Andrew Reid
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reidac.bsky.social
Andrew Reid
@reidac.bsky.social
Scientist, cyclist, urbanist, Linux and HPC enthusiast.
Washington DC.
Reposted by Andrew Reid
October 8, 2025 at 1:30 PM
This inspired me to fire up FlightRadar24, and I'm not seeing it on there, although I can definitely hear it.

I suppose it would make sense if they didn't do ADS-B? Anyways, this means I can't use my seekrit internet skillz to get you a tail number.
November 28, 2025 at 11:06 PM
See also this video by Derek Muller (the "Veritasium" guy) talking about AI and education at the Perimeter Institute, for a related take.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xS6...
Veritasium: What Everyone Gets Wrong About AI and Learning – Derek Muller Explains
YouTube video by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
www.youtube.com
November 26, 2025 at 12:17 AM
Depends which revelation?

I got noise-cancelling earbuds a while ago, and use them to listen to podcasts on the metro, and for me the *loss* of the noise made me uncomfortable. I missed the auditory situational awareness.

But yeah, it did reveal how loud the metro trains are.
November 23, 2025 at 9:04 AM
Addendum: Obviously bad actors can take advantage of this effect, but that's not the point. (8/7)
November 12, 2025 at 2:05 PM
And you can't predict how large this effect will be from the pilot, or from the info available to the board when they are making the adoption-or-not decision, because the effect is downstream from adoption.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. (7/7)
November 12, 2025 at 2:02 PM
So, the results in classrooms will never match what happened in the pilot. This is structural, there are no bad actors anywhere in the system, the method might even be a good one, this will still happen. (6/x)
November 12, 2025 at 2:00 PM
And, at scale, smart teachers with good intentions, who are busy with other mandates, will "get" the new scheme with varying degrees of fidelity, and have varying understandings of the strengths and weaknesses, but they'll never have the investment of the developers (5/x)
November 12, 2025 at 1:58 PM
If the school board adopts the program, they have to distill all this lived experience and developer expertise into a curriculum guide, and then send it to already-existing teachers, who have a lot on their plate, and for whom this particular method isn't a calling or a mission, it's a mandate (4/x)
November 12, 2025 at 1:56 PM
The smart people who developed the program know how to adapt to the reactions of the students, where the curriculum is weak and where it's strong, where the bodies are buried.

They're sincere and well-intentioned and capable, they believe in the method, and in the pilot, they make it work. (3/x)
November 12, 2025 at 1:54 PM
The problem is that pilot programs from education innovators that make it to the school board are of course successful -- the unsuccessful ones don't get that far.

But some of them are successful because they're run by smart people who understand the limits of the new approach. (2/x)
November 12, 2025 at 1:52 PM
I have some second-hand knowledge about education policy (a relative of mine was on a school board in a mid-sized Canadian city); one insight that has stuck with me, and been valuable elsewhere, is the problem of scaling up pilot programs.

The problem isn't scale per-se, but it's related. (1/x)
November 12, 2025 at 1:51 PM
A few years ago, I did a bit of a dive into what exactly "top fuel" dragsters burn, and it's quite the engineering story.

Along the way, I also learned a bit about how gasoline is, as you say, a deeply unholy concoction.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Fuel
November 12, 2025 at 2:41 AM