Astronomer, Thesbian, Nerd

1 million seconds is 10 days

1 billion seconds is 30 years

1 trillion seconds is approx 31,688 years

For further context, If Bernie Saunder's 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires had been enacted in 2012, Elon Musk would be worth less than $365 billion instead of the $1.2 trillion that he's worth today. Space Kareb would still be the wealthiest man alive, but very family in America would have universal childcare just from taxing one billionaire 5%

[Yes, I had to do it. Yes, all the voices are me. Lyrics under the cut.]

Kermit: it’s the muppets show!

Female Chorus:

It’s time to burn the incense,

It’s time to slay the sheep,

It’s time to wake the muppets from a thousand years of sleep!

Male Chorus:

It’s time to raze existence,

It’s time to banish light,

It’s time to call the void in on the muppets show tonight!

Statlor: So tell us, where’s your god now?

Waldorf: I guess you’ll never know

Statlor: your life becomes a torture

Both: when we begin the show!

Chorus: And now let’s get things started!

Audience: Why don’t you get things started?

Kermit: It’s time to get things started,

All:

On the aberrational, no-salvational, incantational, muppetational,

it would be so awesome

I was really strict about kids not using "gay" as an insult and a variety of things like that regarding gender, race, and sexuality. About a majority of these interventions were to do with inappropriate usage of the word "gay" specifically.

I had a three strikes policy per kid.

Strike one, I took the attitude that I was dealing with ignorance. I would take it as a learning opportunity and give them a short explanation of why they shouldn't do that. Across eight years of teaching, I'd say 95% of the time people never got beyond that first strike, and I had some kids rom 6-8th grade later on.

Doing it this way was really effective, because I was also teaching the kids around them. When I was teaching 6th later, I'd have kids not involved in the incident come up to me quietly at lunch and thank me because they weren't sure what the word meant. I had others 6-8th thank me privately for making the room feal safer for them (though not in those words).

Doing it this way modelled for those kids how to intervene and what sorts of things to say if someone said something bigoted, and I was incredibly proud every time my kids spoke up when they heard slurs or the like.

Strike two, I came in a lot harder and there were consequences.

Strike three hardly ever happened. Like less than once a year.

The first time there was a strike three was that first year teaching for money in that little school where in the spring we had a choice of sweltering with closed windows and no air-conditioning or the horrific smell of that much cattle poop smell from surrounding farms.

Boy1 said something homophobic. Again. I started my prepared third strike reprimand.

Boy1: Who cares! no one in here is gay!

Boy2, one of the most popular kids in the grade, sitting right behind him at a computer turned around and said with contempt: how would you know! No one would tell you! Everyone knows you're a homophobe.

Until Grace slips out a sentence along the lines of "could you give me a little grace here" and Rocky immediately points out he used a word wrong so Grace has to explain that yeah, grace means elegance but it can also mean mercy sometimes too.

Have you guys seen that clip

The muppets usually work by improv rules. And the golden rule of improv is that you basically never say "no." It shuts down the scene and ruins the fun. It's always "yes, and," to help keep the energy going.

And this flower, we tell children, if you let it bud and bloom and age from sun-yellow flower to moon-white seed, you can then pluck it and blow its seeds away to make a wish.