Let me tell you a story. A student complains that grade was not calculated on the basis of scores after quick and easy accommodations for a visual difficulty (don't use 10 point font). Administration takes over response. Uses canvas data available to them. Says grade is fine. But as is often the case the administration doesn't know how things work. Their knowledge deficit will lead to deceit to cover their tracks. The canvas data isn't where the grade was calculated; the final exam is not there, no test corrections are there.

On Brenner and @DylanRileyNLR's 7 Theses on American Politics
1. Is raw political power the key determinant of the rate of return? Counter is that it's monopoly power yielding a hierarchy in ROI among capitals. That in turn creates the anger of small capital with a low ROI. 2. This may make investment in politics crucial, but it is to protect monopoly power. On monopoly see @jan_eeckhout and @ThomasPHI2

Will guess that Apple and Google will drop the twitter app due to proliferating health misinformation. "You can decide to trust America's physicians, or you can trust some random dude on Twitter. Those are your choices," Ashish Jha said at a White House press briefing. "For journalists and for people who own platforms, what I would say is you should be thinking about what your personal responsibility is, and do you want to be a source of misinformation and disinformation? That's up to up to those individuals," he said.

Far left Berkeley views? Who from Berkeley gets the most engagement? @delong ? @doudna_lab ? They both have fewer than 100K followers. And they are not left! Michael Lewis is not on twitter. And not far left. Far left SF? It just ousted its left School Board and Boudin.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1595534031545765890

Is it @owasow now from Berkeley? Omar's the far left? Oh, it must be me with my 2K followers & monthly engagement # somewhere between 300-700K. A worldwide influencer. And I'm so left that I make favorable references to Schumpeter's defense of capitalism & entrepreneurial profit

At 10% interest, a loan of $100 would have to be paid back in max 10 years just for the principal to be recovered. If it took longer for the payback then the lender wouldn't have been enjoying an annual 10% of pure interest. At 2% interest, the loan would be paid back in 50 years. This suggests why the the higher the interest rate the shorter the payback period private actors set.

Avner Offer on climate change: "Stern proposed a low composite discount rate of 1.4 %, which indicated that action was called for, and would not be too onerous. At a 1.4 % discount rate, investing £1 for a £10 return in 50 years is worth £4.14 today – definitely worthwhile. "At Nordhaus’s 6 per cent discount rate (derived from the market rate), investing £1 today for a £10 return in fifty years is worth only £0.33 today – a waste of money. Stern embodied the egalitarian social planner,

We're wrongly told an UCLA lecturer's canceled for refusing to pause during lynching videos. We're told a climate scientist was canceled for DEI views. He wasn't; he was given a more prestigious lecture than one for high schoolers. We're falsely told the Othello Prof was canceled My question is why people just amplify these false stories being churned out by a well-funded right wing machine. We know who is being canceled: black principals, faculty who stand up to right-wing donors, BDS supporters, etc. Conservative ideas aren't being canceled.

Look at what National Merit still allows. Does anyone know if the test prep companies recommend that their customers cancel their PSAT scores and submit SAT scores instead? Does anyone know if the school is ever explicitly told that the Selection Index number came from a SAT? I get that the school can infer from the PSAT score list whether a student must have submitted an alternate entry. But I am wondering whether when the school receives the National Merit list, it is explicitly told whether the number came from a PSAT or SAT?

Don't be a sucker and administer the PSAT if you are an administrator or not cancel your PSAT if you're a student. This was my daughter's situation. National Merit competition is usually via a PSAT, but you can submit a SAT score (via Alternate Entry). Just cancel your PSAT. The overwhelming majority of National Merit Semi-Finalists in CA entered via SAT scores even when their schools did give a PSAT test. They just had the score canceled. There are those who didn't know this trick that did better on the PSAT & SAT, but didn't cancel their PSAT score

.@shoshanazuboff's story is of Google using data to improve its search engine & then appropriating data surplus to that for the purpose of generating predictions about consumers to sell to advertisers who can then manipulate or nudge us. It has 2 other features: 1. Google went from improving a service its users knew they were using to appropriating raw behavioral data without users' consent or knowledge. This is likened to forcible extraction of raw material from a colonial possession as if Google were a new King Leopold in the Congo.

Critical race theory:
1. not thinking only THROUGH the categories of race but ABOUT them: how did they ARISE; how did their INTENSION change, e.g from marking language to pseudo-biological groups; how did their EXTENSION change--some becoming white, others excluded from Aryan; how do racial classifications VARY across time & place; how do racial categories become SUBSTANTIALIZED, i.e. groups imagined to stand out of society and can thus be expelled or eliminated from it ("exterminate all the brutes")

Tweeting Shoshana Zuboff lecture at @UCBerkeley Privacy Must Fall: The World According to #SurveillanceCapitalism Title homage to Wm Morris, a Romantic. Had a yearning nostalgia in face of Industrialism, but focused on beauty in textiles and buildings. Sought self-regulation, made moralistic appeals

When he wasn't tightening the border to try to get immigration reform passed, Obama used it as an alibi, i.e. not as wall but as an excuse to deport those whose unauthorized crossing would not be tolerated. #toleratedillegality in border crossings is just one of many cases where the balance of forces & the state conspire to have the law serve mostly symbolic purposes. While Obama did the right thing to try to create a path to citizenship for MILLIONS,