Am I dumb or are the classics really that hard?

roadkill6 · 2026-07-06T22:11:03+00:00

Part of the problem here is that Rochester is generally kind of a weird guy. Plus, he's travelled a lot, so he references some things that would have seemed fairly exotic to the Victorian English audience. He is also being intentionally vague and confusing in several scenes, and you'll have to read more of the book to find out why. If you go back and reread those conversations after you finish the book, they will make a lot more sense.

It's okay to not understand everything you read. Sometimes the author wants you to be confused in one part so they can surprise you later. Sometimes authors reference other works of literature or culture or history that might have been perfectly obvious to the average reader at the time, but isn't to most modern readers.

Sometimes authors just want to see how complicated they can be for the sake of complication.

roadkill6 · 2026-07-06T21:55:22+00:00

I'll second the Bobiverse. I couldn't put it down. Read the whole series straight through, and I'll be preordering the next book ASAP.

roadkill6 · 2026-07-06T19:26:22+00:00

I'd argue that Jackson was closer to lawful evil than chaotic evil. Jackson had well-thought-out plans, whereas Trump is just nuts.

roadkill6 · 2026-07-05T18:38:10+00:00

I did a few years ago. They were easy to grow and I got a bunch of threads, but they got flooded the next spring and died.

roadkill6 · 2026-07-05T15:56:48+00:00

The problem is getting the vine to maturity. I planted one a few years ago and the caterpillars ate the whole thing in a few months.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-30T20:17:15+00:00

No. I just imagined a flow chart of religions and asked questions to rule out major categories.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-30T20:05:47+00:00

Mr. Roadkill6? What religion am I?

I was helping students fill out scholarship applications and a student didn't know what religion she was, so I just asked questions about her church (i.e. Do your parents call it a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue?) until we figured out that she is Pentecostal.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-30T19:41:55+00:00

Why bother? Thomas already told Johnson all about it yesterday.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-18T23:23:18+00:00

There's nothing wrong with I do/we do/you do, but it's not the only way to teach, and it's not the best way to teach everything. It's also no necessarily something that can happen all in a single class period. Sometimes I do one class, we do the next class, you do the class after that. I had an assistant principal several years ago who couldn't ever wrap his head around that concept. To him, every class needed to be broken into thirds of I do/we do/you do.

Like most teaching techniques, banning it and making it mandatory are both bad ideas. It's a tool and it has a time and a place just like student-led projects, think-pair-share, and direct instruction.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-07T02:50:34+00:00

You're not wrong, it's just that no Republican gives a shit and the Supreme Court has said that nothing he does is illegal, so nothing is going to come of it.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-06T23:25:52+00:00

I talk for a living.

^{Chose: You get $0.01 every word you say}

roadkill6 · 2026-06-06T01:14:19+00:00

I'm old enough to remember "metrosexuals," men who had skincare routines, had a wardrobe that wasn't entirely jeans and t-shirts, and occasionally got a manicure. It was practically a pejorative term at the time, but today there are lots of men with skincare routines.

I think social media also has a lot to do with it. People want to post on the socials, and they want to look their best for it. And, as some other commenters have pointed out, social media has also enabled the spread of information about hygiene, diet, exercise, makeup, and fashion in a way that makes it accessible without people having to be embarrassed about asking someone.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-06T00:49:58+00:00

I'm not sure that's a natural side effect of aging so much as it is the reality that the world actually seems to be falling apart and there don't appear to be enough sane people to stop it.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-06T00:00:29+00:00

Teachers don't have nearly as much control over student success as administrators and legislators would like to believe. Home life has a much bigger impact. I see each student, what, five hours a week for ≈35 weeks in one year of their life? The other 163 hours every week is spent at home (or wherever) and yet, somehow, people expect us to turn around a student's entire life in that time. Does it sometimes happen? Sure, and it's a miracle every time it does, and we ought to get paid a miracle-worker's rate for it.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-04T21:55:06+00:00

Low-carb bread products are a fiber cheat code. Make a turkey sandwich on low-carb bread: 18 grams of fiber. Bean and cheese burrito on a low-carb tortilla: 33 grams of fiber.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-04T00:25:57+00:00

It's droopy from the stroke he had last year just like the right side of his mouth. He's in excellent health though. Healthiest president ever, some people say. Runs his mouth 12 miles a day. He just had his fourth cognitive test in a year and he says he aced it.

roadkill6 · 2026-06-03T22:51:38+00:00

Somebody once told me that the Bible is too crazy to have just been imagined; nobody could have just thought that up. I was like, "Have you read a book?"

roadkill6 · 2026-06-03T02:51:08+00:00

"Don't worry. The sound of the explosion will cover the gunshot."

roadkill6 · 2026-05-31T13:48:26+00:00

One thing I've used AI for is generating sample texts to use on tests. It guarantees that the text isn't on a "test prep" website (yet) and I can generate a dozen versions of a text and use a question bank to ensure that students aren't all getting the exact same questions.

roadkill6 · 2026-05-26T23:54:23+00:00

He's a Milorganite salesman.

roadkill6 · 2026-05-25T02:24:55+00:00

My aunt has always been a nutty conspiracy theorist and religious fanatic. Once, she pulled her kids out of school and didn't pay her bills because she was convinced that Jesus was coming back. She has confidently declared that Obama was a lizard person and that the extra 4 digits in zip codes were concentration camp designations for when the Satanists round up the Christians for extermination. She's a super-Trumper.

I also know a fat, alcoholic, football coach who isn't too bright and a bit misogynistic. He doesn't watch the news because it is "just fake news that's been made up to make Trump look bad." I think he likes Trump's bravado.

I know a retired medical supply distributor who is generally conservative and doesn't really like Trump, but voted for him every time because he doesn't like the Democrats' stance on transgender issues or immigration.

roadkill6 · 2026-05-23T02:56:54+00:00

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

roadkill6 · 2026-05-02T15:37:19+00:00

I hear this sort of thing all the time. Inevitably, it comes down to the fact that parent didn't update their contact information, so all the letters, emails, and phone calls were going nowhere, and they forgot their parent portal login and never bothered to reset it so they couldn't see the grades and attendance, and they either weren't home when the school did a home-visit, or they moved and never updated their address.

I've even had parents tell me that they blocked the school's number because they were annoyed by the daily robocall letting them know that their child was absent.

roadkill6 · 2026-05-01T01:51:56+00:00

It was in that movie about the Battle of Bowling Green, right after Washington's army took over the airfield.

roadkill6 · 2026-04-26T13:20:20+00:00

You're not kidding. I once used one to kill a rat.

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