I recently overcame this as I've been reading more of the unread books populating my shelves. I always wanted to keep my books in pristine condition and never wanted to mark them up. Now, I realize they are part of MY collection and marking them up with highlights, underlines, notes, etc., only make them more valued since they contain their intrinsic knowledge from the author as well as my own views. Even if I want to give them to friends to read, they'll see areas that jumped out to me and maybe appreciate some of the additional context or focus I noted as well.
Aside from my college books, I rarely marked any physical books up. When I went to ebooks on tablets from hardcopy, briefly, I got into notes and whatnot with MoonReader for a couple years (like 2013-2015). Don't see any point in it now. Mostly just questions, and always about non-fiction.
What's annoying are people who want other people to find their notes in books (and even sell them for the ego aspect).
Are there any communities like this still around and thriving?
I miss the old bulletin board days of the mid 2000s to mid 2010s, before Facebook and other social media took over. I'm part of a vintage car building community (LocostUSA) that still uses forums, but is a very small, niche community. What others are still active?
As much as people make fun of "new math", it is really neat to see my 3rd grader working through a math problem step by step in a way that makes sense to them instead of the rote memorization I had to do as a kid. While they don't like showing their work, it helps them to work through each step to make sure their assumptions are correct, like you said.
Yes, it is nice that there are more ways that are taught now. It can turn into too much, however. Some parents I know dislike that their kid is taught 8 different ways to do long division, at the expense of having sufficient time to practice any of the methods. They end up taking the kids to math tutoring so that they can actually learn how to do the mechanical steps.
But it is for sure good that there are multiple ways to do various operations, and there are plenty of youtube videos that students can turn to if what they have been taught does not resonate for them.
In computer science, we have classes on memorizing/implementing various algorithms so that we may understand their behavior. Could anyone name the reason why grade school students memorize and execute the long division algorithm? I certainly hadn't used long division since grade school.
Grade school is years long, so a skill you're supposed to know in 3rd grade is one that you need to be able to faithfully execute for the next 3 years. The fact that you'll get a calculator in middle school doesn't help you if you're struggling through 4th and 5th grade.
This makes sense when you think about the divided state of the USA today. People were isolated during COVID and had no feedback on opinions formed then. When they started creating bubbles after lockdown, they wanted validation for the opinions they formed without that feedback. Now, people constantly argue online because that feedback they needed while cementing those ideas wasn't there and we aren't willing to take that communication feedback to tweak our opinions based on common sense because we all believe we are right. This article makes a lot of sense.
This is so true. My wife loves knitting and frequently gets comments about her items of people asking if they could have her knit something for them. When she tells them that if she tripled the prices of a similar store-bought one, she'd still be making sweatshop wages, they go back to the mass produced version they already have pretty quick.
I've been fascinated by mechanical watches for years. It can become a deep rabbit hole (like most hobbies). I frequently have watch restoration videos playing in the background as I'm doing things and love the process of taking apart, cleaning, and reassembling these watch movements. Wristwatch Revival is probably my favorite. I has encouraged me to tear apart a few watches of my own to give them a good service. As complex as they look, most follow a very similar process to rebuild.
I'm imagining a Dungeon Crawler Carl style view-meter that shows more people tuning in as he gets to some juicier parts of his journal. B-b-b-b-b-b-b-osss BATTLE!!!!
It is actually a decent sized community. As someone who works in technology, I enjoy the aspect of actually creating something physical when so much is ones and zeros on silicone. While not daily, I try to journal regularly as a practice to slow down, focus my thoughts, and use it as therapy to get frustrations/emotions/musings out so I can move on.
