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Month: November 2025

Oregon dead last in reading

Oregon dead last in reading

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Why is Mississippi doing so well?

In 2013, the state passed a reform to require teachers to understand the science of reading (basically, phonics), deploy literacy coaches to schools, identify students struggling to read early and hold back students in third grade who weren’t ready to advance.

Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana have now done much the same, and have also made gains.

The original source of all this was a 2002 reading law in Florida that boosted student achievement in the Sunshine State.

https://nypost.com/2025/09/30/opinion/mississippi-is-no-miracle-its-the-future-of-education/

Meanwhile, Oregon, with some of the highest per-student spending, run for over a decade by a one of the most progressive Democratically controlled state legislatures in both the house and senate, continues to double-down on proven failed teaching methods and suspended all education standards to graduate in order to promote racial equality.

While Oregon is passing increasing numbers of functionally illiterate children on to adulthood, kids in Mississippi can read, and other countries children are doing this:

It’s fun on TV until you’re stuck living with it each day

It’s fun on TV until you’re stuck living with it each day

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Interesting little post from a local who’s calling things as they are and have been. Is Portland the claimed Trump ‘war zone’. No. Have we been breeding a violent protesters for years who actually commit a fair amount of violence? Absolutely yes.

So what’s “too far” for Rose City Antifa?

Antifa are clearly violent and they’ve broadcast their intent quite loudly since the Covid protests that had similar acts of violence and arson.

So where’s the line? Do we keep pretending that this wouldn’t escalate to a scenario like the sniper in Dallas? The frog costumes are cute, but even the guy who started that trend loves to post violent threats online.

AI to AI communication

AI to AI communication

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It’s no secret AI agents are starting to take over customer service and other tasks. So, instead of communicating via expensive text-to-speech conversion, why not use their own language.

Gibberlink allows AIs to skip unnecessary speech synthesis and recognition and communicate using beeps and bleeps like R2D2.

Etsy says no more 3d printed copycats

Etsy says no more 3d printed copycats

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Tomshardware – Etsy has redefined its Creativity Standards to exclude a vast majority of 3D printed goods sold on its website today. Instead of copy-cat 3D printed items, any products 3D printed must be “produced based on a seller’s original design.” 

Items produced using computerized tools: Physical items that a seller produced in their personal shop or home, using computerized tools such as a laser printer, 3D printer, CNC or Cricut machine. These items must be produced based on a seller’s original design and are often personalized or customized to a buyer’s specification.

Etsy policy

That means no more copy-and-3D-print spam stores that print common, free, and often cheaply licensed models. Hopefully this prevents the race-to-the-bottom dilution of Etsy’s brand from tons of ‘me too’ shops with the same 3D printed items.

Augmented reality surgery

Augmented reality surgery

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Medivis helps doctors overlay 3-dimensional MRI scans on patients to visualize anatomy. This use of augmented reality helps doctors identify the exact location of tumors, blood vessels, and other structures before performing surgery.

Hitler became a vegetarian?

Hitler became a vegetarian?

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The irony is pretty…amazing. I wonder what it says about us today when we now spend more on pets than human children?

Near the end of his life, Adolf Hitler from 1933 until his death, followed a vegetarian diet. It is not clear when or why he adopted it, since some accounts of his dietary habits prior to the Second World War indicate that he ate meat as late as 1937.

Several eyewitness sources maintain Hitler was a vegetarian because of his concern for animal suffering, noting that he was often distressed by images of animal cruelty and suffering, and was an antivivisectionist

Personal accounts from people who knew Hitler and were familiar with his diet indicate that he did not eat meat as part of his diet during this period, as several contemporaneous witnesses—such as Albert Speer (in his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich)—noted that Hitler used vivid and gruesome descriptions of animal suffering and slaughter at the dinner table to try to dissuade his colleagues from eating meat. 

Japan adopts a 4 day workweek and other baby demographic crisis around the world

Japan adopts a 4 day workweek and other baby demographic crisis around the world

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In response to Japan’s increasing demographic crisis, Tokyo has introduced a four-day workweek for government employees to improve work-life balance and address the country’s declining birth rate, taking effect from April 2025.

In a country of 124 million, only 686,061 babies were born in 2024. That number is shockingly low, but even worse, it’s a decline of 5.7% from the year before and makes the 16th straight year of birthrate decline. 2024 had the lowest birth rate since records were started in 1899. Experts are citing Japan’s notoriously work-life unfriendly corporate culture, strongly ingrained family role expectations, and rise of younger generations less interested in marriage and having children.

The marriage and birth rates in Japan has dropped so low that economists are warning of a breakdown of the country’s economy as well as social welfare system – calling in to question whether so few young people could care for so many old ones. Japan’s population of 124 million is projected to fall to 87 million by 2070, and have a shocking 40% of the population over 65.

Other countries are also treating declining birth rate as a crisis and making work-week changes to encourage families, marriage, and having children. Notably in European and Asian countries such as Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Denmark, and South Korea.

South Korea

South Korea is particularly interesting because it went from a birthrate of 1.24 in 2015, to the lowest birth rate in the world at 0.72 in 2023. Shocking government officials and being declared a national crisis. Healthcare, social security systems and economic stagnation are real dangers in low birth rate countries.

And in South Korea, it has gotten so bad it is now a country in which dog strollers outpace the sales of baby strollers.

By passing many reforms to encourage marriage and having children, they have managed to finally turn the tide slightly with 14.9% jump in marriages in 2024. This, government officials hope, will signal more children for an aging and shrinking national population that was shrinking by 120,000 more deaths than births last year. Even with these changes, South Korea’s population, which hit a peak of 51.83 million in 2020, is expected to shrink to 36.22 million by 2072.

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