Posts made by silverfox

I am so ticked off by the fact that I'm getting charged $520 for turning my apartment keys in despite having signed an agreement to pay rent till August 1st.

I went full Karen tonight and will be doing it at the boss tomorrow. Not ONCE was I warned, "Hey, you turn this in and we charge you x." I am ticked. I am about to go down and demand my keys back and I'll keep them till August 1st to save myself $500.

@Roz

I went and reread the whole series before reading it.

@Jennkryst

points at the six years between the last two

FOREVER

@Jennkryst

All of us Butcher fans waiting forever.....

@RightMeow

This sounds really horrible.

I'm not sure I would drive unless you can train yourself to break with the other foot for now. It might be worth it to go to a nice big empty parking lot and see if you can get a feel for that.

@Quinn

Just, oh my god. I am so glad everything is okay. That is a parents worst nightmare.

@Wretched

I just saw this elsewhere and was coming here to say it. The only celebrity so far I've really known/loved enough to feel about.

@Testament

This is how I feel reconnecting with someone who is just hella fun to play with. @L-B-Heuschkel

A friend gave me the book: Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education by Noliwe M Rooks.

It was a really interesting read considering current times. It focused mostly on the financial factors and was pretty even handed in its criticism of every political side in the education debate. She railed against George W. Bush and Obama in equal measure. She also included both race and class issues in the discussion. When there was something to praise, she did so. When there was something to criticize, she did that too.

Two things I found most interesting:

1. When talking about charters she didn't spend her time on the efficacy of charters. She talked about the financial beginnings of charters and the financial gain privately funded educational management companies reap from running charters. It was a cautionary tale of the dangers of treating opening and running as something to make money off of for wall street.
2. She did a dive into virtual education and how effective they have been. She took the stance that they were wholly ineffective for students of poverty, disadvantage, and who lacked parent support. (For those who HAD parent support and money they were more successful.) The book was written in 2017 before the current crisis and it made me reflect on what we are doing right now in the current climate in the are OF virtual education. My district is going back with a full 5 day schedule but places like LA where they have determined it isn't safe to go back, I have to wonder how effective this online education will be considering their populations. To be clear, I am neither supporting nor criticizing their decision. The BEST decisions are usually made at the local level and I can't judge California by Colorado's levels.

Either way, it was a good read that reaffirmed almost all of my preexisting beliefs about the problems in how schools are funded.

kick feed idly

I'm understanding suddenly why most plumbing companies out here charge for their service visits. Once you pay for that then you feel obligated to stay with them to not loose that cost.

Also, I do not want your service warranty please. I just want you to install a new one and take away this old water heater. Then I intend to invite my father, who does this business, to come up and teach me how to do all the nifty gritty service and maintaince work. Then I'll do it myself tyvm. I grew up in rural colorado and we did our own house work. I've laid pipe, insulation, framed walls, installed deep ceilings, bathtubs, tile, hardwood flooring, carpet, painted, yardwork, etc. I intend to keep doing this despite being a city dweller. Don't upsell me gdi!

(These are things I'm too polite to say to the technician trying to sell me their service bundles.)

I'm having the longest conversation I've ever had with one of my uncles. He's my mom's youngest brother and has always been that uncle that rarely came to family events, never contributed to the family newsletter- we didn't even know he was alive most of the time! But he added me on FB and we've been chatting and it is AWESOME.

Then out of the blue he asks, "Do you have venmo? I want to send you money for school supplies. Teachers pay too much out of pocket and I'm sure there will be budget shortfalls this year."

So I'm over here crying.

Today was a GREAT day all around and this was the cherry on top.

Tagging on,

I'm a HUGE proponent of teaching history thematically rather than in chronological order. There isn't TIME in a year to be able to cover everything and have even a fraction of it stick. So you either choose specific times and dive deep and ignore the rest, or your breeze through the timeline and don't go deep. If you do things more thematically then you can purposefully develop hooks that allow students to tie ideas together and build lasting memory. Will you hit ALL of the timeline? No, but what students DO know they'll actually KNOW.

@mietze

It ABSOLUTELY different state by state, district by district! 4th grade is generally state-history. In Arizona I DID teach about the interment camps, but only after we'd switched to the IB PYP model and were able to integrate it into our unit about why people move. (That was my favorite unit to teach and as a team we disigned it so that we spent a week on forced movements, political, social, economic, geographic). Here in Colorado? Not so much. Weirdly in Arizona, before my school went IB, we spent as much time on the Civil War in the Arizona territory as we did on WWII. And there was... not a whole lot of the civil war that happened in Arizona guys. NOT A WHOLE LOT AT ALL.

A BIG problem, from within teaching, is our resources, absolutely. A few reasons for this and almost all of them can be fixed with money spent.

1. outdated resources. My school is only 6 years old, yet the SS text we have is 10 years old by copyright date. What people were willing to accept 10 years ago is vastly different than now.
2. attempting to make it "acceptable". If a text is controversial districts don't buy it, and companies like Pearson or McGraw Hill don't make money unless they can widely spread their product. It should be usable in NYC and Appalachia.
3. age appropriate-ness. Verging on the far side of caution, horrible things, if they get mentioned at all, are described in the most general terms. This makes them feel like they weren't horrible.
4. standards. Teachers have to choose what to focus on within the framework of our standards. At the elementary level social studies often is the subject that gets compressed/combined with literacy. When time becomes and issue we will choose phonics and text structure over the social themes in books. Force me to fight for a particular state grade or my school is punished? Yeah. I'll do it.

If I don't feel strongly about it either way, then why not do it in a way that makes at least one person more happy? It doesn't hurt me, so I might as well go with it. Also, my descriptions suck, so having even more guidance is pretty nice.

Are these good piece of advice re: Writing a good desc of a PoC?

Part 1: https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/95955707903/skin-writing-with-color-has-received-several
Part 2: https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/96830966357/writing-with-color-description-guide-words-for

Wow, so, somehow I missed a majority of the conversation related to that particular banned character, I'd only seen what was on this particular page. My bad on that.

I still think it's worth moving the conversation back to the topic of the thread and letting that particular topic go be it's own, because I don't see anyone reading that character linked and finding it not offensive.

Wow. Just... wow.

Okay. Since this thread is my fault (@Ganymede #sorrynotsorry cat bot- I am wondering a little bit if the convo about that holy shit wtf character should get moved over to the Arx peeve thread(s)), lemme see if I can steer it a little.

This question takes a few caveats. So to begin with them:

1. These questions do not relate specifically to ANY game. Please respond with generalities that could fit MOST games.
2. These questions are divorced from plot related reasons (aka, Arx not allowing Asian concepts because they are over there and don't have contact with atm, yes, I could be wrong, please correct me via PM, that's not what this thread is about).
3. These questions are divorced from games that put limitations on groups to keep them from being over-represented in their particular sphere. (I can't think of a race example here, but like Gray Harbor had concepts they limited or didn't allow because they were overplayed.)

With that said! The QUESTIONS:

What minority groups don't have particularly good representation on Mu*s right now?

What are the barriers that keep them from being represented?

When you think of representation is it an IC (the characters we app/desc/play) or OOC (the actual ethnicity/sexual orientation/(insert other minority groups here) question? (Aka, should we have more characters of color or should we as a group be actively trying to advertise to diversify our playerbase?)

What are some typical stereotypes of that particular group that you have seen, and what are some resources we can use to combat those stereotypes if we choose to app a character in that subgroup?

@Roz That is 100% what I was worried about, ty.

Okay, what is TERF? I kept hoping it would be explained but it wasn't. Also, I am afraid to google it because heaven only knows what I'll find.