Mona Clark ⚧ @mona@computerfairi.es

@codeawayhaley @kara_dreamer Reading a number of the stories on the subreddit prised open old childhood memories in a wave last night...so I think (unfortunately) I am on the right track, and have started to realize just _why_ we emerged from childhood thinking our mother was dangerous even though she'd done little that was overtly abusive.

@cmdrspacebabe *gives up after a couple of kicks* Hrm. *pokes at it with a finger, then steps back, withdraws her forked staff from her Gem and prods the forcefield with the double points of the fork's tines*

@kara_dreamer @sophieactual Our mother was not quite _that_ awful but she did sink to some fairly low depths when it came to poisoning our joy. She was a wounded, desperately unhappy woman, but then she went out of the way sometimes to spread her misery around. I am not pleased with her right now.

@sophieactual @kara_dreamer It was the story of a young woman who decided to graduate with a B.S. instead of spending two more years to get an M.S. that really got to me. She reasoned that her parents would be happier because she would be joining the workforce sooner and saving them college money, but instead her father did everything possible to belittle her achievement. I saw the red mist for a while after that one.

@kara_dreamer @mawr yes! It didn't *quite* go to plan, but magic rarely does, insofar as I can grasp that it does anything at all.

@kara_dreamer Let us just say that, given my academic background, reading a story from a young woman whose father did everything possible to belittle her academic achievement because it was not the degree he wanted made me feel...*withdraws her forked staff from her gem*...just a little stabby.

@cmdrspacebabe *whirls about to dash her hoof into the translucent sheets, wondering how tough they are*

@typhlosion @IanCBell @kel The important thing is to get into students' heads from the very start that all of chemistry is the movement of electrons. I feel that this very simple fact gets obscured in contemporary teaching, especially because chemistry is taught apart from physics...it's almost as though chemistry teaching antedates the discovery of the electron in some ways.

@cmdrspacebabe well! *looks askance at the thing* I wish I could say I liked this.

@kel @IanCBell @typhlosion ...possibly? In any case I see no reason not to aim, from the start, at an orbital-based picture of the atom and of molecules. People can instinctively grasp the idea of "clouds" of charge, I think. The trick is getting them to understand that the "cloud" looks like discrete particles whenever you glance at it.

@kel @IanCBell @typhlosion Yes, this is true. I feel that chemistry ends up a widely loathed subject because of terrible early teaching. Just hurling masses of information at youngsters who have no context in which to put it.

@bea @tcql thank heaven, a step in the right direction then

@tcql Civil engineering should be the model, not law.

@luke_nukem @liate I still trust to Windows 7 on my main machine. It is far from perfect but, on the balance, provides me with significantly fewer periodic annoyances than other options. I've thrown various Linux distributions on my laptops and feel always that I'm fighting it rather than using it, especially when attempting to use the trackpads or any power saving features.