Directrix Gazer 🧭

Military Operations Researcher, aspiring Eucatastrophist

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@dom_de_la_rose @radioactivered @psettenbrino Doesn't necessarily need to have been so. Even ignoring the possibility of a little heroic hyperbole, people tend to greatly underestimate the power a sling can impart to projectiles. They were quite deadly!

[4th Class Officer @4thClassOfficer]

Incredible Nerd/Dad joke pops in to head:

For a Good Time call 202-762-1069

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@aelfred_D My sister was obsessed with Hatchet and My Side of the Mountain, leading to an enduring interest in wilderness survival.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@TomcatJunkie Have you read "Gear Up, Mishaps Down?"

Also, accident rate for all military aviation in the '50s-60s are scarcely believable to modern eyes.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

Finally got to give her this, which I hope will see much wear at the hands of all 3 kids.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

Eldest (9) came to me today brimming with pride. After many tries, she managed to get the P-51 trainer variant in DCS going from a cold start, flew it up to >10,000 ft and did some aerobatics, then brought it back for a successful landing.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

Along the way, she's been peppering me with questions about each step of the startup sequence (and thus learning how internal combustion engines work), which control surfaces correspond to which axes, and lost of other aeronautics minutia.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@Scholars_Stage wtf
https://t.co/ZdVTxgdIWL

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

Most people do not realize just how easy the AP exams have gotten. They are not college level.

Why/how have they become so easy? What's going on?

This might shock you... A brutal new piece in Education Next just dropped, saying the decline in rigor of the AP in the last two decades is, in large part, because the content has been GUTTED. For example:

— AP Biology cut 40% of its material
— Required lines from the Aeneid in AP Latin halved
— Spanish Lit reading list cut from 56 works to 38

Then the questions themselves have become absurdly easier. Readability measures show English passages have fallen multiple grade levels, and some now include footnotes defining basic words...

A 2025 AP English prompt included footnote definitions for words like "optimism" and "pessimism."

At the same time, scoring was recalibrated so that more students pass: guessing penalties disappeared, rubrics grew more generous, readers were told to give students the benefit of the doubt, etc. — "no one at College Board had any incentive to maintain rigor."

College professors are now seeing students arrive with AP credit who lack basic content knowledge and writing ability. The College Board insists the exams have not become easier, but everybody familiar with them knows they've become an absolute joke.

Advanced Placement is no longer advanced. This is not college level.

It must be replaced.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@eigenrobot Added to your reading list.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@SCShipyards No replacement for displacement, as the old saw goes. That said, I doubt this will ever be more than a model.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@peterrhague https://t.co/vYAGIC6pUt

[Rock Me Amadeus Vult 🇪🇪🇺🇦����🇺 @clifford_banes]

@Scolopendridae @growing_daniel Given enough time, every article on Wikipedia will have a corresponding lunatic on disability with nothing else to do with his time than shitting it up.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@aknox92 @St_Rev @orthonormalist I'd be happy to let fission-fusion weapons take the residual cultural heat in that scenario.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@SCShipyards The episode was great drama but I wish the quality of argumentation on both sides had been a bit better. For instance, the off-switch thing is almost a non sequitur, at least as presented. Still, very good for TV writing.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@memeticsisyphus There is no surer way to identify someone who is simultaneously pigshit ignorant and utterly certain of their own perspicacity.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@ouranometrian3 @orthonormalist https://t.co/Zta0THKFFq

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@Nymdok Steampunk is good (IMO) when it is informed by an interest in, and knowledge of, the period it draws its aesthetic inspiration from rather than using it as a tacky coat of paint.
https://t.co/uk8e38Ju7D

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@dealbakerjones I think you mean, markdown is a **scourge.**

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@elidourado https://t.co/oCJePyoXMb

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@SagerDM Something Something Gell-Mann Amnesia.

[Directrix Gazer 🧭 @DirectrixGazer]

@SagerDM Something Something Gell-Mann Amnesia.