Do you think the department of education writes the textbooks, standardized tests (SAT, ACT, etc.), grading and student management software, learning management systems (Google Classroom, Canvas), or manufactures its own classroom tech (Chromebooks, tablets)?

Each one of those has a bunch of particular nuances, but in general - yeah, I think they could and should in a lot of those cases

The education system is full of for-profit businesses that can jack up the prices, and they do.

Yeah, it’s a big problem with a lot of little parts to be tackled

The DOE simply doesn’t have the resources to create these things themselves

Then government should give them the resources (actually, I think a whole separate agency that develops open source software for any government agency or anyone else who wants to use them should be established, but that’s kind of besides the point).

and would cost them far more if they tried

I don’t think that’s true, and even if it were I think we should be willing to pay premium to make sure essential systems that support the public good are being administered in democratic ways (e.g. by public agencies that are required to give public reports to elected lawmakers and be subject to citizens’ FOIA requests).

the business model has existed forever

A lot of stupid ideas hang on for a really long time. Like, we still have monarchies in the 21st century world.

Personally, I’m more concerned with the use of Google products in schools. A company that’s sole business is harvesting user data and selling it to advertisers should have no place in schools or children’s products. But they’ve embedded themselves into everything so people just accept it at the cost of privacy

I 100% agree this is a significant problem too, I just haven’t come across any good articles about it recently

Exactly, they’re a captive audience, and moreover they are legally incompetent to consent to a contracted business relationship like this

If this was a department of education AI or even some kind of transparently administered non-profit organization I’d be fine with this, but the fact that this is being developed for some for profit company that can just jack their rates and cut off public schools whenever they want to is bullshit. Like, I’m not opposed to the technology of LLMs at all, I think they’re actually pretty neat, but our social and economic systems have a lot of exploitative trash in them that cool technologies can inadvertently exacerbate.

TBH I don’t want have to change at all, I’m just saying in the magic genie scenario I’d wish that people agreed with me

An American security contractor and a Chinese embassy employee are at a bar. The American says, “I gotta say, your propaganda is impressive. You sure know how to keep your people in line.”

“Oh, you’re too gracious,” the embassy worker says. “And besides, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda.”

The contractor chokes on his drink and gives his friend a bewildered look.

“What are you talking about? There’s no propaganda in America.”

I wish I was persuasive

There are more than three things

Not everything that is worth discussing has a source. Abstract ideas and hypothetical scenarios (among other things) have their places in rhetoric and communication.

A lot of people who think they’re saying “[actual fact]” are really just stating “[subjective opinion]” and call any criticism of their opinions “[incoherent rage]”

The President Called all the Artists by Micah Sommersmith

*Independent organization that the US occasionally allows to meet with and assist some recent migrants doesn’t change broader US policy to exclude people attempting to migrate from countries in the Global South, in spite of the fact that many of those countries are violently oppressive towards their LGBTQ+ populations

Like, good for them doing what they’re doing, but it really doesn’t address the underlying problems here

Ah you are totally right and thank you for the correction, I got taught at a young age by a very nice but very overworked public school music teacher that there were just eight notes and not to worry about anything more complicated than that and my brain always really wants to default back to that

I don’t know for sure, but the Jaws theme is definitely a half-step interval, so the spacing of the keys in the meme is right at least

Random trivia I learned from a music theory YouTuber, the bass line to Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name kind of does the same thing, except instead of going back and forth a single half step it does nine (aka, an eight note octave plus one note)

FWIW, the article author also wrote a book called “Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food”

Poltifact: “Mostly false”

Not the most evil bastard in history, but I think the world would be a vastly different and better place if Klemens von Metternich died young.

he did.

*organized labor forced him to do.

You might dig No Joy, Lush, Cindy Lee, the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine

What the hell is shoegaze, anyway?

Ask four different people and you’ll get four different answers, but the term first started to get thrown at bands as an insult around the late 80s in the UK because guitarists in certain alternative bands would be using so many different effects during their performances they’d spend the whole show staring at their pedalboards (I think a review of a My Bloody Valentine show in particular is where the term got coined)

Yeah, I’m not a Texan but I also disagree about this. Also, Austin has produced some amazing music over the years (for example, random Austin band I’ve been in love with recently is Being Dead).

I found a higher resolution one and a bit of an article, although they don’t really explain much

https://web.archive.org/web/20200816121832/https://artsy-media-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/HiVTd7WUmjjxXoqN-R_E5Q%2FHotPotEndPaper_HIRESPRESS+copy.jpg

No other cartoonist’s work functions so well as “art” in the so-called “art world.” [Marc] Bell’s giddy drawing energy vaporizes these false distinctions. He developed his chops as a cartoonist making Crumb-influenced strips for weekly newspapers in the ’90s. An important scene of collaborative ’zine-making developed across Canada at this time, in which Bell participated, fostering, collecting, and documenting these works in the crucial anthology Nog A Dod: Prehistoric Canadian Psychedooolia.

In the 2000s, Bell made an important strip called Gustun, which cast Philip Guston as a comic character, in essence claiming him for comics. Alongside a series of weekly Shrimpy and Paul strips he drew for local papers, Bell began to create large collages and ultra-dense drawings. This work (collected in the monograph Hot Potatoe) absorbed the image-fracturing strategies of Ray Yoshida and the Chicago Imagists. Just as the Hairy Who successfully ignored the ’60s New York art scene, Bell’s work contains a world of inside jokes and regional myth building that is inherently critical of what he called the “Bloo Chip” system, prompting the question: Isn’t it the artists who work outside of the dominant dialogue who end up seeming most relevant?

In Bell’s early-2000s work, shown at Adam Baumgold’s idiosyncratic uptown New York gallery, text and image became fused in meditative and overwhelming drawings. They’re something like ornate encrustations of the subconscious. Comparisons to Adam Dant, Paul Noble, and Bruce Conner would not be misplaced. Recently, he has returned to comics with the graphic novel Stroppy, which encompasses in its satirical field not only capitalism but poetry and mini-golf.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240817121508/https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-cartoonists-art-lover