Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻

anti-car,
cat person

[Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻 @jackodess]

https://t.co/hl91orbgmx

[Evan Kirstel #B2B #TechFluencer @EvanKirstel]

@SecScottBessent @jakepaul

[Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻 @jackodess]

@SpoxCHN_MaoNing You guys, this isn't good... 😢

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

There are so many charts like this, where, if you remove China from the global data, the change is no longer significant.

China is responsible for:
- half of the world's solar/wind energy capacity,
- all of the decline in global pollution,
- 3/4ths of extreme poverty reduction

[Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻 @jackodess]

@MarkLevineNYC @NYC_DOT Great design, can't wait to see it for myself!! When I saw it I thought WOW I can't believe there is still room left over for so many goddamn lanes for cars!!!

[Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻 @jackodess]

@JustinBrannan Hahahaha that's crazy. When you're so used to the unhealthy result of zoning that you think a neighborhood is wrong.

[روني الدنماركي @aldnmarki]

German-backed Leninite rebels are FINISHED! They only ontrol 17% of Russian territory!

[Seth Harp @sethharpesq]

As soon as he came home he killed his wife. So did three other Green Berets that summer. Delta Force fed a phony story to the media that a malaria drug called Larium made them do it, a preposterous excuse that every mainstream newspaper in America uncritically repeated.

[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

United Airlines has not only been shipping weapons components to the Israeli regime during the ongoing genocide in Palestine (itself the crime of complicity under the Genocide Convention), but it has been doing so by hiding them in the cargo of passenger planes filled with unknowing civilians. United Airlines is therefore using its passengers as human shields to unlawfully arm the Israeli regime. These arms onboard constitute an “effective contribution to military action" under IHL, violating the Geneva conventions, and potentially making these planes “military objectives” under the law, eroding or stripping their protected status, and putting every passenger at risk. Hiding these weapons in civilian aircraft also constitutes the war crime of “perfidy” under international law. Doing so during the regime’s ongoing crimes breaches the Arms Trade Treaty. And the act also violates the Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation. United should be sued and boycotted out of existence, and its name should forever become a warning to all who would be complicit in genocide for profit.

[The Last Farm @TheLastFarm]

Guessing there won’t be a congratulatory letter from Ivy League “abolitionists”

[justin serb-ert 🇷🇸🍉 @markocantdunk]

Fun fact two months after 9/11 I (two years old at the time) broke my wrist and some doctors in upstate New York refused to treat me because my parents had accents

[Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻 @jackodess]

@NarKomNats96 That's a crazy edit lmao

[Propagandopolis @propagandopolis]

'Democracy fully armed' — Soviet anti-American illustration, 1985

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

If you really want to understand where the world is at and where it's going, you probably cannot get anything more meaningful than the OECD's PISA study - a global test given every 3 years to an insane 760,000 15-year-olds across 91 countries.

No report globally, by any institution, better captures whether countries are building or squandering their future.

The latest PISA results just came out yesterday (https://t.co/FbHx266LH4) and the results are genuinely fascinating, and in some way pretty depressing.

Why depressing? Because, sadly, the numbers show that the world is getting dumber: as you can see on the first graph below 👇, since roughly 2012 scores in science, reading, and mathematics have been in continuous decline across OECD countries.

The reading score is particularly concerning: it literally cratered, dropping 28 points since 2015, the equivalent of almost 1.5 years of schooling lost according to the report.

To make matters even worse, the reading skill that's dropped the most across the board is precisely the one we most desperately need: the capacity to critically assess what you read, cross-reference sources, and tell signal from noise.

On average, sadly, 15-year-old kids globally are - more and more - incapable of slowing down and actually thinking about what they're reading.

Interestingly though, when you look into the details, this great "dumbing down" isn't across the board: it's overwhelmingly concentrated in wealthy Western countries, while many developing countries are actually getting significantly smarter.

For instance rich countries like Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway are in freefall, while countries like Cambodia, Türkiye, and the UAE are posting big gains.

To be clear, this doesn't mean that developing countries are now "smarter" than rich ones: save for one notable exception, that's still not the case. But they are catching up fast, both because rich countries are getting "dumber" and because they're themselves getting smarter.

The one exception is, as you'd expect, the "smartest" of them all, by a huge margin: China.

It is pretty much in a league of its own: just look at the ranking in the table (only kids in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang got tested - 4 regions covering 200 million people).

China's maths results are particularly insane: according to the report, the best level in maths - level 5, where "top performers" begins - starts at 607. The AVERAGE kid in China is 612: "normal" Chinese kids are at a level that is considered elite in the rest of the world.

In fact, and that's probably the funniest number in the entire report, look at the column called "Share of low performers in science, reading and mathematics": China is only at 1.8% 😅

Which means that only 1.8% of Chinese kids are rated as low performers in all 3 subjects, almost a rounding error. Even Singapore, the second best and generally considered best-in-class in education, is at 6.8% - almost 4 times worse. My country France, is at 21.3% - almost 12 times worse 😢

All of this - incidentally - dispels the common myth that there would be some kids who are just genetically beyond redemption and simply can't be taught: China proves that with the right system, virtually every child can reach proficiency.

So what does this all say about the world and where it's going, besides the fact that, if the future belongs to those who can think, China has never been better positioned to own it?

I think the more general picture is this: there is nothing inevitable about any country's trajectory.

Finland was the world's education darling fifteen years ago - now it's in complete freefall (see the last graph 👇). Cambodia was at the bottom of every table - now it's posting the biggest gains ever recorded in the study. What changed wasn't the children: it's still Finnish kids (Finland has one of the lowest levels of immigration in the West), and it's still Cambodian kids.

It also doesn't matter much - or at least it matters less - if a country is wealthy or not. For instance in Southeast Asia, both Malaysia and Indonesia - the 2 biggest ASEAN economies after Singapore - are faring very badly, while Thailand and Vietnam, both poorer, have better educated kids whose scores are continuing to improve.

So that's the final takeaway: the kids don't change, they all have potential, always, as China's 1.8% proved.

What does change is what adults decide to do with that potential. It's both hopeful - because it means any country can choose to turn things around at any time - and also sad given the results - because it means so many countries are choosing to fail their children.

[Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻 @jackodess]

@rafkhach I was just thinking of how people in the Soviet Union would memorize poetry for fun. My grandfather will randomly recite a poem he's known for 60 years if someone mentions its name.

[Joan Cook from PBS @MissPavIichenko]

The best video you'll see all day

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🇮🇷🇯🇴 Iran’s IRGC says to the “honorable and pure-hearted people of Jordan”:

“Jordan is sacred ground walked by God’s prophets. It must not remain a home for the offspring of Satan.”

The IRGC said it launched a heavy ballistic missile attack on hangars housing U.S. RQ-4 and MQ-9 drones at Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan.

➤ It claims several drones were destroyed, pilots and technical flight crew were killed, and technical facilities were set ablaze.

➤ The IRGC described the attack as retaliation for a U.S. strike on a young Sunni couple’s wedding ceremony in Sirik, southern Iran’s Hormozgan province. Its statement says approximately 70 guests were struck, with four killed, including a young child, and several wounded in critical condition.

Full statement in reply:

[Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg]

Perspective from a Russian nationalist here that if nothing else Westerners seem to be missing. Calls for endless escalation emanating from London etc are motivated by a belief Russia will eventually "back down". That's *not* going to happen, no matter how much one fantasises.

[Moss Robeson @mossrobeson__]

👀If my eyes do not deceive me, the 3rd Assault Brigade did not expel this neo-Nazi for his Auschwitz stunt, but just invited him to honor Yuri Lypa, the "founder of 🇺🇦 racial theory ... who called for ethnic cleansing and installation of sex tribunals for the purity of 🇺🇦 race."

[Jack 🐈‍⬛ 🚲 🔻 @jackodess]

@markocantdunk Your thoughts so far?