Frank McCown

Comp Sci at Harding University & Senior Content Developer at zyBooks: web science, UI, web & Android dev. Colorado native & Broncos fan. 🕇

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

@VidAngel I love your service, but not being able to use it with subscriptions that include ads is a non-starter. I can't afford to get premium subscriptions and pay for VidAngel on top of that. I think you'd enlarge your customer base a ton if you could figure this out.

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

"Despite its advantages, remote work has significantly deepened Americans’ isolation and distress."
https://t.co/uG0BRH3C6S

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

The Web We Know Is Going to Disappear
https://t.co/HQTS1XvXku

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

Thinking of purchasing a car with a rebuilt title? Don't do it if you have @Allstate insurance! They will no longer insure rebuilt titles!

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

AI search results easy to manipulate via Reddit, Wikipedia, and Quora
https://t.co/rWMSdZ8ACf

[Brad @BradleyKellard]

Malcolm Gladwell revealed why you shouldn't go to Harvard:

1. America does not have a shortage of students who want science and math degrees. It has a shortage of students who finish them. Half of all high school seniors who intend to study STEM drop out by the end of their second year. The problem is not interest. It is persistence.

2. The obvious assumption is that smarter students persist longer. So Gladwell tested it. At Hartwick College, a small liberal arts school in New York, the top third of math SAT scorers took the majority of STEM degrees. The bottom third dropped out in large numbers. The data seemed to confirm it. Smarter kids stick around longer.

3. Then he looked at Harvard. The bottom third of Harvard's math SAT scores are equal to the top third at Hartwick. By the logic above, everyone at Harvard should graduate with a STEM degree. They are all brilliant. Nobody should be dropping out.

4. Harvard showed the exact same pattern as Hartwick. Top students graduated. Bottom students dropped out like flies. Even though the bottom Harvard students were objectively brilliant by any global standard. Something else entirely was driving the dropout rate.

5. That something is called relative deprivation theory. Human beings do not measure themselves against the world. They measure themselves against the people immediately around them. A Harvard student in the bottom third does not think I am in the top one percent of all students globally. They think that kid next to me keeps getting everything right and I keep getting it wrong. So they quit.

6. The research from UCLA puts a specific number on it. Your odds of graduating with a STEM degree fall by two percentage points for every ten point increase in the average SAT score of your peers. Choose Harvard over the University of Maryland and your chance of finishing a STEM degree drops by thirty percent. Thirty percent. Just to put a brand name on your resume.

7. Relative position matters more than absolute position when it comes to confidence, motivation, and self belief. The eightieth percentile student at Harvard looks up at the people above them and feels like they cannot compete. The number one student at a state school feels like they can conquer the world. That feeling drives everything.

8. The practical hiring implication is radical. Class rank matters more than institution name. Gladwell argues companies should have a don't ask don't tell policy for where someone went to college. Hiring only from top schools means missing the top students from every other school. That is not smart hiring. That is brand worship.

9. When choosing a college, never go to the best school you get into. Go to the school where you are guaranteed to be near the top of your class. Being a big fish in a smaller pond does not just feel better. It statistically produces better outcomes than being a small fish in the most prestigious pond available.

10. So why do we keep choosing Harvard over Maryland? Because we are flattered. Because the acceptance letter feels like validation. Because we make an irrational decision in a moment of enormous flattery and call it ambition. Gladwell's conclusion is simple and brutal. When we have the chance to join an elite institution we do things that are genuinely against our own interest and we feel great about it the whole time.

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

The Shell University: AI has taken something fundamental from the business of teaching and learning.
https://t.co/EOLe87BnH7

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

The Computer Science Degree Isn’t Dead https://t.co/jT11aprme7

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

"I spent 10 years... getting good at things that are becoming less and less valuable. My last pillar of expertise is now reduced to a "taste" and will probably won't last long."
https://t.co/oKsHtY0z97

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

A Protestant Response to the Pope’s Magnifica Humanitas on AI https://t.co/YptCwXDaQE

[Josh Kraushaar @JoshKraushaar]

“We are witnessing the end of print culture itself, and with it the end of the cognitive substrate on which modern liberal democracy was built.” https://t.co/CEzkDq5s9f

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

Pickleball would have been so much cooler...
https://t.co/hEYBmGxGoO

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

The only thing growing faster than the artificial-intelligence industry may be Americans’ negative feelings about it. https://t.co/P7rwYsbVWU

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

"Cheating has become omnipresent." @Stanford
https://t.co/dMuipX7BMz

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

"But alcohol’s ubiquity persists in the face of mountains of research linking heavy drinking to cancer, heart disease, stroke, cognitive decline, developmental disorders, gun violence, injuries, and countless other consequences."
https://t.co/THkte8DidU

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

Provide reassurance, be empathetic, help them fix it, always give a way out
https://t.co/UunxqRoTE4

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

Teaching Evaluations Are Undermining Academic Integrity @chronicle
https://t.co/jrpblVZM2y

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

Don’t Let Silicon Valley Turn Education Into Slop
Against ‘academic content assetization.’ @chronicle
https://t.co/vR0ipK3tFd

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

American public schools’ overreliance on YouTube for educational content runs counter to what is clear in several scientific studies: Learning analog is better than digital. https://t.co/T7bZRP2fDx 🧵

[Frank McCown @fmccown]

"Professionalism is showing up and doing the job well, including on the days when you don’t feel like it."
https://t.co/9Nsm6fM4Yg