I have lived in places where the speed limit is very obviously around 10 mph too low for the road’s engineering and surrounding environment, consistently. Consequently, there is truly no one during busy times doing the speed limit.

This gives police the ability to pull over anyone, at their discretion, with direct legal cause (not even the “immune from consequences in practice” kind). Even driving the speed limit creates a hazard and merits intervention according to the law.

The place I’m describing was very racist, driving while black was absolutely unofficially illegal, and this lets cops pick and choose in all the worst ways.

Be deeply suspicious of any law that is routinely broken by everyone for years with no change - it is to allow arbitrary, bigoted enforcement.

Feeling hopeful about giant tech companies ignoring attempts to reign them in is unwise, even when it occasionally lines up with something you personally want. And I even say that as someone with permanent distrust of the big power structures doing the regulating.

Doesn’t help that the English adjective “stoic” is used to describe exactly that, usually with a very positive connotation, to boot.

Couldn’t agree more with you both though, in my experience Stoicism offers some of the most broadly-applicable pragmatic advice of all the thought traditions I’ve encountered (with shoutouts to a few others, Buddhism being one, parts of which add up to similar practical advice).

The misunderstanding of it is kind of a sad tragedy, given how many of us could benefit from the teachings. Plus it’s very secular (unless I misremember), which ought to make it more accessible. Bummer.

Chaos and destruction alone remain the companions of the terrible goose.

Geese are some hideous demon’s creation. The Canada goose in particular is a creature built to desanctify life itself.

“oh that? Yeah that’s my poopin’ wedge, wanna take her for a spin?”

I was just fooling around.

If you think you’re too good to get your hands dirty planting new-cat seeds, and you just want to enjoy them once they leave the vine, you’ve really got some thinking to do.

These are arguments to refuse censorship much harder, not to comply.

Really wish we would all shun this voluntary self-censoring of very mild words. Fuck the platforms and their algorithms and fuck the people who censor basic language.

Haha hell yeah, enjoy!

AC6 was so great, I went directly from NG -> NG+ -> NG++, which I never do. Never wanted it to end.

where all the tubes and knobs rise out of it and retract back in

what the fuck

Woof, that’s hilarious and annoying. Food service from what I understand has super thin margins - things like fountain drink sodas (and alcohol sales at other spots) do a lot of the work on keeping the place economically viable. Not excusing that guy’s pettiness but if you see weird behavior around a specific ingredient or item, it’s probably something along those lines.

I’m advocating for a mixed approach that serves more kids, and arguing that you had such a mixed approach yourself but don’t seem to acknowledge it.

Memorization (done properly, that is - I invoked “spaced repetition”, an evidence-based learning technique from the field of education, you’re the one talking about corporal punishment from nuns) is effective in precisely this and related domains having tons of minutiae.

It’s not that learning the process is inefficient, that’s not what I meant - learning only the process and not focusing on rote memorization as well leaves you with only the process to rely on when learning further math (your experience sounds like you got both, regarding multiplication).

Relying on only rules/processes to complete intermediate steps that are not the subject under instruction is what is inefficient. Using rules to reach simple multiplication facts when trying to learn algebra or even just long division is brutal for kids with any attention difficulty whatsoever. By the time they’ve solved the multiplication answer they wanted, they’ve lost the thread on the new concept. Rote memorization reduces the effort needed to use multiplication when learning everything else. It doesn’t feel that you’re reading very carefully here, but it could be me who failed to make myself plain.

I myself am a process guy and high on pattern-seeking. I write software for a living and live in abstractions layered on abstractions - even the physics is invisible lol, nothing (but fans and I guess HDD heads where still used) ever moves. It all feels like pretend!

My point is that understanding processes and relationships in the space of numbers can arise FROM being forced to learn many small truths over and over. A student can identify patterns (the shortcuts) from just learning the facts. Similarly you can get to the facts if you understand the process - like most math there’s a lovely symmetry there that you seem unwilling to agree with me about. They both inform and train the brain differently and you seem to have benefitted from that yourself.

We need both, and rote memorization is especially useful in a small number of domains, irreplaceable. Anyone who has gone through an Anatomy & Physiology class successfully will agree too, and I can give more examples. There’s no “process” or rules involved.

Anyway, I think we’re mostly talking past each other and probably mostly agree.

You’re a real one!

I don’t mean to be picking fights with you but this is a topic I care about - I really think it’s a mistake to say “I was exposed to this material much earlier and therefore picked it up faster and more robustly” and then claim that’s an argument against rote memorization. Especially considering how few kids are keeping up in math. Your experience was very fortunate and largely uncommon.

The rules and shortcuts you’re describing are absolutely part of the work I’m doing with my daughter, but they go hand-in-hand with the “spaced repetition” (ish) approach we’re focusing on, of just iterating a lot. One without the other is much weaker - mnemonics are extremely valuable aids, but none of it sticks without repetition. I’d say that all tasks involving remembering lots of minutiae (contrasted with remembering processes) greatly benefit from mnemonics, but fully require rote memorization practice in order to have the dexterity needed for quick recall that doesn’t get in the way. So things like chemistry, anatomy, case law.

It’s true that multiplication can be kept strictly a “learn the process” task, but your other points kind of just say that the repetition that comes in a person’s life later on finishes that work / replaces the dedicated memorization phase. And frankly the process you went through sounds like it involved a standard amount of repetition, you just had a head start so it didn’t feel as new or as uncomfortable.

I say only learning the processes is extremely inefficient and will make learning any more advanced math much, much harder. Lacking that strong basis of recall, kids have to think to do the multiplication that is merely an intermediate step and not at all part of the material being learned, moving forward. This reduces (greatly) their ability to engage with the actual subject matter because they are already working to complete the intermediate steps. I’ve seen it happen firsthand - I think you mean well, but I think your POV on multiplication is way wrong and actually harmful here.

E: I’m conflating mnemonics with arithmetic shortcuts here, I hope you’ll forgive that. They’re related - remembering one arithmetic shortcut gives you access to many answers, and usually mnemonics serve a similar “get lots of stuff for one significant remembered thing” kind of role.

Completely agree with you. But hilariously, 9 stacks of 6 bricks only accounts for 54 of them…please don’t change it lmao

I take your point but multiplication is a really bad example. It’s one of the few things in life where really doing the rote memorization well, once, pays off lifelong. It can be argued “doesn’t pay off lifelong for everyone!”, and I mean, strictly speaking that’s true.

But not learning multiplication properly is basically a death sentence for keeping up with later math classes, which is exactly what convinces a kid they are “bad at math” and shouldn’t pursue entire areas of the working world, generally very rewarding areas, too.

My daughter is not naturally strong at math and I am naturally not authoritarian, but this is one case where being forced to do the work properly one good time (as in learn it truly well, once) is too valuable to let slip.

No u - go learn.