Lockdown Update Day 154

[elisi]

The BEST thread on the exams fiasco (with many thanks to enevarim for sharing it with me):

THREAD: The mistake people are making re. exams fiasco is that Williams and Johnson et al were sat rubbing their hands together, saying "mwahaha this will keep the poor in their place". It's worse than that. Far worse. The algorithm did its job, and in a way was successful 1/

in making sure that on average, on a society-wide scale, things went the way they would have done as if exams happened. The right amount of people would go to Uni, roughly, the good schools would do better than the bad ones, and market forces go on as usual. The plan 2/

wasn't to push poor people down, it was *to carry on as normal*. The problem is, that "normal" literally *is* pushing poor people down. The results were calculated on trends, and in that respect, they worked, but they neglected individuals. Bright kids from poor backgrounds. 3/

Because we live in a machine designed *by itself* to perpetuate the status quo and let the money concentrate at the top. That's literally capitalism. It's a perpetual motion, self-administering system that simply needs to be left alone to trundle on. The gov don't *need* 4/

to meet over cigars and scoff about poor people. They think they're doing the right thing, because on a macro level things went pretty much as they "should". It's economic herd immunity - you have to ignore the outliers as regrettable but necessary casualties. Which, obviously 5/

is fucking barbaric. It's a system that has evolved; not one that's purposely managed. All you have to do is not care enough about the fringe cases and it just gets on with it. That exam algorithm is basically the same one that's *running the global country*. 6/

And, er, that's why we need a revolution and everyone should do a sociology degree. END.

Direct link: https://twitter.com/20thcenturymarc/status/1295671481817538560

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'If you’re a dude, you may be tensing up': the woman making art out of mansplainers
Comedy writer Nicole Tersigni got fed up of men explaining her own jokes back to her. So she paired their patronising comments with classical art – and went viral

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And no art today because this picture came up and well.



From this Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/ObamaPlusKids