hey hellsite

https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z

They really don't. They grew up on tablets and phones and other closed systems that are completely different and much more simplified then a personal computer. They don't have the knowledge because it wasn't taught to them and they never used it in day to day life.

I work in tech support and I can back this up with personal experience; they're as bad as boomers are only instead of not understanding tech at all, they refuse to learn or dig into the tech. They can use it but they don't have the curiosity to understand it. And when tech breaks, they don't have the know-how to fix it on their own or to even look for how to fix it (a task made all the harder by the enshitification of the internet and AI articles that litter search results)

They consistently act surprised when 'turn it off and back on again' actually works because that's become a meme and not understood to be a valid first troubleshooting step.

The blame lies with the big tech companies, and how strongly they've pushed hardware and software that has been designed to be obtuse at best.

That last part is important, because killing tech literacy has been an explicit goal for electronics manufacturers for 20 years now.

Apple found that if you create a walled and impervious garden where the company can control all aspects of how the technology works, you can nickel-and-dime the customer for unspeakable billions of dollars, and if you make your devices literally impossible to repair for the layman and charge an obscene premium at your own vertically integrated specialized repair stores, then you can either make bank off people insisting on repairing their broken devices, or you can incentivize them to replace and replace and replace, to get used to buying an entirely new phone every 12-14 months. They started doing that long before the iPhone, but the proliferation of smart devices kickstarted the avalanche.

And there's MONEY in that, baby, so the entire electronics industry immediately rushed to follow. That's WHY your fridge and your lightbulb and your washing machine and your car comes with a smart app and an integrated processing unit with proprietary firmware now. It allows the companies to absolutely butcher to death the concept of independent repair, and allows them to shepherd the customer away from ever engaging with their own devices, away from understanding their inner workings, away from modifying or adapting them, and towards paying a premium for every single function they would like to have access to.

You know how some car manufacturers have started trying to sell subscriptions to unlock the heating in their car seats?

Yeah.

Zoomers and Alphas aren't stupid, they've just grown up in a technological environment where there very often quite literally isn't a point to engaging with tech beyond the surface level, because the companies have built walled gardens, and set up bear traps for anyone who tries to venture beyond them.

And it's not like our educations systems have done jack shit to try and keep up or teach tech literacy, so literally how are these kids supposed to have learned?

Going back to college right now is wild because the professors struggle with tech for boomer reasons, and the other students struggle with tech for Gen Z reasons, and I'm just the Millennial stuck in middle suffering through watching them not know how to open Google Drive even though they actively use it all the time.

This is a real sore spot as a teacher in engineering and technology so apologies in advance to everyone but I'm going to go off about it. It's not just the tech companies, though they contribute.

At a certain point in time, just over a decade ago, a decision was made in education to stop teaching these things. To remove the mandatory computer apps classes and spread out the content among other curriculums. So now, the theory goes, students learn how to use Word/Docs and PowerPoint/Slides in English and social studies. They learn Excel/Sheets in science and math, particularly physics and stat. They already know the QWERTY layout from their phones and surely that will translate onto laptops with physical keyboards. File syncing and searching means they don't need to know directories or extensions or good naming and organizational protocols. It's a nice and convenient idea.

And what we find is that this doesn't work. There's too much else to teach in these classes, and the teachers frequently aren't trained to teach these skills anyway, so these skills are taught to a lesser depth or not at all.

So students don't learn how to mail merge, or make tab stops, or even that these features exist and to look them up in the future when it's useful. They aren't taught to type fast or well (my freshmen typically average 30-45wpm). They'd rather complete assignments on their phones than their laptops (same speed but more familiar, plus autocorrect so they don't need to learn spelling). Every day, they "reopen" assignments and panic because all their work is missing - because they downloaded a new copy of a worksheet rather than opening the existing one on their computer that they'd been editing. You should see how many files are in their Downloads folders with parenthetical (1) or (5)s after them. It doesn't occur to them that if they sit down at a different desktop in my graphics lab, their Illustrator project files won't be there because they saved locally. And they constantly submit the wrong files, submit the wrong formats, or lose files and have to redo work because they don't understand file types or name and organize their files.

This is not a complaint about the younger generations. This is not their fault. The system has failed them.

This is a complaint that they aren't taught these fundamental digital skills. There was a deliberate decision to not run classes that teach them these skills, and to hope that they'd pick it up elsewhere or somehow should already know these things through, I dunno, osmosis. And they're so used to being supported and explicitly walked through things that they haven't learned to be inquisitive, to explore and try things out or search for help or tutorials. Many of them have learned to be helpless because it's easier. And I haven't even brought up how we used to be taught about avoiding scams, media literacy, and internet safety!

tldr as a Millennial, we were *taught* how to use tech, and it was boring but it was useful. Zoomers and Alphas aren't taught but are expected to have the same literacy and knowledge.

"And they're so used to being supported and explicitly walked through things that they haven't learned to be inquisitive."

I wanna push back on this point a little, because they are PLENTY inquisitive. The problem is, they don't know what to be inquisitive ABOUT. You're right that we didn't give them the proper base knowledge, so why should we expect them to be able to self-teach if they don't even know where to start either?

Let's say you know nothing about sailing. At all. Haven't even watched Pirates of the Caribbean. Then someone tells you to go write a paper on how to run a sailboat. Would you even know where to START researching that? What terms to put into a search engine to try and get your answers? You might be able to find your way there eventually, but you're going to stumble a hell of a lot on the way, and you're going to be going in mostly blind.

But maybe one of your classmates had an uncle who sailed, so that classmate picked up at least a few basic terms like starboard and port and jib and anchor, enough that they have a starting to point to even know what to ask so that they CAN learn more.

You say they're so used to being supported, but the fact that they WEREN'T supported is the exact problem that led to this. Expecting them to be inquisitive enough to solve it on their own IS the issue, and we've seen that it doesn't work.

So yeah, we DO need to go back to explicitly teaching these things. We DO need to stop expecting kids to just learn it by osmosis. But we've also got to stop expecting kids to care about stuff we haven't even given them the language to understand.

the snake of eden 🥰

I drew more self indulgent OC stuff, my oc Varel x Crosshair

Pintando con lego

Stop Motion AND Lego Art?!? The man is too powerful!!!

Lmao he even showed the brush getting dry 💖

gay sex

You're not hiding this in the tags

that is the face of a man worried he will be next

Good news, he was not next! In fact, she accepted him as her mate, he learned the crane mating dance and now every year, he artificially inseminates her with crane semen to expand the very endangered crane population. True story.

Sorry, he WHAT? Imagine being this man's boss and having to sit him down like. Listen. Brian. We need you to fuck the bird. You have to act like you're excited about it.

crane husband.....

this is the diametric opposite of all those awful swan wife stories and i love it.

(WalWaPo makes you jump through like three separate hoops before you can read the article, so I will share some of the highlights:

Legit cannot pick the funniest part of this

she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she's simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)

His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)

the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and "sitting" on artificial eggs so she thinks he's performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)

"chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES." (alternately: "chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She's 36, she's very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! ...Is there a downside? WELL...")

chris sits any potential human partners down, like "my love, you must understand before we wed,,, i am already... Attached" (camera drifts wistfully to the above photo) "Lady Walnut and I have an,, Understanding... the relationship is open, but very committed"

just had to explain this post to my father bc he thought my stifled laughter was a signal of illness.

well done, everyone, good game. hit the showers.

Not only is he 'married' to walnut, this has apparently happened SEVERAL times, so he has MULTIPLE crane wives, none of which know about any of his other crane wives. This man is, for some unknown reason, irresistible to cranes

the “this content has been removed for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines” notice really adds a lot of flavor to this post and somehow makes it MORE obscene than whatever that actually was

World Heritage Post

i love in fantasy when its like “king galamir the mighty golden eagle and his most trusted advisor who would never betray him, gruelworm bloodeye the treacherous”

When my sister and I were kids we had this one action figure, who was actually a brutalized batman doll without his cape (the dog chewed half his head, too), who we dubbed ‘Evil Chancellor Traytor’. The idea was that in the fictional society of our toys, ‘chancellor’ just came with the word ‘evil’ in front of it, as a matter of ancient tradition. Like ‘grand’ or ‘high’ or something along those lines.

Anyway, the running gag was that the king (an old Power Rangers knock-off doll) had absolute and unwavering faith in Evil Chancellor Traytor, who basically comported himself like a mix between Grima Wormtongue and Jafar from the Aladdin movies. Everyone was always sure that Evil Chancellor Traytor had something to do with the nefarious scheme of the day. The dude even carried around a poisoned knife called ‘the kingslayer’.

The additional twist on the joke, though, was that he never was behind anything. The king was actually right. Evil Chancellor Traytor was the most devoted civil servant in the entire Action Figure Dystopia. He spent his nights working on writing up new legislature to ensure that broken toys had access to mobility devices, was always on the lookout to acquire new shoeboxes for expanding city infrastructure, and drafted a proposal that once got half the ‘settlement’ in my sister and I’s closet moved to the upper shelf so that vulnerable toys were less likely to be snatched up by the dog.

The knife, as it turned out, was as symbolic as the ‘evil’ in his name. See, Action Figure Dystopia had a long history of corrupted monarchs getting too big for their thrones and exploiting the underclasses. The job of the Evil Chancellor was to always remain vigilant, and loyally serve a good ruler - or, if the regent should became a despot, to slay them on behalf of the people.

But since killing the king would be a terrible crime, the Evil Chancellor had to be the kind of person who would willingly die to spare the people from the plight of a wicked leader; because the murder would be pinned on them, in order to keep the ‘machinery of politics’ working as smoothly as ever.

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor had a diary, in which my sister I would take turns writing out the most over-the-top good shit he’d done behind the scenes. Usually after everyone else had finished talking shit about him. I don’t know why but we got the biggest kick out of being like:

Barbie With the Unfortunate Haircut: Oh that Evil Chancellor Traytor! Why can’t the king see how wicked he is?!

Charmander From the Vending Machine: Char!

Jurassic Park Toy of Jeff Goldblum With Disturbingly Realistic Face: At least if someone puts a knife in the king’s back, we’ll know where to look!

Evil Chancellor Traytor’s Diary: Today I was feeding ducks at the park when I noticed another legless action figure sitting by the benches. I put a hundred dollars into his bag while he wasn’t looking. I really need to increase budgeting to the medical treatment centers. If only we had enough glue, I think we would see far fewer toys trying to get by without limbs… *insert iconic evil laugh*

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor eventually fell victim to one of my mom’s cleaning sprees, and she decided he was too busted up to keep and tossed him out. My littler brother, who tended to follow my sister and I’s games like he was watching a daily soap opera, cried so hard that we had to do a special ‘episode’ where one of the toys found the Evil Chancellor’s diary, and so he got a big huge memorial and the king threw himself into the empty grave and then ordered the toys driving the toy bulldozer to bury him so that ‘Traytor’s grave would have a body’ (this seemed very important for some reason).

And then we had the Quest For a New King. Somehow or another that ended up being a giant rubber snake called ‘Tyrant King Cobra’.

::closes tab, shuts off computer, and proceeds to have the best day ever just by knowing this exists::

i will always reblog Evil Chancellor Traytor

star wars week 2023: may 21 • underrated character » wrecker aka the sweetest man ever

my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and he was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”

i googled this bc i desperately wanted this to be real, and guess what…it is.

the dude’s name was su dongpo (also known as su shi). his original poem went like this:

稽首天中天，

毫光照大千，

八風吹不動，

端坐紫金蓮

(Humbly bowed my head below all skies Minutest lights shine through my deepest bounds Immovable by strong winds from eight sides Upon purplish gold lotus I seated straightly by the low mound) (x)

on which his friend wrote “放屁” (fart, literally), and you know the rest.

(here’s a chinese source for the skeptics)

this is even funnier because just writing “fart” out of the blue sounds really stupid and random in english, but in chinese, fart (fang pi) is used as a common reply to, well, people talking out of their ass. kind of like how we’d use “bullshit” in context.

IT’S BACK AND IT GOT BETTER

Becca Rothfeld, “Live, Laugh, Log Off,” The Baffler (x)

Way too funny not to share