Your video, Elite Dangerous Galactic Exploration Heatmap, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, Explore a Ghost Town in Southern Italy, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This really rang true for me... (Cool Story Bro alert)

I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing two different RPGs in my early teen years: Ultima 6 and Final Fantasy 3 (SNES, FF6 by Japanese reckoning).

I treated Ultima 6 as a world simulator more than a "game", and so I never actually finished it because I had discovered and thrown away key plot items, and done enough"evil" stuff to have low karma that prevented me from actually proceeding with the story. But I didn't care much, I enjoyed just exploring and steamrolling anything that crossed my path.

Final Fantasy 3(6) was more forgiving though. I put experience eggs and other stuff on each character and then ground xp in the dinosaur forest, and eventually got every one up to level 99 with 9999 health and high stats. Similar to Ultima 6, I mainly enjoyed exploring and leveling up, so I had never even tried the final boss battle (Kefka) until I had every single character up to level 99 (not just 4-person party, I mean *every* character).

I figured being the final boss meant that it would be a tough fight no matter what. So I decked out a group of 4 (I liked Edgar, Sabin, Mog, and Umaro as my favorites) all with high end stuff. Edgar had Genji Gloves (dual wield) and Offering (attack 4 times per weapon, so 8 with Genji Glove), with Atma Weapon and Ragnarok swords.

Fight my way to Kefka, and order Edgar to "attack" -- 8 attacks of 9999 damage each, Kefka dies without getting so much as a single turn. Welp, guess I overprepared for that boss!

/end CSB

The last couple of decades I've really begun to see the military as corporate welfare. We have a force capable of crushing, literally crushing any non nuclear power nation 20 times over. We can never use that force against a significant nuclear power nation like Russia or China lest we risk WWW3, the war that will REALLY end all wars (by humanity at least). Our tech is also pretty much useless against a guerrilla force because they can melt across borders and into the local population.

Our outdated technology still would destroy any of the nations other than Russia or China. We have shit mothballed and decaying that would do so. We have a fucking stockpile of main battle tanks that we will never use, but we keep building them and storing them because, apparently, if you let the people go who know how to make them you can never replace that knowledge.

All the while, we let people get mired in school debt, credit debt, and increase our national debt because we need to crush some unknown force. We spend a fraction of what we should be spending on space exploration and colonization. I could go on, but why bother.

If you have any doubt, just look at the F35. By the time it is all said and done, we will have close to half a trillion sunk into that fucking debacle and it STILL isn't functioning capably. Russia and China haven't got anything close to it and we don't need it against anyone else. You could take that money and give close to 2 grand to every single man, woman, and child in the country. Instead we basically are lining Lockheed Martin's pockets.

A great exploration of the importance of a good editor. *promote

Can't help but imagine rabbit ears and whiskers flailing as he gesticulates! Perhaps it's his penchance to take his viewers down the Rabbit Hole of some social misjustice. I know he does explore further into these topics on a separate podcast...they are still Gordian knots which will convince no opponent.

@drradon: I agree with you 100% on teaching both and teaching basic arithmetic first and then leading on to proper math once that foundation is established.

@dannym3141,

I was first blindsided by it when my kids came home with multiplication homework and were adamant they couldn't answer it the way I was showing them because it would be marked wrong, it was the wrong way to do multiplication.

The link to the full Manitoba math curriculum is below. The worst sections are under 'Mental Math' with the idea being that you should be able to add/subtract/multiply/divide all numbers in your head with a dozen pages worth of tricks. The tricks being what newtboy was calling 'proofs'. Our curriculum calls them 'techniques' though and I've included an example from the Grade 3 curriculum verbatim after of how it is supposed to be 'taught'.

Overall Math curriculum:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/index.html

Grade 3 example:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/support_gr3/number.pdf

From page 56:
Describe a mental mathematics strategy that could be used to determine a given basic fact, such as
-doubles (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 7 + 7)
-doubles plus one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 6 + 6 + 1)
-doubles take away one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 7 + 7 – 1)
-doubles plus two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 6 + 2)
-doubles take away two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 8 + 8 – 2)
-making 10 (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 4 + 4 or 8 + 2 + 4)
-commutative property (e.g., for 3 + 9, think 9 + 3)
-addition to subtraction (e.g., for 13 – 7, think 7 + ? = 13)."

Now before you think me and observe there's nothing wrong with showing kids some extra tricks to help them, that is NOT how this is supposed to be used. If you read further, students are REQUIRED to "explore" multiple methods of calculating answers and must demonstrate they know and can use all these 'tricks'. So instead of providing assistance for difficult calculations as it should be, it's used to make ALL calculations difficult, and create extra work, AND makes kids just learning the concept completely overwhelmed with everything you MUST know to get a right answer to 2+2=4.

And here's the link to the Grade 11 review of the basic arithmetic:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/ess_mm_gr11/full_doc.pdf

And for the Grade 11 students and teaching them to add/subtract/multiply and divide, the teacher's guide describes this like a subjective discovery process with quotes like this:
"Consequently, mental calculation activities should include periods for thought and discussion.
During these periods, the teacher should encourage students to
-suggest a variety of possible solutions to the same problem
-explain the different methods used to come to the correct answer and their
effectiveness
-explain the thought process that led to an incorrect answer"

An important note is we are not talking about solving complex word problems here or anything, but specifically for calculating a basic arithmetic operation with the different methods being those described from back in Grade 3 already outlined above.

Here's a thought experiment:

Imagine a power technology emerging that makes the cost of electricity virtually zero and the supply virtually endless.

Since the emergence of life, the task of survival is the quest for energy in one form or another. Most of the critical advancements by humanity have been driven by the need to acquire, distribute and store energy. When you're sitting at your computer being productive for a paycheck, you are serving the same goal as prehistoric hunter-gatherers, you're just doing it via a much more complex system of acquisition and distribution.

The more efficiently we acquire energy, the less effort it takes to satisfy our individual energy needs and the more time we have for other pursuits such as culture and exploration.

What happens when the effort necessary to acquire a life's worth of energy approaches zero?

For space, fabric suits seem fine, but planetary exploration is a dirty, rough business. I don't understand why they aren't thinking more along the lines of a newt suit. Yes, much heavier, but it would last exponentially longer and be exponentially safer.

A whole new decade for you to explore Truck! Happy Birthday ... may it bring all the best there is to have

The video pretty drastically oversold the benefits of Political Correctness, in my opinion. I do, however, completely agree that generic "politeness" is a far superior standard to hold yourself to or goal to aspire to.

PC vs politeness seems very highly analogous to perceiving things as either intrinsically "offensive" or being personally "offended". Humor is frequently a fantastic way of exploring those kinds differences, and SMBC comics did an excellent strip on offensive vs offended:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-02-23

The conclusion there is that "I'm offended" starts arguments (ie., it can create rational and beneficial dialog) while "offensive" ends them (ie., it stifles progress). I feel that it is equally accurate to say that politeness can help resolve problems while PCness really doesn't; it is possible to politely disagree, but in the realm of PC disagreement in and of itself is often deemed offensive and seen as something to be discouraged.

I think part of being an adult is learning that people will often disagree, and that is actually a good thing.

What do real scientists say?
...the one's he worked with all said Lindzen is totally wrong, and his views are not held by the vast, VAST majority of other scientists that actually work in climatology. He's a political shill now, working for 'conservative think tanks' to deny climate change.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06032017/climate-change-denial-scientists-richard-lindzen-mit-donald-trump

Note, his graph at the beginning that appears to show no significant rise because as usual they start in late 97-98, a super hot El Nino year (the hottest on record) typically used as a starting point to pretend that temperatures aren't rising as fast as they are. Start at any other time to see how different the results are. This graph contains the hottest 15 years in recorded history over a period of the last 19 years. That's pretty telling by itself.

1)the climate is always changing-but according to natural cycles, we should be in a cooling period, not a warming period.
2)so at least in his mind, everyone agrees CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes warming...that's better than most deniers.
3)"little ice age"-During the period 1645–1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period between 1460 and 1550 (it was not caused by low CO2 levels), and CO2 is produced more in warmer temperatures than cold, so starting shortly after then you can claim the CO2 levels have been rising since well before the industrial revolution...which cherry picked like that may be technically true but is again misleading by starting at an unusually low level following a low level solar period, but the level of that rise has consistently risen since the industrial revolution, and is incredibly higher than any natural mass releases besides rare massive super volcano eruptions that caused mass extinction events.
4) just plain not true, and not agreed on by scientists.
5)What they actually said-
Improve methods to quantify uncertainties of climate projections and scenarios, including development and exploration of long-term ensemble simulations using complex models. The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system�s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.

Confident prediction of future weather is not possible, weather predictions are based on statistical probabilities too. Because they aren't perfect doesn't mean they're wrong, useless, or should be ignored until they're 100% right every time. More funding for more study will improve the predictions consistently, but we are intentionally defunding them instead.

Religion channel? As in the religion of climate change denial? That's not what that channel is.
Philosophy channel? What?
Learn channel, only if the viewer looks into his BS elsewhere to learn the truth.
Lies, yep...controversy, yep....politics, yep....conspiracy,OK. His ilk are steeped in those, but you left out money, the driving force for all the deniers controversial, political lies and crazy conspiracy theories. ;-)

"I don't want to be a multi-planet species." Does this dork think Earth's going to last forever? What happened to, "Space, the final frontier." Bill?

I agree we take care of our planet, but there's no reason to give up on exploring the cosmos. Jeez!

A comment from Youtube:
"So, this horrible and blatant act of racism happened to occur to a former ACLU civil liberties counselor who majored in Critical Race Studies -- described as a major aimed at "naming one's own reality" by "using narrative to illuminate and explore experiences of racial oppression." Isn't it ironic and unfortunate that this would happen to her of all people?

What's also a little ironic is that Ms. Suh not only received these texts from a "Tami," but also happens to have a Facebook friend named "Tami" who posts on Facebook about "Tiny House Listings" -- a house rental service.

Speaking of which, it's kind of interesting that Tami showed up as "Tami" on Ms. Suh's phone, rather than as a phone number, isn't it? And there's a photo for Tami too. That means Tami is saved as a contact. It's a little odd for some random Airbnb host that Ms. Suh never met in-person to be a contact with a photo on her phone, isn't it?

Interestingly, if you look at Facebook-friend "Tami's" photos, they're all sort of artistic, colorful photos of inanimate objects -- just like Tami's photo in the texts.

If I didn't know better, I would almost, almost think that this stilted, formal, perfect little racist exchange between house-renter Tami and critical race studies major Ms. Suh, and the passionately tearful speech in the rain that followed -- why was she making speeches in the rain anyway? -- was, in fact, a carefully constructed "narrative" that Ms. Suh conspired to create with her Facebook-friend Tami.

But hey, that couldn't be right, could it?"

Hmmmm...