NielsBohron @ NielsBohron @lemmy.world

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3

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707

Joined

2 yr. ago

100%. The only redeeming quality of boredom is that it encourages you to go out and gain other interests and skills in the absence of other entertainment, but that's more in the "I'm done with my homework and have nothing to do for the next 2 hours until dinner" sense. And even before smartphones, TV, booze, and weed easily filled that niche if you weren't careful.

It’s just that a majority of them now seems to be incapable of focusing on anything for more than a few minutes.

I teach chemistry at a college and I don't think it's any different than the past; it's just more obvious. When I was in middle school, I would tune out all the time, but I didn't have a smartphone, so I brought shitty fantasy novels to read under the desk. In high-school, I would tune out all the time, but I didn't have a smartphone, so I would just leave or draw band logos. In undergrad, I would tune out all the time, but I didn't have a smartphone, so I doodled or wrote song lyrics in the margins of my notebook. Even in grad school, i would frequently just straight disassociate my way through lectures when I ran out of attention span (so every 5 minutes or so).

There's tons of pedagogy and andragogy research that shows that humans in general only focus for 10-15 minutes at a time (and it's even shorter for teens and males in their early 20's), and that's remarkably consistent across generations. I don't think people actually have shorter attention spans; they just have an easy way to mindlessly fill that void that is harder to come back from without an interruption. Frankly, my students from Gen X all the way to Gen Alpha students do pretty good at paying attention, but even my best students still zone out every few minutes, and that's fine. It's just human nature and the limitations of the way our brains are structured.

or "water closet" in the UK

Keep in mind, these are almost certain to be the same people who complain about how political everything is these days. What they mean is that they don't want to see leftist/progressive memes, but they're fine shifting the Overton widow to the right.

Depends on how steep the hill is and how precise you need to be with your position. Parallel parking in San Francisco almost requires the handbrake.

I live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and regularly drove my standard transmission in San Francisco (one of the hilliest cities in North America), and used my hand brake all the time to maintain my position while I engaged the transmission. I'm not really sure what you're on about...

Like any decent Lovecraftian work, it looks like a big ol' bag of NOPE.

I don't know; during the Bush Jr. Era, I would have agreed with you, but I think the powers that be have figured out that religion is more useful for creating wedge issues than actually governing.

If the goal is simply controlling the population, then oligarch-controlled media and social media seems to be perfectly adequate with just a little bit of religion to give the conservatives bad-faith plausible deniability when it comes to the racism, misogyny, and homophobia (both the politicians and the voters).

"Would you fuck me? I'd fuck me"

"Why should I change my name? He's the one that sucks."

~Michael Bolton, probably

seconded

The problem with this methodology (using IMDb ratings to compare different seasons and shows to each other) is that every show is going to see a "ratings bump" when people who are disinterested or dissatisfied stop watching and only the die-hard fans are left watching and rating.

I thought The Raconteurs were ok, but the Dead Weather really got my attention.

If I'm being honest, I don't expect to see a penny of social security. I'm making other arrangements wherever possible

I'm not an etymology expert, but I did see a few sources that all claimed scot came from a Scandinavian word "skat," which was a redistributive tax (Source)

I do like your explanation, too, though. The other explanation I've heard a few times was that it was related to the Dred Scott case regarding an escaped slave who petitioned the Supreme Court in an attempt to gain his freedom (it didn't work, though, so I'm not sure why people would claim that to be the origin of the phrase "Scott free" anyway)

Just a friendly little cat

Like, I've been saying it since he was accused, he could very well get off Scott scot-free

FTFY. I agree with everything you're saying; I just have this weird compulsion to correct misused homophones. A "scot" is an archaic word for a tax (unrelated to being of Scottish descent, AFAIK), so the term isn't anything to do with a person named Scott. Pedantic, I know, but I really can't help myself, so... Sorry? You're welcome?

Either way, have a nice day.

As a college instructor, it's difficult sometimes. The dumbest goddamn students I've ever had still manage to pass sometimes due to being friends with the right people or getting lucky when cheating in a way that I can't necessarily prove. I can be 100% certain that someone cheated, but if I can't objectively prove it, it's really, really dangerous (to my career) to fail that student, especially when they are as connected and narcissistic as Trump.

Plus, lots of people take advantage of more inclusive accommodations and more forgiving grading or attendance policies to the point that sometimes they do pass despite knowing a tiny fraction of the material. I could eliminate a lot of that by making the tests harder and removing a lot of academic support services I offer to make the class more "sink or swim," but then I'm mostly punishing the people that need my help the most. I just have to remind myself that it's better to pass a student that doesn't deserve it than it is to misjudge the situation and fail a student who legitimately just needed some additional understanding or academic support.

Are we not gonna talk about Kelso's mug shot? The man's eyes are so close together that he's singlehandedly the best evidence I've ever seen that humans are descended from cyclopes

And Canada Gooses! Canada Gooses are barrel-chested and majestic! The envy of all ornithologies!