“valued at” != “worth”

If this could be the default way that heads of state and the Capitalist class in general dealt with each other, rather than large-scale wars, this would be great.

I got a laptop recently with an AMD GPU, and installed Ubuntu on it, and the first time round I got the AMD drivers working, but every boot the discrete GPU and the integrated GPU would change their device IDs (e.g. gpu1/ gpu2), so Steam would end up launching games on the integrated GPU half the time. I got frustrated and installed Windows, but found out that you can’t buy Win10 anymore, so got Win11 and hated it so much I went back to Ubuntu. Second time around, I found a thing for setting the GPU in the launch options by GPU name, and that has fixed it.

Linux is not ready for average consumers if they have to install it themselves, but neither is Windows; most people buy a computer with the OS preinstalled, and never have to deal with driver setup; the Win11 install had a bunch of driver issues too.

SteamDeck is such a huge revolution because it’s really the first time that a company has made preinstalled Linux machines available in a way that average consumers don’t have to go looking for or pay through the nose (cough System76 cough).

If someone like Dell or Lenovo (or hey, even System76 or Framework) could get their laptops in-store at BestBuy, with everything pre-configured and ready-to-use, that would be Linux being “ready” for the average consumer.

I’d guess your graphics drivers are the issue in that case. Sounds like it was probably kicking all the games over to the integrated GPU.

There’s a totally fair criticism that Windows is no more or less comprehensible or usable than e.g. Ubuntu, but familiarity is the differentiator. If someone is opposed to changing settings in a .conf file but not a .ini file, or fine with making registry changes but not service changes, it’s not an issue of usability or accessibility, it’s just familiarity.

to WINE about

Or it’s a roundabout way of saying he cheated: “I finished the marathon in 22 miles!” :D

No reason to assume malice just because they’re not listing out identifying information. I don’t list my schools or company names online either. It’s not as though we could (or would) validate it anyways.

Lego Island was an action town sim set in a Lego-themed world. There was nothing particularly “Lego” about the gameplay. I mostly just loved riding the motorcycle around the island as a kid.

The real Lego video game is still just Minecraft.

Not even remotely true. This has been being discussed for decades, and many experts have concluded that Israel’s actions both during the Nakba and subsequently meet the definition of genocide.

Here’s an examination of the many different arguments around this by the Center for Constitutional Rights, from 2016, concluding that scholars and human rights legal experts have identified Israeli actions as genocide (as well as other international crimes) for a long time.

Awesome, thank you.

Out of curiosity, (given that in another comment you talked about home schooling) when you call yourself an educator, do you have a teaching certificate in your state, or other professional teaching certification?

I’m not trying to be rude, but since you began by invoking the title of “educator” as an appeal to authority in this area, I think it’s important to clarify that you are in fact such.

Home schooling is never the correct answer as a societal solution for education.

Special needs education is a field that requires specialized training. This is something you need a degree for, not something parents can wing from self-study. It’s great that there is public funding for some people to allow them to get their kids specialized tutoring, but that is not common, and isn’t a substitute for actual school systems with IEP or other Special Education-trained professionals.

The non-governmental organisation Airwars undertakes detailed assessments of incidents in the Gaza Strip and often finds that not all names of identifiable victims are included in the Ministry’s list. Furthermore, the UN estimates that, by Feb 29, 2024, 35% of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed, so the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely substantial, with estimates of more than 10,000.

Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.

In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.

Yes, exactly.

Their choice to post it on pro-endless-growth LinkedIn sure makes it feel like a snipe.

I agree with the conclusion of the article:

“School’s the same for 120 years, where kids go nine to three, have long holidays, sit at desks and have to regurgitate what the adults tell them to learn, basically all over the world. We’re blaming kids for falling academic standards, we’re blaming the rise in mental ill health, we’re blaming the rise of cyberbullying. Oh, well, it all must be the fault of the mobile phone,” Marilyn Campbell told Al Jazeera.

“I mean, what a simplistic view of how we are educating our children in a different world and taking away that main tool that we’re all using in society and saying, ‘No, the kids can’t have it now’.”

A balanced approach, involving regulated use and clear guidelines, may be the most effective way to harness the benefits of smartphones while minimising their drawbacks, experts say.

The general recommendation of Campbell and Edwards, who carried out the scoping review in Australia, was to leave it to individual schools to determine smartphone use and to focus on helping children to use smartphones positively.

A lot of research actually shows that neurodivergent kids rely on online spaces and communities, especially for companionship and social interaction. Forcing a lot of neurodivergent kids to sit in a chair for 8 hours and stare at a whiteboard never worked, but everyone used to just not care. They just sat there suffering, got sent to ISS and ignored, or got kicked out and sent to juvie.

Manor Lords was the top-seller on Steam for a couple days if not a full week, so Hooded Horse definitely has enough money for a good while.

Bender said Manor Lords sold 250,000 copies in the last month after selling over two million copies in its first three weeks MSN

2,250,000 * $30 = $67,500,000

I think they’ll be good for a while.

Kids should be required to pay attention when they are a student.

I agree with this provided we have supplied them with a reasonable learning environment and expectations. Employees should be required to pay attention when at work, sure, but if we are put in a horrible work environment we would also refuse to work, or if it’s really bad, quit. Students don’t have the latter option, (nor the monetary incentive to ‘tough it out’) so the former is, by necessity, what they go to.

I think people have got this backwards: Lack of attention doesn’t disrupt the learning environment. Lack of a proper learning environment disrupts attention.

I do believe the teachers and administration need the ability to contain disruptions in class.

Looking at your phone doesn’t stop anyone else from learning; that’s a disruption to the class. You can’t define “class disruption” as “not learning” (you can stare blankly at a textbook quietly and not learn anything). Class disruptions are behaviors that prevent or impede other students from learning, which looking quietly at a cell phone doesn’t do.

I am reminded of the axiom of, “if one employee (student) is failing (being disruptive), you have a Personnel problem. If many employees are failing, you have a Management problem”. There will always be problem students, but they’re not really who we’re talking about. We’re talking about a widespread disconnect from a large number of students, because they are not being provided with a learning environment that engages them.

I work at a large company, and WFH during lockdown completely changed the employee attitude towards being trapped in a box of our employers’ choosing. My entire team is now remote, and maybe 10% of people go into the office once a week, at most, and probably half or more of us would quit outright if you tried to force us into RTO.

Students also experienced this, but they are all being given RTO orders, and (to reiterate once again), cannot quit, which really reinforces that it’s entirely possible for them to not be in the school building each day, but are being forced to for someone else’s benefit (and kids aren’t dumb, the argument that reopening schools was for the benefit of getting parents back to work was very publicly stated, and kids saw that). This does not make for a healthy mental situation that is conducive to (school)work/learning.

Do I think that means schools must run like prisons? Hell no.

But they share fundamental similarities. That’s just the reality. What building forces adults to be trapped there, with no choice about whether to leave or not? Prisons. There’s really no way around this parallel. The question is then, “how do we make what is in effect a prison, feel less prison-like?”, and that has to be by making it an enjoyable environment. But no schools aside from the super-wealthy are even able to do this, and most aren’t even trying at the carrot. Instead, they’re switching to the stick, and that don’t work.