I agree with almost all of this and even the parts I disagree with I agree in principle. There will never be someone who can reach level or power needed to actually do what you’re describing without being a very, very good liar. Because they are never reaching that position on merit and message alone. It’s not just republicans outnumbering us. It’s people who are indifferent outnumber republicans and democrats and progressives combined. And not performatively indifferent. I mean people who genuinely do not care and do not vote and never will vote no matter how bad their circumstances get. A rock bottom low enough to engage that many people can not exist in a world with drive thrus, cell phones, and air conditioning. There’s no way to make that many people uncomfortable enough to care without it already being too late.

Eh. The previous SAT wasn’t even necessarily harder or easier. They cover about 90% of the same subjects and material. They just emphasizes different things at different rates. Some students actually did better on one versus the other based on their particular brand of aptitude not the aptitude itself. But the punitive scoring was bad PR for a test that essentially covered the same material but didn’t have a guessing penalty. People didn’t necessarily do better on the ACT because of the guessing penalty not being part of it.

So, all colleges started accepting the ACT or the SAT without preference about 2 decades ago and what happened was the ACT never had a guessing penalty so a lot of students started shifting to the ACT in favor of the SAT to the point that the SAT had to change their test to be more like ACT to continue to compete in the marketplace with them. And “compete” might even be misleading because they were still very popular and still the standard but they made the change to avoid losing their stranglehold on the market is probably the more accurate way to describe it.

Like cats with listening devices in them? Fine! You don’t get to be bait!

Honestly, based on early interactions I’ll probably have to avoid political conversations if I can help it since even people I agree with ideologically seem to irritate the shit out of me. Not all of them, obviously. But enough to have clocked avoiding engaging with certain groups already. I’ll just have to know it when I see it.

What is a tankie?

I lack diplomacy when I get annoyed.

I got permabanned this morning. Made a joke that automod thought was inciting violence (said people who don’t punch their ponies in their face make me sick - not even my joke or a joke but a reference to someone else’s joke - in response to someone calling horses disgusting) and all my alts were banned too. Which is fine but I miss my TV show communities a bunch. I like to discuss my stories!

This is helpful. Thank you! It will make sense eventually but it’s very frustrating whenever I encounter something new and I can’t intuitively figure it out my own but that’s the price for it not being reddit, I imagine.

Ha! I worked in Test Prep and College Admissions consultation for nearly a decade at a fairly prestigious company in a major city with major private schools (major money and major lineage/legacy) and unless there have been major changes to the SAT/ACT since the pandemic that teacher is completely full of shit. There isn’t even a guessing penalty anymore on the SAT let alone any way for them to know how a student comes to the answers they choose. You don’t have to even turn in your work when you turn in the test.

Sounds like the teacher felt stupid or threatened or both and made up nonsense to combat their own failing. And honestly, I would consider giving bad advice that could impact a student’s future malpractice. That was actually the standard for teaching algebra when I was in school so a teacher telling your kid it is cheating is beyond confusing. It’s borderline abusive and at the very least completely incompetent.

Oh Brilliant! Thank you for you patience! That seems to have worked. So if I add a “!” in the future that should work?

Yeah that was the one I tried to join but it said I couldn’t because only admins can create accounts. Unless I just don’t know what I am doing, which is totally plausible seeing as how I just joined Lemmy this morning.

My professional burden has been saddled with people who want applause for taking twice as long to less than 50% of the same amount. And those numbers are probably generous.

In 2nd grade I decided one day to just complete my entire 2nd grade math book because it was easy for me at the time. Their solution was to force me to go into a third grade class for math but I quit because it meant I lost one of my recesses and thought that was bullshit. Honestly, surprised no one followed up and forced me to go back at any point. I just stopped going and no one said anything.