Last minute geek

1. LA teachers' strike: Charter school teachers walk out, too
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

LA teachers have walked out, striking in torrential rains, protesting the billionaire-backed privatization movement that wants to hand public school funding to charter schools. So it would be noteworthy ...

2. Karen Pence teaches at school that bans LGBTQ kids and staff: Report
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, just started a new job this week. She's an art teacher at a Christian school that makes job candidates sign a pledge not to engage in homosexual activity. ...

3. #TacosForTeachers: crowdfunding to feed LA's teachers as they strike against privatization and austerity
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (America's largest district) are walking the picket line this week in the pouring rain, demanding an end to the billionaire dark-money backed privatization ...

4. InfoWars has a platform again, thanks to a new Roku channel
(English/engadget)

Last year, amid heated criticism over the conspiracy theories it spread about events like the Parkland, Florida and Sandy Hook school shootings, InfoWars -- along with owner Alex Jones -- started to its ...

5. Woman with medical condition can't hear "male voices"
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... is... less common because the bass-processing portion of the cochlea — a snail-shaped structure deep in the inner ear — is very well protected, said Jackie Clark, a clinical professor with the School of ...

6. Knack Pack expandable backpack review
(English/the-gadgeteer)

REVIEW – I have always had the drive to find the perfect backpack. Between travel and daily use at school, I’ve tried countless backpacks only to find them too small, too big, or without the right features. ...

7. In LA, the teachers of America's largest school district are on strike
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

LA teachers are on strike today, fighting against privatization, standardized tests, giant classes, and clawbacks of in-class teachers' aides. The LA Unified School District -- whose billionaire superintendent ...

8. Teen Vogue counsels taping over your webcam to resist FBI (and other) surveillance
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... teens into sharing nude photos, and schools even keeping watch on their students. "This is a pretty invasive, targeted form of malware, but the consequences can be super embarrassing," said Joseph Lorenzo ...

9. School police officer removed after ticketing principal for parking in disabled space
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

At Jefferson K-8 School in Warren, Ohio, school police officer Adam Chinchik noticed that a car kept parking in the no-parking zone between two disabled spaces in front of the school. Turns out that it ...

10. Children in Virginia's Trump supporting counties became more abusive
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... University of Virginia used data from a school climate survey taken by over 150,000 students across Virginia. They looked at student responses to questions about bullying and teasing from 2015 and 2017. ...

11. Need a study table for kids? Here are 10 of the brightest ideas
(English/ikeahacker)

The school term begins yet again and soon, there will be piles of homework and books, strewn all over the house. Wouldn’t it be great to have a dedicated study table for the kids to do their thing? ...

12. Cambridge Analytica pleads guilty, faces the first in a probable series of criminal convictions
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... that extravagantly claimed to have won the election for Donald Trump. Back in 2017, Parsons School of Design prof David Carroll teamed up with PersonalData.io to request data from Facebook and Cambridge ...

13. LA school district prepares for strike with army of expensive scabs
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

30,000 employees of the LA Unified School District are preparing to go on strike tomorrow, demanding a reversal of the trend to privatizing public education. In response, the nation's largest public ...

14. CES rescinds own award from sex toy because sex toys are obscene
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... “it’s an adult product so not eligible.” Those dead-eyed, life-size sex dolls are another feature of CES that are fine by it: Perhaps the answer to all this is that CES's executives are old-school sexist ...

15. Lin-Manuel Miranda and his Hamilton colleagues just bought a bookstore
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... I was in high school I would go to the old location and sit on the floor and read plays — I didn’t have the money to buy them,” Mr. Miranda said... Read the rest Read all  ...

16. How to improve your rubber band shooting with science!
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

When I was very little, my big brother brought me in to school for show-and-tell. In the lunchroom, a kid fired a rubber band that hit me right in the face. I still remember the welt. This fascinating ...

17. Had enough? Get school bags organized with this easy IKEA hack
(English/ikeahacker)

School’s in. And to make life easier, make a convenient catch-all space for school bag storage, keys, hangers for coats and hats. This even has little pigeonholes for lunch boxes and books. IKEA ...

18. Teacher who fed puppy to snapping turtle in front of children found not guilty of animal cruelty
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Robert Crosland, the high school teacher who fed a puppy to a turtle in front of young teenagers, was found not guilty of animal cruelty this week. Robert Crosland, the Preston Junior High School teacher, ...

19. Behind the wheel of Daimler’s upcoming electric trucks
(English/engadget)

Daimler has been very vocal that it's moving to electrify its trucks. From short- to medium-haul delivery vehicles to school buses, the company is making no bones that its future lies in EVs.  ...

20. Learn the essential tools of graphic design in one master class
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... of the trade the same way? If you're looking to kickstart a design career, the Graphic Design Certification School offers training and proof of your skills in one easy online package. In 41 hours and hundreds ...

21. LA's teachers are ready to strike on Tuesday, rejecting privatization of public education
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... conditions, and stripping schools of resources and even putting schools on four-day weeks. But on January 10th, the teachers who educate the 694,000 students of the LA Unified School District (comparable ...

22. Trustbusting is now a bipartisan issue
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Ronald Reagan may be sainted by the right, but 2018 was the year conservatives broke with his slavish, simpleminded adherence to the Chicago School antitrust theory that says that governments should only ...

23. In the future we might paint our homes with dead Christmas trees
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... of post holiday garbage that winds up in wood chippers or the local dump every year. However, a lot of people still like to kick it old school with a cut-from-its-roots-and-left-to-slowly-die-in-a-pot-of-water ...

24. The Chinese government is putting tracking chips into school uniforms to watch every move kids make
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... hold his Tsingtao: From The Epoch Times: In China’s latest quest to build an all-seeing surveillance state, schools have become part of the state’s monitoring apparatus. Students at more than 10 schools ...

25. Pipes under Portland produce power while they deliver water to homes and businesses
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... the grid. Though the system can't generate enough energy for an entire city, the pipes can power individual buildings like a school or library, or help offset a city's total energy bill. Unlike wind or ...