My impression at the time was the superintendent acted on his own. Not even the board of education was involved, and they weren’t happy to be blindsided.

My guess is the

1. superintendent had a student in that grade,
2. student came home with new textbook,
3. superintendent saw the ‘blasphemy’ in the new-that-year textbooks,
4. superintendent was his own Karen.

Western Kentucky in the 90s. . There was a ton of weird stuff at that public school. I went far away for college and am glad for it.

Edit: Better link/source

The thing that got me to significantly reduce my dairy consumption was

1. Being exposed to vegetable milk (first soy then almond) by my roommates
2. Not keeping fresh milk in the apartment because it kept going bad
3. Losing the ability to gracefully digest lactose

I eat much less cow now because of cute internet cow videos.

Anyways, I think if 5 people reduce their consumption by 30% that’s more impactful than 1 person reducing their consumption by 100%. (Math caveat: assuming each person has the same baseline level of consumption. 5 vegans reducing their consumption by 30% won’t do squat).

In middle school our new science textbooks were recalled the first week of school. The textbooks discussed (horrors!) the big bang theory without also talking about the theistic theory. The books were returned with those pages rubber cemented together. The teachers were upset (upset enough that middle-school me noticed), but it was by order of the superintendent.

My parents got me a copy of A Brief History of Time in response. Also, rubber cement is fairly easy to pry apart.

I think you’re saying that we/I in the USA still see/have the trappings of normalcy: ads for BB&B, our Amazon packages are still delivered, we still have our treats.

Y’all outside of the USA don’t care about our treats. Y’all’s news is showing all the human rights erosions and ignoring that I got new prescription glasses by mail just 2 business days after ordering them (what a successful and stable country this must be/s!).

(sidenote, maybe prescription glasses aren’t treats, but I’m very excited because my prescription has changed and maybe I will stop with these eye strain headaches)

Of course, having to teach science instead of their myth really upsets them too.

In my experience, it was in addition to. My high school biology teacher was a creationist who “taught the controversy”.

And like when I had to move offices to make room for a temporarily displaced group that’s still there 2 years later. They were supposed to be gone by summer.

Military service is one of the ways out of poverty we dangle at young people. I can’t blame an 18-year-old for wanting in on the GI bill. Student loans suck.

My local Lowes turned me off by having their music blaring way, way too loud for some event. Like, needed earplugs on that half of the store loud.

Now Home Depot has turned me off by not having any human-run checkout counters anymore, and all the self checkouts have incredibly distracting “we’re recording you” screens. Plus, you know, the politics.

The Ace hardware is still awesome and has a store dog (no outside dogs allowed). Store dog is a friendly, happy lab.

I don’t know what my dad’s death certificate says, just that when the doctors removed him from the breathing machine he died. I blame Obamacare. /s

(And I haaaate when people ask me what “he really died of”. Like, seriously. Do they hear themselves?)

Also that the COVID death numbers were inflated because COVID doesn’t kill people, pneumonia and not breathing kills people.

TIL. I’ve bought freeze dried lamb lung for my pups (they love it), but didn’t realize lung is banned for human consumption in the USA.

It’s funny because Chinese snake oil (made from Chinese water snakes) may have actually been effective for aches and soreness due to its high omega-3 content. Then, American charlatans got ahold of the “snake oil” idea and made it with “alternative” ingredients (mineral oil, maybe rattlesnake if you’re lucky) that did not convey the same benefits.

Oh yeah, I get that there’s more than 2 reasons to be upset about AI scraping. I work in the academic library world and the vibe here is

1. bots are rude
2. AI is not a reliable source of facts

We work with facts and information, and I have no expectation that my collection of facts is something to defend against replication.

On the other hand, I’d be pissed AF if someone stole my research paper on 1800s family drama and reprinted it without attribution, or AI-hallucinated new pseudo-facts that were not in the source materials.

Edit: my situation isn’t that of others and I totally get why artists and authors would be upset about AI bots stealing their work.

I use a shelf-stable egg replacer in my baking, mostly because I hardly ever have eggs on hand. (Bob’s Red Mill is the brand I see, but I’m sure there’s other brands out there)

I guess I’m big on shelf-stable substitutes for stuff that goes bad fast: I also have powdered milk for baking/sauces, and textured vegetable protein to add protein and texture to things I’d usually use ground meat for, where the meat’s flavor would be overpowered by the sauce anyway.

Tbh, I’d be less testy about bots scraping my sites for AI input IF they respected my robots.txt file and didn’t slam the server. They’re just rude and I don’t like it. Sometimes they’re so rude it’s effectively a DOS attack.

Tbh, my sites exist to get information out there and I don’t care if someone mirrors my sites, as long as the information is still accurate.

I think “ethnic cleansing” is a subset of genocide.

My wiccan high school classmate in the early 2000s sure was. Our PE/Health Education teacher was very vocal about his feelings towards witches.

I’ve been having good luck with Mercari. It’s an online flea market where individuals sell their stuff. It helps that I dress boring and know my size in a few specific brands/items.

Good question. It might shake out differently for eBay and Facebook because they make it clearer that you’re buying from an individual or store. I don’t think Facebook even takes a cut.