"All of [Linus Pauling's] exams were closed book, and the students complained bitterly… I paraphrase Mr. Pauling’s response: It’s…what you can recall instantly that’s important. If you have to look it up, it’s worthless for creative thinking." wsj.com/articles/SB121…

I've decided to start tweeting out some of the argument maps, I use when teaching intro to philosophy. Here's a map of Bertrand Russell's arguments that philosophy is valuable: app.reasonspace.com/arguments/1e4a…

Good toy

Home building thread: In honor of ground being broken today on my future house, follow along for the next few months as I document building a house with basically no background knowledge

Fantastic long essay on a few hundred years of the history of journalism—populism, bias, objectivity, tech, and more—that is going to get buried here because of algo penalties. QTing for visibility

0.4 seconds after taking this picture, my children decided to turn the decibel meter I purchased to help them be quieter into a high score challenge

The untainted ambition of youth: “I’m going to do exactly what [this tap dancing world champion] is doing”

I have found the man who sold the pagers to the Hezbollah fighters

Our now-4yo had a ridiculous and obvious bias, starting from when she was zero years old, for young, pretty, model-thin sitters and teachers

gm

Recommend against using the concept “psychological safety”. “Psychological” is naturally taken to mean “feeling of”. “Safety” is focused exclusively on downside protection. If you’re pushing outside of your comfort zone and swinging for upside, the shoe won’t fit.

Now that I am engaged I can feel the necrosis of my ability to relate to or give advice to people who are dating. Where once I might’ve been able to give advice on how to text a girl back or set up a dating profile, now all I can think is “You FOOL! TELL HER YOU LOVE HER!!!”

Your periodic reminder that there is no reason to get angrier on my behalf than I am on my own behalf

I think most people have very little idea what education is. Key concepts like “instructional design” aren’t easy to extract from the modal educational experience (e.g. you listen to someone talk for a while and read some stuff and eventually you’re tested on this content).