This is actually really good for babies’ brain development. You’re laying the groundwork for conversation, teaching them through example that people take turns talking and listening.
Did you know that babies from affluent families hear an average of thirty MILLION more words before age 5 than babies in families below the poverty line? For context, Les Miserables is about 650,000 words and it looks like this:
So it’s like reading this book 46 times.* And that’s not the total number of spoken words, that’s the GAP between affluent and poor babies. And these are the years in which the brain undergoes the most development. It’s mind-boggling.
So what I’m saying is: keep doing the thing. Do it to all babies, all the time. Narrate your day. Ask them for opinions. (“Should we buy the large bag of potatoes or the small bag?” “Gaabooglagje.” “Yes, just as I thought.”) Point out colors and shapes and letters. Let them scribble outside the lines and treat their babble like talk. Sing them nursery rhymes and Raffi songs and songs from the radio. All of these things are going to build their brains to prepare them for kindergarten and beyond.
*Please do not read Les Mis 46 times to an infant. They don’t even care about the Parisian sewer system.
Shout out to my Arabic teacher that looked at us yesterday mid-lesson and said, “I’m worried. You all look exhausted and depressed.”
Of course we were all like, “Oh yeah we’re dead inside, you haven’t noticed?”
And he snapped shut the textbook, threw up his hands and said, “That’s not healthy! No more vocab! Time for dancing!”
And he taught us a dance from Iraq and we danced instead of doing vocab. We didn’t stop dancing until he saw all of us laughing and was satisfied that we were all feeling better. It was perhaps the coolest, most kind-hearted thing I’ve ever seen a college instructor do.
When you vote a straight democrat party it changes Beto to Cruz on some machines. If you’re in Texas and voting please RECHECK your answers. If your machine does this, notify someone working at the polling site.
The issue is with specific machines that let you push one button to vote straight-ticket, which is a “feature” that is configured by the people running the machines.
Essentially they build a small script that tells the machine which checkboxes to check when somebody selects “straight ticket”. When used correctly it’s a nice time-saving feature.
However.
An unethical person might “incorrectly” program the feature to select whomever they want, thus hijacking votes. Of course, when caught, it’s just “a programming error” and nobody goes to jail for tampering.
The workaround is NEVER use the “straight ticket” feature if offered.
Instead, hand-select each vote then verify the results before you submit. It’s seriously not very tedious and has a much higher chance of not being messed with.
a concept: Harry Potter with his mother’s hair and father’s eyes instead of vice versa.
Harry with fiery dark red hair and soft hazel eyes please and thank you
i imagine this is how harry and draco’s first meeting would have gone then haha
can you imagine how much more confused arthur would have been in that scene where he first meets harry 😂
his eyes would probably sweep right over harry at the breakfast table, and then he would freeze and have to do a mental tally of his children
I can see Fred and George really going with it too…
“Come on Dad, don’t you remember Harry?” “Next you’ll tell us you don’t remember Craig” “Or Ethel” “Or Annie“ “Or Ryan”
my brother is teaching his cat how to high five by giving her a treat every time she successfully taps her hand to his hand, which is all well and good, but now she thinks that she is entitled to food every time she high fives someone. i can’t eat in the same room as her anymore because she’ll just bap my hand rapid fire and then go nyoom straight in for my pizza like no Kelly that’s illegal go finish ur own dinner
“No Kelly, that’s illegal.”
So, a while back, I was using clicker-training to teach my cat Taz tricks. She learned very quickly and it was a good experience all around, but we had to hide the clicker.
Taz had learned that the clicker meant she got treats. So she would find it, carry it up to people, step on it to make it click, and then SCREAM AT THEM to give her the treats she was clearly owed because the clicker had made a sound.
Captain-Radioactive-Mentality 