I don’t know from research but my 10-year-old finishes a book every two days, knows large chunks of the Bible by heart, composes poetry, writes and draws graphic novels, and the other day she spent 5 hours cleaning and decorating her room and creating beautiful little installations for her book case. I have no idea how giving her a smartphone would have improved her life, so this fellow can stick his research up his.
The only criterion of doing something with your kid is how this will be helpful to the kid. “It’s not as bad as some people say” is a terrible operating principle. Show me how it’s good and makes her life better because my method is bringing excellent results and I see no reason to abandon it.
My friend, I’m with you on this beyond what you can even imagine. I’m in this every day, and I’m at the end of my tether. Here’s an example.
I have a colleague, Professor T, who is retiring. Being a very responsible and meticulous person, Professor T informed the administration in July of 2025 that he was going to retire in August of 2026. More than a year in advance. He emailed everybody who might be affected by his retirement and cc-ed me. I also informed the administration that he was retiring. I put it in the budget and in the Annual Report. I signed the retirement paperwork in February. I created and posted a schedule for Fall of 2026 without Professor T who is – get that – retiring. So he won’t be teaching. Because he’s retiring.
Yesterday, yes, yesterday, my friend, April 29, 2026, an angry administrator showed up to tell me that we failed to inform them that Professor T was retiring.
“You didn’t file any of the paperwork!” he said.
Professor T and I stared in mute amazement. The secretary was the first to come to and she rolled in the ream of paperwork we all signed and submitted months ago.
“Well, we’ll have to re-sign it because there are no signatures on my copy,” said the administrator, waving a blank copy of the exact same form we showed him.
In silence, I signed his document.
I’m not burnt out because I don’t like teaching or research. No, students are great. Research is going fantastic. It’s this kind of shit that’s getting to me. Because Professor T’s situation is one of I don’t know how many ludicrous things that I have to deal with. He’s my most responsible, reliable professor who is taking early retirement because he’s tired of this absolute crap. Nobody is being hired to replace him. Just like nobody was hired to replace the other 4 professors at my department who retired since 2022.
You simply can’t make a university run on 1/3 of its workforce and expect good results. Now the general public, whom we are supposed to serve, is noticing. I’m extremely embarrassed about what your friend experienced and I confirm that this isn’t an outlier. It’s how things are because we are terribly mismanaged.
Sorry for the rant but you hit a very sore spot. Thank you for bringing it up because it’s very important and must be talked about.
The idea of multiculturalism and replacement of whites is the motivating force of today’s Russia. Here’s one of many Russian propaganda videos expressing this idea:
"I am Kazak, I am Buryat, I am Tatar, I am Chechen!"
Weird Russian 🇷🇺 video showcasing the multiracial nature of their invasion force in Ukraine, followed by "Allahu Akbar!"
JD Vance, on the other hand, is a charmless, gormless idjit:
JD Vance refused to clap for “nature,” during the King’s speech to Congress.
Even Speaker Mike Johnson was puzzled. In fact, he looked a bit afraid as he rose to clap while JD, emissary of the White House and president of the Senate, sat silently. But the Speaker found the… pic.twitter.com/rRqsqpD3rf
He is new to conservatism and hasn’t managed to find out that conservatives love nature. We are conservationists. We love the natural world. We hate windmills and solar farms because they are ugly and destroy nature.
I don’t like this dude. Let’s not run him. We have a deep bench of serious people who can easily beat Kamala.
People, did you hear Trump’s speech on the occasion of King Charles’ visit? I only now had time to listen, and it’s a beautiful, uplifting speech. Here’s an excerpt:
For nearly two centuries before the Revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and the great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride. And that’s what it is, glory, destiny, and pride.
The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.
I’m not remotely English, as we all know, but I stand in awe of the magnitude of the English achievement in every sphere.
A beautiful speech. I recommend listening to the whole thing.
I did something so cool today, folks, I’m really happy. I’ve been teaching Spanish drama this semester. And two of my colleagues in Ukraine are also teaching Spanish drama. So we agreed to teach the same plays. And today, we had a joint class session with my students and my friends’ students in Ukraine. Imagine what a powerful experience it is to connect with your peers across the ocean who, in the time of war, are also reading a Spanish play from 1806.
The activity really worked because these students don’t have a language in common that isn’t Spanish, so they had to make an effort to understand each other.
The entire course has been outstanding. It turns out that students love reading plays. We had really profound discussions throughout the semester. And the culminating experience of the course was this transatlantic debate.
I have only ever used the paid version of Duolingo that my husband got for me. I have no idea if the basic version works, so keep that in mind.
There are three things in Duolingo that really advance language learning. They are the chatbot, the Legendary level, and Match Madness.
Chatbot
You need to have at least one conversation with the chatbot every day. Ideally, you’ll have two. Here’s what’s important: don’t let the chatbot control the conversation because if you do, you’ll end up having the exact same conversation every day. To make it useful, you have to initiate. When the chatbot says, “hi, how are you?” Don’t respond with, “I’m fine, how are you?” You already know how to say it, so what’s the use of doing it again? Instead, start your own conversation on the basis of what you learned in the day’s lesson. For instance, if you learned about birthdays, say “It was my birthday last week. To celebrate, I went to my favorite restaurant with my family. We ate my favorite dish which is fish with vegetables.” It doesn’t matter if it’s true. Your goal is not to provide correct information to the chatbot but to practice.
Legendary level
After you complete each batch of exercises, you can press on it again and have the option to do a sort of a test on them. That option is called Legendary. It’s great because often it asks you to translate sentences into the target language. You get up to 20 sentences that you have to translate on the spot. Specialists in foreign language teaching tell us that translation exercises are bad for beginner and intermediate level students. That is stupid, however. Translation exercises are great. I wish Duolingo had more of them and didn’t limit them to the Legendary level only.
Match Madness
This is a contest-type activity where you have to match words in the target language with their translations. To keep advancing through the levels, you have to find translations at an increasing speed. This is excellent for improving your vocabulary.
The chatbot, the Legendary level, and Match Madness are the hardest activities on the app, and many people avoid them. But these are precisely the activities that move your knowledge of a language from a passive to an active mode. Both modes are crucial for language learning but if you are stuck in passive, you’ll never speak.
As planned, I took my department’s proficiency test in German at the end of this semester. I placed into C1 which is “an Advanced (or “Proficient User”) language level, as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)”.
This is on the strength of 20 minutes of Duolingo a day and nothing else because I don’t have the time. Recently, I started reading in German but only did 4 reading sessions so far because it’s a busy time in the semester.
Of course, this is my sixth language, and it does get easier with every new one. However, this is an answer to everybody who claims that Duolingo doesn’t work and that you can’t become fluent in a new language in middle age.
My goal is to become completely fluent in German in the next two years. All it takes is consistent effort. If I got to C1 in 20 months, it’s definitely doable.
After I become completely fluent in German, I’m thinking of doing something completely out there, like Japanese.
Yes, I have. And I have concluded that not giving money to Russia, the last remaining big ally of Iran, would be more helpful to the defense of Israel than saving a few bucks on stolen grain.
I understand that the question was asked ironically but the unironic truth is that it’s very much on point.
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