#not academic material

[inspired-lesson-plans]

From

#I was actually reading a study on this today

#they’re actually useful for brain-related things like test anxieties and migraine pain

#the placebo effect is actually so effective that you can imagine taking pills and see a reduction in some symptoms

#which is something I personally do for headaches when I’m on the go

#the brain is wild

@elldritch-horror, I think I found the study you were reading, or at least a related one. Apparently Buergler et al (2023) broke the test-anxiety-suffering undergrads into three groups :

Take Open Label Placebos (like the Zeebos)

Take imaginary placebos (literally playing pretend multiple times daily)

Don't do anything about it at all

And guess what... both of those bogus treatments had real effects! Even non-deceptive placebos are pretty good!

This post is now about the fact that I have wanted to sell "honest placebos" for years.

First of all, they work. In fact, just a quick little bit of research revealed that it's common for medical practitioners to give their patients placebos (if it's not serious) because it's cheaper and doesn't have any side-effects (Wernsdorff et al, 2021). And when researching new medical treatments, so-called "deceptive placebos" are so potent that researchers will give participants Open Label Placebos (like the Zeebos), and even these result in statistically significant effects on patients! (Gupta and Verma, 2013)

Second, as a teacher I can think of 3 kinds of kids who would immediately benefit from this.

Hypochondriacs who legitimately cannot tell whether or not they are unwell and are probably really anxious about asking to go to the nurse all the time

Avoidant kids who want an excuse to leave class for 10-30 minutes.

Very impressionable kids whose stomach pains and headaches really can be treated with placebos.

Give them a placebo (deceptive or not), tell them to wait it out for 15 minutes, and if it doesn't get better, then they go to the nurse. Thus, they stay in class and aren't bothering the already-overworked nurse.

In America (at least in New Jersey), teachers aren't allowed to give any kind of medicine to minors. I cannot imagine getting in trouble for giving placebos.

Even if you're a grown adult, if you're feeling symptoms of some kinda illness but you don't know if you're sick, you can take a placebo. If the symptoms go away, you don't have to worry about it. I get headaches a lot, and I would love to know if taking a few cheap sugar pills would do as much good as 1000mg ibuprofen. I'm going to take a hot shower to relax my muscles anyway, and if my headache is still there afterwards then clearly I need the medicine.

My only criticism is... ugh, those look terrible to swallow. Make them soft-gels or make them sugar-coated so they're pleasant to swallow. Also, get better graphic design! That bottle looks like a prop from a 2000s SyFy Channel movie. I want to feel delighted that I'm taking an Open Label Placebo!

Footnote, I found this while reading How To Winter, so take that as you will.

well I guess this is the logical next step in, you know. everything

[inspired-lesson-plans]

We need this movie.

Half of me is making a joke about the Black History Month Cinematic Universe (Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker both absolutely belong in the BHMCU).

The other half is dead serious. I want every high schooler in America to watch this movie, and I would watch it with them every single time.

Cudjo Lewis, the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the U.S. 

https://www.history.com/news/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-slave-clotilda-survivor?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1525373347

[inspired-lesson-plans]

A few years ago, I got briefly obsessed with (and had a Tumblr post break containment about) the then-ongoing downfall of Cornell marketing professor Brian Wansink, an influential food psychology researcher who turned out to have been doing scientific fraud on a massive scale. This ranged from having grad students record every random thing they possibly could about a study and then slicing and dicing the data until they found a correlation between two random things that met a statistical significance threshold and only reporting that, to impossible data, to copy-pasting thousands of words between allegedly unrelated papers, to extremely basic arithmetic errors like sample sizes that don't add up. The scientists who exposed him dissected several dozen of his papers, but he's published over 200, and pretty much all of them seem to be like this. I've thought ever since that it would make a great school activity to bring in a stack of random Wansink papers and challenge the class to see how many problems they can find.

Oh, I've heard about this guy! I think they talked about him on an episode of Freakonomics, or else somewhere on NPR.

Academic dishonesty, especially regarding scientific publications, it's something very near and dear to my heart. And the fact that this guy produced so many in easy, delightful, daytime talk show style. Scientific headlines means that I think I know the angle I would want to take with this just because somebody says that something is science, doesn't mean it is. It's not a matter of you. Can't trust the mainstream media, it's a matter of people need scientific literacy in order to be trustworthy when reporting science.

But the reason why I'm responding to this ask instead of just making a lesson plan, Which I do intend to do, is that I never ever actually took any classes on scientific methodology. All I know about p-values I learned from Khan Academy and Wikipedia.

So do you think we could collaborate?

If I draft up a lesson, could you proofread it for me to make sure that it's got all the information that you would like to see students learn?

And if anyone else knows any way they can help, please leave a comment or DM me. I'll be grateful to gain a better matter of this topic.

[wasabi-gumdrop]

thinking about modern au Kabru

ivy league college student, probably studying law and political science on a full scholarship. first time living away from Milsiril so he has to promise her, yes mom i’ll call you at least four times a week, no mom i don’t need your amex black card, yes mom the normal credit card is fine i need to learn how to budget like a Normal Person (it has a limit of $20k — that’s not normal Kabru).

Milsiril insists for a long time that she’ll just get him a house off campus so he can have his own space (aka a place she can drop by anytime and possibly live a few months out of the year just to be close to him) but Kabru puts his foot down and tells her the best way he’s gonna make friends is by living with other students (bye mom).

his floor in the coed dorms is the party floor and he always makes sure to invite everybody (his nightmare is accidentally leaving anyone out and having them think that he doesn’t like them). somehow it’s always a good time, everyone leaves with more friends than they came with, it never gets totally out of control, and plenty of girls who are interested in him (and a lot of guys too tbh) bring tons of baked treats so there’s always free food. Kabru is the RA’s favourite person to have in the building (even though Kabru himself is messy but most of the people he’s friends with are nice and clean up after themselves).

he has a porsche (Milsiril gift for his 16th bday) but he’s adamant about not driving it unless he absolutely has to (because he doesn’t wanna look like a douche). BUT he never says no when his friends ask for rides (so he ends up driving all the time anyway). he actually contemplates selling the porsche and going for a more practical car but Mickbell is like ‘dude you are not taking this away from me.’ Kabru sighs and decides to keep it because his friends (Mickbell) like being chauffeured around in a fancy convertible (Rin, Holm, and Dia don’t care, they’re just glad they don’t have to walk to the grocery store).

he’s probably on a casual texting basis with most of his professors and you know he’s going to all their office hours, grabbing beer with them just to keep chatting about life outside of school. and that’s how he winds up in some super secret faculty group chat where he’s now privy to all the college administration gossip.

Kabru is elected for student council during his freshman year and he’s probably the favourite to be sc president one day.

he doesn’t really date (gets too in his head about how he doesn’t wanna ruin any friendships) but he does hang out one on one with a lot of girls and treats them all really well. he probably goes so far out of his way to be platonic that he flies a little too close to the ‘Just Like One of the Girlies’ sun, he kinda forgets that most people interpret it as flirting coming from him. which leads to a few awkward conversations. people feeling led on, a few angry jealous boyfriends, scathing dms about him being a girl stealing homewrecker.

it’s such a nightmare for him and he needs it to end right now. so he begs Rin to ‘date’ him for a week or two and then publicly dump him just so the entire student body gets the message that he is Just A Friend.

Rin stares at him for a few seconds. then she laughs. she laughs and laughs. she laughs for a crazy long time. and then eventually she goes, ‘wow you’re an asshole, Kabru. no i won’t be your fake girlfriend. you’re gonna suffer and i’m going to enjoy it.’

and that’s when Kabru has a moment of enlightenment. ok yeah. asking for that is probably really selfish and mean. maybe he needs to think about girls’ feelings more and that’s maybe more important than his deep seated need to be liked, and when has Rin ever been wrong about anything.

he apologizes. and so begins one of the more serious talks he’s ever had with Rin about being okay with not being liked.

he thinks he can really turn over a new leaf. the whole ‘not worrying about what other people think’ thing goes pretty well — up until Kabru meets the aloof professor for his Monsters and Myths class who keeps forgetting and mispronouncing his name.

Kabru has never needed someone to like him So Bad, he needs Prof. Touden to like him as a matter of life and death, and he’s willing to look stupid for it (fails a midterm on purpose to justify begging for one on one tutoring)

[astriiformes]

When I was applying for undergrad, I was fully in my "All my favorite characters are weird smart academic types" phase, because I Iike many undiagnosed twice-exceptional teens had carefully constructed a personal identity around a certain (incredibly harmful) societal idea of intelligence. It totally showed in the institutions I was applying to, too, and in particular, my motivation for choosing them.

This also lead to me making bad choices in the long run and was completely unsustainable, but I will admit that it was helpful when it came to motivating myself to complete my college applications. (Especially considering one of my top schools -- and the one with the most involved application -- happened to be a university that a beloved favorite character had attended but also, it is really, really good in retrospect that I did not get in there.)

I am happier and healthier now and have a much more sustainable image of success in my head, if an imperfect relationship with it, but this also means I have a complicated relationship with the fictional academic archetype and the type of characters I used to love, and that used to be motiviating to me. A lot of my favorite characters these days are ones who possess other traits I admire -- tenacity, kindness, a strong sense of justice, and a desire to change the world for the better. But I don't associate most of them with school or academic success at all; sometimes even the opposite.

All this to say, seeing as I have grad school apps due in exactly a month now. Save me Palamedes Sextus. Save me.

[inspired-lesson-plans]

Faculty Resources, Tax Preparation

psa for usamericans

if you live in any of the states below: the tax filing resource you should be looking for is IRS Direct File; you can file federal taxes directly on the IRS' website, they have a free support helpline if you're stuck, they'll also redirect you to a free preparer for state taxes, and it should work with most tax situations

if you live in any other state (or aren't eligible for Direct File) and your total income for the year was $84,000 or less, you're eligible for IRS Free File; this only covers federal taxes, and works through external providers, but will guarantee that you can use their tax preparation services for free

if you are eligible for Direct File, though, you should use it! obviously very few things about the current political situation are certain right now, but it is a genuinely good and revolutionary way to handle tax paperwork and it's a lot more likely to stick around and expand into more states if more people actually know how to access it and end up using it

[saeran-exe]

20/08/24

I forgot to post this yesterday 'cause I got home so late from uni 😭

Yesterday was a pretty tiring, but worth it, day of studying since I missed an entire week of class and had to study all of the content from last week's welding technology class + study from a texbook on science and engineering of materials.

Content studied yesterday:

> Stress-Strain of metals under tension, compression, sheer and torsion tests ;

> Stress-Strain graph (elastic and plastic strain, recognition of ductile and brittle materials, points of elastic limit, yielding, ultimate strength and rupture) ;

> General types of welding ;

> Concepts of welding technology .

My welding technology class went great and I was relieved when I found myself following the explanations with ease and being able to participate because of successful studying and absorption of the last class' content through photos of the board that my classmate sent me. I was really scared I would fall behind but I feel pretty confident and intrigued by the subject and engineering in general... I think I'm finally falling in love with it!

[averlym]

litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

[antiadvil]

When I get home I need to put all the weekly ship stats for the year into a spreadsheet or something bc even though we’ve never hit number one we’ve been consistently on the list since April and a lot of the ships that have been beating us have been much more seasonal 👀

[inspired-lesson-plans]

Not an academic activity, but I think every teacher can tag at least one Aika, Zira, and Miss at their school.

IDWTBAMG CHARACTER FUN FACTS

Well, some fun facts and mostly lore or character relationship stuff. Under the cut!

AIKA

Aika became the next Star Guardian at age 13. She’s 15 now

Aika’s want to help people and relentless positivity were part of the reason she was chosen to be the Star Guardian: Guardian of the Stars in the first place. While her love for the job has fizzled out, this aspect of her character still a core part of her.

She’s very kind and gentle person but that kinda goes out the window when magical duties are brought into the equation

Her and Hoshi care about one another but their relationship is currently a bit tense. They’re usually pretty quick to make jabs at one another

She struggled to get used to the platform shoes in her magical girl outfit

She LOVES food. And her eyes are usually way too big for her stomach leading to many a food coma

Aika and her teammates worked in secret for the most part, not really being allowed to “exist in the real world”. Because of this, with the free time she had, Aika would read a lot (she’s actually very book smart)

Aika loves extreme sports and is an adrenaline junky. However, rollercoasters freak her out for some reason

Aika drags Zira into lots of new eperiences. Zira usually ends up appreciating the experiences after the fact 

Aika’s a morning person

ZIRA

Zira is smart but doesn’t apply herself in school

They have a lot of artistic interests, particularly art, music and fashion

She likes the idea of writing fanfiction in theory but writing’s sooooo much work. Any ideas she has just kinda live in her head, causing her to zone out and daydream a ton

While shy for the most part, Zira can be very blunt and isn’t necessarily a pushover

Prior to Aika, she didn’t have a lot (any) friends at school but she’s mostly content doing her own thing

They’d hang out in Miss’ classroom a lot, either to show her Moon Sailor stuff against her will or just to have lunch

Zira loves playing video games and especially loves visual novels

Zira develops a crush on Aika pretty quickly. Aika’s kindness, authenticity and bravery is inspiring to Zira. Also Aika’s the only other person her age to really give her the time of day. And also she thinks Aika’s pretty

She thinks Hoshi’s really cool and since Aika doesn’t particularly enjoy talking about her job, Zira usually goes to Hoshi for magical girl questions. Initially Hoshi doesn’t trust Zira with that information but is really flattered to have someone who looks up to them and is interested in everything they have to say. So they indulge when appropriate.

Zira’s a night owl

HOSHI

Hoshi saved Aika when she was really young and has kept her safe ever since

Hoshi and Aika started off kind of like siblings but Hoshi then became her boss, making their relationship a bit strained and more complicated

Their role as a magical mascot managerial in nature. They make Aika and her team do their jobs, follow protocol, teach them how to use their powers, keep up morale, do timecards, etc.

While Hoshi oversees this team, their responsibility is primarily to the Star Guardian

Hoshi, much like Aika, used to be really chipper and a bit more goofy but Aika’s kinda worn them down overtime

Hoshi’s not a fan of Earth, but in an effort to better understand Aika’s feelings, tries out being a human and doing Earth activities

Hoshi takes a while to get used to their human form. They’re really clumsy in it

They have a hard time making hands for their human form. Their hands are slightly different every time but equally terrifying. They eventually get better at making them though.

Hoshi doesn't use their human form too much. Most people just assume their Aika's weird pet bird

Hoshi doesn't need to eat but discovers they enjoy the act of eating

ECLIPSE

Eclipse is one of the few humans that know that Aika and the other magical girls exist

He met Aika pretty early on in her magical girl career and he was immediately enamored with her

Since finding about magical girls, he’s obsessively tried keeping track of them, leading him to start acting out in order to get their attention. They only really care because he knows their secret and they play along

He and Devoid made his current outfit together. DeVoid wanted to make it black but Eclipse was set on making it very bright and showy

Eclipse currently resides with DeVoid. He gets on her nerves sometimes but they both do care about each other

Eclipse is a pretty good cook 

Eclipse isn’t particularly hateful but he’s really got beef with Zira for some reason

It’s hard to tell if Eclipse is really in love with Aika or if he just loves the concept of their nonexistent relationship

Eclipse has a lovely singing voice

His real name is Elio

LADY DeVOID

DeVoid was banished to space by a Star Guardian. For a LONG time she lived (unconsciously) as a sort of celestial being that would spit out monsters that the Star Guardians for many generations would have to face. While not ideal it was better than fighting DeVoid before she got to full power.

DeVoid finally wakes up in the present timeline, with no memories other than being banished by a Star Guardian and wanting revenge and knowing that she’s supposed to be able to create monsters. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t remember how to use her powers. She doesn’t even remember her name, so she came up with “Lady DeVoid”

DeVoid loves human reality TV. Specifically competition shows. She loves how petty and evil people become

Reality TV is where most of her knowledge of humans comes from

Though DeVoid is pretty stoic, her ears are very expressive

DeVoid taught Eclipse how to do his makeup

She really likes Eclipse’s cooking

When she’s out and about she’s usually wearing sunglasses because it’s simply too bright for her

DeVoid does have to work a normal job in the human world and simply goes by “Dee”

People rarely question her appearance (because that’s just rude). But when people do ask what’s up with her horns she just says “it’s a condition” and that’s usually enough for people to just end the convo there.

MISS

Miss loves her job more than anything. She’s a very accomplished teacher and takes a lot of time to make sure all of her students succeed

Miss cares about Zira a lot. Always staying in her classroom just in case Zira wants to stop by for lunch, giving her advice or giving her extra tutoring as needed 

Because of Zira, Miss has become a closet Moon Sailor fan

Though Aika’s just started attending school, she and Miss have bonded quite a bit. Aika’s positive disposition and cheeriness bring Miss a lot of joy

Miss keeps her personal life (not that she really has one) out of work but finds herself opening up a little more than she’d like to Aika and Zira

Miss used to get really antsy during summer breaks, leading her to start teaching summer school to fill the time

Her workaholic nature was the reason for her and her ex-wife’s divorce

Miss has gone on one date since her divorce. The idea of having starting over is exhausting to her so she’s mostly okay just being single

Miss doesn’t really like coffee but she drinks a lot of it out of necessity

Miss has a ton of tattoos

[crustaceousfaggot]

Anyone else thinking about John Irving on this fine day. I'm going to throw up.

Source - An evangelical Christian on Franklin's last expedition: Lieutenant John Irving of HMS Terror

[shukruut]

a professor of mine once explained that she re-used corpus and transcriptions that were all her own hard work every chance she got because she didn't want to let all that effort go to waste after only showing it once.

so repost (or self reblog or whatever) that fanart/fic as many times as you'd like. It's hard work, and you get to make people notice it anytime you want

[aroaceleovaldez]

do. you consider the graphic novels to be canon (in some way)? and if so, what do you make of sadie and carter wearing the chb and cj t-shirts respectively at the end of tot i think

I consider the graphic novels to be their own individual canon - they're an adaptation of the source material and follow a different series of events than book canon, so they're in the same category as like the movies, show, or musical to me (and DS game, lmao). They exist completely separate from the canon they're adapting from, so they're their own entities.

The material I consider strictly "canon" is the first series, so Percy Jackson And The Olympians only. Then HoO and TOA as extraneous canon on top of that - sort of a like "recommended but optional." TKC and MCGA also kind of operate as their own canons within themselves but can be linked to main PJO canon, so similar category. Published companion novels and similar material (so like Singer of Apollo) are also optional add-ons.

Stuff like Un Natale Mezzosangue and Nachos After The War where they weren't ever formally published are non-canon official material to me, kind of in the same vein as promotional material released alongside the books (the activity guides and such). The official art exists in the same sphere to me. I also personally consider CHB: Austin's lore to be semi-canon or non-canon official material, because they're actually affiliated with Rick Riordan (he has directly interacted with the camp's activities in the past) and I think it's just kind of cute.

The ReadRiordan articles are just straight up strictly non-canon. They just are. That is just an objective fact about them. I am slightly more lenient towards some of the old official Riordan website's media, like the interactive Argo II map descriptions, just since those descriptions were one-and-done and presumably had to have been approved versus a ton of articles with different anonymous unaffiliated authors. It's at best in the same category as the non-canon official promotional material.

As for Sadie and Carter wearing camp t-shirts - it's a cute cameo! And also kind of interesting in that they're technically one of first official published depictions we have of the camp shirts with any kind of details on them (the old official art doesn't count actually cause that was also bonus material).

[inspired-lesson-plans]

If you're following my blog, you're already in the outlier set for queerness and neurodiversity, as recently established. Let's check education level as a general proxy for intelligence*.

* I have one brother with a Masters who could be doing post-doctoral research if he were in a different profession, and another brother with a Masters who has so much red-pill brainrot that he probably couldn't repeat undergrad. Asking academic achievement does not accurately measure how smart you really are. Intelligence, like the other D&D stats, can't really be defined or measured in any specific way. The goal here is not to measure how smart you are, it's so you can get a sense of the room you're in and feel like you're in good company.

Y'know that quote about "if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room"

Also applies to queerness and neurodivergency

[inspired-lesson-plans]

Can someone write a unit plan for how to understand an End User License Agreement?

I bought a $50 TV that comes with Amazon Fire and the first thing it did was spend 10 minutes installing mystery updates, then force me to agree to Terms of Service. Before I could use the TV that I only want to plug a USB into.

Almost nobody in the world has ever read the Terms of Service. Even fewer people actually understand what they are agreeing to. Whatever Amazon is demanding from me, I am only certain that I do not agree with their Terms.

So we need to make these terms much more legible. But we also need to be literate in this bizarre dialect. This should be taught in school.

[inspired-lesson-plans]

My thesis advisor for my master's program, in the final semester that I would ever be in school, gave me this gem:

If you can power through the first 30 minutes without getting discouraged, no matter how many times you have to read and reread the same things to understand them, then your brain warms up and gets ready for as many hours until you are just too tired to continue.

So if typing it out verbatim is what you need to do to keep yourself from getting discouraged during academic warm-ups, then do it

If it works, it works

Right now I'm struggling to do like...any homework. One of the homework assignment types is readings, which I use a little trick to get done. This trick addresses the facts that I have to focus to read it, and I also have to be able to tell myself that I really did read every word.

So I just open up a little Notepad instance off to the side, and rewrite the reading word for word as I read it. If I forget a sentence or otherwise lose pace, I can just look back at the Notepad instance to see where I left off. Do I internalize any of the info I read? No. I am focusing entirely on typing. In fact, after writing, I do a quick skim of the reading to actually understand it.

I periodically delete my transcription, as it's really just a focusing tool and not a note-taking method. And, after writing anywhere from 2-10 paragraphs, I can finally just focus on the reading and finish it out without doing this manual-copying thing.

If it works, it works.