I've been away from teaching for a year. I was teaching writing, so I didn't test for reading comprehension. I thought I gave them a reasonable amount of reading to do, considering the time required for the significant volume of writing that I and my colleagues assigned. We all felt it was important for them to read, too, because writers have to read. How else will you know if your ideas are original? And, of course, people who don't are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to the mechanics of writing. I never did figure out why people who didn't like to read even wanted to write. I'd say that a significant portion of them were able to read the assignments just fine, and they included sophisticated texts--Hamlet, the Brontës, Frankenstein. Some of them surely skipped the reading and sat out the class discussions as best they could. I'm pretty sure I could tell who they were. Toward the end, I observed some things that I thought were shocking. I had a graduate student tried to use AI to outline his novel, and the result didn't even resemble the assignment I'd given. I also noticed that a number of students didn't seem to grasp how a novel is laid out on the page, because they were clueless about what I meant by "scene breaks" until I projected a published page on the screen and showed them the white space that breaks a fictional narrative when there's a change in POV character, time, or place. I finally realized it was because they were listening to audiobooks. I had to change my syllabus to specify that, although audiobooks are a completely legitimate way to consume text for other purposes, they needed to read printed books (paper or ebook were both fine) for my class. And, of course, I explained the reason for this change. In short, written word is competing with a lot of other kinds of media these days. (Movies, TV, games, the internet--all the usual suspects.) Games, in particular, are a huge part of young people's lives these days. I privately thought that many of my students really wanted to write video games, but that wasn't what our program taught.

“For amusement purposes only”

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Oh, it just occurred to me that maximum annual contribution and market volatility are not related to each other. Duh. I had to leave the USAA page alone and do something else. It's almost sunset. It's finally cooled off again. I might return to it tonight. I might wait until tomorrow.

@Mark Place "WOW" emoji here.

My grandfather kept one for upkeep on the farm ditches. He called them by an older name, "motor patrol". He would stand and watch it work. He would stop it and tell the driver what he wanted more frequently than was necessary I am sure. The water drainage district did more of that work in later years. No doubt my grandfather told them how to do it.

@AdagioM said: Ewww. But well played. Exactly that. Thanks

The Oracle founder bought CBS, the largest private donor to the IDF in history. I already knew of him because he bought an entire Hawaiian island. He bought one of the neighbor islands. CBS is not news. And the attack on 60 Minutes was predictable.

@RealPlayer said: Bernard — and eventually you’ll have to subscribe to continue receiving updates for $99/year. And it takes great quality video of you and sends it to who know where without any question about a warrant. What's not to like?!

@Steve-Miller said: I wonder how much of that surge pricing goes to the drivers. Google’s AI says Uber calculates the customer fare and the driver’s pay separately — one algorithm to find the maximum for what customers are willing to pa for a ride, another separate algorithm to find the minimum for what drivers are willing to accept to provide a ride. I don’t think anyone is surprised by this. Uber also invests a lot in autonomous driving technology, so all this will become moot anyway when the customers develop enough trust in cars that drive themselves.

@Mary-Anna said: Oh, and the choir rehearses at a church right across the street from my house. I can walk out my front door five minutes before rehearsal and be there with time to spare. That's great!!

In CA there are dozens of hamburger restaurants owned by Greeks. Interesting that they all look nearly alike with nearly identical menus even though they are each individually owned. The menus include classic hamburger fare, Mexican food and always a few Greek items. Best value available for lunch on the road. My friend grew up on an Army base in Greece and speaks the language fluently. If he ordered in Greek we always got free food!