Love this post - thankyou! Slightly tangential request: as a primary teacher I would LOVE to hear any elements of the freedom of expression unit that you can recall? I realise they’re likely blurry, but it sounds fantastic and impactful and I’d love to at least ponder creating something similar…
I wish I could recall more – I’m sure we must have done activities surrounding it, but mostly what I remember is just him talking to us about it. He was a really interesting teacher at a really interesting school; it was a private school for gifted kids (I had to test in when I was six or seven) and extremely liberal, I don’t think he could have done it in a public school. He also taught us about revisionist history and colonialism super young.
What I remember is that it was tied into a study of foundational government documents like the Magna Carta and the US Constitution; basically he did a nine-year-old-eye-level view of the history of democracy, so he didn’t talk about details or nuances or even dates and names, he just said, you know, this is kind of how it went. And one of the ideas nested in there somewhere (along with a few others like explaining how free public education was established and worked, and how taxes worked) was the idea of freedom of expression.
I remember him explaining to us that in some countries, in history and the modern era, you could be arrested for saying an opinion; you could be put in prison for having your own ideas about the world. He talked to us about how freedom of expression meant that the government couldn’t persecute you for what you said, but you could still get in trouble for it with other people. “Like how you can’t swear around your parents.” Very much “protects you from the government, not the Justin.”
And then he just started asking us questions, like should you get in trouble for lying? What if you lie to a bunch of people and someone gets hurt? What if you lie in a way that breaks a law, like saying you didn’t rob a bank when you did? (“Shouting fire in a crowded theater” was one he used, it’s a fairly standard example). He didn’t talk about sex at all ‘cause we were nine-year-olds, but I can see in the discourse on Kink At Pride the examples he would have made. (I didn’t find out until much later, but he was gay and was deeply impacted by the AIDS epidemic; in the summers when he wasn’t teaching he basically just spent three months getting repeatedly arrested for civil disobedience at protests. He also taught us about passive resistance, going limp when being arrested so that it’s harder to move you around and takes up more manpower.)
He just talked to us about like, there is a balance between freedom of expression and public safety that we have to navigate and it’s always changing, so you have to be able to discuss it, you can’t just make blanket statements about it. It’s not a right that you just have, it’s a negotiation that as a responsible adult you have to engage with.
I wish I could remember if he gave us activities about it, but I just remember it being a long conversation.
FYI if your employer does this, if they have done it for a long time especially, you and your coworkers could be owed huge amounts of unpaid wages and it would be an easy suit if there is a paper trail like this and your employer is placing strict requirements on your behavior while not at work. Employment lawyers generally work on contingency. Just food for thought.
I literally don’t have the space for any more physical books, but I’ve downloaded every Underrealm book on Kindle. I read The Alchemist’s Touch specifically because of this post and I seriously can’t recommend the Underrealm books enough. they are absolutely fantastic.
I don’t really read anymore, not like i used to. And of i get a masters this year like i am planning to then that isn’t going to change. But hell yes I’m going to go and buy these books because THIS is exactly the kind of thing that i want to support!
YISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
One day I will have a job and a bank account and I will have money from the job in the bank account and I will use some of the money to purchase these books
Hey did you
did you know
did you know we have a podcast now and you can literally listen to the books for free.
(You probably didn’t. That’s okay because it’s very new).
It’s slower than buying and reading them, but it’s great if you have no book budget but you do have some listening time!
people with medical issues are not “putting a strain on the medical system”. that’s what the medical system is for. yes this includes people with substance use related medical issues and other people considered “undeserving” of help
A petition was filed with the National Labor Relations Board today requesting a union election. The petition includes 66 staffers at Warner Bros. Animation and 22 at Cartoon Network, including roles like production manager, digital production assistant, IT technician, production coordinator, production assistant, design production coordinator, assistant production manager and senior assistant production manager.
They are involved in such Warner Bros. projects as Batman: The Caped Crusader, Harley Quinn and Teen Titans Go! and Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, We Baby Bears and Craig of the Creek.
The workers also requested voluntary recognition from management at the Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiaries.
A tweet was issued confirming the move, which was officially announced earlier on a joint Zoom call.
“Although many might not think it, production is a specialized skill; we might not be artists or writers, but what we bring to the table goes beyond traditional creativity and gets content on the air,” Warner Bros. Animation production manager Hannah Ferenc said in a statement about the organization effort. “Having lived through the existing state of the animation industry for the past seven years, I want to make sure that not only our current workers, but all those who choose to join us in the future, can feel secure in following their passion by earning livable wages and being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
The Animation Guild has already established bargaining units on shows like Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites, The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad! It also is active at studios like Titmouse New York and L.A. and ShadowMachine. Establishment at Walt Disney Animation Studios is currently in progress.”
Members of the Kennedy Space Center control room team rise from their consoles with nervous anticipation to witness Neil Armstrong’s landing of Eagle, the lunar module, on the surface of the moon in July 1969.
Armstrong would later reflect that landing was by far his biggest concern, saying “the unknowns were rampant,” and “there were just a thousand things to worry about.”
While the tiny, fragile Apollo lunar lander descended rapidly to the Moon’s surface, its guidance computer disturbed the crew with several unexpected alarms. Including a 1202, which they had never simulated in training.
Turns out they had overshot the planned landing zone. The Eagle was coming in ‘long’ or downrange, overshooting the predicted landing zone.
Just after Buzz Aldrin calls out the altitude, “700 feet”, Armstrong replies: “Pretty rocky area.” They were confronted with a crater field and boulders measuring 10-15 feet across, so Armstrong leveled off at about 400 feet to find a better spot to land.
With a rapidly diminishing fuel supply, they would soon reach the 60-second mark when they would have to abort the mission.
“We heard the call of 60 seconds, and a low-level light came on. That, I’m sure, caused concern in the control center,” Aldrin recalled. “They probably normally expected us to land with about two minutes of fuel left. And here we were, still a hundred feet above the surface, at 60 seconds.”
Just after Armstrong asks “Okay, how’s the fuel?” and Aldrin replies “Eight percent”, Amstrong declares “Okay. Here’s a…looks like a good area here.”
In the final seconds of the white-knuckle descent, the four-legged lunar module made it to the dusty surface.
Aldrin: “Contact Light.” That meant at least one of the probes hanging from three of the craft’s footpads had touched the surface – they had landed on a site they would call “Tranquility Base”.
“Houston, Tranquility Base here,” said Armstrong. “The Eagle has landed.”
“Roger, Tranquility. We copy you down,” came the reply from Charlie Duke in mission control. “You got a bunch of guys down here about to turn blue.”
