The decline is across demographics, across geographies, and correlated with an increase young mental health issues.

The answer is staring us in the face, quite literally, as we type this. We put a cheating and dopamine producing machine in the hands of children without any regulations. Of course it is harming their academic performance.

Ask a football coach if there kids are going to play tackle football and you'll be surprised how often you they won't let them. Ask an educator or psychologist at what age they give smart devices to their kids, and I'd guess it is 3-4 years above the median.

The policy doesn't matter when we're actively damaging the brains of children, which are not fully developed.

There are people who see massive business opportunities for enriching themselves in privatizing the education system. Some of there points are reasonable, and sometimes they are frauds. Either way, they lobby hard and have a lot of generally Republican politicians in their pockets.

Also, teacher pay is terrible in comparison to the job stress and - reasonably and expected - educational requirements.

The education system is trying to deal with a probably that is out of their control, the increasing wealth stratification in the US, while fending off adversaries that with both good and bad intentioned reasons are trying to undermine the institutions of public education.

At the same time, we have a totally new societal threat in social media. If you haven't read "Careless People", read it. You seem societies around the world locking social media away from kids on the advice of professional groups of educators, pediatricians, and psychologists. There are hordes of irresponsible and negligent parents whose kids are barely functional, and working their way through the educational pipeline.

There is no easy fix here that anyone is missing. In a democracy, this is an existential national crisis, as we are all seeing in real time.

edit: don't ask me who is working on this. It just tells me you are unserious and just complaining. Try google. Hundreds of thousands of people are working on this. Please elaborate on your disagreement with teachers groups (NEA, AFT), the prior administration (American Rescue Plan), or the current administration (ECCA). Or disagreements with AmeriCorps or NPSS as private volunteer service groups groups. Or disagreements with private education advocates (CAPE, NAIS). You may not like all the administrators and principals and teachers as individuals working on it in the system, or PTA organizations outside the system. I could go on all day. But these people are all seriously concerned about the problem, even though they may disagree in areas - you are not special in awareness of this issue.

Neither of those latter countries had a large shared land border with the US and ethnically similar populations that would make it easy to attack unhardened infrastructure.

The US couldn't defend our bases in the area or our newly less enthusiastic regional allies. It couldn't keep the Hormuz open. The US wasted years worth of advanced munitions inventory defending against relatively cheap missiles.

The US couldn't annex Canada if it wanted to. Canada doesn't even need a military to destroy the US via assymetric tactics.

There's a matter of debate as to what populism is. And on both ends of that debate are Trump and Sanders.

Sanders is the archetype of an ideological populist, related to socialism, and he believes in governing for the popular good, it is why he is an independent. He's a throwback to early 20th century social programs. It is relatively noble and good. He wants fair redistribution of wealth. He wants to remove wealth's influence from the democratic process. He has a lifetime of track record and governance as proof.

Trump is the archetype of the "thin center" populist. He has no real driving philosophy of governance, and demagogues under the banner of populism. He panders to the religious right even though he can't name a book of the Bible. He panders to the nationalists and bigots. He panders to patriots. And he sets up his opposition, regardless of truth, as the opposite of those things.

Trump is a populist in the way the Goebbels set Hitler up as a populist (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/making-a-l..., https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/1934-nazi-pa..., and https://museums.nuernberg.de/documentation-center/topics/nat...). That is to say, he is not one at all, he just lies about it to exploit division.

edit: we're just talking past each other. Bernie Sanders is a left wing populist. Ron Paul is a right wing populist. Massie is a right wing populist. My point is that Trump is simply a fake populist. He says populist things and doesn't believe or act on them for the most part. He's simply a kleptocrat with autocratic tendencies.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are on polar opposite ends of ideologies.

Bernie Sanders has a lifetime record of integrity, working to fairly distribute wealth, and good and transparent governance.

Donald Trump has a lifetime record of bankruptcies, fraud convictions, lying about his policies for the working while governing for the richest people, using government to enrich himself, and using government to hide his misdeeds and shield himself and his business partners from accountability. Donald Trump says he is many things he is not, and simply believing the words that come out of his mouth is being gullible.

I am not even a Bernie Sanders supporter.

We have lots of software developers being laid off. An elected position serves as resume filler, too. You'd be shocked what a difference you can make when you try a little.

I wish people wouldn't say that, it's not the case.

First, pushback requires equivalent effort. If 10,000 towns are uncooperative because 10,000 mayors resist this, the amount of political power to overcome this is incredibly large. The mayors can delay or cancel projects with uncooperative or malicious vendors. They can slow down approvals. This administration and the powers that want this espionage power understand this, which is why they target downstream races, school boards, and sheriff positions.

Second, a state senator is much, much more powerful than you give them credit. There are usually much fewer of them than members of the US House or Senate, so they individually more voting power. They can substantially influence state politics, and it is magnified with majorities and committees.

Third, resources are pooled and parties coordinate, so starving them of influence, which is root of all their funding, is key to voting undemocratic parties out of office.

Don't believe what you read about politics online. It is made for modern, shallow consumption. Little races matter.

You can make a large difference by participating directly, too. You don't even have to make a scene about it in your platform. Just run, be boring, win, and talk with your votes.

It is gutter racism.

edit: I wish I could be surprised by the downvotes, but it's gutter racism and I'm proud to point this out! I would be never be quiet about a matter of ethics and conscience just because of startup accelerator social media popularity points. This directly influences many of our friends and colleagues in this field. It is vile, evil racism and directly topical for software startups.

edit 2: the list of immigrants and children of immigrants who have founded software companies that are the absolute backbone of US information infrastructure is embarrassing to write down. Anyone can search for the information, but it's harder to list companies not founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.

It is useful, because instead of being surprised and reading this article, you can nod your head and go about your day because you already knew they were a company that was rotten to its core.

Get people fighting about who is exploiting them, and they cannot unite against anyone exploiting them.

edit: no need to make the thread deeper. I agree with your reply, too. Two things can be correct at once, and usually are.

edit: also no reason to make this thread deeper, but you seem to be missing the idea that I am insulting Pinochet. He didn't do it for any reason other than power and money. That is worse. For whatever reason, you appear to think I have views I do not, and are assuming the worst of my replies. I will not reply further.

Security doesn't happen by magic. It is enforced by process, maintained by people and systems built and run by people. Furthermore, when people are under stress and underresourced, they make more mistakes. This was inevitable given the budget cuts.

You can't fire everyone at AWS and say one intern will support it, and say that it is a profitable and sustainable restructuring. Any fool can see that will fail, so if it were actually implemented by someone who is not a fool, you can conclude it is intentional.

That isn't the Dutch Disease, it's anti-intellectualism. It is where Pol Pots come from eventually, and it never leads anywhere good.

It is a bad plan that has and will continue to harm people, but it is intentional.