Hello friends,

I love the end of October; in my part of the world, it’s finally starting to feel like fall. This weekend I’ve been raking leaves and curled up in front of my fireplace. I’ve discovered a renewed interest in practical wisdom—that only comes from doing something—so as I do an activity I ask myself “what am I teaching myself with this?” Am I teaching myself to be passive and accept something that someone else is offering to me? Or am I pushing myself to do and to accomplish things for myself?

It’s a revealing question.

 

» Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way? Phonics, as it turns out, teaches kids how words are an physical manifestation of an abstract system. Teaching “whole language” is the equivalent of “do what I tell you and don’t ask questions,” rather than giving children the tools to think and discover for themselves.

while you’re likely to find some phonics lessons in a balanced-literacy classroom, you’re also likely to find a lot of other practices rooted in the idea that children learn to read by reading rather than by direct instruction in the relationship between sounds and letters. For example, teachers will give young children books that contain words with letter patterns the children haven’t yet been taught. You’ll see alphabetical “word walls” that rest on the idea that learning to read is a visual memory process rather than a process of understanding how letters represent sounds. You’ll hear teachers telling kids to guess at words they don’t know based on context and pictures rather than systematically teaching children how to decode.

» Someone is already looking at MBTI type and personal style, and I love it. The site is more more sales-oriented than a thorough examination, but it’s still something to go off rather than simply expanding through first principles.

» In grantland, the wrong font can mean certain death. This PI’s grant got rejected because of byzantine font rules in the VA’s grant review system. Given the sheer volume of grant submissions to go through, I can understand why something as arbitrary as formatting is used to disqualify applications—just to narrow down the field.

» This one has been making the rounds: Instagram Has a Massive Harassment Problem.

But Instagram’s current reporting pathway doesn’t allow users to explain exactly why something is offensive, leaving moderators to guess.

“There could be all sorts of things that the user understands that the moderator doesn’t,” Andy said. “So many of my co-workers are old, people who did not grow up thinking like anything like this would ever happen. They got hired because their résumé says, ‘I have a Facebook account,’ but you need a Ph.D. in 4chan slang sometimes, and stuff that’s specific to Instagram, in order to understand what someone means when they post something. We just have no context about the stuff that we get related to harassment, and it makes it a lot harder to interpret who is attacking.”

» I remain interested in Wim Hof breathing.

» Ironic fashion is nothing new (and never will be while premium fashion trolls like Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld are still around).

» Everything I knew about reading was wrong—a recap of Naval Ravikant’s approach to reading. I’ve heard a lot about this guy on Twitter, so I listened to the podcast that was the origin of this list. He had some interesting things to say, but he’s not the luminary I was expecting. I will continue to be mildly interested.

» The Builders of Ocean Grove had a Higher Calling

» The Man Who Pioneered Food Safety

» Coming to terms with six years in science: obsession, isolation, and moments of wonder. This is a frank essay about the realities of getting a PhD in science, from someone who made it through. If you are interested in pursuing a PhD at all, read this.

» I’m considering chinoiserie wallpaper for my bedroom.

» FBI Admits It Used Multiple Spies To Infiltrate Trump Campaign