Extinguished Engineer

This is also the story behind my current profile name.

@GeeksGamersCom I don't believe it. But imagine you're Disney and you're wondering how to restore at least a shred of goodwill with fans. Not much, just something. And you don't want to spend a single penny on it. Do this.

RUMOR: Disney to Remove Star Wars Sequel Trilogy From Timeline to Resume Focus on Original Characters "If true, this would be one of the most dramatic franchise shifts in modern Hollywood history."

@LundukeJournal I've been watching it and I reached the same conclusion. x.com/ExtinguishedEn…

@AFitTrader I'm guessing that it's not. We store some there and some spread across the rest of our body, and then it comes off in the reverse order. As our belly gets smaller we're also losing fat in other places. It's not not as easy to see.

Why is belly fat always the last to go?

LLMs gave me a new superpower: I can tell people how bad their ideas are but the words don't come from me, so they're less likely to be taken personally. "I ran that through Claude/ChatGPT and it raised some concerns." What's not obvious is - They were my concerns first, which is why I prompted the LLM - I included my thoughts in the prompt, telling it where to look. (It doesn't always agree with me.) - I cleanse the output, removing phrases like, "You're right to be worried about ___." It comes out looking like a neutral analysis. And it almost is. It's also likely to explain the issues more clearly than I might have.

@BassKaji @gak_pdx My opinion (and it's only that) is that reading is 75% of it. If the child likes to read, they'll learn a ton of other stuff, and they'll explore what interests them, which in turn means they'll learn and remember more. Then they'll keep doing it for life.

@ExtinguishedEng @gak_pdx You can also restructure the curriculum around how the child learns best (e.g. reading vs. lectures vs. hands-on) and do more practical experiences via field trips and similar.

Home schooling produces, on average, reading levels that are 1-4 grades higher than public schools, and standardized tests scores 15-30 points higher. So naturally, the Interference Class of lefties who are behind lavishly funding the public school system to the highest per-capita in the Western world, while producing pathetic, ever-lowering outcomes in reading, math, and standardized test scores... are now looking to interfere with home schooling.

@TheMekon_Venus It was original enough to start a lasting franchise. I've been watching SG-1. I'm not used to the lighter, episodic nature, but it's growing on me. What I realized is that it became the new Star Trek. If they don't blow it they can keep it going for years.

This went on to be a massive TV franchise. But what did everyone think of the original movie? I’m gonna be honest and say that it had some great moments.. and is a classic. But at the time I felt it had issues. Had this movie never evolved into a successful TV show universe, would it be remembered so well?

@TatooineSons It's funny that there enough people who hate these films to split them into camps. They were utter disasters, but hermit Luke had nothing to do with it. The rest of his story wasn't very good, but that's no surprise because the writing was trash.

“Jedi don’t give up.” Except for Obi Wan Kenobi hiding out on Tatooine. And Yoda in exile on Dagobah. They never give up. Except those two.

@ShearedSheeple @nikicaga It's homework.

@ExtinguishedEng @nikicaga This is a worksheet brother, not a test

The wording may be confusing, but teaching kids to add up to nearest ten and carry over the rest is pretty important, its not something you just do rote memorization for

@CuriosityonX What does it say about the aliens that they only want one representative? Do they misunderstand us? The first thing they need to know is that no one can represent us.

If aliens requested a meeting with a sole individual to represent the human race, whom should we send?

Why should homeschoolers have to prove that their children read at a higher level? Public schools aren't required to prove that their students read at their grade level, which they typically don't. Please don't pretend that public schools have some lofty standards that we should aspire to meet. If our children can fog a mirror and have a pulse at 18 they meet public school standards.

@gak_pdx It’s not a good look for homeschoolers that they make these claims and then resist any effort to require they prove it

@ManaByte Lucas wasn't only disinterested in giving the fans more of what they liked. He wanted to take back what he already gave them. For years he's pretended that we didn't see what we saw, and that the changes were about advance in special effects.

@Jainadave_ I imagine not, but it's better than the self-training I did before. It analyzes my previous workouts and tells me how to push forward. Sometimes I give it pictures and it critiques my form.

Can AI replace personal trainers?

@harvardheinous @think_starwars It would have to be very recent.

@ExtinguishedEng @think_starwars A freshly-created asteroid field caused by recent off-camera events.

🪨The Asteroid Field chase in The Empire Strikes back is my all time favorite chase scene. Everything about this scene is perfect! Han's humor and flirting with Leia, the desperation of the chase, 3PO and his odds! A perfect scene from the greatest Star Wars film of all time 🐐

However hard or easy it is, 8 and 9 are the symbols we've learned to represent those numbers. The circles are a regression to counting. And then there's two sets of dots, some in a grid. It's as if the presence or absence of the grid means something to whoever printed it, but it utterly fails to communicate that meaning. Whatever they're trying to communicate, they should do it with digits, not by creating some new construct that competes with digits. That creates confusion, not clarity. And even if this helpful, it shouldn't be homework. It's a side quest. Students shouldn't be traded on the weird thing with the boxes and the dots. Perhaps as a rule of thumb, we shouldn't test children on things we don't expect them to use.

Math Understanders are dunking on this saying ‘guess you just don’t have Number-Sense bro’ but the issue is that it’s just phrased weirdly for someone who wasn’t in the class when this ‘a way to make a ten’ thing was introduced. I and presumably everyone who criticizes this Understands Numbers just fine, but I also don’t know what ‘using a way to make a ten to calculate 8+9’ means. I could try to infer it from context? Do you ‘make a ten’ with the 8 by grabbing 2 from the 9 leaving 7, hence 17? Do you ‘make a ten’ with the 9 and 1 from the 8, again leaving 7? Do you round both up to 10 getting 20, then take away the 2+1? I’m sure it’s something like that. Or rather, I don’t know what the heck else it could be. Either way, rest assured, I ‘have number-sense’! But ‘make a ten’ is a weirdly specific phrase and (again) since I wasn’t in class when the teacher talked about it, and it wasn’t a phrase ever used when I was learning arithmetic, I can’t have confidence I ‘know what it means’ and ‘know what the teacher is asking for’ per se, so if I’m the parent trying to help my kid who doesn’t know what to do, this leaves me frustrated. Math is not supposed to do that! The great thing about math is there are objective answers ascertainable by multiple methods, and all methods are right as long as the logic is correct. You’re not supposed to *have to* ‘do it the way the teacher was going for’. But this thing says the student *has to* ‘make a ten’. Simply must replicate the specific arcane phrase and method the teacher went through in class, other ways are deemed ‘incorrect’. This is essentially wordcel-thinking intruding into math. Wordcels probably like that because it aligns with what they like about education (=secret learning & phrasing dispensed by special experts using specific phrases you must learn and internalize) and not what they dislike (=math).

@DrHelios42 @nikicaga The boxes don't visualize that. They don't mean anything. That's the problem.

@ExtinguishedEng @nikicaga you just did what the boxes are visualizing. You made a 10 and identified that the remainder was 7.

@DrHelios42 @nikicaga You're right, I can barely tell that apart from the other picture with the boxes and circles. 8+9 is 17. Our system is base 10 so you keep the 7 and add the 1 to the next column. That has nothing to do with the boxes and circles.

@ExtinguishedEng @nikicaga It's not just a mental model its literally the basis for long addition and derived from our system being base 10

@ShearedSheeple @nikicaga I agree 110%. Teach it. Teach it all. Don't test students on it.

@ExtinguishedEng @nikicaga Everyone independently coming up with their own mental model is obviously inefficient. And it will leave some kids in the dust Teaching mental math is a very good thing

@mathieuhelie @nikicaga If someone can add 8+9, I think they understand the relationships, including the properties that make 8+2+7 the same as 8+9. The key relationship is that 8 = 🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢 Adding numbers isn't about relationships.

@ExtinguishedEng @nikicaga The point of math is not to arrive at the answer. It’s the understand relationships between numbers.

@Staroxvia @etubruton @nikicaga You know what's an even better visual representation? 8, 2, and 7.

@ExtinguishedEng @etubruton @nikicaga yes they are being asked to solve 8+2+7, they're being asked to use the 8 to bring the 8 up to 10 and recognize that it leaves 7 leftover the boxes are just a visual representation of this