K. Chen Profile picture
Heartless humanist, unmovable automaton, fount of terrifying knowledge and purveyor of Collegey Velveteen Discourse. @tznkai@fosstodon.org; @tznkai.bsky.social
Jun 13, 2021 8 tweets 2 min read
1. Don't trust the Post.
2. Don't trust teachers who talk like this
3. Don't trust placement exams.
4. Even day cares can teach students of multiple abilities different things without sorting them into advanced classes. “It’s like not allowing any kids in a daycare to walk un I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with teaching some kids algebra when some kids that are the same age are being taught factorization, but that's not actually what these fights are about.
Jun 13, 2021 5 tweets 1 min read
There needs to be some terminology we can use to distinguish between people who willingly associate with very bad people (sexual predators, murderous cults) and people who have normie if problematic (TM) positions (thinking pink is girly) This is still about Lin-Manful Miranda, but not just him.
Jun 12, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Amazon is probably not any more or less terrible on average than any other blue collar job, we just feel guiltier about it because we all use Amazon.

(Also lacks some caché because of gender bullshit) Actually it might be less because they're large enough to have an actual HR department and comply more often with, e.g., disability accomodation law.
Jun 11, 2021 9 tweets 2 min read
I would actually love this. I'm sure nothing about the actual cartoon would hold up but the general concept vigilantes with a cool plane solving crime in a world where the bad guys have overly awesome tech works well for the same reason so much of Batman Beyond worked.
May 21, 2021 107 tweets 23 min read
This is correct, parents will revolt. I will bet all of the money in my pockets that parents will insist their special snowflake children are being /held back/ by being forced to waste their time helping other children instead of being given personalized instruction in advanced material.
Apr 20, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
What this looks like is a bunch of perfectly good medical equipment being thrown away during a crisis. But the reporting suggests this is an unregulated ventilator bought during the rush to cash in on COVID, finally cleared through customs, and then abandoned by the importer. I'm pretty deep in the google search and every result is raising a red or yellow flag.
Apr 19, 2021 17 tweets 4 min read
They're talking about a real thing, much like there is the Cult of Breakfast but on the other hand you can just not eat breakfast or drink so much water instead of forming an entire oppositional identity around it. Bluntly, a lot of our social problems are the result of white people not liking the advice they are getting, patholozing it into an identity, and then forming an entire identity to oppose that thing.
Apr 19, 2021 6 tweets 1 min read
Apr 19, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
Every day is defamation day

OK, no one to my knowledge has made a legal threat here but this is a really good exemplar of how things that seem like they're defamatory aren't because they're not statements of fact. The elements are here, but we're going to skip right to "statement of fact" for the analysis because that's where this gets interesting. The claims Byrne made are very clear.

Apr 19, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
People are using the word "scientifically" to do work that the term simply can not bear. Here's a reason to wear a mask outside that you may not have heard yet:

It's easier to do so while transiting between two indoor locations.
Apr 19, 2021 13 tweets 3 min read
Everyday is defamation day

Also "defamatory lie" is redundant. It can't be defamation if it isn't a lie. Let's do the elements

Apr 18, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
You see the same thing with business consulting and staffing in general. The enterprises go to white shoe firms because they're expensive and get, at best, marginally better results than going with a less expensive option. Frequently a worse result. And they don't care. This waste of money seems weird since the profit motive is supposed to drive everything, but it can be explained by a phrase from the tech industry "no one got fired for buying IBM"
Apr 17, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Are you people trying to kill me? But wait there's more

cnbc.com/2021/04/16/law…
Apr 17, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
I cannot quite grasp why so many Americans, even the ones willing to mask, think the masking "unnecessarily" is such a burden as opposed to roughly equivalent to covering a sneeze. It took an entire pandemic for this society to grasp the implications of the germ theory of disease, let's get to where various East Asian countries already were long ago.
Apr 17, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
As much as I personally benefit from cheap airfares, ending cheap airfares would be a massive environmental victory. Since I'm feeling waspish this morning, I will also note that people's concerns about the environment tend to maximize when they justify lifestyle choices already made and mysteriously diminish when, e.g., they are reminded that their fave leisure activity is cooking the planet.
Apr 17, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
We're now at 78.3% used, two months later as some states are exiting prioritization. That's a tiny improvement in throughput suggesting to me that I was right to think of the unused vaccines as a combination of float and learning by doing. bloomberg.com/graphics/covid… Jurisdiction Doses administ...
Mar 24, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Blackness was made and whiteness was made up. I think a lot about the power of culture and assimilation, so I have some sympathy for the people Jonathan is complaining about. But only a little, because if you want to change Black attitudes on America you should start with Black material conditions.

Mar 24, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
This is a very, very good thread. It also reminds me of this incident with my friend, which is honestly one of the things that has affected me most in my life. At some point shouldn't you just get to be yourself and still get important things?

Mar 24, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Again, if you believe that the global reserve currency is at all likely to collapse, please ask yourself what happens to global network of computers required to make bitcoin happen. This is what I refer to as a Goldilocks Apocalypse - a massive earth-shattering event that's juuuuuust catastrophic enough to go exactly your way.
Mar 22, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
I understand you folks think you can meme a stock into high prices forever, but that's not how any of this works. GME stock chart for the day. But congratulations, random with $74,400 to blow, you've managed to make the very squiggly looking line covering a loss of 2.55% and it look like a steady loss of 2.55%.
Mar 22, 2021 17 tweets 4 min read
Uh. What? I don't know if it's the world that's changed or it's me, but I honestly don't know how to react any more to a show whose premise is "vigilante beats up criminals" unless that vigilante is also a costumed superhero.