@staff Please Don't Let The Twitter Users Who Are Inevitably Going To Come Here Due To The Elon Purchase

7:00 A.M. // 9:00 P.M.

Killing innocent children is not self-defense.

abbot: er doctor. veteran. combat medic. amputee. widower. goes to therapy. fakes measurements to allow an abortion for a young girl. gives blood while actively treating patients. copes in dark humor. a yapper. talks his friend off a ledge he was just on. listens to a police scanner on his day off. volunteers to come in on his day off. makes sure people know they're doing a good job.

women stories matter

percy apologizing to luke when he hit him in their final swordfight in the woods. they were actually fighting and percy still apologized when he struck luke. i will be crying for eight to ten business years

the fireworks that were lighting luke’s face up in more and more alarming shades of red as his confrontation with percy in the woods continued to build up. the fireworks turning a cold, calculating blue to show him adapting to the new revelation and switching up his words to try and manipulate percy with an approach that shows care for percy’s wellbeing and bringing back the same points made in the flashback between the two earlier in the episode

this so poetic cinema

this parallels so hard with percy saying “i’m done running from monsters” when going to see zeus bcoz for percy there is no difference between a monster out to get him and a god out to get him because their reasons are never ever justified. what defines a monster anyway? looking like one? nope. acting like one. and a god targetting a literal child is acting like a monster. holy shit the writers were on fire and holy shit i love the parallels

When Sally says “Not everyone who looks like a monster is a monster.” Can be a lot of characters but I think the one that sticks oht the most is Tyson. Especially how Annabeth has to get over her stereotype that all cyclops are monsters in the second book.

do you have any ideas about why so many students are struggling with literacy now? I know that illiteracy and reading comprehension have been issues for years and most americans read at like a 5th grade reading level but I’m curious why it seems to be worse now (pandemic? no child left behind?)

It is everything. There’s not one answer. I could talk about this forever so instead I set a five minute timer on my phone and wrote a list of as many of the many things that are causing this on a systemic level that I could think of:

It’s parents not reading with their kids (a privilege, but some parents have that privilege to be able to do this and don’t.)

It’s youtube from birth and never being bored.

It’s phasing out phonics for sight words (memorizing without understanding sounds or meaning) in elementary schools in the early aughts.

It’s defunding public libraries that do all the community and youth outreach.

It’s NCLB and mandating standardized tests which center reading short passages as opposed to longform texts so students don’t build up the endurance or comprehension skills.

It’s NCLB preventing schools from holding students back if they lack the literacy skills to move onto the next grade because they can’t be left behind so they’re passed on.

It’s the chronic underfunding of ESL and Special Ed programs for students who need extra literacy support.

It’s the cultural devaluing of the humanities in favor of stem and business because those make more money which leads to a lot of students to completely disregard reading and writing.

It’s the learning loss from covid.

It’s covid trauma manifesting in a lot of students as learned helplessness, or an inability to “figure things out” or push through adversity to complete challenging tasks independently, especially reading difficult texts.

It’s covid normalizing cheating and copying.

It’s increasing phone use.

It’s damage to attention span exacerbated by increased phone use that leaves you without an ability to sit and be bored ever without 2-3 forms of constant stimulation.

It’s shortform video becoming the predominant form of social media content as opposed to anything text-based.

It’s starting to also be generative AI.

It’s the book bans.

what did I miss.

TLOU spoilers:

Do you know what really made me cry?

It wasn’t the screaming, even though those sounds made me clutch my wrists so tight, I’m going to bruise tomorrow. It wasn’t the blood, or the wounds.

It was the little head raise Joel did when Ellie screamed at him to get up. And as hurt as he was, standing at death’s door, with so much blood loss and so much brutality inflicted on his body, Joel tried to push himself up. Because Ellie, his daughter in everything but blood, was begging him to do so.

I don’t think I’ll ever be alright again.