Book bans and culturally divisive conflicts cost schools more than $3 billion last year.
Schools say they’re spending the money on legal fees, added security, additional staff time and additional costs for community, school board and government relations, according to a report by Diana Lambert at the Times of San Diego. Districts are picking up the financial burden of staff turnover related to conflicts and because staff had to take time away from other duties to deal with conflict.
Half of superintendents surveyed said they’d been personally harassed at least once during the school year, 10% said they’d been threatened with violence and 11% had their proprty vandalized.
“A Pennsylvania superintendent called the emotional stress and anxiety ‘nearly crippling.'”
This article doesn’t say who’s causing all this strife, but I bet it’s the usual MAGA/Qanon/anti-vax/anti-LGBTQ/Dominionist suspects. Trans people and drag queens aren’t bothering anyone.
Awaken Church, an anti-LGBTQ charismatic sect closely aligned with Trump, wants to expand into Coronado, a suburb of San Diego. It’s facing pushback from local leaders (good!).
Church leaders compare Democrats to evil Biblical figures and say the LGBTQ community is the devil. The church partners with a right-wing organization that says it’s building an “army” to “save” America.
The Ingenuity helicopter is permanently grounded on Mars following a crash, after 72 flights. The NASA interplanetary probe was built to be affordable, using off-the shelf components where possible, and was designed for only five flights.
Police have determined who put the body of an 81-year-old former nurse in a home freezer in Allied Gardens, a suburb of San Diego: It was her husband, who died in February, weeks after the body was discovered.
But the cause of death and motive are still unknown.
Julie and I have an agreement that if one of us predeceases the other — which is, of course, likely — the survivor will not put the body of the deceased in a home freezer.
Unless it involves an awesome prank, in which case anything goes.
Ross Douthat: It’s Going to Be Normal to Have Extreme Beliefs. “Going to be”? It already is.
ChatGPT is getting support for Projects. You will be able to group related chats together and add source documents and custom instructions. This looks extremely useful and makes ChatGPT more like NotebookLLM.
I’d love to be able to pin or bookmark chats.
Another new Twitter? Good luck with that. “Users are now flocking to Bluesky. But every social media platform becomes a wasteland in the end.”
In a short article, J Wortham casts a skeptical eye on whether BlueSky will be the new, better Twitter and widens the discussion to examine Silicon Valley and California history. Racism and violence aren’t late additions; they were there from the beginning.