do not be a hero, and certainly do not be a god

i have a much less rosy view of charter schools given that i was a teacher in a charter school system for 2 years and it was beyond awful

getting class to start on time and have even a modicum of "the teacher proceeds through the lesson without major interruption" is the baseline of function for a classroom, but it was something that i (and most other teachers at this school) could not achieve. the classroom conditions were so bad that one of the 7th grade english teachers, in the middle of class, realized "oh. i don't have to be tortured like this anymore. i can just leave." and walked out of the building lmfao. if you know teachers you know this is a crazy thing to happen. the mid year staff attrittion rate at that school was so high

when i was working there i used to express the problem as like, "if we could just even get to the level of ROLEPLAYING, where i am roleplaying 'being a teacher' and the kids are roleplaying 'being students', that would be a significant improvement" and one of my friends who was at the time studying to be a teacher was like "that is not even a good thing to aim for..." but it was a bar that we could not reach lmao

and this was a prestigious public charter, that prided itself on making kids wear uniforms, and call students "scholars", and name the class years after their college graduation dates rather than hs graduation, etc

anyway. "how does classroom discipline work" is not a question i have an answer to b/c at that school the problem certainly wasn't lack of *effort*, but everything tried fell apart instantly. idk.

but i think the largest and most intractable problem, for both me personally and a lot of teachers around, was that as soon as the classroom culture started to disintegrate, it was impossible to get it back on track.

the most obvious thing, as others have pointed out, is that in treasure island long john silver runs an inn with his wife, a black woman, in bristol, which is absolutely not madi behavior-- i cannot imagine madi would take him back in the first place much less move with him TO ENGLAND-- but IS maxs exact area of expertise. but theres so many other things that cement it for me

as early as episode 2, max tries to convince eleanor to buy out the inn and run it together with her when england takes nassau back. this is her dream-- to share power over her life with a woman she loves, free of the pressures of the outside world. (youll note this also happens to be silvers dream for himself and madi. the parallels)

in season 4 shes faced with the suspiciously similar option to take a husband to be the face of her business, completely on paper, for the sake of the public eye. and she refuses! she doesnt want to give a man that kind of power over her. not only that but she desperately wants to retain some kind of truth in her identity-- she admires anne for her honesty, her courage. these are things she can rarely afford to express. in refusing a marriage of convenience, she asserts her autonomy.

But. black sails tells us over and over again that an oppressive society will always find ways to batter down these private boundaries. there is no island safe from colonial rule. mirandas peaceful house in the interior is burnt to the ground. the maroons are forced to accept a freedom that comes at the price of abandoning those still enslaved and taking part in their continued subjugation. the things it takes to make these spaces are terrible, and unsustainable, and when it comes to being gay in the 1700s there is a tightrope to walk between privilege and privacy, one that destroyed flint and the hamiltons, thats even narrower to max as a self-made woman of color.

given all that, i do not believe she can girlboss her way out of her circumstances no matter how many lessons she took from what happened to eleanor. nor do i think the show believes it. i think the political-marriage-offer plot point is another illustration of that theme-- maxs desire, and silvers desire, to build a warm, happy room in the middle of the imperial machine, without meaningfully striking out against the machine itself, is destined to be futile no matter how strong they are as individuals.

max and silver are mirror images of one another. each of them is essentially the narrator of one half of the story. it is absolutely agonizing how BOTH of them tried to convince their lovers to abandon their ambitions, to settle for a quiet life with them, and in doing so saw that relationship destroyed by their own fear of an uncertain future....

....And its even MORE agonizing to imagine them finally securing the trappings of a domestic life... but without the love. and they know the love was what mattered! theyre always going to know!!!

Confirmed.

"training AI on a book without paying for it is stealing" -> "fine, we'll buy the book"

"if you pay for one copy you can only keep one copy" -> "okay, so we'll shred the physical copy and keep the digital one"

"now nobody can read it!" -> "you couldn't read our copy anyway, because we're not interested in selling it, and you've set up a legal framework where you can't read books without paying for them"

Point 3 has been a problem as long as books and markets have existed. Point 2 is the most common legal solution for digital lending libraries. The only thing that's new is point 1, and that's a direct response to lawsuits that people on this website have long cheered.

Me: yes, in various forms, but you have to understand that the primary reason I and others in our species participate in this particular ritual is to ritually invoke erotic mating behaviors by using a phallic symbol to communicate our readiness to copulate and our laxness with traditional contending ritual doctrines discouraging mating.

Alien: Ah, so this goes back to that Freud guy you talked about before.

Me: on some level. He had some less advanced analytical technologies but they were typical of his era.

Alien: I see. And this is a “heterosexual” behavior?

Me: actually the ritual itself is sexuality agnostic. By invoking primary images of sexuality, we’re able to utilize these symbols outside of their conventional contexts, by making symbolic references to them.

Alien: are these references like the references you mentioned in rust programming of memory pointers?

Me: yeah, you got it! and therein lies the eroticism of programming the machine. It’s why the machine is related to sexually by many humans.

Alien: fascinating.

Me: humans also use this ritual to find willing mates by prompting other humans to ask us if they can participate in the ritual with us. But this isn’t always the case, and that ambiguity —

Alien: creates tension in the uncertainty. It’s all play again, I see.

Me: precisely.

Alien: can I bum a smoke off you?

Me: ;)

The doping of graphene with a plethora of elements has been reported as enhancing its electrocatalytic performance. It has become almost a paradigm that the once fantastic graphene for electrocatalysis is not so fantastic anymore and that we need to add something to it (i.e., a dopant) to make it great again...

having an evil shishu: also extremely normal. what, you can have an evil shixiong but your shifu can’t? grow up.

having an evil shidi: also fairly common, although there might be a larger issue at play so keep your eyes open for that

having an evil shifu: this is itself an issue, since you are now in one of the classic Confucian Conundrums and have to choose between sacrificing righteousness or filial piety