I am earnestly surprised such a thing even got proposed in texas

Being long term unemployed, I would sometimes think of sleep as a low energy state until the next welfare cheque. But also being drunk fulfilled the same purpose.

True believers and cynics. From the outside, how could one tell?

Everything outside of my immediate experience is densely packed squid atlanteans. (I feel like some people seem to genuinely think like this, which is distressing)

Aw, I used to live with a cat called Bro

What do people say there?

What's that enormous hole in dude?

The parliamentarian will say Obama specifically cannot run for a third term, and the democrats will roll over and display their vulnerable belly in a display of trust

I wonder if trump has ever actually deescalated anything in his life

This whole thing was interesting as my schooling experience was 20 years ago (good grief). I've been meaning to ask my friends who teach what their experience is like.

i'm sure by now it's different that it was even two to three decades ago, but from my experience there is some truth to the statement that there was more rote memorization in the eastern educational system.

That may be true, but I'm not sure it manages to encompass the thought "and therefore the perfidious Chinese will always be behind us in every sector unless they cheat and steal", which is the underlying message.

(Also, for my part, my failures at uni going from decent grades in high school was going from 100 to 0 in terms of how much control my parents had over my time and also suddenly having a social life.)

(and severe depression)

One of the things I remember from the past is people saying "Their schools tell their students what to think, our teach us how to think." and like... I know what they mean, that our schools teach us abstract philosophical ideas about how to construct an idea, pare it down, and build a corpus of supporting (and counter) evidence.

Except they don't, really. I don't know if you remember school, but there is a bonkers amount of rote memorisation, and there's a limited amount of "how to think" you can teach a classroom of 30-40 kids who are mostly checked out. Like, I went to several well regarded high schools with pretty good grades, and the vast majority of education is simply remembering work schedules to get particular results. Not that there wasn't some exploratory stuff here and there, and that critical readings of what texts were saying wasn't touched on, but the majority of students struggled with even surface level readings and mathematical proofs.

This argument always bothered me even when I was a lib. Like, assuming that Chinese high schools were just rote memorisation entirely, they would functionally not be that different to our schools.

That was the implied joke, yes. (For clarity, I think I have tasted wet concrete before as a kid, I have not tasted diesel)

I probably cannot live with a lot of people, even if they really need it. I've been woken up by angry housemates one too many times and I'm really not coping.

Wet concrete. Diesel. I think coffee smells way better than it tastes (unlike the other two).

Edit: the top of my cats head

95% of Israelis

Damn, what did those 5% of Israelis say to get in?

Watership down! I shout as a naval vessel lists amidst the smoke, wholly misunderstanding the title of the book

As an alcoholic, yes.

It means you're able to capture enemy buildings, important in today's competitive employment market!

Is there no magic left in the world anymore

What's up with putting solar panels on random infrastructure that isn't roads and parking lots? Like, a parking lot with solar panel cover would both provide a lot of energy and stop people cooking in their cars somewhat