"When students at San Jose State returned to campus last fall after more than a year of remote learning, lecturer Damon Moon thought they would be chatty and excited to see one another. Instead he noticed something concerning: They weren’t talking at all." wsj.com/articles/colle…
"They lost the skill to have small talk...Schools were an environment that encouraged students to have reasonable conversations and build relationships during their formative years."
"Recently, small groups of students went to Zoom breakout rooms to work on an assignment. Ms. Touneh said no one had their cameras on and no one spoke. 'It took me 6 minutes to say something. I finally gathered the courage. I said, Hey guys, so what are we supposed to be doing?’”
"Runhua Yang, a biz major, said she’s normally extroverted but the pandemic has made it more difficult to express herself. Masks have made it harder for teachers to hear her, causing her to speak up less often. 'If a professor doesn’t encourage participation, I stay quiet.'"
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"Never before has Texas—or any other state—involuntarily activated so many troops under state active duty authority for such a long-term mission." Quite a @TexasTribune story on the hardship faced by the thousands of National Guardsmen sent to the border: texastribune.org/2022/02/01/tex…
@TexasTribune "A few days after being told he’d likely sit the deployment out, the NCO was ordered to report within 72 hours, he said. If he didn’t, his commanders told him, the state would issue an arrest warrant. 'I had to cancel $60K worth of business contracts'...His employees all quit."
"As many as 1 in 5 troops in the 6,500-strong 'operational force' who have been sent to the border have reported problems with their pay, including being paid late, too little or not at all for months."
This was my first day back in NY since returning to US last month after 4.5 months in Germany. When I was in NY over summer, you could sense things opening up. But now, the contrast with Germany seems so, so stark, especially as regards the basic fact of people going to work. 1/3
In Germany, even during their rough Delta surge of Nov and Dec, many people were still going to work, going downtown. The regional trains from the suburbs were still heavily used; you had to search for a seat. The train stations were bustling--in Berlin, in Essen, in Cottbus. 2/3
In NY, my goodness. Penn Station and shiny new Moynihan Hall are ghostly. There are no commuter crowds. Newsstands are closed. The bar at Moynihan closes at 8 (in NY!). There are so many visible people in distress bc there are so few others around. Public transit needs people.3/3
The rise of Amazon and the rest of Big Tech used to be yoked to the Democrats. In the pandemic era, their fortunes have diverged. My latest, to mark the occasion of the paperback release of FULFILLMENT: washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/0…
"The Democratic Party was becoming the Amazon coalition: highly educated professionals (mostly white) relying on home deliveries, and working-class people (mostly not white) getting stuff to them...There's undeniable awkwardness in the former keeping safe by relying on latter."
I was remiss in not including another record-breaker: Jackson, Miss. It had 152 homicides, in a city of only 166,000. That's up from the previous record of 130, set last year. clarionledger.com/story/news/202…
Three small moments of humanity observed while in transit in past day at a time sorely lacking in such: 1) A 40ish Texan, ex-Army, chatting up the Dutch couple across aisle of a NE Corridor Amtrak. "This is my first time riding a train in America. We don't have trains in Texas."
2) The young woman behind counter of a deli near Penn Station in NY buying large cookies from the deli counter to give to her two co-workers as a holiday gesture during a quiet moment before shift change. They are startled and visibly moved by her generosity.
3) The tow-truck driver in upstate NY, who did 10 years in a Puerto Rican prison for drug dealing etc. and is delighted to now own his own business, spending a 50-minute drive cheering up a guy with serious car troubles.