amrussell.bsky.social
Live in Scotland, work in Social Impact (Carers Trust), occasional DM, occasional cricketer, hardly ever posts. Also, expert in social media engagement.
169 posts
188 followers
962 following
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I'm hearing "not great, not terrible".
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Everyone raves about my Maenad joke
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IOW, they knew their problem and what they needed to do to fix it, but they couldn't stop the supermarkets dictating prices.
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Did market research for them in 2004 ish. Big contract, they'd take us to MD level briefings where we'd hear all about their quality led premium pricing strategy, nod and smile, then get in the car and listen to the Asda/Tesco/Morrisons ad telling us we could get 24 cans for a tenner this weekend.
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"No, it was here all along" he retracted.
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The more you think about it, the worse it gets.
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Also points out as you say that they struggle with figurative language. muse.jhu.edu/article/922346
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FWIW the study was specifically English majors at Kansas universities. "Problematic readers often described their process as skimming or relying on SparkNotes"
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A lot of these responses became more explicable once I'd seen that study showing that many US undergrads can't comprehend written English. So many obvious and simple concepts seem to be floating just beyond their reach.
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The "I'm terrible at dating" round on House of Games gives a flavour of more or less random folks sense of big picture chronology. Anyone can be wrong but e.g guessing 1870s for Guy Fawkes, or 17th C for printing press implies pretty patchy mental timeline.
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There's a lot to love here, but I think it's the "towards me" that really sells it.
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Lads, he's talking about *you*
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Yeah, I don't mind a cliffhanger and the season one end felt like they did know the whole story, but this felt more like, we've got a hit on our hands so let's keep it going. Which is death to the actual story.
(See e.g. The Boys which is in full coyote running over the cliff mode)
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But until that ever occurs, does this lack of familiarity matter, from a cultural point of view? How many kids reading Narnia today or in 30 years simply don't get the allegory, or have nagging sense of resemblance, or even *could* get the allegory? And if not, have they lost anything?
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I suppose there might come a point, assuming trends in Sunday School attendance continue*, where Biblical stories get treated like Greek myths (a bunch of really cool stories that kids read/get told for the sheer fun of it) but that's a way off.
*NB I am purely guessing about this based on vibes
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Like, we're not religious and our kids never went to Sunday School and it would be mad if they had given that *we're not religious* but it feels a bit weird that they wouldn't recognise the story of Jonah or Samson or know what a Damascene conversion means.
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It's one thing to say, I know this is a reference to the story of Peter denying Christ three times because my teacher/the annotation told me, it's a other to recognise it because you just *know* it, and all the connotations and implications.
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This you?
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It's all very well being wise in hindsight Tom.
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Being told the shot has missed while it's still being lined up does take some of that terrible tension out of the experience
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I work not just in the charity sector but doing evaluation research: working with peers, academics etc it simply never comes up.
Admittedly I'm not in international development area but you'd think it would have some influence. Might start mentioning it, see who bites.
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I saw this in the Picasso museum in Malaga, where you can see him get it "right" then pull it all apart again.
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I mean, this is basically 8 year old me having a rant but: why not have faith in the material? You don't need gimmicks, you don't need to tip toe around your fears of kids' disinterest, you need to celebrate books by giving out books and talking about the cool bits.
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But kids love drawing! It's fun, they express themselves.
No! It's tedious and awful; I learned nothing, I produced crap.* It did not inspire a love of the Romans, or autumn, or ships. Finding things out did that.
*Again, at no point in many years of making posters did anyone teach me how to draw.
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At school, for any project or trip or event we always had to draw a sodding picture of it. Same for my kids. Paint a poster. Make a model. It was meant to be fun and a way to express ourselves. God, I hated it.
I was, and remain, shit at drawing. Because drawing was never taught.
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Well, no. Or some kids sure, but they were always going to be readers. The rest wear the Marvel/Disney costume they got as a present because that's the costume they've got. Does this instil a lifelong love of reading? Maybe, would be interested to see the evaluation. But, why not give them a book?
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Last time I watched a couple of episodes of YPM its unremittingly bleak cynicism about the capabilities and functioning of government/the state it made The Thick of It look like The West Wing. Not just "these people shouldn't have power " but beyond that "this power shouldn't exist".
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“You are treating every dog and every dog owner as antisocial.”
Sickos hahahaha yes dot jaypeg.
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"jobs whose purpose is difficult to discern".
Can we specify the degree of difficulty. What kind of effort was applied to this task.
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Been thinking about Glass Onion, and how Miles Bron repeatedly wins vs smarter people by immediately taking destructive action that they somehow thought he wouldn't or couldn't actually do.
Until one of them stops trying to play by the rules and fucks shit up on an even bigger scale than he had.
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If you start with Uther it's died, sleeping, died, died...
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Brimstone Tide?
No, perhaps not, I see that now.
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...so Traitors have chance to kill before reveal.
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4) Seer is guaranteed to be faithful. Otherwise Faithful pretty much have to kill them (with role reveal) to trust them. So v unfair to get it. But would have to get it late in the game as @stephenkb.bsky.social says. To keep it fair - get role at end of day, no one knows, can't reveal till morning
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3) All traitors alive n days before finale split the pot if at least one wins. This actually helps Traitors by discouraging throwing under the bus, but that's annoying and I'd like to see actual team play. E.g. self sacrifice while making a Faithful look bad.
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2) One vigilante type role. Either has one shot at anybody or only shoots if killed. Most likely to kill Faithful early in the game, possibly a better shot later on. Victims role revealed on death.