David_Conroy

@ChanukahZ3 @Purity_Troll @kripchakmentum @Minorityr3p0rt @camkasky @infinite_jaz @RoKhanna "Indigenous to the Arabian peninsula" is a racist Zionist propaganda lie. Palestinian Arabs have roughly twice as much average ancestry specifically traceable to ancient southern-Levant populations as the present Israeli-Jewish population as a whole.

@Purity_Troll @kripchakmentum @Minorityr3p0rt @camkasky @infinite_jaz @RoKhanna Yes decolonization is when Jews move back to their indigenous homeland, the land of Israel. The palestinian arabs are indigenous to the Arabian peninsula & like all arabs outside of the arabian peninsula the palestinians are colonists.

At the end of an interview with @infinite_jaz, Congressman @RoKhanna was asked if he would be willing to take a Palestinian-led tour of the West Bank to see the reality of the cruel injustices they face under occupation. We just got back.

@midwitologist @ben_m_somers Some of their in house stuff is legit

There are all these these valid critiques, but let’s just ignore them and pretend they are legit and accomplished something significant. The truth is that half the “curriculum” is 3rd party EdTech slop they cobbled together. The other half is in-house-made programs that we have no reason to believe are any better than stuff already on the market. It's really not a reinvention of education whatsoever. It's just marketing for people who want to believe.

Alpha School made a groundbreaking change to how we teach kids academics that every school should copy They started A/B testing every piece of learning material to give kids the most effective materials for every topic To accomplish this, they needed to divorce mastery tracking from curriculum. They needed to build a "routing" layer that has independent diagnostics/assessment in order to be able to run these A/B tests We're taking this one step farther at Recess; our product has a recursive/self-improving loop similar to how tiktok works. We're building an independent assessment and tracking layer, and then using classic ML-based-recommendation systems to show kids content for each node. This will automate the A/B tests and also allow different kids to get different types of content based on what will perform the best for them, vs. having one population-level curriculum that all kids follow. It's a bit like the difference between a cable television network and Youtube. Cable television creates a "program schedule". There's a set playlist of shows coming up and you follow that. Alpha is a GREAT network cable show; think HBO. Our approach looks more like HBO Max or Netflix or Youtube; we still syndicate all that amazing content, but every user is recommended slightly different content that makes sense for them. Not all users will see the same content; some will get content that no one else on the platform gets

@lelemSLP @StGeorgeofTuf Ok proud fellow Zionist, when do we start bulldozing the illegal Israeli settlements? Lest go!

@StGeorgeofTuf Zionist just means not wanting an existing country Israel to be destroyed. This should be normal opinion for any normal person, no?

This is me 30 years ago. Happy and proud to serve my country. I came to Israel with my family when I was 15. We had a good life in Lithuania, but my parents decided make Aliyah, because we were/are Zionists. I finished high school and then served in IDF. Now, 30 years later, many people in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, with their brains clouded with hate, are absolutely ready to murder me, for the sin of living in my country and serving for a year and a half in the army of my country. Literally basic things that all the other humans on Earth are allowed to do. But they made up special rules for Jews.

@ufijuice @garrytan Bbñ. B

@garrytan lol that kind of thinking is the reason why everything was going downhill in the last 20y; answering a known question is just a database request, actual thinking is different -- but the selection process was biased to retards that can't think but memorize useless info

Elite admissions select for one trait: getting the known answer faster than anyone else. 18 years of optimizing against an answer key someone already wrote. AI just made the answer key free. Everyone has it instantly now. So the kids trained hardest to win spent their whole lives mastering the one thing that's now a commodity. The premium moved to the questions with no answer key yet. We need a new training. The new training is about one thing: How to be the first person standing in a new land, exploring it, preparing it for the coming billion people who will need it. The future will be built by these people. And there is a lot to build.

@NaomiBinyanAtid He didn't call it genocide, idiot, he called it ethnic cleansing. But "expelling and evicting people isn't ethnic cleansing" doesn't work, does it. It's cartoonishly stupid as well as cartoonishly evil.

Expelling people who don't want to be citizens and who don't recognize your government's sovereignty is not genocide. Neither is evicting people who squat in houses they don't own and refuse to pay rent for. Nor is demolishing houses built w/o a permit in protected zones where building is not allowed. x.com/i/status/20656…

I used to feel sorry for these people but, after hearing the Israeli side of this story, I have no sympathy for Jordanian squatters in Jerusalem, and I even resent how I was manipulated into pitying them to begin with. They can live anywhere else in Israel but choose contention and to serve as placeholders for a future Islamic conquest, like fifth columnists. Israel should have deported all Jordanians who refused Israeli citizenship. Israeli patience has been immeasurable.

@boneseggsbones @liron @teortaxesTex @DeenBot Fantastic series of responses here

@liron @teortaxesTex @DeenBot "‘I didn’t look into the incident.’ There it is. The rationalist who admits he doesn't need data as long as he has hate to guide his implications. You are actively promoting antisemitism while debasing your Doom Debates brand.

Sad thing about Jews is that they *are* clever; but they are so used to dealing with retards that they overestimate it. It's easy to see why Zionists resist anti-Zionism (duh). A switch to "Palestinianism" is an attempt to smuggle in "Zionism REQUIRES elimination of Palestine".

@greg_ashman x.com/i/status/20313… He's a prime offender himself.

Is this ‘whole raft of commentators’ in the room with you right now?

@cbokhove @SterlingSimmon6 2/2 the Stockard study explicitely set out to include a systematic analysis of lower-powered and lower quality studies, and that it found that results were robust to differing metodological approaches and sample sizes.

@cbokhove @SterlingSimmon6 1/2 You've commented before on both the Stockard review and the WWC report. You described the highly contestable WWC inclusion criteria (1 study remained (!!!)) as "probably too stringent" and the Stockard criteria as "too broad", despite the fact that

I think we need to be careful with rhetoric like 'burying' as this far too much conjures up images of subterfuge. We see that far too often already in social media's responses to science. There are reasonable criticisms of Direct Instruction (which is *not* explicit instruction).

@eduleadership @ben_m_somers @kutluokan Two things are true: most tech use in schools heretofore has been deleterious; correct use of correct tech programs (of which there are few) has enormous potential

@ben_m_somers @kutluokan A good overview of the research is here: thefp.com/p/we-gave-stud…

Tech guys are rediscovering the table of contents and representing it in 3D

@DKThomp @grok remind me Nicolas nassim talebs statins thesis

I have to hand it to anti-medicine influencers. They are very, very, very clever about bullshitting their audience. Statins are a popular drug, with a low side-effect profile for most patients, which have been repeatedly shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, the most common cause of death in most developed countries. So, how the hell do you argue against statins? By creating a highly specific scenario and reporting the benefit in extremely tendentious terms. More than 90 percent of people who have a heart attack don't die of a heart attack within the next 5 years. So if you ask "how much extra life will a statin give you in those 5 years?" the answer will be small. You can make it seem like statins don't do anything by analyzing their life-saving effect within a population group that mostly isn't going to die, anyway! The below is like saying, "if you wear a bike helmet for a year after being in a bicycle accident, it only increases your life expectancy by 19 minutes." Well ... haha, yeah! You have framed the scenario in a perfect way to make bike helmets look worthless! Very clever!

@havivrettiggur @grok Is us military aid to Israel essentially a loan or essentially a cash transfer. Fully fleshed out unbiased and committal argument please.

Glenn is wrong on basic facts. But even if his facts were right, he still can't explain the completely unique importance of Israel to the Western left. He proves it here in every step where he tries to disprove it. (Sorry it's long. It's more for the record than to get clicks. Plug it into your favorite AI for a summary.) The wrong facts: Biden didn't give Israel "$18 billion in cash alone." He gave Israel a credit line that can only be used to purchase directly from US defense contractors. It was almost all hardware, and a significant portion of it (almost $7 billion) was replenishment of purely defensive missile-defense systems -- systems mostly jointly developed with the US and which then, after using Israeli knowhow to build out the world's most cutting-edge missile defense technology, are being integrated into the US arsenal. David's Sling and Arrow are developed jointly, Iron Beam was developed together with Lockheed Martin. Iron Dome is co-owned. In other words, part of that transfer of money is essentially federal grants to US arms manufacturers, and part of it is America basically using Israel as a cost-effective R&D shop to upgrade its own capabilities. That figure also includes the costs of US operations in the region. It's a bit rich to try to argue that these operations are only to protect Israel. US operations against the Houthis, for example, weren't about Israel at all, and in fact did nothing for Israel. Houthi attacks had already shut down and bankrupted Eilat Port by the time America got into the picture. The shipping blockade was mostly hurting Egypt and the Europeans. (This was JD Vance's complaint about Trump's attacks on the Houthis: Why weren't the Europeans doing it?) I should say; I'm not exactly strongly opposed to weaning Israel off US aid. Israel is rich now, richer per capita than Britain and France. And Israel has always respected the American taxpayer far more than America's European allies ever did. Consider this: Even before October 7, Israel spent some 5% of its GDP on its own defense -- and only then asked America for help. Europe, on the other hand, spends an average of just 1.9% on defense -- far less than America's 3.5% -- and receives $60 billion a year from America in the costs of deployments to protect Europe. One of these relationships is respectful and mutual. The other is disrespectful and exploitative. I'll let the mathematicians in the crowd figure out which is which. If the aid ends, Israel won't fall. And America will still be buying Israeli tech. And if you stop looking at cashflow and just count the actual hardware America is sending over to the region, it might be worth noticing that America has sold Saudi Arabia three times more military hardware (in dollar value) than it's ever sold to Israel. This is mostly wrong too: "The US gives billions more to countries like Egypt and Jordan to prop up governments on the condition that they don't oppose Israel." That money was originally to bolster the peace, yes. But it's not about that anymore. Try to take away the aid to Egypt and you'll hear from Egyptians that their economy is teetering on the edge of collapse. Abandon Jordan to their own devices and you'll hear from Jordanians that Iran and Turkey are trying to overthrow the monarchy and turn the country Islamist. It really isn't about Israel anymore. "The US uses its veto power at the UN and isolates itself from the world to shield Israel, as it did multiple times under Biden." This is true, but it's also a stupid direction for Glenn to go. Because UN votes are about as ridiculously lopsided against Israel as you can get. There are more censures of Israel in UN institutions each year than against all the dictatorships and rights abusers of the world combined. And it's not close. Even if you genuinely hate Israel, surely we can agree that it isn't worse than North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, Belarus and Iran combined, right? Bringing the UN into this conversation is a data point in my favor, a demonstration of the completely unique place of Israel in the leftist imagination. "As for why there were Gaza protests in the EU and elsewhere, that's simple: EU countries, the UK, Australia, Canada are massive pro-Israel governments that aid and support Israel in countless ways." What? You could, at a stretch, make this argument of Germany. But Spain? Italy? Canada? This is just pablum to mask the point that Glenn can't actually explain the unique scale, duration and regularity of the anti-Israel protests in these countries using the military-aid excuse. "Their citizens are also responsible for what Israel did in Gaza, which is why they protest." Yeesh. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are among the world's largest arms exporters. The Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war (85,000 children died in that war from starvation alone) flew Eurofighter Typhoons (made jointly by Germany, Spain, UK and Italy) and drove Leclerc tanks (France). If selling Israel weapons systems makes Britons "responsible" for Gaza, why did no German, Frenchman, Italian or Spaniard feel responsible for Yemen? Why did no one in those countries march? Why did no one even notice? Glenn is again making my point while trying to argue I don't have a point. "Middle East citizens protest in part because many of their governments accommodate Israel (Jordan, Egypt), while others feel a kinship with Palestinians for religious and ethnic reasons." Why don't Arab nations feel a kinship with Yemenis? Or Syrians? Turkish forces alone probably killed several thousand Syrians in that country in recent years. Why don't Turks seem to care? More to the point, Glenn, what are those "religious and ethnic reasons" that make 400,000 dead Yemenis at Arab hands a cultural irrelevance in the Arab world -- not to mention the man-made catastrophes in Sudan and Libya -- while Gaza alone sets the region on fire? "By contrast, the US Government doesn't support or aid Iran and is no way responsible for what it's doing." Agreed. But you know, Amnesty International USA couldn't even bring themselves to condemn the regime. And that's their one job. Why is that? And US allies using vast quantities of US weapons systems are backing different sides in the catastrophic Sudan war. Does America really have so little potential leverage there that it's not even worth talking about the humanitarian catastrophe underway there? "Protests would be irrelevant and nonsensical." Every single Iranian protestor or advocate you'll speak to -- have you spoken to any? -- will tell you that Western attention right now is vital. You're choosing to believe that your voice would be irrelevant because you don't want to feel guilty for your own emotional distance. A great and powerful cognitive dissonance is driving your strange new dismissal of the power of activism, of speaking truth to power. "It'd make far more sense to demand that Americans, British and Europeans protest the savage, brutal repression in Saudi Arabia and Egypt since those governments actually fund and prop up those tyrannies." Sure, that would make sense. So where is that demand? Where is that protest?

@JimGamble_INEQE @greg_ashman @ktibus @oldandrewuk @educationgovuk @CSPR_Panel @Ofstednews @hackneycouncil @lscp_chscp As Greg said, transparent.

@greg_ashman @ktibus @oldandrewuk @educationgovuk @CSPR_Panel @Ofstednews @hackneycouncil @lscp_chscp As I said, when you have something evidence based and serious get back to me.

My response to a DfE Behaviour Advisor’s comments on the #CSPR of #MossbourneVictoriaParkAcademy MVPA @educationgovuk @CSPR_Panel @Ofstednews @hackneycouncil @lscp_chscp chscp.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

@CynicalPublius The Taliban got rid of heroin and bacha bazi before the American invasion brought them both back

THAT is what I am TALKIN' 'BOUT!!!! Amen. How many American lives did we lose in an obviously futile mission to turn an 8th Century Afghan culture that included slavery, women as chattel property and Bacha Bazi into a "liberal democracy"? Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

@besemer_amanda @moriah_bridges @NielsHoven No everybody can get fractions of they're taught properly. They're just deceptively difficult to teach well.

@moriah_bridges @NielsHoven LOL. I worked with my peers in grade school to try to teach them fractions and I noticed a few (not a lot) just could not get them. Before hiring to this day I ask people on a scale of 1 to 7, how easy was it for you to understand fractions in 3rd or 4th grade.

We don't teach kids math by saying "you can add these numbers together, or you can just guess at the answer instead" Schools should not be teaching kids to guess at words as an alternative to sounding them out This idea kids can achieve "comprehension and fluency" without being able to decode words - that's the real nonsense > "I have never seen any teacher that doesn't do both" Yes, that's exactly the problem

@Ed_Realist @karenvaites @greg_ashman "pushing" phonics? It's not a class-a drug my man.

@karenvaites @greg_ashman hahaha. "Newcomers". You used to work at Expedia. Then you were in ed tech. You've only been doing curriculum since 2018. And you're pushing phonics because you saw an opportunity.

TFW new people arrive to literacy debates and accidentally amplify the phonics naysayers who peddle competitive reading products. Latest example: Freddie DeBoer embracing Jeffrey Bowers as a key source for his phonics dismissiveness. Oops! @greg_ashman explains in his latest. I think we are going to see a lot of this as new people dive into the Southern Surge story. Note to the universe: you can’t ChatGPT your way to understanding the nuances of the Reading Wars story, largely because the landscape has changed a LOT in the last decade, and much of the oral history hasn’t been written down. Frankly, the Reading Wars are mostly over, and we’re now in the Implementation Wars era, at least in the US. That said, the internet has columns debunking Bowers, so DeBoer could have done more homework here.

@FluSumoLab hey I loved your podcast, just fantastic, but all that's available are episodes 1,3,4,6 and 9. Are the others out there somewhere? Cheers

@MrsSDalton75 @RogersHistory I would bet you anything, rewinding to the start and going on from there, it started with unhappily tolerating a while lot more than zero, and escalated predictable from there.

@RogersHistory Some schools are toxic environments for teachers & children sadly. Neither feel safe, adults lack support & guidance to deescalate intense situations that can often be avoided. It starts with zero tolerance & ends with poor relationships, stress & anxiety. The kids suffer most.

As assaults and abuse has risen, so has the pressure on schools to not suspend or exclude. UK schools need to be given absolute backing to get tough on this. Societal behaviour norms are being gradually eroded in the name of endless reasoning and unlimited support for any and all behaviours.

@adamboxer1 @KirkMcCullough4 That's almost impressively stupid.

@KirkMcCullough4 yes. there are lots of schools that insist on following a lesson structure of I/We/You. So each lesson has (on branded slides) one I, one We, and one You.

To me, I/We/You is a powerful way to conceptualise teaching specific things. It is NOT a powerful way to structure lessons. It's a cycle. And you could have multiple cycles in any given 55 minute "lesson".

@SethDillon @EntiumNTM @DouglasKMurray More accurately, he didn't *just* argue that non-experts shouldn't be allowed to speak; he also argued that they *should* be allowed to speak. In that grey area, Douglas Murray appoints himself expert-annointer, all the while confidently spouting sub-"I've read one book" nonsense

Murray never argued that only experts should be allowed to speak. It was much more nuanced than that. He made several related points: 1. Some people who speak on serious subjects (like Gaza or WWII) do so from a place of ignorance or bad faith while wielding massive cultural influence. That's not good. 2. If you're going to try and shape public opinion on important/complex issues, you should do it with seriousness, accountability, and some firsthand knowledge when possible. Traveling to the place you're talking about constantly can accomplish this, so why wouldn't you go there if you can? 3. And if you repeatedly promote fringe ideas or fail to push back on them, you bear some responsibility for the results. 4. You don’t get to spread provocative or revisionist claims and then hide behind “I’m not an expert and never claimed to be” whenever someone challenges you. It's more a call for intellectual integrity and responsibility than anything else. He wasn't calling for censorship or defending elitism.

"You should trust me because I'm an expert." "You should trust me because I'm not an expert." Both are fallacies.