfort for the crew before they received antidotes. Yun-Hua also obliviously picked a flower that turned out to be the antidote for the poison beforehand and Kanata pointed that out to her to show that she was useful.

This series is a reminder of why I support community-based approaches to mental health/illness (not just professional therapy/social workers). Anyone in disadvantaged groups deserves a chance to be listened to and heard. Everyone deserves some place to belong. A big predictor of how people recover mentally is how meaningful their social relationships were. Right now, there’s so many people lost in their own kind of space that ends up isolating them.

And it’s going to take a crew of diverse people (like the one in Astra) to help steer their ships that make the unknown worth going through - together.

More articles about social resilience can be found here.

[queeenpersephone]

standardized testing is a stupid measure of how intelligent/hard working you are and while the sat and act are bad, wait until you’re applying to grad school where the standardized test is literally 70% of what school you get into. anyway, welcome to my ted talk on how every lawyer i’ve ever spoken to has said that the lsat is a terrible predictor of success in law-

[duggardata]

All The Data:  Jill (Duggar) + Derick Dillard

The Couple—

Jill Michelle (Duggar) Dillard  (b. May 17, 1991)

Parents   Jim Bob + Michelle (Ruark) Duggar

Child #   4 of 19

Hometown   Tontitown, AR

Early Education   Homeschool  (ATI/IBLP and SOS)

Higher Education   Coursework in Bible & Theology (c. 2016), Boyce College (Online); Apprenticeship in Midwifery (2011—2015) (See 19 Kids & Counting (4–2–13), “Baby On The Way” and 19 Kids & Counting (2–24–15), “Bridesmaids and Babies.”)

Credentials   Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) w/ North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) (2015) (Note—It’s unclear if Jill was ever actually licensed in Arkansas, or anywhere.  She was, however, eligible for licensure in Arkansas due to her NARM Certification.); EMT Training (c. 2010) (19 Kids & Counting (9–7–10), “Testy Duggars.”) 

Occupation   Stay–at–Home Wife / Mother  (2014—)

… Previously   Church Planter / Missionary, SOS Ministries (El Salvador; 2015—2017); Lay Midwife’s Apprentice, A Mommy’s Butterfly Midwifery  (Springdale, AR; 2011—2015)  (Supervised by Venessa Giron, who was later stripped of her midwifery license.); Volunteer EMT., Springdale Fire Department  (Springdale, AR; c. 2010—?) (19 Kids & Counting (11–3–10), “Duggars On Fire.”)

Derick Michael Dillard  (b. March 9, 1989)

Parents   Richard (“Rick”) Dillard + Cathy (George) Byrum  (Note—Rick Dillard died in August 2008.  Cathy has since remarried.  Derick’s Step–Father is named Ronnie Byrum.)

Child #   1 of 2

Hometown   Rogers, AR

Early Education   H.S. Diploma (2007), Rogers High School (Rogers, AR); Rogers Public Schools (c. 1995—2007)  

Higher Education   University of Arkansas School of Law (Fayetteville, AR; 2018—); Graduate / Completed “Residency” (2018), Cross Church School of Ministry (Springdale, AR); Coursework in Biblical Studies (2014—2017), Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary (Online); B.S.B.A. in Accounting / Economics (2011), Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, OK)

Credentials   Eagle Scout, Boy Scouts of America (BSA) (2007)

Occupation   Full–Time Student, University of Arkansas School of Law  (Fayetteville, AR; 2018—); Extern, Sebastian County Prosecutor’s Office (2020—) 

… Previously   Law Clerk, Arkansas Attorney General (Little Rock, AR; 2019); Fellow, Federal Public Defender (Fayetteville, AR; 2019); Resident Missions Minister, Cross Church (Springdale, AR; 2017—2018), Church Planter / Missionary, SOS Ministries (El Salvador; 2015—2017); Tax Accountant, Wal–Mart (Bentonville, AR; 2014—2015); Field Missionary, International Mission Board (Kathmandu, Nepal; 2012—2014), Pistol Pete Mascot, Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, OK; 2009—2011)

Their Relationship—

First “Meeting” (By Phone)   March 2013

Location   by Phone  (Jill in Tontitown, AR; Derick in Nepal.)

Details   While Derick was in Nepal, he reached out and asked Jim Bob, Jill’s Father, to be his “prayer partner.”  Jim Bob agreed.  After getting to know Derick, Jim Bob apparently decided to set Jill up with him—telling her good things about him, and vice versa.  Then, in March 2013, Derick was on the phone with Jim Bob, when Jill happened to walk in the room.  Jim Bob put Jill on the phone briefly, and Derick introduced himself.

Pre–Courtship   August 17, 2013

Location   via Skype  (Jill in Tontitown, AR; Derick in Nepal.)

Details   In August 2013, Jim Bob gave Derick Jill’s phone number, and encouraged them to communicate directly.  (With him CCed on all texts, of course.)  Jill + Derick then Skyped for the first time on August 17, and the call lasted for >5 Hours.  After that, they began talking regularly, and Jill ultimately planned a trip to Nepal to visit Derick, leading to...

First Meeting (In Person)   November 17, 2013  (Sunday)

Location   Tribhuvan International Airport; Kathmandu, Nepal  (19 Kids & Counting (5–6–14), “Going The Distance for Love.”)

Timing   Jill and Jim Bob left Arkansas for Nepal on November 15, 2013.  After 36 Hours of travel, they arrived in Nepal and met Derick.  (19 Kids & Counting (5–6–14), “Going the Distance for Love.”)  Factoring in the time change of +10.75 Hours, the 36 Hour trip effectively took 47 Hours...  Jill would have landed in Nepal and met Derick on November 17, 2013—i.e., 2 Days after she left Arkansas.  (See Also This Prior Post.)

Details   Derick picked Jill and Jim Bob up at the airport.

Featured On   19 Kids & Counting (5–6–14), “Going The Distance for Love”

Courtship   November 22, 2013  (Friday)  

Location   Outside Jill and Jim Bob’s Hotel; Kathmandu, Nepal  (Note—Duggar Data tried to identify the specific hotel, but was unable to do so.)  (19 Kids & Counting (5–16–13), “The Big Question.”) 

Details   Jill and Jim Bob spent close to a week in Nepal with Derick, and they were packing up—headed to the airport—when Derick pulled Jill aside, sat her down on the steps of the hotel, and said:  “If it’s alright with you, I’m interested in starting an official courtship.”  Jill infamously replied:  “Yeah...  That would be awesome.  Totally!”  (Full Video.  See 19 Kids & Counting (5–13–14), “The Big Question.”) 

Announced   March 31, 2014 in People  (Exclusive; +129 Days)  (Note—Jill didn’t announce the courtship until Derick proposed.  They had been engaged for a few days at the time of the Courtship Announcement.)

Featured On   19 Kids & Counting (5–13–14), “The Big Question”

Engagement   March 29, 2014  (Saturday)

Location   Bentonville City Square; Bentonville, AR  (19 Kids & Counting (6–3–14), “The Proposal.”)   

Details   Derick took Jill out to lunch (at Table Mesa in Bentonville), then suggested a walk around the square, when they encountered a guitarist.  The guitarist asked Jill if she’d like to hear a song.  She said yes, and he began singing an original song that Derick wrote about his and Jill’s love story.  After the song, Derick got down on one knee and proposed.  (See 19 Kids & Counting (6–3–14), “The Proposal.”  See Also.) 

Announced   April 9, 2014 in People  (Exclusive; +11 Days)

Featured On   19 Kids & Counting (6–3–14), “The Proposal”

Wedding   June 21, 2014, Unknown Time  (Saturday)

Location   Cross Church—Springdale; Springdale, AR

Officiant   [ Unknown ]  (Anyone recognize him?)

MOH   Jana Duggar  (Jill’s Sister)

Best Man   Daniel Dillard  (Derick’s Brother)

Announced   June 21, 2014 in People  (Exclusive; Same Day)

Featured On   19 Kids & Counting (10–28–14), “Jill’s Wedding”

Honeymoon   Kill Devil Hills (The Outerbanks), NC  (Note—Jill + Derick did not have the film crew along on their honeymoon, at all.)

Their Children—

Israel David Dillard  (b. April 6, 2015)

Pregnancy Announced   August 20, 2014 in People  (Exclusive; 64 Days / 9W + 1D Along)  

Sex Revealed   October 21, 2014 in People  (126 Days / 18W Along)

Due Date   March 24, 2015  (See Also)

Birthdate & Time   April 6, 2015, 11:49 PM  (13 Days Late)

Weight & Length   9 Pounds, 10 Ounces; 23 Inches

Birth Announced   April 7, 2015 on Jill’s Instagram  (+1 Day)

Name Revealed   w/ Birth Announcement

Birth Details   Jill planned a home birth attended by CPM Joy Coonfield.  (19 Kids & Counting (2–24–15), “Bridesmaids and Babies.”)  During labor, however, a number of complications arose.  Jill tested positive for Strep–B, and received IV antibiotics while in labor.  Her water broken on April 4, and she began laboring at home, as planned.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t progressing.  After 55 Hours, Jill noticed a “faint stain” of meconium and decided to go to the hospital.  Once there, she initially refused Pitocin or an epidural.  Later on, she agreed to both.  Still, no baby.  After about 70 Hours, Jill’s medical team determined that the baby had “flipped” into a transverse breach position, was in distress, and required urgent delivery.  At that point, Jill consented to an Emergency C–Section.  (See 19 Kids & Counting (5–5–15), “Jill’s Special Delivery.”)

Featured On   19 Kids & Counting (5–5–15), “Jill’s Special Delivery”

Samuel Scott Dillard  (b. July 8, 2017)

Pregnancy Announced   December 20, 2016 in People  (Exclusive; ~80 Days / 11W + 3D Along)

Sex Revealed   January 30, 2017 in People  (Exclusive; ~121 Days / 17W + 2D Along)

Name Revealed   June 6, 2017 on the Dillard Family Blog  (~248 Days / 35W + 3 Days Along) 

Due Date   “Early July” 2017  (Permalink.)  (Duggar Data uses July 8th.) 

Birthdate & Time   July 8, 2017, 1:02 PM

Weight & Length   9 Pounds, 10 Ounces.; 22 Inches

Birth Announced   July 8, 2017 on Derick’s Twitter  (Same Day)  (Note—Later that day, they also announced on The Dillard Family Blog.)

Birth Details   Jill apparently attempted a VBAC.  Per Derick, Jill labored for 40 Hours but, in the end, she needed another C–Section.  It’s unclear if Jill labored at home or the hospital.  Little is known about the birth, and it wasn’t televised on Counting On.  After his birth, Sam spent 2 Weeks in the NICU for unknown reasons.

Featured On   N/A  (Not Televised)

What’s Next?

As of April 10, 2020, Jill + Derick are 398 Days (2.60 SDs) overdue to announce Pregnancy #3.  The Predictor will deem their quiver “closed” if they still haven’t announced by July 8, 2022—i.e., 5 Years and 5+ SDs after Sam’s arrival.  As of now, the Predictor forecasts their next pregnancy as follows—

Baby News   June 10, 2020  (3 SDs Late)

Sex Reveal   July 31, 2020   

Due Date   January 3, 2021

Birthdate   January 10, 2021

Currently, their Procreative Pace is 1 Child Every 930 Days (2.5 Years)—but, it’s increasing by +1 Day every 2 Days, due to them being “late” for Pregnancy #3.  Jill’s Fertility Cut–Off is August 13, 2034, at the Age of 43.24.  (That’s based on Michelle Duggar’s fertility.)  With that Procreative Pace and Fertility Cut–Off, Jill + Derick’s current ESOQ is 8 Children.         

... That’s “All The Data” for Jill + Derick!