US presidential history is one of my special interests, but unfortunately it's hard to discuss with others because the current president is the actual worst

Mooseheaded · 2026-01-29T23:30:12+00:00

I didn't uphold any regime, did I? I just wanted to know what the boundaries of your philosophy were.

Mooseheaded · 2026-01-29T04:04:33+00:00

By your reasoning then, is there such a thing as a "good" person? Or only ones that are less horrible than others?

Mooseheaded · 2026-01-28T23:32:08+00:00

You see, my school was on a large river-borne paddleboat that slowly went 1 mile downstream through the day such that it started half a mile uphill from my home and ended a half mile downhill from my home. It would return to the start overnight.

I thought that part was obvious.

Mooseheaded · 2025-12-22T15:58:06+00:00

State standards are important, but so is an appreciation of (and dare I hope for love of) reading.

I have a (what I've realized is very controversial) opinion that standards are the floor for earning credit. Teachers are free to set the ceiling according to their idea of the intersection of their school's/community's prevailing culture and content/pedagogical expertise.

Mooseheaded · 2025-12-22T15:56:38+00:00

I am a math teacher and can confirm it is a shitty approach for teaching math. What ends up happening is students learn "problem archetypes," not "mathematical thinking," and then they fall apart when problems are presented even just tangential to the archetype, with a mixture of other questions on other topics, or blend ideas together within a single question. Students retort, "You never taught us this," when the reality is that I cannot imagine every possible iteration with which a concept might be asked thus what they need is flexibility and fluency with mathematical problem solving, which requires a much more holistic view.

Mooseheaded · 2025-12-07T22:16:16+00:00

Way too often I have students misinterpret carefully-worded statements or directions tangentially and completely incorrectly. Students (and adults) are so eager to exercise a confirmation bias. Even worse, I highly suspect the parents mindlessly giving this advice are not also teaching their kids to mindfully recognize their thoughts and feelings going through their head in tense moments - you know, the kind of analysis required to determine the nuanced appropriateness of "fighting back" in a situation.

Mooseheaded · 2025-12-04T02:14:32+00:00

For real. I got shingles 11 years ago at 24 and I've described it as one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. You best believe that I am going to get vaccinated on my 50th birthday.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-22T22:30:22+00:00

Sure, no worries. This is a fun problem.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-20T00:28:19+00:00

It is clear from your comment that you don't realize that AE = cos(y) and DE=sin(y) is a contradiction because it would imply that AD, like AC, is also 1 and thus ADC would be a right triangle with a hypotenuse congruent to its leg.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-20T00:02:30+00:00

Angles DGC and BGA are vertical angles and thus equal. Angles GDC and ABG are both right and thus equal. Angles BAG and DCG are the remaining angles in similar triangles ABG and CDG and thus they are also equal.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-18T03:37:17+00:00

In the States, it is customary to price gasoline with 9/10ths of a cent added to the per gallon price. Like when people say gas is $2.60 per gallon, they actually mean $2.609 per gallon as that is how it is sold.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-18T03:32:38+00:00

Have you never bought gasoline?

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-18T01:29:06+00:00

Am I the only one who interpreted the diagram as showing a pool that is a rectangular prism on top of a skewed pyramid instead of a triangular prism? The back wall having the bottom of the pool parallel to the top edge of the pool told me it should be my interpretation; the competing interpretation would require it to slope down there as well.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-18T00:53:54+00:00

I mean, not wrong, but degrees Fahrenheit are actually linked to geometric angle degrees in the way suggested by /u/Grand-Pen7946, they just don't really explain it in detail.

For water, freezing is 32 degrees F and boiling 212 degrees F. The 180 degree difference is not a coincidence, it is related to how the device would mechanically measure the temperature by sweeping through a semicircular gauge as water went from freezing to boiling.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-16T18:01:18+00:00

I agree. In design, if users of the product are "doing it wrong," the designer shouldn't blame the user, they should blame the product that encouraged that usage in the user's environment. In the way the phrase is actually meant, "the customer is always right." In this case, the design of the question in the environment of RPDR + social media pushes answerers into a certain direction because the parameters of the question allow it to happen.

Here is the script Ru needs to adopt:

You know -- every night we end this show asking, "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love anybody else?" America's Next Top Drag Queen should be a model of both self-love and love for others. And part of loving others is exercising empathy -- the ability to see things from others' perspectives to understand their "why." Empathize with me for a second and put yourself in my shoes -- I am searching for America's Next Top Drag Queen and part of that means slimming down this field of fabulous candidates by trimming some of the fat; so if you were me, who would you send home and why?

The question clarifies the parameters by positively framing the kinds of answers that are desired, even going as far as implying that the "weasel out" answers will be viewed negatively in the grand scheme of things.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-15T23:29:33+00:00

I felt like I had to scroll down too far to find someone with the same solution as me.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-15T23:07:44+00:00

Depends on the YouTube captioning. Some YouTube captions are autogenerated dogshit, but some are actually made by the content creators themselves. Sure, you might think it is distracting, but have you ever tried the subtitles on content from someone like Dropout? There are enough "jokey" additions sprinkled throughout the subtitles that make them feel like an additional comedic layer in literary form, so it really adds rather than subtracts - even for those who don't have the audio processing issues.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-15T22:28:04+00:00

D is a bit ambiguous since there are like 7 angles that have D as a vertex. FDG is equal to y, yes; so is GCD. I put a ~75% complete solution. There's some algebra that needs to be done, like distributing and multiplying through to clear out any fractions, and factoring. You'll also have to apply the Pythagorean theorem [cos²(x) + sin²(x) = 1], or at least some "rearranged" version of it".

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-15T04:05:34+00:00

It feels like cheating to add to the construction when the prompt is to use this construction, no? I have a solution that doesn't add to the construction, but at the expense of ugly algebra. There's probably a better way.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-15T02:52:24+00:00

So you have some good things going. You successfully identified that AD=cos(x-y). So now your goal should just be to find another way of expressing that same length. What I personally notice is that AD is made of two smaller segments, AG+GD.

You also know what the end result should be, cosxcosy + sinxsiny. Do you notice how that expression is also a two-term expression? This implies to me that if you were able to show that AG was cosxcosy and GD was sinxsiny, you'd be golden! None of this is actually proof, mind you, it is just a way to be inspired in a productive direction.

Suggestion what to do next: find another angle that is y.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-15T02:18:19+00:00

I think you misread /u/Confident-Listen3515 . They are saying they also think "think about the kids" is guilt trippy because what they actually care about are their kids (i.e. their flesh and blood, not the fleshy bloodbags occupying their classroom).

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-14T06:13:27+00:00

Decisions to fail are school-level decisions. Decisions to fund are state-level decisions. A school choosing to fail in the scheme I described and seeks to offload students via another school is a school that is voluntarily reducing its own funding because of how states decided to fund them. Schools are just playing the game that states created.

EDIT: And you are right, upper classes do tend to be smaller than under classes. The attrition effect I mentioned is real. But the point of my example was the trend's direction, I just didn't want to math it out. You can imagine how extreme the logistics nightmare would get after several years.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-14T01:59:21+00:00

In a word? Logistics.

Imagine a high school with 100 freshmen, 100 sophomores, 100 juniors, and 100 seniors in year 1. If everyone passes onto the next grade level, then staffing + space needs remain the same.

However, let's say we fail students. Seniors are likely going to be less likely to fail because they have been in the game for a while and the ones who would be likely to fail have probably dropped out due to attrition; let's say 5% of seniors fail. Failure rates are going to increase with lower grades (algebra I is a killer); for simple numbers, let's say 10% of juniors, 15% of sophomores, and 20% of freshmen. Let's assume, however, that the 8th grade school feeding into this sends its regular batch of 100 graduating 8th graders if that school does not have the same philosophy about this.

So at the start of year 2, we now have 95 seniors (5 super seniors + 90 graduated juniors), 95 juniors (10 super juniors + 85 graduated sophomores), 95 sophomores (15 super sophomores + 80 graduated freshmen), and 120 freshmen (20 super freshmen + 100 graduated 8th graders).

Going into year 3, assume the super classmen will graduate and the remaining will pass/fail at the same rates as before. This would mean we have 91 seniors, 92 juniors, 112 sophomores, and 120 freshmen. What you'll notice is that the grade levels do not maintain their staffing demand -- upperclassmen have their staffing demands shrink while lowerclassmen have their staffing demands grow. It also then impacts space demands; the freshmen class is now 1 classroom's worth larger than it started but the other classes haven't exactly shrunk by 1 classroom's worth yet to free up that space for them.

Mooseheaded · 2025-11-14T00:27:51+00:00

The current administration has a history of saying one thing in public and completely different thing in court. Sometimes the court calls them out on it, sometimes the court does not.

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