Random-Interesting-Weird

[Malcador]

https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/4/181833/Sleepy-Hong-Kong-residents-get-5-hour-"Sleeping-Bus-Tour"

"The 76-kilometer, five-hour ride on a regular double-decker bus around the territory is meant to appeal to people who are easily lulled to sleep by long rides. It was inspired by the tendency of tired commuters to fall asleep on public transit."

[Sarex]

35 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Well if it were debris in the barrel, could still injure multiple people with one shot, like a shotgun, no ?

[Malcador]

As Amentep said, fair assumption to say this was a POV shot and they were close in.  Sounds like the usual situation when it comes to safety, over time it becomes  - "It never happens".

[Hurlshort]

https://principalsdesk.org/2021/10/11/toxic-positivity-is-hurting-education/?fbclid=IwAR1Ylw0ZCtO_q2NEXj4clie6BRhdtDwuTtCGunf4WK8lyElABas3TY6DIkc

It's important to remember that this is a long career with highs and lows. Being awesome isn't worth it if someone burns out a few years in. Teachers need to manage expectations and time. 

On another education note, this lady is facing some serious heat: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-21/riverside-teacher-suspended-after-mimicking-native-americans-in-viral-video

I'm not going to defend her lesson. It was very tone deaf. I don't understand how she managed to do that bit for years without a High Schooler or co-worker pointing out how bad it was. But some of the reactions show a total lack of understanding about how education works. People are blaming the entire school district, the administration, etc. Do people understand that there are a thousand lessons being taught on every individual campus every day? There is no way to track and control this stuff. You hire a professional and hope they know what they are doing.

I'm not sure how they move forward, other than issuing apologies. She doesn't deserve to lose her job for a bad lesson. Hopefully she can ride out the bad press and quietly transfer to another school or something. What a mess. Why go into education, again? For the outcome, not the income?

[Sarex]

 

[Gorth]

On 10/23/2021 at 12:33 AM, Malcador said:

As Amentep said, fair assumption to say this was a POV shot and they were close in.  Sounds like the usual situation when it comes to safety, over time it becomes  - "It never happens".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59018391

 

Apparently Alec Baldwin was handed a loaded gun with a real bullet in it. The guy who was injured was standing behind the woman who got killed and was hit in the shoulder as it passed through her.

 

Meanwhile, the BBC has obtained a document showing which crew members were listed as scheduled to be on set that day.

It names a head armourer, the crew member responsible for checking firearms. Hannah Gutierrez Reed is in her twenties and, according to the LA Times, had recently worked in this role for the first time.

 

Looks like the head armourer messed up on her first day on the job...

[Malcador]

Ah ok, stand corrected

[Guard Dog]

150 mph without a driver: Indy autonomous cars gear up for race

Please, please tell me the cars are controlled by teenagers with X-Box controllers!

[Raithe]

This warehouse contains Switzerland's high-level nuclear waste from 45 years of power generation.
I mean it to make just two points about nuclear waste. The first is that there is so little of it. compared with any other technology, the waste it produces per joule of energy generated is minute. In fact, there's a growing movement arguing long-term storage of high-level waste is not even a necessity, when we can just monitor it at the surface for its whole lifespan, or until fast reactors reuse it as fuel.
The other is that a guy is quite happily standing there and not being dead. Which I'm led to believe could come as a surprise to some people.

 

[Raithe]

Herein lies the impossible irony of suggesting that vaccine skeptics talk to their doctors and of assuming that this patient-physician bond represents a durable and valued connection between individuals and the larger institutions of health and medicine. No such bonds exist anymore. Like so many other stories of the “declining trust in institutions,” the real story is not the decline in trust per se, but rather the failure of the institution. The increasingly expensive, arcane, and impersonal US health care system, with its harried practitioners, shock billing, impenetrable insurance coverages, and regionally monopolistic consolidation, leaves no room for trust, and certainly has no time for conversation.

Is it really so surprising then that millions of Americans are more trusting of their favorite local radio personality, who talks to them for three or four hours every day (at least until he, too, dies of preventable Covid), or of the friends in their Facebook groups, than they are of a strange doctor whom they might see for three uncomfortable minutes once a year — often after an enraging two hours in a waiting room for an appointment made months prior?

- Jacob Bacharach, Talk to Your Doctor

[Raithe]

Beyond Dark Academia: The Real Horror in Magic School Is Systemic Inequality | Tor.com

[Raithe]

Superhero cosplay makes you a better person for one science-backed reason (inverse.com)

[Gromnir]

3 hours ago, Raithe said:

Beyond Dark Academia: The Real Horror in Magic School Is Systemic Inequality | Tor.com

we got no problem with egalitarian magic, accessible to the plebs, but am thinking the author o' the article doesn't know her audience. even in pnp a computer rpgs where it is reasonable to have magic be balanced with sword havers and other users o' mundane tools, is common to see players complain if magic is not special enuff. 

so what we get in fantasy lit is the traditional school o' magic, which appears to be based exeter or similar real world prep schools or colleges, but the protagonist is frequent a character straight outta a horatio alger tale. even if the protagonist is special and maybe even marked before birth by prophecy, she had to work twice as hard to get into the magic school and once there she is constant needing overcome the prejudices o' her classmates and even her teachers-- through moxie and perhaps a bit o' luck, she overcomes all odds and obstacles.

*groan*

am not happy with such fare, but is understandable how we get to such a place, 'cause is the audiences who want magic to be special.

HA! Good Fun!

[ShadySands]

8 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

is common to see players complain if magic is not special enuff. 

Hey! I resemble that remark

But that article reminds me of why I like Shadowrun. Magic isn't exactly rare and anyone can potentially get it and even though it remains pretty powerful it doesn't automatically mean a rise in station or anything like that.

[Gromnir]

30 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Hey! I resemble that remark

But that article reminds me of why I like Shadowrun. Magic isn't exactly rare and anyone can potentially get it and even though it remains pretty powerful it doesn't automatically mean a rise in station or anything like that.

the thing is, am suspecting if an author wrote a shadowrun story which focused on a school in the setting, following multiple students post matriculation, the institution in question would not be based on front range community college. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Azdeus]

I'd hate for being a teen in Shadowrun, imagin goblinizing in school... Yikes.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Azdeus

[Raithe]

For the random internet weirdness that might or might not give some pause for thought.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Raithe

[Guard Dog]

First the Gromnir disclaimer. This image is being posted purely for humorous purposes no actual comparisons are being drawn between the two entities. It’s a freaking joke, laugh at it or don’t.

Now then…

@HurlshotI figured you’d get a chuckle from this

since both are run by the state I guess it’s true what they say. When the only tool you possess as a hammer everything starts to look like a nail!

[Gfted1]

The prison corndog doesnt come with a stick.

[Guard Dog]

I guess another thing they sort of have in common is kids will wind up graduating from one or the other!

[Hurlshort]

Also, since Columbine, they have put up massive gates and fences at almost every school. 

[Malcador]

3 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

First the Gromnir disclaimer. This image is being posted purely for humorous purposes no actual comparisons are being drawn between the two entities. It’s a freaking joke, laugh at it or don’t.

Now then…

@HurlshotI figured you’d get a chuckle from this

since both are run by the state I guess it’s true what they say. When the only tool you possess as a hammer everything starts to look like a nail!

Missing a photo of the "playground" some of the ones in my city look like prison yards, chain link fence, asphalt concrete. 

[Gromnir]

probably isn't immediate recognizable, but the tables in the prison lunchroom is immovable. more obvious is all the windows in the multipurpose room o' the school. 

the thing is, the stuff being shown is gonna look similar for church retreats and youth camps too 'cause there is efficient ways to achieve goals and until somebody invents a better mousetrap, you is gonna see a replication o' means. cafeteria style lunches is gonna be an efficient way to feed a large group o' people. buses is an efficient way to transport large numbers o' people. 

side note, am never seeing the old skool buses being used for prison transport in ca these days. 

gonna bet those beasts is expensive and the contract to modify such is lucrative.

HA! Good Fun!

ps one o' the more amusing quirks o' corrections facilities is food allergies. residents self-report food allergies and is always the folks who believe they has gamed the system by choosing the right food allergies to get the best meals possible. various pasta w/tomato sauce entrees is not popular, so is many residents who claim to be allergic to tomatoes. have eaten the meals the residents get and most o' it is good, but am admitting the meat & tomato sauce accompanying pasta were kinda terribad. unfortunate for the folks gaming the system, maybe once a month or so, there were a food item on the menu near everybody loved-- the mcrib sandwich. 'course it weren't mcdonalds, but if you had the mcdonalds version and the corrections version side-by-side, chances are the superior version would be the corrections offering.  double-whammy for the gamers: pork; tomato. the barbecue sauce were tomato based. 

converse, am recalling a guy who were listed as being allergic to strawberries. in addition to meals, these guys would get snacks... brand name stuff as often as not. cheeze-its were common, and messy. pop-tarts were also a frequent provided snack, and there is a strawberry variety o' poptarts which, go figure, actual has enough real strawberries in it to send a guy with a strawberry allergy into anaphylactic shock. so you got staff not recognizing the food allergy and a resident who is quite literal insane and suicidal, and next thing you know the paramedics is showing up to rush the loon to a hospital and the negligent staff is all but certain he is gonna be fired. 

Edited October 29, 2021 by Gromnir

[Raithe]

Independent - Architect resigns in protest over UCSB mega-dorm

"Criticizes Munger Hall as 'Social and Psychological Experiment' with Unknown Consequences"

A consulting architect on UCSB’s Design Review Committee has quit his post in protest over the university’s proposed Munger Hall project, calling the massive, mostly-windowless dormitory plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”

Edited October 30, 2021 by Raithe

[Gromnir]

4 hours ago, Raithe said:

Independent - Architect resigns in protest over UCSB mega-dorm

"Criticizes Munger Hall as 'Social and Psychological Experiment' with Unknown Consequences"

 

another example o' form following function. if you don't win the housing lottery as a ucsb student, you need find non-university housing. 

Must UCSB Students Live in Their Cars?

result is proposed housing which looks very institutional, yes? is just no acreage to build a sprawling housing development on campus, so you get a design stressing efficient use o' space. 

edit: am gonna admit to being disappointed in the UC system. munger hall is most definite not an enlightened or creative solution to a persistent problem. design choice is also a teaching opportunity. the chosen solution is barely deserving a passing grade as only minimum requirements is met w/o anything innovative or unique being contributed.  

HA! Good Fun!

Edited October 30, 2021 by Gromnir