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Jessica Winter discusses the rise and fall of "balanced literacy." "It’s startling to realize that panels of experts had to argue the case that teaching children to read involves careful attention to the relationships between sounds and letters, or enhancing their vocabulary and knowledge of various subjects. It’s stranger still that, in many school systems and for many years, this was the losing argument." [more inside]
posted by vunder at 4:49 PM PST - 76 comments

Foo Fighters ft. Shane Hawkins Perform "My Hero"
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:08 PM PST - 13 comments

Less known than Alfred Dreyfus, the story of Barros Basto also deals with desire to maintain Jewish faith and the sacrifices one must pay for it - another sad example of 19th century European antisemitism. He also took some pictures of the Portuguese soldiers fighting in WWI [text in Portuguese]
posted by chavenet at 1:42 PM PST - 2 comments

An Advanced Guide to Writing Prompts for MidJourney
posted by storybored at 12:21 PM PST - 29 comments

Barack Obama wins Emmy for narrating Netflix national parks series. The former president won an Emmy Award on Saturday to go with his two Grammys. Obama won the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series, "Our Great National Parks."
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 11:33 AM PST - 29 comments

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 11:28 AM PST - 135 comments

A Silicon Valley startup offers voice-altering tech to call center workers around the world: ‘Yes, this is wrong … but a lot of things exist in the world’ Hi, good morning. I’m calling in from Bangalore, India.” I’m talking on speakerphone to a man with an obvious Indian accent. He pauses. “Now I have enabled the accent translation,” he says. It’s the same person, but he sounds completely different: loud and slightly nasal, impossible to distinguish from the accents of my friends in Brooklyn.
posted by folklore724 at 9:47 AM PST - 40 comments

After the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8th (previously), the DOJ released the search warrant and property receipt on August 12th, and a redacted search warrant affidavit on August 26th. On August 26th, the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines sent a letter to the House Intelligence and House Oversight committee chairs, saying the intelligence community and the DOJ are conducting a damage assessment of the recovered documents. An August 29th court filing by the DOJ said that a review of seized materials had already been completed. On August 30th, the DOJ filed a 36-page rebuttal to Trump's August 22nd motion requesting a special master, along with a detailed timeline of events leading up to the search. On September 1st, Judge Aileen Cannon said she would release her decision regarding appointing a special master "in due course", and ordered the DOJ to release the detailed property list, which the DOJ did on September 2nd. [more inside]
posted by orange swan at 9:39 AM PST - 281 comments

What happens when two Hollywood actors who know nothing about soccer football buy a middling pro team in Wales? GQ’s Tom Lamont spent a season following football's newest fans to find out.
posted by ellieBOA at 6:18 AM PST - 16 comments

I am 81 years old, my partner 92. On my 70th birthday, I woke from a dream in which I had rounded a corner and seen the end. This disturbing dream moved me to begin photographing the two of us, chronicling our time together, growing old. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 3:12 AM PST - 19 comments