ᔑᐸᐱᑚᕬᐱᑎ @skanman@qoto.org

Antagonizing your enemies only motivates them. People will sip poison voluntarily if you hand it to them in a fancy glass and a warm smile.*

*Don't poison people! It's not nice, I wrote this just to make a point.

Just to add, this story is true, and mine. If you did have a teacher like this, I'd love it if you shared some wisdom with me too. 😊

A teacher in 7th grade yelled at me "Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades!!", I responded with "But, if you almost pull the pin on the hand grenade.. " and then he stopped me, and so I started with "Ok, but if you almost play horseshoes.. ", and he cut me off again this time iterating "You're just proving my point!". To which I responded "I've almost proven your point, but because you cut me off, now you've proven 'almost' counts for more than just horseshoes and hand grenades".

He smiled in pride at his defeat. He went to his desk and and gave me a small bag of candy. He told me the candy was supposed to be a reward for the best literary project at the end of the semester, however he was a debate champion in college, and he'd been undefeated 40 years just to be bested by a 7th grader. His name was Mr. McCray. He was always saying things like "Other teachers say knowledge is power, but they're only half right, creativity is the ability to turn knowledge into something useful, something that makes a difference, without creativity, knowledge is idle. Creativity can yield knowledge. Now that's power.".

Mr. McCray was that one teacher I still think about frequently 25 years later. Most people would tell me they've never had a teacher that awesome. Even though he passed away 20 years ago, I know how he would want me to respond, by saying "so become one".

In his honor, I want to leave you with this.
"Wisdom doesn't just come with age, it also comes from the ability to patiently listen to the wise, and value what they say." - Me.. a product of the great Mr. McCray.

@MQMLab I'm pretty jealous, however, if you see students with frozen food near it, investigate.

@deNew_John or make it worse.. could go either way right?

@acjay It's amazing that it's based on a true story. Even if people didn't see the movie, you'd be introducing them to a masterpiece.

As Qoto is heating up, I appreciate the amount of activism here, 95% of the time it's well done. Other places, people get emotionally triggered, and drop a forcible opinion with no reinforcement. That's not activism, it's reactivism. That makes me proud to be a member here.

#activism #activist #qoto

@trinsec @favus Now that THAT is interesting!

@mars the longer I look at it, the more lost I get, in a good way 👍

If you're not sure if existentialism is real.. is it existexistentialism?

#stupid #philosophy #question

@garyackerman I gotta share this with you. Back around 2000, I was just starting my IT company. I wound up with ex Florida governor Claude Kirk as a client. I would go to his house and solve minor problems, teach him a few things as he was a little later in age.

One day I asked him what I would have to do to become governor. He smiled and invited me to sit in his living room for coffee. I partake. I told him I knew how to fix many issues (focusing education). He listened intently, and agreed completely. Then, he spoke the truth. He asked me if I think the budget exists to evolve the education systems to levels in which 99% of students graduate with such higher learning that it would offset the global IQ by over 25 points. I said "of course not". He smiled and responded, "it could be done easily". I was shocked. He said that if that were to be done, it would offset the workforce of the nation and collapse the economy, then he showed me the math that proves it. He explained that utopias can be created. It's very possible, however it creates a giant imbalance, that while concealable, is not sustainable. Every debatable argument I passed his way, he provided a simple to understand, yet disturbing macroscopic explanations on how it will influence the creation of a more dystopian world. He told me being governor broke his heart. He entered service with the ideas of improving the world and found out he could but would do more damage than good. He's the reason I chose psychology and sociology in college, just to see if he's right. I never charged him for service after that. I met him a boy, and left a businessman. I still believe in education reforms, in a big way, and if I see models that work, I dump my time and resources into them. But there's a reason why it's a struggle to reform education, you'll only receive resources when the status quo is below balance, and you'll only receive enough to achieve the balance. This is exactly why private education is far superior to public. It's designed that way for good reason.

Sorry for the long toot my friend, I'm not writing this to discourage you. I'm sharing this because it can be used to empower you. It really sucks to know that places like Detroit and New Orleans are designed to be the way they are, and it makes me a little sick to know the reasons why they shouldn't be fixed.

@garyackerman I'll definitely try that next time, but I know me, I'll probably accidentally click cancel. I'm still curious about Microsoft's algorithms for their progress bars, 3 seconds to 99%, 10 minutes to 100%

@garyackerman I find moving the mouse in circles speeds the computer up.

@trinsec Lenovo still reigns in build quality.. I've been using ThinkPads for 18 years. I switched to a Dell XPS 13 2in1 last year though because it's super small and tough and I got into motorcycles during lockdown out of boredom and open roads.

@trinsec ok, so some laptops don't have metal frames, they just use the body as the structure. It's not usually the hinge that breaks but where the screws anchor into a plastic body. I'm looking at you HP pavilion,Toshiba satellite, and Dell Inspiron. On occasion, the hinge will lose lubricant in some laptops and become too stiff and fracture the body at the screen housing.

It's rare, super rare, but on this occasion, I don't think it's the users fault. 😂

@acjay yeah my first mental image was Nicholas Cage in Lord of War 😂

@ahi so the problem there is changing the will of 7.9 billion people across vast distances from a multitude of cultures and sociological structures. That's a pretty big complex problem. In that particular one, the solutions are simple but dark. Humans by nature are collectors and competitors. So this inherently drives us towards industrialization. To change human nature, is the same as any creature. A tiger for example can be moderately tamed, changing it's nature some what. How does that happen? Cage it, care for it, punish it when it does wrong, reward it when it does right, control it's environment, teach it environmental manipulation, and voila, a circus tiger. Humans however hate this, the result is always war. Humans don't like to be heavily controlled. This is a paradox that cannot be solved because we will continue to ignore the simple easy solution, and keep trying to add details and complexities to the broken solution we like.

The simple solution is, we're bad for the earth, the earth will get rid of us. The more we destroy it, the more it will destroy us.

Here's the golden irony, the reason we don't like that solution, is the very same nature that causes the problem in the first place. 😂

@ahi
By immense, do you mean by size or complexity?

I love complex problems because hey, I can get paid to solve a puzzle. But immensely large simple problems, I slowly look for the nearest exit, because it's going to be monotonous.

@acjay Well, it's a good business. I don't think they're referring to the shady type. The legit type is extremely complex financially. I've dealt software to defense organizations, and wow. The regulations and conditions are extremely difficult to navigate.