For those of you that may have just finished watching Cory Booker’s record-breaking senate speech and are inspired to “get in good trouble”, you have a great opportunity for it this Saturday!
On April 5th, numerous advocacy groups are banding together into one nation-wide rally that will be held in major cities all over the country - you can easily find a participating location here!
I’d just like to clarify some things about Senator Cory Booker’s marathon Senate speech in protest of the present administration and everything they are doing to the American people.
Senator Booker was NOT allowed to sit down, eat, or use the bathroom during his speech. Sitting or leaving the room to use the bathroom would be considered yielding the floor. Eating would have interfered with his speaking and the person who has the senate floor must continue to speak, except when listening to questions that they will then answer.
He only took occasional sips of water.
The person who previously held the record for longest speech on the Senate floor did have bathroom breaks and also did things like read from the encyclopedia.
Senator Booker did not do that. His speech was to point out the damage that this administration is doing and he stayed on that subject.
Senator Booker’s speech did reach many people. It wasn’t a silly stunt that was done so that he could take the record for longest speech. He wanted to show the country that democrats will do something to bring attention to the problems we are facing. That democrats are listening to them.
Senator Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and 4 minutes to “make good trouble.”
also like, a Black man breaking Strom Thurmond’s record is absolutely *chef’s kiss*
for those who are too young to know about Strom, he was literally a white supremacist
He trained himself to give this speech by practicing and then implementing limits on food and water intake leading up to this. He cut out food for days, then cut out water the day before.
He then went to do an appearance on Maddow after yielding.
I assigned a writing prompt a few weeks ago that asked my students to reflect on a time when someone believed in them or when they believed in someone else. One of my students began to panic.
“I have to ask Google the prompt to get some ideas if I can’t just use AI,” she pleaded and then began typing into the search box on her screen, “A time when someone believed in you.”
“It’s about you,” I told her. “You’ve got your life experiences inside of your own mind.” It hadn’t occurred to her — even with my gentle reminder — to look within her own imagination to generate ideas. One of the reasons why I assigned the prompt is because learning to think for herself now, in high school, will help her build confidence and think through more complicated problems as she gets older — even when she’s no longer in a classroom situation.
She’s only in ninth grade, yet she’s already become accustomed to outsourcing her own mind to digital technologies, and it frightens me.
When I teach students how to write, I’m also teaching them how to think. Through fits and starts (a process that can be both frustrating and rewarding), high school English teachers like me help students get to know themselves better when they use language to figure out what they think and how they feel.
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If you believe, as I do, that writing is thinking — and thinking is everything — things aren’t looking too good for our students or for the educators trying to teach them. In addition to teaching high school, I’m also a college instructor, and I see this behavior in my older students as well.
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This! This is what scares me the most about AI! Physical exertion is difficult if someone isn’t used to it, and it gets easier the more often it’s done. When it’s done often enough, it becomes a habit. Mental exertion is exactly the same. Thinking is a learned skill just like a sport is, and an entire generation is growing up without that most critical skill.
An unthinking populace is a more easily controlled populace.
nuh uh fellas i come pop my head in here to find not one of you posting terry in the captain’s chair at trekonderoga this weekend? lord alive what has broken in this space
fellas. im serious. you gotta get it together out here
I’ve been listening to the people in the apartment below me have arguments for two years now and I still can’t figure out what language they’re speaking. The best I can narrow it down is like if Portuguese and Hebrew had a baby. Is that a common pidgin combination
I just listened to a clip of this and jesus christ you fucking got it. there are like 3500 people in the whole united states who speak this and two of them are in a very fraught marriage four feet below me
Call me Phil (she/her). This blog consists of whatever random crap I find amusing, including various fandoms. Anyone can follow me (except porn bots, blocked on sight), but some of you might not like what you read, and you'll be blocked if you're an asshole about it.
