vanilla extract smells wonderful but tastes horrific on its own. but mixed with sugar and flour and cream it tastes just like it smells. we need the support of others to reach our full potential
I fucking hate the lack of infrastructure in my country. God.
Dude if I could take a train 400 miles anywhere I would pay 14 dollars just for a seat, never mind all those amenities. Jeez.
Reasons I remind myself I don’t like my country number who knows what
While this is super cool in and of itself, I’d also like to remind people that modern high speed rail (most of which is in China these days) operates at around 200 miles/hour (China’s fastest train actually operates at 370+ mph but that’s an absolute state of the art maglev, the 200 mph number is average rail speed). If we actually invested in these train systems, you wouldn’t even need an overnight ticket to make a 400 mile trip. To put that in an American context, it would allow you to get from New York to Los Angeles (the famous Cannonball Run taken by car enthusiasts for decades) in about 15 hours, which is 10 hours better than the current Cannonball Run record. With that kind of speed, you could take an evening train halfway across the country (Boston to Chicago would be ~5 hours) for a weekend trip.
Trains are not just more convenient (no driving!), but technologically superior to cars.
printers are inherently malicious creatures. i have never met a printer that does not on some level want to make everyone’s lives miserable. they are full of ink and malice
I’m thankful for my 10th grade history teacher because:
“I have to teach the book.” He said. “You have to read it and I have to give a test on it to make sure you know what’s in it.”
“Okay,” we said. “This is what school is.”
He also said “but I don’t have any rules that say I can’t teach you more than one book.”
“But this isn’t English class,” we complained.
“No it’s not,” he replied as he handed out photocopies of a different book I do not have the name of. I would learn later that he paid for the photocopies himself, because he could not afford to buy a set of books for us, and the school wouldn’t help. We had to turn in the photocopies at the end of the lesson. He’d done this for years, and the packets of paper were sets of folders containing well read photocopies and some pages were crumbly and he’d replace whole packets or pages in a single packet at a time. He had a whole cabinet full of these folders, broke down by chapter, out of a different book. Some of the packets included photocopies from more than one book, some news articles, a couple academic papers. We were not always required to read those, but we were promised extra credit if we did.
“Write me an essay,” he’d say.
“Ugh,” we groaned. “What about?”
“The differences between what’s in the packet and what’s in your books.”
And we would. He’d accept full essays and he’d accept a simple list of differences, but that was always an assignment. Point out the differences.
“Which fact do you believe?” He would ask us.
“The packet,” we’d answer.
“Why?” He’d ask.
“Because they don’t want us to have them,” we’d answer.
“Good,” he’s smile. “With this chapter, I’m not going to give you a packet. I want you to make your own packet based on the information in this chapter in your government supplied textbook.”
“Ugh,” we groaned.
But we learned how to do some simple research, and we were told that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone, but everyone that edited had to present sources. We had to come up with twenty pages worth of extra information on the chapter in our textbook. The textbook’s chapter was something like ten pages long. We had to do our essay/lists on what was left out/added/changed. It was a good two week long project.
“Why am I making you do this?”
“Because it’s busy work,” someone answered.
He frowned. “Because one day you’ll be presented something as fact and you’ll have to decide if it is fact or not.”
“How do we know the difference?”
“Maybe one day one of you will grow up and be able to give a simple answer to that question because I don’t have that answer.”
“You just didn’t want to do the work to make a packet yourself, huh?”
He smiled. “That is an advantage to having minions.”
And then he laughed like an evil vampire and we watched a movie.
This is one of those Tumblr things where I don’t much care if it’s a true story or not, because it’s an extremely good idea for how to teach history — and, based on my own super-brief stint in attempting to teach young stubborn kids via unconventional-but-effective methods (primarily with the goal of feeling like I was educating them in a helpful and lasting way),this is a fantastic idea.
You know. I get a lot of notes and tags on this post saying “and everyone clapped” and honestly, thats fine. I haven’t been in tenth grade in over fifteen years. This is paraphrased based on the experience of being in this man’s classroom for a whole school year. I 100% don’t remember his exact words or phrasing. This is a ~takeaway~ from the lessons this particular teacher gave us. I AM happy people don’t trust it’s authenticity because you shouldn’t trust everything you read. That’s the whole reason I wrote this in the first place.
However, the vampire voice was real. He was a character named Count Vlad who knew history because “he lived through it first hand.” He came out every time we watched a movie in that class, which we did often. We were way too old for this sort of teaching. We knew it. He knew it. He didn’t care. Count Vlad critiqued movies based on historical events with how accurate or false they were for the sake of selling movie tickets.
i love how every time he’s just like, oh? it’s just a random-ass platypus?, perry is just. so fucking done with him. like seriously, how many platypuses does he even know???
He doesn’t want to assume every platypus is Perry bc that would be a microaggression
Just imagine though all the letters that must have been sent home about the shit Hermione did at school or updates the school sends to muggle parents so they’re kept in the know. And she’s never been in trouble before so her parents think this is just regular wizarding school hijinks because it obviously never has context for them and Hermione just rolls with it
“She saved the philosophers stone.”
“Oh good for her! She must have gotten there before everyone else in class”
“People must get petrified all the time. It says not to worry though so it can’t be a serious illness”
“It says they’re obliged to inform us that ‘dementors’ will be at the school all year.”
“That sounds exciting, I wonder what subject they’ll be teaching?”
“She’s been selected to participate in the second triwizard tournament task.”
“Yes we had a letter about the tournament, she must really be getting stuck in with it and making all sorts of foreign connections.”
“Says she was part of a secret defence club?”
“Oh I’m so glad she’s finally getting involved in the clubs, it’ll be good for her, you know she studies too much”
“I wonder why we didn’t get any updates from the school this year? They always seem to have something going on.”
“I’ve been thinking you know, about moving to Australia. We did always want to.”
“I don’t know what’s been stopping us all these years to be honest. Let’s do it.”
so this picture of an ai combination of every serial killer into one person is currently going viral on twitter, despite the fact that it isn’t an ai combination of every serial killer into one person and is in fact just a picture of jerma with his shirt photoshopped to say ‘red sex’, im going insane
I’m fifty papers in to this round of grading. Please enjoy a selection of out-of-context comments I’ve left on students’ papers so far:
Further updates as warranted.
Important update as we hit paper 70.
Memo to all college writers. If you’re going to write a paper on country music for a born-and-raised Texan professor, make sure you’ve got your facts straight.
And with this, I conclude my first round of freshman grading. Hallelujah. In general, I’m quite proud of the work they turned in. Importantly: not a single person failed.
[ID: Screenshots of several comments on papers left by op. They read:
- “juicy” is not a very scholarly word.
- It’s true and you should say it.
- lol. You had me in the first half, I’m not gunna lie.
- I think “dicelexea” is the most interesting spelling I’ve seen for “dyslexia” maybe ever.
- “shot off into oblivion” is not a very scholarly phrase
- NO
- why are you shouting at me
- I like it. But it’s a run-on sentence.
- Why would you hurt me like this. MLA format, please!
- How would you feel about becoming an English major?
- this is dangerously close to “throughout history”…but I will allow it.
- The song was actually written by Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman, who both had close family/friends who were diagnosed with fatal illnesses. McGraw heard it demo […]
- I’ll try not to take that personally.
- It’s true and you should say it. But perhaps say it in the active voice next time.
- yes cap
- no cap
- I know I tell y'all not to strive for perfection, but you have obtained it nonetheless with this, the most beautiful Works Cited I have ever had the privilege to behold.
- If you chose to use Shakespeare as a way of ingratiating yourself to me/my love of the bard…your devious plan is working.
- your proper use of semicolons is a beacon of hope in these trying times
- Othello is a play, not a novel.
- I also like to use periods for emphasis. In an academic paper, however, try to use punctuation for its intended stylistic purpose.
- NICE
- please excuse me while I cry
- There are times when “fuck” is absolutely warranted in an academic paper. Alas, this is not one of those times.
