I see what you mean, but I also believe that the value of places like Beehaw often lies in the intermediary stage before they become an institution or wither away and die.

Right now Beehaw is pretty close to the peak of what it can be. It’s the equivalent of a large online block party. If it gets bigger than this it will need to institionalize or wither away. What you’re asking is for it to institionalize sooner than is necessary, which is what will kill the feeling.

Beehaw has a lifespan to it, we should all recognize this now. Beehaw is great because it runs on good faith and trust. These are limited resources and they’ll run out eventually, either sell out or burn out.

The best way to approach it is to put into it what you get out of it, and stop putting into it when you stop getting value out of it.

Very happy with it. $400 MSRP feels right, I don’t think I would feel so positively if it was more. I’m on vacation right now and using it a lot to wind down in the evenings.

The Bible as lame as it is to say. Particularly Ecclesiastes and Job. Absolutely brilliant, beautiful, full of humanity.

Poorly written essay title. She’s not rewriting Nazi history on WP, she’s correcting Wikipeda to be in line with current historical consensus.

No I do not think it is right to impose choice on others and I never said as much. I believe people ought to be free to waste money if they so see fit. But when it comes to the collective level, we ought to be subsidizing sustainable agriculture and not corn and beef as we (USA) currently do. I.E. when it comes to policy the policy should be directed towards incentivizing people towards sustainability. This doesn’t take away people’s free choice to eat beef, it just means they do so on their own dollar and not the governments.

Damn, that’s awful. How allergic? Like anaphylaxis?

This is just using a digital solution to an analog problem for no real gain in efficiency. In theoryland sure, you can replace books with ereaders and possibly save money. And at certain levels of education this works out, middle/high school. In earlier levels, there are two issues. One, kids break things. Cheaper to replace a book than an ereader. Two, kids associate the tablet form factor with entertainment. Kids rely a lot on symbols for interpreting the world. It’s hard to get them into education mode when the symbol on front of them puts them into entertainment mode. Books signify learning, it helps the kids get into the right headspace.

No, getting rid of smartphones in classrooms is the only way to actually teach critical thinking. Using devices in classrooms teaches kids that all the answers are on Google and that they don’t need to think, only search.

Google/wikipedia is an incredibly useful tool, but before you learn to use them you first need to be taught basics. The scientific method is the first things kids need to learn: how to observe the world around them, form ideas of how it works, test those ideas, change them based on further observation. This kind of reasoning is sabotages when the kid learns that if they just use Google they can get the answer without learning how to do the work.

Takes like yours generally come from a place of well-meaning but are far removed from the actual reality of the classroom. Kids need to learn first how to figure out information in the real world hands-on before they are introduced to the abstract digital world.

You actually can successfully ban devices in the classroom through a variety of methods.

I agree. Ideally everyone would be free to eat ribeye everyday. Unfortunately we live in the real world where that’s not possible. Cutting down meat consumption is the reasonable, economical choice. I still eat meat for sure, it tastes good. But in my daily life I’ve cut down significantly and saved money.

Twitter isn’t and never was useful as an organizing tool. Arab spring was a failure. Twitter is actually more useful to the ruling class than not because it gives a way for the masses to expend it’s restless energy without changing anything.