I figured that today would be a good day to compare the two given the recent indictments. The World from A-Z gave literally equal time to Trump and to Hunter Biden. It had quotes from both parties responding to each but never started clearly that Trump lost the election. It went into more detail explaining Hunter Biden's alleged crimes than Trump's, perhaps due to time constraints. CNN 10 didn't bring up Hunter Biden (I remember it being covered last spring). They attempted to explain some of the legal language used to make the charges and the process more comprehensible to young viewers. They were careful not to presume guilt or add political commentary but were explicit that Trump lost the election. The World does now seem to be doing better in its sound-mixing and editing than in the first few days. The transitions feel much smoother when there aren't sudden changes in volume with each one.

Have you looked into Science Mom? She's doing physics as the "live class" this year, but she has recorded Earth Science, Chemistry, and Biology. The Earth Science is free, but there's a charge for the others. They are very enjoyable, pretty deep, and not at all dry. There are note pages provided that teach note taking and help kids focus, and the are several hands on activities in each. Science Mom and her husband Math Dad banter a little with Math Dad taking the role of the confused person who needs more explanation. Some kids have found that distracting or confusing. That's the main complaint I've heard about it, but my kids really enjoyed it.

I read it and really enjoyed it.

It may be a fault in my memory, but last year when we watched CNN10 it seemed like there'd often be a theme of the day that several of the short segments tied into. The A-Z episode I was mentioning the climate change thing about was basically "It's hotter this year, and many blame human actions, but here are 3-4 things that could also be affecting things." That would be very appropriate as part of a longer segment, but there wasn't enough context given for it to not feel like there was an agenda. For example, one of the potential causes was a recent volcano. Although that clearly could not have caused the many-year trend, that wasn't mentioned at all. A quick-fire list like that, especially with a youthful audience, gives the audience the impression that all items in the list are roughly equal in importance or acceptance. I'm not at the point of deciding that there's a definite agenda, but I'm going to be watching closely.

Yeah. A lot of places have the family bathroom doubling as the accessible bathrooms. Both families and those with disabilities are likely to take extra long, and when there was only one such bathroom, I always felt bad having a toddler who was taking his time to do his business. What if there's a wheel chair user on the other side of the door who can't go elsewhere?

I've had that dream, too! My kid was three at the time and didn't find it remarkable, but the school went up through basically Kindergarten. They may have had another bathroom for the older kids that I never saw, but I feel it would be odd by age 5 or 6. Yeah, I completely agree. I feel it's more likely there's an undiscovered passed-out junky than a pervert in the boy's bathroom at the playground, but I don't want my seven year old to be alone with either. Have just one big bathroom would make it more likely to have safety in numbers without violating community norms (brother-sister pair can use the buddy system in an inclusive bathroom). I think it's for reduced water usage, and maybe saving a little time. Flushing a urinal takes a lot less water than flushing a toilet. I know someone who installed one in her house due to having lots of sons and grandsons. If they are at the back and separated by a partition, no one needs to see them unless they want to use them.

Another very interesting set up I saw was a preschool in France. The assumption was that 2-5 year olds needed supervision, so there was a wall about 4 feet high in the middle. Girls went on one side, boys on the other. There was just one stall for teachers to use. Otherwise everything was out in the open and teachers could continuously watch everyone. It made a lot of practical sense in that setting, but I can't see it being embraced in America. At least not the lack of stalls.

At our local zoo, which is a big one, I was once there with my 3 year old son. He was potty trained but still in the "can't hold it for long" category. We made our way to the bathrooms to discover that a visiting preschool or kindergarten has taken all their kids into the women's room because all their chaperones were women. This was something like 50 kids. I asked if everyone in line would be using the toilet or if we could move ahead of those who were just being monitored and got my head bitten off, so I quickly pivoted to the men's room. I took my little boy in, went directly to a stall (no line, of course) and was out in minutes. No one was visibly upset by this, but I was very annoyed it had to happen. When we went to the zoo in Amsterdam, the restroom was one large area with good stalls, sinks along one wall, and a walled-off area at the back where my husband found urinals. Yes, little kids would have to learn to not go wandering back to stare at the urinal area, as I assume little boys already learn, but it worked so much better. I hate having to decide in each location whether my 6 and 4 year olds can use the men's room together or if they need to come in with me (and they don't love it, either).

So, I know that public bathrooms often don't meet public need. Some events have far more men than women, others have the opposite. Fathers need to be able to take toddler girls to the toilet, mothers need to take little boys, and sometimes adults need help or supervision from opposite gender adults as well. That's before we get to those for whom two gender choices gets complicated. All that to say, there's an issue. I want to know what set ups you have seen that work really well (or really poorly, if you want to say what doesn't work)? Do you like having lots of individual rooms? The traditional style? Inclusive toilets with individual stalls? Something else? I know people tend to get salty about the issue of bathrooms, but I'm hoping to just discuss the physical layouts of different solutions and what types of situations each works best for. Where have you seen them? What can we do to get more like that?

And the pacing seems a little frenetic. Lots of short segments that are completely unrelated to each other.

Today's episode seems to be doing a push for natural causes for global warming.

How is it going for y'all? I've heard it hasn't gone all according to plan, but I hope it's been a good experience and that any negatives are the kind that will make a great story in a few months.

I was a cleaning person at a camp one summer during college. I wore gloves; the permanent staff, by choice, did not. There was lots of gross cleaning involved. Blood, poop, urine, dried snot, vomit, etc. The permanent staff gave us wimpy college kids one "nope" per summer, where they would take over something we just couldn't handle. I never used mine because I could always imagine something worse coming up later. It would be prohibitively expensive in such a setting to have special cleaners come in for that sort of thing. There's a reason I only did it one summer. Last summer, at a camp where I was volunteering as director, some boys clogged the urinal of a port-o-john with trash, then used it, I'm hoping thoughtlessly. The next boy, instead of using the toilet on the same cubical, also used the clogged urinal, and so on until it was literally and copiously overflowing. It fell on me to stick my hand in to remove the trash. Yes, I wore a glove, gagged a lot, and scrubbed copiously afterwards.

What's funny in a sad way to me is that riots are also the outgrowth of the same thing Aldean is supporting in this song. Something bad happens- don't trust the system to bring justice. Instead, go out with your friends and bring about change. It's understandable that people get impatient with lumbering forces of bureaucracy that have often failed, but understandable isn't the same thing as right. He wants to be able to take the law in his own hands while at the same time criticizing others who are taking the law in their hands. By the way, I'm not saying the system is perfect at all, or that protesting is wrong. It's also not wrong to have a neighborhood watch that keeps an eye out and goes and mows Ms Becky's lawn instead of calling code enforcement. Protesting can be corrupted and so can that neighborhood watch. My point is that there's a reason to have a slow, lumbering system and that we need to work to make out the best system we can. I have a high school classmate who is a true anarchist. He has no faith in the idea that systems can ever work and instead believes only in direct, local community action. I know he'd be very upset by the images used in Aldean's song, but I'm curious whether he'd see any reflection in his own beliefs.

Even if he didn't mean any of it in a racist way, glorifying vigilantism is not ok. It's shallow thinking of wanna-be heroes, and it's currently making America a much less safe place to live.

We started back today. I think 2nd grade ds is enjoying having routine again as he hasn't complained at all, unlike his older siblings. He jumped back in where he stopped in Beast Academy 2 and had to be told to stop after an hour, loved some Mystery Science, did ok in spelling, read Zoey and Sassafras happily once I agreed to sit and listen to him read, helped little brother practice the abc song, and is currently embellishing his handwriting page even though he's fine for the day.

On the thought of what could we do that isn't rampant capitalism or soulless communism: I know that France has some of its own, not inconsiderable, problems including in the area of housing, but we were impressed by the way they had developed mixed-income communities when we were there in a smaller city (not Paris). They had zoning laws that were just about opposite to those we have in our part of the US. Every development had a mix of small, cheaper properties and bigger, fancier, more expensive ones. Everything was also within easy walking distance of schools, shops, and the Metro. Sure, there were areas of town that were more expensive and areas that were less expensive, but each was a spectrum. In the "working class" neighborhood we were in, there were recent immigrants, established blue collar families, and young professionals. The nicer areas might price out lower middle class people, but there was still a spectrum from middle-middle class up through quite wealthy. (I believe something like housing vouchers were also used in all areas, which helped tremendously in ensuring a mix of incomes in neighborhoods) Here in the States, there are thousands of people living in huge crummy apartment complexes where the only professionals they ever see are at the schools (teachers, nurses, etc) or the justice system (police, lawyers, judges), and none of those people live near them. Kids growing up, bouncing from complex to complex, sometimes going worse and worse as once they've been evicted once they have to pay extra high rates for the next many years, never really knowing someone with a better job than Wendy's or drug dealing, how can we expect anything from them but being stuck in that cycle? Some of them break the cycle, and that's awesome and amazing, but as a society we are setting them up to fail. In the neighborhood we were in in France, even the poorest kids with uninvolved parents went to schools with kids from all sorts of backgrounds. There weren't schools that were written off in the public mind because "what can you expect from those kids"? People could afford to get themselves to decent jobs because they didn't have to buy a car first. People could access healthy foods because they could walk to the farmer's markets held each Saturday in the town centers. I have no idea what the laws are like in Australia, but in the US, our zoning laws are a huge problem that are set to preserve the status quo and comfort levels of the wealthiest among us while hurting the young, the poor, the environment, the schools, and the sense of community.

It sounds like his untrustworthiness is currently in the news. I'd start by making some casual inquiries with people I knew at the district and council level. "Has so and so decided to step down/make a formal apology/otherwise address this issue?" That's not the publicity Scouting needs. Depending on the whole situation, he may or may not need to resign, but absolutely he needs to address the problem honestly and openly and let the message if how it's been dealt with spread through the units. A guy who panicked and made a dumb choice because he didn't notice his house was on the wrong side of the road after redistricting is different from a guy who knew from the beginning but thought the rules didn't apply to him.

My plan should be set in stone since we are about to start, but I'm still working on a few things. I want this to be a year where she gets used to working a bit longer and doing more informational writing, but I also want her to be able to do a lot of interest-based work. Math: Jousting Armadillos and following, unless she wants to switch to AOPS Prealgebra. History: Ancient and medieval using Human Odyssey, supplemented with reading popular history works. A lot of her writing will come from history. Literature: in the Fall shell be preparing for a reading bowl, so I won't give too much additional fiction until Spring. Science: overview year working through Khan Middle School courses. I think she'll likely do all three this year English: finish AAS 7, finish MCT Town level, then probably move into Voyage level. PE: gymnastics Health: we'll do something, including a drugs and alcohol unit to meet a scout requirement Electives: I plan to have her choose a few merit badges that look interesting, then I'll help her find counselors and get started. She can then work through them, getting help as needed. Extracurricular: Scouts, youth group. We'll see what happens with the church music program in the fall, but probably Bell choir.

I didn't see the original posts, so I hope this is relevant. When I'm in meetings where nonsense is being said, I sometimes find it helpful to be visibly attentive but disagreeing, without being over the top. I'll shake my head slightly when something sounds wrong, make a disbelieving face, make eye contact with others in the meeting and raise my eyes brows in a "really?" kind of way. Someone else might then be emboldened to voice their thoughts, knowing that at least one other person isn't on board with what is said

Late to the (super fun) party. I took this in college and it was extremely helpful in understanding myself and those around me. In my wider friend group it turned out the girls were all Thinking rather than Feeling, with most of us being strongly so while one was border-line. There was one guy who was strongly Feeling, which helped us so much to understand why he would sometimes make choices that had previously confounded us. Because I knew him well and could watch as he learned and grew and used a different style than the one that came naturally to me and most of the others I was close to, I was able to gain perspective that I then generalized to help me understand other people I haven't had a chance to know well yet. I'll choose the thing that makes sense most of the time, even when it feels awful. I'm very grateful I had it pointed out to me at a crucial time in my development that others have different, but still good, methods for making decisions. It has made me far more empathetic and understanding. A different test might have done the same thing, I don't know, but I believe thinking about different aspects of personality is extremely valuable. For the weird side of the Myers-Briggs: our very small college (<500)decided to give us printouts that not only listed our results from the test but also the names of the top 10 males and females we'd match well with as well as the "10 worst" of each. I can't remember how it all went down, but there were some very interesting but odd conversations that resulted.

Thank you all so much for the advice and encouragement. You've given me a lot to read, research, and think about.

This may be oddly specific, but here it is anyway. I'd like to find resources to help me teach a "get inside the Old Testament mind" kind of study, where we look at the other stories that were prevalent in that time and area and compare them to biblical stories. I'd prefer the helps be from a somewhat scholarly, not fundamentalist perspective but not have an attitude that is hostile to religious belief. This study is for adults, but my kids would probably get dragged along for parts. I've find some interesting sources that I can draw on, but if there is an actual study like this that already exists, I'd really appreciate it. Examples for clarity of the kind of topics I'd like to cover: -How do the Biblical accounts of creation differ from other creation stories at the time? What's the theological significance of those difference? -What were the attitudes towards child sacrifice in the Ancient Near East and so they shed any light on the story of Abraham and Isaac? Which parts of that story would have seemed remarkable to the original audience, and does that make it easier to find the lessons we can take from the story today?

The biggest desire I have is for the opportunity to form more community, so I'd want repeat activities rather than one-off big things. Also, I'd like clear communication about age expectations. Our libraries are very loosely-goosey with ages, which is great when I want my 9 year old to join in a group for 10-13 along with his sister but disappointing when we go to something advertised to ages 6-14 and it's entirely ages 2-7. I'd like "this is aimed at age 8-10 but older/younger kids are welcome if they want to work at that level" or "this is a teens-only space but siblings and parents are welcome to wait in the children's area." Or "This is aimed at older elementary. Younger siblings are welcome to sit in, but the event for then is on___"

My fourth was my kid like that (total coincidence we didn't have more after him, honest). He's currently on scissor restriction at age 4, something the other kids didn't need, but has learned to be careful with books. When he wasn't, we had baby gates around one room and kept books and other valuable things there.