Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@mina

For a first kit something like this will be less upsetting:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806563908696.html

Slowly you learn how to control the heat in the iron, the names of the parts, how to read the board and circuits etc.

This thing almost made me cry 8 years ago. LOL.

If you want to try the puzzle there are still a few of them here:

Cordwood Puzzle Too

The second in the series of Boldport's Cordwood Puzzles, an old method of PCB assembly with through-hole components sandwiched between PCB layers. A little slice of history!

(shop.pimoroni.com)

What is something that once seemed advanced and impossible to you that later became easy?

Isn't that feeling the best high in the world?

I used to think that this thing was so advanced and complicated and that only super experts would understand it at all.

I even thought it was sort of mean that Boldport made it so hard!

Now I'm like "this is baby stuff"

This has happened with mathematics for me many times. But only a few times with electronics. I'm totally self-taught in electronics. My knowledge is hard won, my students get to learn these things much faster with my help.

But, that's what I love about teaching.

When I was first learning electronics I bought a bunch of kits from Boldport. Including the "cordwood puzzle" and when it came I was so despondent. It's pair of PCBs and parts and YOU need to puzzle out how to put them together.

I remember thinking that I'd never be able to work it out. Just putting a kit together correctly and having it work was my limit.

I put the puzzle away, forgot about it.

I found it today ... guess what?

It's SO EASY.

Nice to be old and learn new tricks isn't it?

WHY isn't there a more huge blue sky research fund into gall wasps?

They can control plants and make them grow things for them.

They control plants better than human gardeners.

@Sunny @LilahTovMoon

Having adult guidance is very important. Just telling teens to "get a job" isn't.

Making $3000 over a few months at an after school job as a teen isn't a good use of a young person's time in most cases and if they can afford to do other things such as study, learning a language, learning a skill it's a better use of time.

I don't think the kids I've taught who worked needed all those hours to get how budgets and taxes work.

@Sunny @LilahTovMoon

I say this as someone who worked at a mall tutoring center all through HS to save money for tuition.

I would have gotten better grades if I could have only worked summers but that was not an option.

As a teacher I find most teens are excited to get a job, and overestimate how much they can do and how little sleep is OK.

@Sunny @LilahTovMoon

When students in HS have to hold down a job during the school year it hurts their education. Summer jobs are another matter.

Students may choose courses that are less academically challenging to keep their grades up, or their grades may fall.

It also makes things like being on a sports team or in a club difficult.

Ultimately it's the sense that they think they can "triangulate" me (say one thing to me and another to less left leaning democrats) that has me very sour on most of the party moderates.

It's just dishonest.

And it's condescending.

But I find that moderate Democrats who found success doing this kind of trick with Bubba and Obama still think it will work and it just doesn't.

It's good for politicians to target mailers and advertising, but this should always be done with the assumption that voters talk to each other.

For example if I find out that a politician sent a teacher a message about unions and improving education that seems sensible and like they are interested in who the voters are.

But if you try to talk behind people's backs? Try to be a progressive to some voters but regressive to others?

hooo boy. That makes you seem creepy and untrustworthy.

@Anke

They didn't send the one where they made his beard darker to me... but they sent that one to my husband who's white.

CHARMING MR.CUOMO just what I want in a NYC mayor.

OMG go jump in a lake.

(on second thought do not jump in the lake it would be bad for the water and environment)

@Anke

Some of my friends who are married don't get two fliers and I wonder if it might be because my husband and I aren't the same race, which is the other data they seem to have?

They also struggle to get that right for same sex couples.

hm.

@Anke

They seem to know I'm a teacher based on some of the fliers, but that's about it.

To their credit they do send us fliers in English, while my next door neighbor who mostly speaks Spanish gets them in Spanish... however she says the translations were very clunky and hard to read.

@Anke

It's addressed to me, and to my husband, and they are not smart enough to realize that if we have the same address and last name we're married and don't need TWO copies of everything.

@Landa

Alternately it could be a D&D game, but I think the constraints of a literal game like minecraft would make it more material... playing an RP game would be too vulnerable to BS.

Did you get the diamonds or nah?
Is your automatic farm working?
Why not?
etc.

@Landa

There should also be some regular people involved.

A few kids who know a lot about the game, a cranky old person, an actual engineer who'd be aghast at the nonsense physics of the game...

@Moss

It's not fair. You get this and all I get is political junk mail!
https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/114763164556713325

@buffyleigh

And this mixed response relates to your first point. Stories aren't just "good" or "bad" ... they are also "good for you right now" or... maybe not.

A book can be basically perfectly written and still unreadable for some people in some moments.

Does that make any sense?