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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Is it? There seems to be widespread agreement on that point, here on Lemmy, that expecting the worst of everyone is critical to motivate the Americans to go out and vote.

    It’s a strong enough consensus, reinforced with absolute certainty over and over in our political communities, that I’ve been forced to ponder it myself many times. Because I also have an instinct that it’s quite possible to demotivate and even deactivate would-be voters by making them feel that theirs is a lone flame in the wind, or that the insurmountable forces of evil will make their efforts inconsequential.

    As a counter example, here in New York, that wasn’t what brought people out to knock on doors and vote for the new progressive mayor. People participated because they had hope for change, or maybe just to be a part of a something new. They weren’t voting against Cuomo as much as they were voting for Mamdani, if that makes sense.

    Are we confident that our all-in commitment to motivating people through fear of their neighbors’ inaction is a winning strategy?



  • I know it may be difficult for some to believe, especially from the outside looking in, but the sea change in the US is in progress.

    With the ongoing suppression of our media and the limited means of the average household to reach an audience beyond their local government, it may be hard to see the trees for the forest in a nation that’s so spread out, but we currently have at least one national general strike scheduled, and with every public protest the resistance seems to grow exponentially.

    Progressive campaigns like Mamdani’s are spreading and succeeding in many districts once considered solidly MAGA territory. It may take many more months for all of these efforts to reach the national scale and even longer to make it into the international headlines, but it appears Americans haven’t yet given up or fully taken to glassy-eyed complacency.

    Whether it’s enough has yet to be seen. I would just offer that perhaps they’re not yet done fighting for their democracy.


  • Septimaeus@infosec.pubtomemes@lemmy.worldMath is not a democracy
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    20 days ago

    Dear colleague,

    By qualification I meant explanation. My doctorate is irrelevant to the truth.

    Since you asked, my larger point was about the unhelpful nature of this content, which makes students of math feel inordinately inferior or superior hinged entirely on a single point of familiarity. I don’t handle early math education, but many of my students arrive with baggage from it that hinders their progress, leading me to suspect that early math education sometimes discourages students unnecessarily. In particular, these gotcha-style math memes IMO deepen students’ belief that they’re just bad at math. Hence my dislike of them.

    Re: Dave Peterson, I’ll need to read more about this debate regarding the history of notation and I’ll search for the “proven rules” you mentioned (proofs mean something very specific to me and I can’t yet imagine what that looks like WRT order of operations).

    If what riled you up was my use of the word “conventions” I can use another, but note that conventions aren’t necessarily “optional” when being understood is essential. Where one places a comma in writing can radically change the meaning of a sentence, for example. My greater point however has nothing to do with that. Here I am only concerned about the next generation of maths student and how viral content like this can discourage them unnecessarily.