An aficionado! Have you heard of the jam hitch (ABOK #1727)? Grossly underdiscussed IMO—I only discovered it earlier this year. It tightens like a zip tie, and (in kitchen twine at least) I've found the string will snap before the loop slips open again. It's quickly become my most-used knot, day to day. I like to tie it with the second turn inside the first (like #1855 as opposed to #1856).
There are (I'd contend) four basic types of knot: Bends, hitches, bindings, and loops. Bends tie two cords together, hitches tie cords to objects, bindings wrap & grip objects together, and loops are loops.
You only really need one bend. I suggest the zeppelin bend, but they're all pretty similar. Hitches can benefit from a bit more variety, but a round-turn with two half-hitches will serve you well in most situations, along with its more secure variant, the anchor hitch. There's a trade-off between how secure a knot is and how easy it is to untie, which is why the less-secure variant is useful.
The best loop is the angler's loop, which will even hold in bungee cord. The alpine butterfly is also good to know because you can tie it "in the bight" (without access to either end of the rope), which is very handy.
Bindings are (I think) the most commonly-used family of knots for most people. Lashing a load into a truck so it won't move, tying a bag shut, and even tying shoes are all situations for bindings. For large loads, I'd suggest a trucker's hitch, which is good for (e.g.) tightly strapping a load into a truck bed, hence the name. For smaller situations, like cinching a bag shut, try the jam hitch—an underappreciated favourite of mine. It works like a zip tie, tightening around an object and not loosening. (Make sure the knot itself is tied tightly before you zip it. After you zip it, you can tie the ends together for extra security.)
If nothing else, learn the round turn & two half hitches, the alpine butterfly, and the trucker's hitch. Some combination of these will serve you well in most situations.
I'm glad you've experienced success with these strategies, but unfortunately you can't generalize that.
> They did not do phonics, they learned to read whole words from flashcards.
Whole language learning is a perfect example of this: The fifth word on the Wikipedia page for whole language is "discredited." [1] It's been linked to systemic regressions in literacy among children. Clever kids with lots of support can succeed despite whole language methods, but in general, whole language is significantly worse than phonics. I'm glad it worked for your kids — hands-on attention from a parent is an excellent way to learn :) — but in the classroom, it is empirically much worse than the alternatives.
> The problem is that making them do stuff is the default, not the exception.
It is great for kids to be intrinsically motivated & I think the course material should be as engaging as possible, but often the kids are disengaged regardless, and I'm skeptical that there's some special trick we can pull to make the majority of kids passionate about fourth grade math class. A lot of them just won't be that interested in long division, and I think it's better to make learning a smooth and efficient experience than to jangle enrichment opportunities in front of their faces like cat toys. Alternative approaches always irritated the hell out of me as a kid. "Aren't you inspired? Don't you feel creative?" No! Just tell me what's going to be on the test and let me do the work!
I believe in school as an opportunity for intellectual enrichment, but fostering interest is not the primary goal of schooling. It's nice if school can make your kid an engaged and passionate reader, but your kid must become literate—whether they want to or not. And frankly, until they can string a sentence together, interesting books aren't even on the table.
At some point, kids have to develop the discipline to do the things they need to do, whether they want to or not. Carrots are better than sticks, but in the real world there are a lot more sticks than carrots.
I was a passionate and interested kid. I had a lot of boring classes in high school, but I worked hard at them anyway, even when I didn't give a shit. I got good grades because I knew bad grades could jeopardize my future. That was my stick; kids who don't take that seriously might need a different one, but ultimately you can't keep them going with carrots forever. It's good if they can be intrinsically motivated, but kids often will not be, and they need to do things anyway.
I feel like many of the more alternative teaching methodologies have unclear learning goals. What is "holistic problem-solving"? How can we measure it? Do we know that conventionally taught students lack it? Is it hard to acquire? Is it even important?
When I first went into the workplace, it took me a bit of time to adjust to the non-academic setting. You think differently, you work differently. I discovered and learned problem-solving skills that I was not taught in school. Frankly, though, I'm glad I was not taught those skills in school, because they are easy to learn in the workplace, especially if you have a solid theoretical grounding (something which is a lot harder to pick up on the job).
To the extent that generalized problem-solving is a real thing, I think it probably boils down to the ability to quickly internalize information and draw connections, which conventional schooling already focuses on anyway.
I know a lot of people who believe this, and I think it just doesn't bear out.
I am 4. I have many interests. I would love to read books about those interests, but in order to do this, I have to do phonics drills and practice sounding out words. But I am 4, and I do not have the cognitive skills to force myself to do unpleasant practice to acquire a skill which I will some day cherish. I must be made to learn.
I am 14. I have many interests. I would love to have a career revolving around those interests, but in order to do this, I have to acquire various basic skills and distinguish myself. But I am 14, etc.
Kids aren't just a blob of flesh that will some day become an adult. People don't take them seriously as individuals, but they should. That said, if left to their own devices, they simply will not do what is best for them. You have to make them do stuff sometimes, including learning.
> it's not even mathematically possible to train 100 percent of teachers to be in the top 10 percent of teachers
…yes, but it's totally possible to (by, say, 2036) train 100% of teachers to perform at a 90th percentile as compared to teachers from 2026. That's how improvement works, which is what people are describing here.
> No student nor teacher cares about be trained to some objective standard of competence
What are you talking about? Students are extremely invested in whether their teachers have attained objective competence. If all teachers suck equally, that is very bad for me as a student. If I'm rich, my parents can probably hire me tutors or take me to a private school. If I'm naturally talented, I can teach myself. Otherwise, I'm totally screwed.
So, yes, objective competence matters. It's extremely silly to pretend otherwise.
Yeah, and it shouldn't be too much to ask for. So it drives me crazy that I can't get by in Java without a full IDE. All I want is "show docs" + "jump to definition" + "show references" + "show implementations". I should not need IntelliJ for this.
> Primitive wrappers are used to denote nullability, which golang also has in its sql package for example.
The nullability wrappers in go's sql package are one of my least favourite parts of the langauge, haha. I really wish Go had proper sum types.
> Value types will have the ability not to be nullable, which is the same as golang.
It's good that Java will eventually add that feature, but I was critical of Go for lacking generics all the way up until they added them. Java's backwards compatibility story isn't as strong as Go's, either. Generics, Go's biggest change ever, were fully non-breaking; meanwhile, some people are still using Java 8.
Go's attitude toward adding features is, "we don't have that & it's fine." If you want to dynamically load code in Java, you have the power to do all kinds of custom class loader magic. If you want to dynamically link code in Go, too bad. Now, I don't love this approach. My favourite language is Rust, which has features out the wazoo. It is beautiful and powerful and complicated. Go is none of those things, but it is austere and minimal and that has its own advantages. Java lacks the advantages of either.
Of course, Java is widely used no matter what I think of it, and it is boring (in the complimentary sense). At the end of the day, it's a fine choice for a project. But as I said earlier, thank god Go is boring enough that I don't have to write Java anymore.
Everything's a reference in Java except primitives, and even primitives get object wrappers. In Java, String, Long, and Bool can all be null. Go isn't like that—only explicit pointer types and interfaces can be nil. In practice it really cuts down on NPEs.
Ok, granted, but I have never seen these in actual use. Java's ecosystem is big enough that you can use Java for years and not even know it has modules. I find this profusion of features unboring for the same reason that C++ is unboring.
In Go, everything's already in modules. It's just simpler. And when they did add generics, it was backwards-compatible, so there was no Java 8/Java 11 thing.
> Furthermore, any non-trivial project is better served with an IDE
In any other language, I can get by fine with vim + LSP regardless of project size. Java has a uniquely bad LSP story.
My big issue with Go is, the language just isn't that great. Zero values instead of sum types, reflection instead of proper macros, a mediocre module system…
Java's warts are far worse than Go. Everything is nullable. There's no module system to speak of. It's so IDE-dependant.
I agree with the spirit of "use boring technology." So thank god Go is boring enough that I don't have to write Java anymore.
Can we? We can vote for a party, but I don't know that any party here has permacomputing in their platform. If you want to add something to a party's platform, the usual way to do that is lobbying, but who can afford lobbyists? The alternative—grassroots activism—tends to involve a lot of stuff like local repair cafes that attract volunteers and get people talking.
No? I imagine, in this context, that he thinks of himself as an advocate against police violence, since he retweeted a video of cops kicking a man in the head and said he thought it was bad. Doesn't seem particularly Jewish to me, one way or another.
You are parroting criticisms made by antiracists and intersectional feminists who are themselves part of the contemporary progressive movement.
This is like when laypeople say "economics is all hogwash because humans aren't rational actors": They are citing behavioural economics as if it disqualifies the field of economics rather than being part of the field.
The way people talk about Just Stop Oil is interesting. People often say, "Just Stop Oil is doing activism wrong," but I never hear anyone talk about orgs that "do activism right" because the public never talks about them at all.
Like them or not, Just Stop Oil is very good at making headlines and stirring up controversy, which is their goal. If you go into a party with a megaphone and shout about beavers, everyone will eventually be talking and thinking about beavers. Conservatives use this strategy to manufacture controversies like "critical race theory" all the time. As a radical group, simply being in the headlines benefits them.
> such an uncomfortable idea violates any principles of evolution.
Evolution isn't a normative thing. It's perfectly possible for us to evolve into something that morally shouldn't exist, especially in an artificial environment.
"Intersectionality at an individual level" is poison for a social movement. If everyone lends their support only to movements that benefit them personally, that creates a fragmented ecosystem of niche groups that accomplish nothing. Strength lies in solidarity—in big-tent alliances of disparate groups.
The drawback with a big tent is that small subgroups inside that tent may have their concerns ignored. For instance, black women in early feminist movements were treated poorly, but what were they going to do? Start a schism? That'd be a setback for everyone.
Intersectionality is a second-order tool that protects the interests of smaller sub-groups within a big tent. You're wrong to assume that everyone outside the intersection is "actively repelled." When an environmentalist group says they're anticolonial, feminist, BLM, etc., environmentalists are typically fine with it. Sure, it does turn some people off, but that's a feature, not bug. If your group gets co-opted by people who reject some of these values, it makes it difficult to work together with groups that do focus on issues affecting indigenous people, women, etc.
Conservatives tend to gloss over what it is exactly that they want to conserve. The environment? No. Norms? Sometimes, but not always. Before the 19th century, abortion was relatively uncontroversial; anti-abortion rhetoric was a "conservative innovation."
What they always defend is social hierarchies. Anti-abortion rhetoric may break from the status quo, but it does so in defence of preserving women's role in society as obligate mothers. Starting wars in the Middle East isn't staid or responsible, but the performance of these wars situates America at the top of a symbolic hierarchy of global power.
If you dig into the fathers of modern conservative thought (people like Edmund Burke), one thing they were very concerned about was the preservation of aristocratic hierarchy beyond the end of monarchism. How can a liberal society maintain a class distinction between the rulers and the ruled? These are the intellectual roots of meritocracy: Let the free market pick winners without any interference by egalitarian meddlers, and the upper class will naturally select itself.
From this standpoint, the conservative disinterest in sustainability becomes obvious. The machines that are destroying the environment are owned by wealthy people whose fortunes may be destabilized by switching to a newer, more sustainable technologies. The conservative movement exists to protect the social status of the wealthy; therefore, concern for the environment is a liability.
> There are huge environmental and societal issues in today's computing, and permacomputing specifically wants to challenge them in the same way as permaculture has challenged industrial agriculture.
Permacomputing seems like a body of values and practices that is extremely grounded in a particular political perspective.
It's odd to regard permaculture, degrowth, anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, etc. as completely orthogonal. They're all part of a shared tradition of thought—not an "omnicause," but an ecosystem. You won't find a lot of people who love intersectional feminism but hate decoloniality. Appropriately enough, plucking a single plant from the earth and then dismissing the rest of the garden is exactly the type of blinkered thinking which permaculture discourages.