I could start with a joke. I could offer a pithy aside. I could at least mutter something under my breath. But even that seems too dangerous these days, when one offending comment, one decade-old tweet, or one line-crossing joke can leave a person forever tarred and feathered in the online public square. These days, it's not enough to watch your mouth. You're apparently supposed to watch everyone else's too. Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: "The modern online public sphere, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid ideological prisms, and arguments of 280 characters, favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. Yet the values of that online sphere have come to dominate many American cultural institutions: universities, newspapers, foundations, museums. Heeding public demands for rapid retribution, they sometimes impose the equivalent of lifetime scarlet letters on people who have not been accused of anything remotely resembling a crime." The New Puritans. "This is a story of moral panic, of cultural institutions policing or purifying themselves in the face of disapproving crowds. The crowds are no longer literal, as they once were in Salem, but rather online mobs, organized via Twitter, Facebook, or sometimes internal company Slack channel." (By linking to this, am I saying Anne Applebaum is right? Am I suggesting we've gone too far toward a pious, punishing culture? Actually, I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying anything. What, am I crazy?)
"For months, refugee organizations and military officials had urged the Administration to begin evacuating Afghans who had backed the U.S. effort. The White House demurred, worried that such a move would signal a lack of faith in the Afghan government. As a result, the operation, crammed into the span of a few weeks, was unnecessarily rushed and poorly planned." David Rohde in The New Yorker: Biden's Chaotic Withdrawal from Afghanistan Is Complete.
+ "Many Americans are now fond of saying, knowingly, that the war was unwinnable because it's Afghanistan—graveyard of empires, a rugged land filled with proud people who are happy to fight to the death. But that kind of breezy dismissal just allows us to avoid the embarrassing conversation about what actually went wrong ... If there could be a sure thing in warfare, this was it—and we blew it." Sebastian Junger in Vanity Fair: How the US Corrupted Afghanistan.
"Before, it was, ‘No worries ... it's not going to crest. It's not gonna come down the hill. There's 3,500 firefighters, all those bulldozers and all the air support.' Until this morning, I didn't think there was a chance it could come into this area. Now, it's very real." Many editions of this newsletter have been delivered from a Tahoe cabin or a cafe in Truckee. Today, the report is about those places as wildfire evacuees flood Lake Tahoe roads in rush to flee.
CNN sums things up with the lede: The levees held. The power grid did not. Millions of those in Ida's path are out of power and could be out of luck for days, if not weeks. "Officials say electricity might not be restored to some areas for a month."
"Conventional wisdom had it that the trouble was largely the result of a surplus of orders reflecting extraordinary shifts in demand. Consumers in the United States and other wealthy countries had taken pandemic lockdowns as the impetus to add gaming consoles and exercise bikes to their homes, swamping the shipping industry with cargo, and exhausting the supplies of many components. After a few months, many assumed, factories would catch up with demand, and ships would work through the backlog." NYT (gift article for ND readers): The World Is Still Short of Everything. Get Used to It.
"The United States' view of sports is very masculine driven. I think that you see some of the struggles for the W.N.B.A. and most of the female sports. And I think oftentimes disabled and adaptive sports are kind of put in that same category." NYT (gift article for ND readers): The United States may be the birthplace of basketball, but to make a career out of playing wheelchair hoops, athletes have had to move overseas.
8
BUSINESS IS GOING LOONEY TUNES
"More recently, however, as international appetite for anime grew, mainstream behemoths like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon have entered the licensing fray, gobbling up exclusive titles like Beastars, Kakegurui, and Made in Abyss. Anime has ballooned into the third-most in-demand TV subgenre globally." Wired: Welcome to the Era of Big Anime.
9
JUST RUB SOME DIRT ON IT
"Five seconds after the bolt hits the ground, everybody looks around. The eight Indians position players are OK, but their newest teammate is not. Caldwell is on his back, arms spread wide, out cold on the mound. The lightning strike had hit him directly." The incredible story of Ray Caldwell, the MLB pitcher who survived a lightning strike to finish a game.
+ Georgia woman charged with masturbating on public beach. "While she was being booked, Revels-Glick ... told officers 'she was sorry for what she did' and was under the impression nobody had witnessed her getting into it 'because it only took her 20 seconds to orgasm.'" (Same.)
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We recently learned about the treasure trove of research available on the importance of inclusive education for students of all abilities. Still, most schools have yet to catch up or lack the funding to make recommended changes. Today we examine the uproar in Denver over its back-and-forth on the issue and how that compares to the U.S. overall.
TODAY'S STORY
Denver plans on keeping special education segregated after all Wed Aug 18
Denver is struggling with a concrete plan forward for its students with disabilities. Historically, the district has placed special education students into separate learning environments called "Affective Needs Centers." At one point, the district planned to shut down these centers in support of integration, but that decision has since been reversed. Special education will instead continue to be segregated, upsetting advocates who cite the adverse, long-term effects on Black students who are 4.5 times more likely to be placed in these classrooms.
The district says the real problem is how students are evaluated for placement. Testing is biased and conducted by primarily White teachers who project their unconscious bias on students of color. Other issues include the quality of education received, such as high teacher turnover rates, subpar supplies, and students feeling othered. As a result, almost two thirds of special education students fail to actually earn their diploma.
And it seems such segregated learning is prevalent across the country, despite research showing an inclusive approach is far more effective. One California study found that only 13% of special education students (whose conditions have no affect on their cognitive abilities) met or exceeded the state's math standards, compared to 43% of their peers. National investigation of this in 2018 further revealed:
Most of the U.S. separates students with disabilities (especially students of color or from urban environments) from general education, even as research argues against it.
All students benefit from an inclusive education environment. In other studies, an inclusive education has shown to change discriminatory attitudes, lead to more student engagement, and increase instruction time.
Congress needs to support special education funding to not only equip school administrators and educators, but provide grants for further exploration of segregated versus inclusive education.
Reconsideration of the status quo is important for financial reasons, too — especially since special education costs more. A 2003 report found teachers are increasingly placing students into special education programs to ease the burden in their own classrooms. Massachusetts saw spending double from 1989 to 2000, putting special education at almost 60% more than the spend on regular education.
Study on segregated versus inclusive education 3 years old | 2.5 hours long
ICYMI (AGAIN)
Yesterday: Unhoused LA residents have hardly anywhere left to live
Friday: Can teaching students civic participation unite America?
Thursday: Apple's new tool against child exploitation
CLASSIFIEDS
Our team has had the honor of learning from incredible Latinx leaders, including the lead investor in our first ever investing round! That's why we're stoked to share an incredible event coming this Fall: LTX Quest 2021, the largest gathering of Latinx professionals in the world.
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