Yes, and I'm not arguing that, I'm saying the primary problem from my experience, is teachers are bad at teaching math. I'll give some credit that the curriculum is nonsense, sometimes, but is that an excuse? When a parent raises a good question about how a process or method works, you should be able to answer them, or at least realize the issue they're brining up.

Again, subjectively, I remember being in grade 8, and if math didn't come to you, it was considered fine, and teachers would excuse your lack of comfort as (paraphrased): “Math is difficult”. Just like today, and it seems like the math got easier because we were doing stats and variable-based algebra, where today in grade 8, they're doing fractions, and not proper fraction, they don't reduce them.

One of my old classmates from primary school works at a dinner in my home town, she was never good at math. The other week she gave me a bill, and I placed $30 on the table, and she could not tell me how much change she owed! I think it was $9.48, and I didn't want change, but she struggled to compute the number, why? I understand we all have calculators, but you should be able to check simple work in your head, otherwise, how are you sure to any degree if you're right or wrong?

I've seen this kind of problem with other engineers, where they can't grasp the calculations, so they'll get confused if a number should be 4, 5 or 15. In most cases, you should be able to figure out a ballpark, and then once you're reasonably sure, use a calculator, and if your number matches, it's all good, and It's way off, you have an issue. I've seen engineers who are literally 1000x off their assumed value, and not some complex Nth dimensional radio transmission calculation, a ballpark “will it work” number. One Jr Engineer calculated a value of 2 (or something like that), when some a basic look and numble it was 11 000, he was truly, and completely, lost on how that worked.

This goes back to asking the teachers questions, how do you get X, I can see step 1, 2, and 3, then something happens, and now we're on a step 5, where is step 4, and how do you get that value? I've had a teacher laugh at me and tell me it's safe to assume... no it's not. When I showed my younger daughter how to do the calculation in the "traditional" manner, she got it almost instantly, and she could never explain the "new" method, but her teacher couldn't either, and for the matter, neither could the text book.

Let's go in reverse, the bathroom was more of a sudden need, and it happened twice, literally, twice. The other issue, yes you could just park, but then HR would complain, and complain, and complain, and it was just not worth the headache. I started parking in the disability spots, and they would send emails out that you require an office approved disability tag, which was not legally true. I ignored them, and then the private security company started ticketing the car, which again, wasn't actually legal. Once the office had the ticket, they started refusing other nonsense, like giving me the parking tag, which I required. It was such a bleep headache, that I gave up that fight.

They were already extremely mad at me that I would stand outside the front doors, and only walk a couple meter (6ish feet), to smoke joints, which is protected in Canada if you have prescribed cannabis. They claimed people didn't like the smell, and it was disruptive, unprofessional, against company policy (which didn't matter), at one point legal got involved. I remember the fat blond lady, standing in the office doorway, telling me I was not allowed to use cannabis at work. I ignored her, and had my doctor reach out, which to his credit, he did! They didn't care.

Eventually, legal got involved, and apparently they didn't actually know the law surrounding medical cannabis in Canada. I linked them to Health Canada, gave them some numbers and emails addresses, and they quickly realized it was a dangerous line to walk, so they tried to force HR to drop it, they didn't. They did HR to drop the stupid disability parking nonsense, but this was finally around when COVID started, so we left the office, and never returned.

Ironically, I was talking to our HR lady Tuesday, trying to resolve a medical issue, and did she stand in the way? No, she went above and beyond to help, she actually “yelled” at the insurance company, and is doing a full follow up with them next week. It's such a contrast that's it hilarious.

Your primary banking card can be 'hacked' without a device, sort of. Give it to your restaurant server, and it is out there. Forbid they take a moment and scrape it.

Stuff it into a reader somewhere. Forbid it is actually the reader covered by a shim.

Read it off to someone to pay a bill. You may never know who that is.

There is no perfect security.

Why? Simple, I'm an engineer working in the field. If you're an adult, you should be qualified to teach primary math, without argument. Do you ever see the same attitude taking with literacy? If an adult couldn't read at a grade 3 level, people wouldn't think it was funny because "math is hard" , if you're a primary school teacher, you need to be qualified, we pay them enough, average of 95k / year.

But if you don't know the basics, how can you hope to understand anything more complicated? Yes, most people have a calculator, but, if you can't be certain of the calculation without checking it, do you really know what you're doing? I'm not suggesting kids know how to calculate a 7D vector plane, for a radio transmission antenna, but, if they can't answer 12×11, we have a serious issue.

Based on what? If your a teacher and you struggle to answer the majority of word problems, you're unqualified. By grade 4 you should be well versed in your multiplication tables, and by grade 8 able to compute simple variable based algebra in your head. The teachers can't even handle basic math, and to prove my point, a bunch of teachers sued over having to take an basic math test. For the record I'm in Ontario, Canada, in Simcoe County.

I absolutely believe you! My grade 11 daughter struggles with grade 3 math concepts, and that bothers me because in primary school all of her teachers congratulated her on her exceptional grasp of math concepts, she got over 90% in grade 5, 6, 7 and 8. Exceptional? She can't multiply in her head, if I walk up to her and ask something simple like 4×5, it will take her a good 30 seconds to come up with 20, and she'll question that after she says it. Our primary schools went to zero homework, years ago, so the kids don't bring anything home. This is a big deal because if teachers are telling you your daughter is the next great math wonder kid, and you never see anything to question that, what do you do?

Part of the problem is the idiotic system they used to teach, some “common-core” cluster f. My younger daughter used to bring home unassigned questions that she didn't understand, and would ask me for help. I would explain how to get the answer the “traditional” way, but she needed to show how to get the answer in “the new method”. Okay, is that an issue? Yes! There were a handful of questions that could not be answered if you followed the “new” method. I asked her teacher to explain it to me, and she couldn't, she would just tell me to assume, or, give me part of the answer that couldn't be derived, and thought that was reasonable. Out of frustration, I modelled some questions in Octave, and showed conclusively they were impossible to answer. The teacher's response? (paraphrased): “Well, this is the system we teach, and the questions are fine.”. No, they weren't, one question I wrote the textbook author, who wrote back and said (paraphrased): “WTF that's not how I wrote it”, then proceeded to give me the full question, which could be answered.

My younger daughter, whose in grade 8, brought home a test last year, she got 100%, great, right? Nope, the answers were wrong, not subjectively written in a non-ideal format, WRONG. I informed her teacher, gave her the right answers, and I got an anger, bitter, bitchy email back, telling me I was wrong, and didn't understand the concepts. Really? I'm a computer / embedded system engineer, I've taken more math classes than any human should have to take. I'm vastly more qualified to teach math, than any of the teachers, for either of my daughters, has ever been.

All of that is bad, and we got tutoring for my older daughter, and it's helping, but when it comes to selective other courses, they would never allow kids to fall behind. Where do they? Spelling, Writing, Penmanship, Gym, but where don't they, Reading, Geography, Social Studies (holy crap), Sex Ed. Basically, in Ontario, Canada, if you're not ashamed to the point of self-induced illness, to be white, well having emotional breakdowns that others were treated unfairlyt, well you change your gender and pronouns every hour, you're a sickening, disgusting human, and since blacks have trouble with math, you have to be functionally retarded.

Yes, that's annoying.

I'm in Ontario, Canada, and this will be a subjective post, as I don't have evidence.

I have been at parent teacher nights where teachers are proud of their incompetence. The grade 5, 6 and 7 teachers were laughing that they didn't understand the math curriculum, and one of them made a joke (paraphrased) “word problems are difficult to understand, so I get together with other teachers, and try to understand them.” Why? This is primary school math, there is no excuse for any adult to struggle with any of it. If by grade 4, you can't compute 1×1 12×12 in under 1-minute, on a test sheet, you're falling behind, by grade 8, you should be comfortably performing simple variable algebra in your head, without a calculator.

When it comes to reading comprehension, for some reason, we take that seriously. No child would be hugged, and cuddled, and comforted if they couldn't read. When they can't multiply 5×5, in grade 8, they get treated like the world is against them. I don't know if it was just Ontario, or it was all of Canada, but, you teachers were asked to complete a basic math test, elementary math test, and the teachers sued the government over it. Think about that, teachers, who we trust our children to, sued, because numbers are scary? “https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-court-mandatory-teacher-math-test-1.7042352”, then we wonder why our kids are functionally retarded? They can name 50 f'ing genders, have in dept know about butt plugs and rainbow dildos, but can't perform grade 2 math, by grade 12?

Come on, they're paying people to use their bundled browser, on their operating system? Isn't that taking anticompetitive practices to a new level? To be fair, Edge isn't that bad, it's not good, but it's not bad, if they can't get organic growth, maybe just sunset it, or, be happy anyone uses it.

Your honor, every smartphone currently in existence has tools built in to accommodate people with vision loss, ranging from 'increase the font size' to 'magnifying glass functionality' to 'screen reader' to 'attach a braille output screen.'

Gonna excite the upper atmosphere, ruining propagation, and making the next few days boring for radio amateurs worldwide.

Now, cue the FT8 users who will proclaim the advantages of not talking on the radio.

"we're paralyzed by stupidity, bigotry and an overwhelming urge to prevent anyone from having a happy life without being miserable a minimum of 40 hours a week."

As I meant to write, presuming no one can have 'a happy life without being miserable a minimum of 40 hours a week' seems to me a claim that a 40 hour a week job leaves employees universally 'miserable'.

Did I misinterpret your assertion? Please elaborate.

That's one, and it's enough.

"I do still see a lot of thought terminating cliches though"

And your post is peppered with them.

Do try to engage in critical thinking. Not theory, real thought and discernment. Among other things, not every 40 hour a week job is misery, even if your entire life is.

The thing is I'm not, I'm very laid back.

They took a major issue with cannabis use on the property, which I kept having to show them was a non-starter. In Canada, if you have a legal prescription, you also get federal protection, as you would with any other medication, on where you can use it. Initially, I would walk to the far end of the parking lot, but eventually, I couldn't, so I went to the smoking area, and finally a few meters from the door. They took issue that I smelled after smoking joints, which I kept insisting was not something I could control. They claimed I was a liability because I used cannabis, never explained why, or how, and the owner of our company never cared about any of this.

Then there was the intimidation stuff, which was equally retarded. The HR department wanted to foster some stupid DEI thing, and sensitivity awareness. Workshop #1, the lady running it went on a misandrist rant, that would soak any feminist, it was so hate fuelled, it was almost impressive at her pure vile disdain of men, especially Caucasian men. At near the end of the workshop, she asked all Caucasian men to stand and apologize, to which I refused and demanded she point out what I had to apologize for. Long story short, HR decided at that point, I was going to be harassable, and they really tried to pin everything on me. The owner of our company got involved, and that made the problem worse.

After that is when I got in trouble for being in the gym, but never told why. I didn't slam weights, I didn't grunt, loudly, I was just lifting heavy weights, and putting them back, and wiping everything down, something most people didn't do. The offensive clothing thing, again, no explanation, an anonymous complaint was made. Anonymous complaints, are not complaints, if there was an issue, why didn't the person with the issue tell me? Why? There was no issue, and they proved that when they couldn't tell me what the issue was!

The mail issue, my medication, medical pot, had to be handed off to a person. Since I was at work all day, the most sensible place to have it delivered was the front desk. This is a provincial and federal issue, so I can't just call a producer and request an exception, and I told all of this to the larger company, and included documentation from Health Canada. Once a week, a package would show up for me, and every single time I would get an email and speech about how I'm not allowed to have mail delivered. They never, not once, were able to show me a written policy about this, it was only ever stated verbally. At one occurrence they threw out the package, and it had ~$500 of medical pot in it, but the lady who threw it out, didn't get permission from anyone else, which caused legal to get involved. Legal then tried harassing me, over cannabis use and cannabis delivery, and yada yada yada, but, it's federally protected. I gave legal the phone numbers for Helath Canada, and told them to take it up with HC, which to their credit, they did, and realized HR didn't have a leg to stand on. Legal refused to force compenstation for the package however.

The cannabis stuff dropped at that point, and HR just found a new list of stupid, pointless, nonsense. Luckily for everyone COVID started, and we all started working at home, at which point we hired our own HR lady, and to date, I have had ZERO issues with her. The owner still calls me from time to time to chat, and he always bring up old HR complaints and tries to figure them out, since I've had ZERO "infractions" at our company, with our own HR person. The only one I had, was due to an accidental "winking" emoji, where I clearly meant to send the "smile" emoji, and that got sorted out in minutes, because it was very, very, clear what happened.