You don't think they care?

No, they don't. Trump is Jesus to them. Anything he says is the right and true gospel and he can do no wrong. Seriously if someone is still supporting Trump they are so far down the rabbit hole that another case of lying and grift isn't going to make a dent.

If you look at the opinion polls, the shift to more negative ratings has been from blockheads who were somehow on the fence before and now don't like high gas prices. The number of people who think he's doing a good job has barely shifted.

THEY. DON'T. CARE.

I imagine quite a few American students speak a second language, such as Spanish or Hebrew.

Your post is... historically inaccurate in an interesting variety of ways.

That is definitely not true. Most Japanese people's English is not anywhere near the average native speaker's, and the English exam is notorious for being more about rote learning and gaming the system than about actual ability.

20 magazine size or A4 size pages is a fair bit of information. It probably isn't like a novel with a narrative to follow either, it's likely to be technical.

I suppose the problem is that different children will find different things interesting. The whole class really needs to do the same book, and in the UK that specific book will be on the exam too so the choice is limited to what the exam company offers.

You are comparing Minneapolis, with a population for around 400k, to Japan, with a population of 120 million.

COVID seems to have had a much greater effect on Minneapolis, which is not surprising since Japan mostly kept schools open.

I'm not sure you can directly compare literacy rates between Japan and Minneapolis either. Obviously the Japanese speak a different language, with a completely different writing system, which has different criteria for proficiency. There is also very different history there, and different attitudes towards students with learning disabilities. Speaking of which, some people with dyslexia find that they it only affects English, and not Japanese or Chinese.

I don't think you can really conclude from your data that money isn't a very significant factor.

Good for you, but don't be too quick to blame other parents.

In the 1980s, a single parent on typical wage could afford a decent house, nice car, and to raise a family of spouse and 2-3 children. Nowadays two parents working full time can't afford a single child in many places.

It's not just money that is tight, time is too. Both parents working, both tired after work, and increasingly with side hustles.

I wouldn't read too much into this. AI is too new for it to have much of an effect here, and it could be measurement error. I've known kids who were supposedly bad at reading, but it turned out they were just bad at reading aloud and got bored with the material the school gave them because they were reading Lord of the Rings at home.

It's also possible that this anecdote is about a really bad article. 20 pages is quite a lot, and if they are losing track of what it is about then it suggests that it doesn't have a very good abstract or introduction that lays out its case before getting into the details.

It's more complex than one controls the other. Israel stated the war with Iran before the US was ready, and the US was forced to join in. Netanyahu will continue to annex parts of Lebanon, and break whatever ceasefire is agreed, and the US can't do anything about it.

There are some limits, lines Netanyahu can't yet cross, but he's definitely got the upper hand when it comes to forcing the US to do what he wants.

Iran won. Before the war, few believed that they could survive a direct attack by the US, but now it's very clear that they control the Strait, and can bring the global economy down whenever they like. The US can't stop them, nobody can.

The only winning move is to get off oil as fast as possible, which is the opposite of what the US is doing.

Meanwhile Israel continues to do whatever it likes, and the US has no control there either. All they can do is send more free stuff to the Israelis. Doubtless the ceasefire will last only hours before Israel breaks it.

It's actually kind of astounding how badly this has turned out, for everyone except Iran and Russia.

Indeed. One can have legitimate concerns with damp in the house, but the solution to shitty tradies doing a bad job isn't to set fire to the house (while yelling racist epithets).

No only do you still hold a torch for the EM drive perpetual motion machine scam, and utterly fail to do even the most basic of middle high school physics calculations, it seems you have a real problem with geography as well, never mind basic reasoning.

Do you deny saying this:

[...]all people that enter the future EU where "the British Islands" might be a part again[...]

Do you not understand how nonsensical that is? The ROI is part of the British Isles and is still part of the EU.

The British Isles is NOT the UK. Learn some fucking geography before you start trying to double down on claims about it.

What is your point?

It's nonsensical to talk of the British Isles (or Islands as you incorrectly write) "being part again", because the British Isles aren't one country and part of them is still in the EU.

I fail to see it.

I'd expect nothing less from you.