Sonoma County Office of Education establishes guidelines for school closures on smoky days

The Sonoma County Office of Education established the general rules on Tuesday advising districts to base decisions on school closures on local air quality levels measured by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index. District officials should view the air quality index at purpleair.com at 5 a.m. the day school closures are being considered and are recommended to cancel classes when the index shows air quality at a “very unhealthy” level of 275 or higher.

Several parents reacted with swift criticism saying it’s a health risk for students to attend schools when air quality levels are as poor as the 275 threshold.

“Generally, we believe that students are in a safer air environment when they are in school. This is because schools typically use filtered air while many homes may not have this ability,” County Superintendent Steve Herrington said Tuesday evening in a statement.

Head count is how the State gets paid, right? How disgusting to make a rule based on money, and call it health.

“This is just as much about the health and safety of students and faculty as it is about the principle of collective decision and shared governance,” Gorelick said.

OIC, the principle of... ~shrug~ Need to work on my compassion for the greedy now. oom

the future happens here first

What do you after the band breaks up? Let it go, let it flow like a river. I went to the boat ramp yesterday to scry. Toxic algae warnings and it smells like sewage, but I saw a GB Heron, and lots of Phoebes. I like Phoebes.

Dave Mason - Let It Go, Let It Flow
https://youtu.be/illeTgLbowg

LOL! Two ads in there for me before I could listen, one for Group Selfies. AI yi yi! fake intelligence

let it flow through you
peace

Always among my favorites for lightening up:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLlv_aZjHXc]

(Laughter really is the best medicine, for all sorts of things).

Thanks for the OT, EL!

(edit for slight typo)

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-million-trumps-of-india/

Right now, over half of India’s population, perhaps 600 million people, are under the age of 25, making them the largest number of young people for any country on earth. This generation’s male population, Poonam writes, are the most desperate since India’s independence. Every month, one million Indian youths enter the workforce, yet only 10,000 of them get jobs — a staggering statistic. The rest feel left behind and abandoned by their own country, so they turn to scams and violence to make money.

As a result, the men Poonam writes about are not driven by morality, but by how fast can they achieve money and fame. Their ability to flip between right and wrong depends only on what they stand to win or lose. Anxious about their future, these men feel they must succeed now or else risk being left behind. Since India’s infrastructure still operates on a foundation of bribery, scams, and corruption from bottom to top — so much, that corruption is often viewed as a virtue — this generation of young Indian men, Poonam writes, will cheat their way to their dreams because it’s all they ever see from politicians, businessmen, and celebrities. If these young men don’t embark on such an ideology right now, they will lose their shot at world domination.

“No matter how poorly placed they find themselves now, they make up the world’s largest ever cohort of like-minded young people, and they see absolutely no reason why the world shouldn’t run by their rules,” Poonam writes.

“The consequences for the rest of us, inside and outside of India, of young India’s determination, won’t just be economic. The idea that only they can help themselves will lead this generation of Indians to redefine everything according to their perspective: work, success, morality. It will change our world in ways we can’t yet imagine.”

 
Mahatma Gandhi? Spiritual India is so last century.

What this security researcher at Symantec then found was alarming.

http://web-old.archive.org/web/20181101205425/https://www.wired.com/stor...

I reverse-engineered the machines to understand how they could be manipulated. After removing the internal hard drive, I was able to access the file structure and operating system. Since the machines were not wiped after they were used in the 2012 presidential election, I got a great deal of insight into how the machines store the votes that were cast on them. Within hours, I was able to change the candidates’ names to be that of anyone I wanted. When the machine printed out the official record for the votes that were cast, it showed that the candidate’s name I invented had received the most votes on that particular machine.

This year, I bought two more machines to see if security had improved. To my dismay, I discovered that the newer model machines—those that were used in the 2016 election—are running Windows CE and have USB ports, along with other components, that make them even easier to exploit than the older ones. Our voting machines, billed as “next generation,” and still in use today, are worse than they were before—dispersed, disorganized, and susceptible to manipulation.

Where I work that has a kids whiteboard affixed to the wall. Along with the whiteboard there are letters of the alphabet, a variety of animal figures, and a child standing in front of the board adding their personal vision of the moment.

I walk by that white board all day long and each time I do, another child has created something new. I'm always fascinated by the patterns, messages, and pictures they create, each one wholly different than the next.

It reminds me of how our brains used to work. Unfettered with the conventional way of doings things, our imaginations were fertile and completely our own. There was no "wrong" way to create. There was only the medium and our minds.

If I wasn't actually at work, I'd pull up a chair next to them, and create something of my own.

In honor of loosening up and lightening up, play like you're 5 years old again.