Jon Becker

@jonbecker.bsky.social

5600 Followers 1738 Following

Education professor. School Law. Ed tech. Politics of Ed. #RVA #GoDuke #LetsGoVCU (Jon is not AI and can make mistakes. Please double-check output.)

Man Welcomed to Hell with An Icebreaker Game
Richmond's highest paid CEOs ranked. One made $24.5 million. (There are thumbnails images of them. You can guess what they look like)
I’m tired of being told that, to be a progressive, I now must swear allegiance to crazy ideas. I’m a strong Democrat, with a winning bipartisan track record. I’m rooted in progressive ideals and policies: criminal justice reform, Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free education, clean air and water. These are ideas I have fought for my entire adult life. But some people in groups like the DSA are pushing an agenda FAR outside those ideals. Supporting Hamas is not progressive. “No police, no prisons, no borders” is not progressive. Celebrating the murder of Israeli civilians is not progressive. These ideas are REGRESSIVE. If there were no police or prisons, if anyone in your neighborhood could do whatever they wanted, while politicians cheered on terror groups — would that represent PROGRESS to you? No, that would be a step back. Those are REGRESSIVE ideas. On the other hand, if everybody could see a doctor when they got sick, get a good, free education and breathe clean air — would that represent progress? Yes. Those are PROGRESSIVE ideas. They are NOT the same thing. And the difference matters. Some defend the far left by claiming they only want Nordic-style social democracy. If that were true, I might applaud them. I want those policies, too! But what does universal healthcare have to do with Hamas? With abolishing all law enforcement? With erasing all borders? With treating every wealthy person as a villain? Ideas matter. And these are terrible ideas. Right now, extremists are trying to sneak backwards proposals into our party, hoping mainstream Democrats are too frustrated with MAGA and the Democratic Party establishment to notice. But we see you. Yes, we want our Democratic Party to be a big tent. But we don’t need “party poopers. So STOP pooping in the punch bowl — and telling us the turds are ice cubes. They aren’t. And we are smart enough to know the difference. 💩
Good Morning Dr. Becker, We hope this email finds you doing well. We wanted to check in with you about the use of Claude in cleaning our data. Because we are comparing 133 VA counties across six domains, each domain produces over 2,000 lines of raw data. We would like to use Claude to help clean the data and isolate our variables. To be extra clear, we are doing the work of creating the charts, Claude is only isolating the variables out of the 2,000+ rows. These are the step by step instructions for how we would use it and will be included in our Data and Methods section:
Red, yellow, and orange bell peppers on a grill
Tuxedo cat sunbathing on a window sill.
AQI of 176 in N. Chesterfield, VA with a big red sad face emoji
The Bottom Line ​If we judge these systems by their fruits—meaning the amount of happiness, safety, and health they allowed people to experience—both are disastrous. ​Fascism is worse in its fundamental conception because it explicitly rejects the value of universal human life and is designed to cause harm. Authoritarian Communism has been equally catastrophic in its historical results, proving that a system which sacrifices individual lives and freedoms in the name of a collective goal will ultimately produce a massive surplus of human misery. Both represent the absolute worst outcomes for humanity.
If you fly from the newly renamed Donald Trump airport to Sioux City, your ticket will read: DJT-SUX. I’m not saying the universe writes jokes, but…
Sophie Cunningham serving as the ring girl at the UFC event holding up a sign with the number 1 on it.
NYT Morning Briefing: Senator Lindsey Graham. Cold plunging. Wimbledon finals.
Essay: E Pluribus Algae: Why Green Pond Scum is as American as Red, White and Blue
WaPo headline: Elon Musk files to pull out of Twitter deal
Sally Jenkins saying that Pochettino should ASK Balogun to sit "for the good of the game"
Grill with a honking piece of flank steak on it.
Two grills with chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs
Really "hot" guy with an apron saying "Best Flippin' Dad Ever"
Members of the Patriot Front surrounding a Black woman on the Metro in DC
Our founding parents were Pompous middle aged white farmers. But they were also great men. Because they knew one thing that all great men should know. That they didn’t know everything. They knew they were going to make mistakes. But they made sure to leave a way to correct them. They didn’t think of themselves as leaders. They wanted a government of citizens. Not royalty. A government of listeners. Not lecturers. A government that could change not stand still. The President isn’t an elected King.
A row of geese crossing the street blocking traffic
The Org Chart Survivor patron saint: Ethan Mollick Your company made you 'AI Lead' on top of your actual job. You use it, it helps sometimes, and you've stopped trying to explain to leadership what it can and can't do. You run little experiments and post the results. Just try things, you keep saying. Just try things.
Kager Knueppel commitment announcement going to Duke.
To verify their data was truthful and applicable in other educational scenarios, the research team asked Anthropic, the company that developed the AI software called Claude, for data about how students with the college’s email addresses were using the technology. Anthropic confirmed: Most students were using AI for “technical explanations,” to explain concepts rather than automate work.
Sophie Cunningham pointing
Trump's Religious Liberty Commission takes aim at church-state separation
"The victory [in NYC primaries last Tuesday] of candidates such as Chevalier and Valdez accelerates a shift in the Democratic coalition. Both won enough affluent and white voters to overcome their weakness with poor, working-class, black, and Hispanic voters, These candidates and their supporters reflect a social class that throughout history has been uniquely dangerous: people who come from wealth and have educational credentials but are underemployed, downwardly mobile, and resentful of a society that doesn't give them the rewards they see as their due. Left-wing populism aims at the destruction of the existing order. It is traditionally driven by a vanguard of the young, idle, and discontented Revolutions the world over remind us of how far those impulses can rage before they burn out." --NR Editors
Google asks if I meant to search for "captain clutch Brunson"