The Five for 11/18/20
Charter Schools Save Everything?, Mongolian War Diet, Best Phone Case, Ethiopian Civil War
Hey, welcome to the new home of The Five, now that I’m in the process of eliminating Mailchimp from my life (going to write about this even more later).
The formatting is a bit different, because Substack son’t let me use numbers like I wanted.
[ONE]
Join me on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter at 8:30 pm (central) tonight for a new venture I’ll be unveiling with a friend of mine, designed to help with the student loan crisis.
Currently, 42.3 trillion Americans are carrying $1.54 Trillion in debt. Many of those debtors will be repaying loans for the rest of their lives.
We can’t change the cost (or need for) higher education, but my friend Drew and I are building a solution that could start to chip away at this crisis that leaves an untold number of people in a modern day indentured servanthood.
The announcement will be a pretty casual affair, with me playing Zero Dawn Horizon (I’m getting back to video game streaming, hopefully) and discussing the idea with Drew. We’ll be taking questions and laying out how this could help curb the student loan crisis.
[TWO]
Education will likely be a hot topic again, assuming Joe Biden is certified the winner of the Electoral College, which means the topic of Charter Schools will come back up. The Daily Wire has some interesting reporting on the success of a charter school that’s literally in the same building as a public school:
Thirty percent of Brooklyn’s William Floyd public elementary school third-graders scored well below proficient in English and language arts, but at a Success Academy charter school in the same building, only one did. At William Floyd, 36% of students were below proficient, with 24% being proficient and none being above proficient. By contrast, at Success Academy, only 17% of third-graders were below proficient, with 70% being proficient and 11% being above proficient. Among Success Academy’s fourth-graders, 51% and 43%, respectively, scored proficient and above proficient, while their William Floyd counterparts scored 23% and 6%, respectively. It’s worthwhile stressing that William Floyd and this Success Academy location have the same address.
For a deeper dive into Success Academy, check out this season of the Startup Podcast, which follows the controversial charter school’s founding, issues and results.
There’s a charter school starting in my neighborhood, but I was pretty much kicked out after I accused modern educators of demonizing blue collar work and intentionally turning students away from the idea of skilled labor, while 2-4 million skilled labor jobs (many with six figure potential) go unfilled. NPR reported on this phenomenon in 2018, if you want a deeper dive.
(Success Academy Students in Uniform)
[THREE]
Ethiopia is on the verge of a civil war, with thousands of deaths from “machetes and knives” already in violent clashes on the street. Britan’s Sky News has a pretty solid summary of what’s happening on the ground.
Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia's federal government and the northern state of Tigray escalated into full-blown military conflict after the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, accused Tigrayan leaders of ordering a raid on an army camp.
Ethiopia launched a military offensive on 4 November with Prime Minister Abiy using Facebook to claim that federal forces have "liberated" western Tigray.
The fighting has resulted in the displacement of thousands of civilians with some 10,000 thought to have crossed the border into Sudan. Aid agency officials say hundreds of thousands may follow in their footsteps if the conflict, now entering its second week, continues to intensify.
[FOUR]
Well, that was heavy. Let’s do a little pop culture.
Like about half the world, I’m really enjoying season 2 of The Mandalorian. I really hope Katee Sackhoff (of Battlestar Galactica fame) gets her own spinoff show.
I’m reading The Last Lion: Winston Churchill, Defender of the Realm and it’s one of the best biographies I’ve ever picked up. It’s good content for uncertain times.
The Unicorn Beetle Pro cases are the best cell phone protectors I’ve ever owned. After I dropped my phone and broke it (not just cracked the screen, the phone quit working), I switched over to this ultra durable case. Planning to put UB cases on my Microsoft Surface and Amanda’s iPad as well to make them more toddler proof.
Finally, this interview with Armenian refugee Bedros Keulian on the Warrior Poet Society YouTube channel is pretty phenomenal. Not only does it highlight Bedros’ personal story of healing from trauma, but it paints a vivid picture of life under socialism.
[FIVE]
I recently re-discovered this snapshot I had taken from a page of Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, which highlights the fact that part of the reason Ghengis built an empire that stretched from China, through Russia and Europe and into modern day Iraq was that his army dined amply on meat and dairy products.
Their enemies followed something closer to a vegan diet, which was in part why the Mongols had such success in battle.
There are lots of reasons not to be vegan.
And now you know one more.
The Chinese noted with surprise and disgust the ability of the Mongol warriors to survive on little food and water for long periods; according to one, the entire army could camp without a single puff of smoke since they needed no fires to cook. Compared to the Jurched soldiers, the Mongols were much healthier and stronger. The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains. The grain diet of the peasant warriors stunted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones.
Until the next one,
-sth