“Write 3 to 5 sentences explaining Gatsby staring across the bay at the green light of the far pier.”

This is a common type of prompt that most school systems use and in theory it fosters and develops critical thinking. Why would Gatsby stare at the light? What must he be thinking about? Why did the author choose a light? But (american) school systems never actually explain what critical thinking is. Only a set of minimum requirements that students struggle through.

I hated those prompts. They seemed like the teacher was just fishing for a specific answer. Sometimes the color doesn’t mean anything and the author thought it just looked nice. It wasn’t until I had a sociology teacher explain it with a poignant example that it really clicked.

He asked us “Is suspending a student good punishment?” He went on to elaborate that a student that skips class gets detention. Well if he skipped class why would he go to detention? So he skips that and gets suspension instead. This student didn’t want to be in school so the school ultimately punishes him by not having him in school.

Reductive and simplistic, sure. But the idea that you approach a problem or thought from many different angles to see all facets of it didn’t really gel with me until that moment. We need more of that. We need the “why” of critical thinking.

Deal or No Deal wouldn’t work as the briefcases all have something inside of them: a placard with a dollar amount

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cries.

Part of me thinks that its just linux circlejerk and bandwagon

That’s exactly what it is. It’s people that have had to get so far into the weeds with an operating system that I think they just enjoy the pain. Looking through some of the Justifications for hating Windows on here and it’s like, “I tried to use a 20 year old proprietary Webcam for a video game console and it didn’t work immediately on Windows” or a guy that had issues with getting a serial port like rs-232 or something. Neither of these things are a typical user case. These are people that are specifically looking for trouble. Use a webcam from the last decade. Use a usb port for God’s sake.There is a reason why the “I use Arch btw” joke exists

I like Linux. I use Redhat at work. But Christ the Linux Fandom is as bad as Apple.

I’m not sure how any of the different hardware components I bought to build my system had Windows pre-installed, considering I had to install Windows myself.

Yeah the last time I had to install drivers for a network card on Windows was over a decade ago

Good.

Yeah, people say right-wing when what they mean is authoritarian. There’s a guy named Bob Altemeyer that has been studying authoritarianism for decades and he makes a distinction between left wing and right wing authoritarianism.

Sure. But the guy above me is implying that at worst, EVs pollute more, and at best, the two are just the same in terms of pollutants.

The reality is harm reduction. It would be better to take a train or bus than drive any car. Better still would be to ride a bike, even better would be to just walk. But that is not feasible. Instead we just do what we can and make marginally better choices.

Don’t let perfect get in the way of good. We’re after incremental changes.

This is a bad take. The EPA has a list already made because these lies keep going around. It is better for the environment through out the entire life cycle of a car, from raw material mining and processing to manufacturing and use, to be Electric than use an Internal Combustion Engine.