151–160 of 173 posts
So many of us parents put the burden of our children's learning on teachers when the responsibility is squarely ours.
If my son is in 5th grade and can't read, it's my responsibility to teach him or get him the help he needs to be able to learn.
On his eightieth birthday some of his students, now in their 50s, told how they had always felt stupid until he showed them they were not. Now they had businesses and successful careers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer to rent, and am not rich. I live in a large metro area in the US where rent is not insanely high, though. As someone who is single, it comes with a lot more freedom and less to worry about. Probably not the best long-term, but it's less stress in my life in my opinion, so the trade off is currently worth it.
Ok, well, if not rich, it sounds like you have the choice of buying or renting. Lucky you! I don't know anyone who has that choice. The person I responded to initially only meant, I guess, that some people who have the choice, prefer renting. Hm..but they were also talking as if people without the choice, like renting: > it would be nice to live in a world where everyone is wealthy and capable enough to own and maint…
So landlords haven't painted, repaired the roof, added appliances, etc in 100 years?
A friend who worked as a doctor in the Fens of East Anglia said that many of the older farmers she treated (in the early 2010s) were essentially illiterate. If she gave them a form or a letter, they would hand it to their wife to read because they considered reading to be women's work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Focusing just on worker's wages, when there are billionaire property owners (specifically owners of IP) living around the corner from you, is just ignorant and disingenuous if this really is your argument. Average incomes within the city are the overwhelming determinant of the demand side of housing supply and demand. A dozen billionaires are not going to materially affect the availability of housing, even if they…
"Economists at large" being a hand picked few and US-centered. Rent control can take many forms: rental caps, incentives/benefits, zoning and housing policies, etc. The view that it's solely a supply-demand equation is way too simplistic. Rent prices are currently falling as much as 10% in Amsterdam despite an extremely strained housing market with a 50k+ deficit on units available vs demand.
Instead of assuming the article has no valuable insights, I recommend you read it.
>>Rent control can take many forms: rental caps, incentives/benefits, zoning and housing policies, etc.
Rent control only takes the form of caps on rent, or caps on rent increases. The other policies you mention are not defined as rent control.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my grandfathers was illiterate as well. Not a finance whiz, but not stupid either. He was a rural blacksmith and he was rather good with engines and small appliances, repairing them for paying customers. This is also a good moment to meditate on "right of repair". As recently as approx. 1970, most of the machinery in daily use could be repaired by a skillful, even though illiterate, person. The advent of semic…
It's interesting you mention this. I got a chance to visit the family holler (rural mountain farmstead) when I was a teenager. Everyone back there was still driving old pickups, most of their tools were pretty old as well. You could tell a lot of things were kept just because of that very idea that they could repair them. I know my grandfather, growing up as poor as he did, NEVER threw anything broken away until he w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you saw a typical apartment unit after people moved out you wouldn’t be asking that. My parents own a 12 unit apartment building in a small town, and my dad is up there multiple times a week. There’s regular stuff like cleaning hallways, and then there’s stuff like “the tenant on the top floor installed a dishwasher themselves and it leaked while they were gone flooding their unit and the one beneath it.” After mo…
Respect is a two-way street. How many of those problems came from the ways people coped with absent landlords not fixing things? How many calls to fix the dishwasher preceded the self-install? How many of those people are on their nth slumlord and long past giving the new one the benefit of the doubt? You only have one side of the story from one apartment building. Maybe your parents are good ones. Nothing I've heard…
My entire point was that if landlords did nothing most apartment buildings would be unlivable in a matter of years. I'm not going to defend all of them as I've never been a renter myself, but I have seen what amount of work goes in to a small building just to keep it livable and safe for the tenants.
waiting for the next article, "I was CTO for 17 years, but couldn't code"
Funny enough -as in the article- they are usually attracted to teaching (medium posts, best practice talks, youtube videos...) and mentoring/managing positions. Maybe as a way to escape from coding. Or maybe they want to safe others of struggling with the same problem they have. I don't know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting you mention this. I got a chance to visit the family holler (rural mountain farmstead) when I was a teenager. Everyone back there was still driving old pickups, most of their tools were pretty old as well. You could tell a lot of things were kept just because of that very idea that they could repair them. I know my grandfather, growing up as poor as he did, NEVER threw anything broken away until he w…
There is a little bit of a survivorship bias with regards to old tools. The crappy ones broke long ago but the quality ones survived. But also, there were not the modern manufacturing methods we have now back there. There was no hammer with a plastic integral handle, everything was wooden and cast iron or tool steel. You could easily buy or make a wooden replacement handle when the old one rotted away. There was no d…
Maybe I'm joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there. I'm all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get aw…
I don't consider cheating in exams a crime so I'll assume you mean breaking and entering.
I doubt the story, but I saw many people do similar breaking and entering for pranks at uni so have no real problem with that.
I also had access to a library of exams. Once I went to an exam to steal? a copy for next year, but I couldn't work out how to get it out of the room. This is what hackers do, test limits on conventional systems. I also did a lot of work.
You seem to be confusing a job (academia) with his life as an undergrad student, they are not the same.
He worked hard at Uni the way he/BBC tells it, that's good enough for me. I don't believe his story, I am sure it's not as clean as he says, but unless you have the info I'm commenting on the BBC tale.