khalid_salad

That’s awesome. :)

I tried something similar with my Steam Deck (Bazzite + Gamescope works OKish) but I got tired of using a KB+M.

I will let you know if I figure out any way to bypass Google account creation. I have this old bullshit Amazon Fire HD 6 (Fire 6 HD? Who fucking names this shit?) that I am trying to fuck with and you can bypass connecting to the internet at all by clicking any SSN → back → not now, so maybe it’s possible on some Android TV devices. Or maybe not and I can finally get around to reading Don Quixote.

Edit: turns out you can remove your Google account from the device after you’ve reached the home screen, which is a better solution. Also, should have mentioned that I replaced the stock launcher.

Re: Smart TVs, what works for me is a Roku TV, skip all of the sign-in shit (don’t even connect it to the internet — update firmware via USB if necessary¹). Then, plug in whatever devices and navigate to them. Close enough to a dumb TV for me.

I almost have Android TV figured out: Bought a cheap Onn Android TV box, sideloaded SmartTube in case I need to rewatch The Gemsbok’s Video performing an existentialist reading of Fucking Dark Souls², installed MullvadVPN³, and sideloaded whatever other apps I needed. The only reason I say it is almost figured out is I couldn’t bypass the Google account creation/login — an insufficient stopgap is to create a throwaway account, though it’s very hard to do this in a way that isn’t linked to your real identity, I think.

(This will be part of my “how to privify/securify your shit” series, if I ever learn to write.)

1: it isn’t
2: this sounds angry but it’s more pumped up, this shit rules
3: note that “block connections without VPN” is built into regular Android, but not Android TV, as far as I can tell

New response from scratch because I manically edited the shit out of my old one. Sorry for linking the wikipedia page there — you were clearly referring to the same thing I was and I didn’t take the appropriate time to understand your reply. I apologize.

The backlash I am familiar with is that students would learn how to identify the place value of something (“the 3 in 220134₅ has value 3 * 5¹”) but not be able to do actual arithmetic (3 * 5 = ?). Basically “why are my kids learning this abstract stuff about numerals or set theory when they can’t even remember their times tables?” That is my primary issue with it — it is not good pedagogy. Abstraction should come after a student has learned the foundational material. They aren’t professional mathematicians, and treating them as such (beginning with abstract definitions, as we do) is bad pedagogy.

I am sure there was some pushback in the form of “this is too hard”, but I don’t know how much of that kind of pushback occurred. I also would not necessarily blame it on the intelligence of parents. I can imagine a sort of shellshock when your 10 year old comes home with abstract mathematics that you never learned or only learned in high school or at the undergraduate level. And I can similarly understand the outrage when you expect your child to learn foundational skills in school, only for those to be skipped in favor of a high-minded appeal to “real understanding” (in my experience, this is a theme in US education — don’t memorize basic arithmetic because you can just consult your calculator; don’t memorize facts because you can just look them up).

I do not know what the curriculum was before new math, but I would be very surprised if they exclusively taught arithmetic in all of K-12 before the 1950s. I haven’t confirmed this, though.

I do think it is good pedagogy to pepper in motivations for abstract concepts early. Have a student evaluate 1723 * 16 via the standard algorithm and separately have them perform

1000 * 16
700 * 16
20 * 16
3 * 16
now add em up and think about why you get the same answer

tl;dr I think it was more “why are my kids learning this shit before they learn to multiply” than “I have no idea how to help my kid with their homework.” Anecdotally, the latter is not something I have experienced (when I taught K-12), even when the material was abstract and something the parents couldn’t help with.

Some highlights from my high school AP (Advanced Placement) English class:

1. teacher insisting that you can’t split an infinitive in English, but can’t explain why this bullshit rule was made up in the first place
   • also something about “up with which I will not put” because god forbid you know what you’re talking about
2. some inappropriate discussions about abortion
3. we watched the 1931 frankenstein movie after “reading” shelley’s novel, but didn’t relate it to the book in any way¹
4. we read some shitty short story, which turned into a shitty movie, and then the teacher kept relating back to the film when discussing the themes of the book
5. at some point they were like “choose your own novel to read and analyze” and we didn’t really do analysis, and the novel selection was
   • dan brown’s shitty novels about the dude who deciphers symbols or whatever (it was the one with anti-matter)
   • one of ayn rand’s pieces of shit
   • i don’t remember what else, but there were definitely no classics
6. we had to write college entry essays for the teacher to “critique.” i wrote mine about how math fucking rules. the teacher decided it was too technical (despite there being no actual math in it), so they gave it to their partner (an engineer) to read — I doubt this was legal — and came back to tell me how well-written it was²

my high school education was probably considered decent. don’t even get me started on “whole language learning” and “new math” and the insipid pseudoscience plaguing our certification programs while our populace treats our teachers like shit

1: Also, this movie was nearly a century old when we watched it and my class got mad at me for spoiling it.
2: it wasn’t written well

I write -- for “en dash” and --- for “em dash” and I end up looking like an asshole in emails a lot. However, they appear to work correctly here:

en: -- en: –
em: --- em: —

Also, Gnome Characters can be useful, though I have been looking for a good replacement.