Will it become easier to get into college in the years ahead?
The number of high school graduates is projected to peak in 2025- then there’s a demographic cliff due to birth rates that have declined since 2007.
It may relieve some of the demand- fewer kids chasing the same # of seats
I wrote up the full story—including tech tips, tools, and lessons learned—on my blog. If you’re a parent, teacher, or maker, I think you’ll enjoy it:
👉 lukeshepard.com/blog/tinkerca...
I printed the models at home using my Bambu Printer, then brought them back to school the next day.
I volunteered a few times in the classroom- it was so fun to see the whole process
✏️ writing
🖥️ modeling
🖨️ printing
🎨 painting
📜 and finally, exhibiting with their essays in a full gallery hallway show.
With TinkerCad, it was really easy - almost all students got SOMETHING on the canvas. Many of them got deeply invested in their models.
Some imported models of other objects and animals, while others created their own out of basic shapes from scratch.
Many ancient and modern rulers have made monuments to reflect their legacy.
My son's teacher asked her students: if you could build a monument to YOUR legacy, what would it look like?
How is 3D printing being used in schools? Sure, some schools have a STEM lab, but I want to share a story of how my child's social studies teacher incorporated 3D modeling & printing into her class.
Students designed, modeled, printed and painted "monuments" to their own legacy.
Like Musk, Watson dickered with reporters about whether his action qualified as a Hitler salute - even as he gave his full support to the regime behind the scenes.
Thomas Watson promoted the Nazis. He took Americans to Germany to salute the Nazis, and then: "Watson lifted his right arm halfway up before he caught himself. Later, a colleague denied to a reporter for the New York Herald that Watson’s gesture was a genuine salute."
Who is the modern day Thomas Watson? What rich man, pillar of industry and major US contractor, controls our modern information infrastructure and has no problem supporting the rise of an autocrat?
Why, Musk of course.
The Nazi operation was the largest information gathering system in the world.
Black notes: "Watson’s people boasted that Social Security was “the biggest accounting operation of all-time.” Actually, it was the second biggest. The dress rehearsal had already taken place in Germany in 1933."
The work was done through subsidiaries like Dehomag (IBM Germany), but with full control and knowledge of the main IBM headquarters in New York.
The answer: IBM machines.
Hitler ran a national census, first in Germany and then in conquered countries, and then used those results to target people for the concentration camps.
IBM built custom machines and ran the operations before and during the war.
Black asks: "The Germans always had the lists of Jewish names. Suddenly, a squadron of grim-faced SS would burst into a city square and post a notice demanding those listed assemble the next day at the train station for deportation to the East. But how did the Nazis get the lists?"
This story comes out in Edwin Black's compelling story, IBM and the Holocaust - an excellent book detailing their intentional, knowing collaboration with the Nazis.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and...
Many businesses collaborated with Hitler to implement his war and the Holocaust. German companies like Krupp manufactured Zyklon B, the poison gas used in the death camps. Mercedes Benz used over 60,000 forced laborers from concentration camps to build tanks and engines.
Elon Musk and his team are taking over the US government in pursuit of enabling autocracy. It may seem unprecedented - but of course, it's not, as big business has historically been very aligned with fascists.
But the best part is: @mikeduncan.bsky.social has announced he will continue with the Revolutions podcast after this scifi series is over! He says it's more of an intermission, not an ending.
So we WILL get to hear about all the epic 20th century revolutions (and maybe even 21st century?)
It really helps if you've listened to the rest of the Revolutions podcast.
@stephenfrug.bsky.social
"From small stylistic tics to larger patterns of emphasis and interest, Duncan has a historical voice, which he then takes and applies to history that has not yet happened, with powerful effects."
The stylistic choices really help with the whole piece. @stephenfrug.bsky.social points out:
"One of the things that makes Revolutions 11 work so well is precisely its borrowing of its form from that earlier work."
stephenfrug.substack.com/p/you-should...
... eventually the tensions within the classes will kill the initial usurpers, and general people will live in fear and panic until eventually, the whole system is rebuilt.
The latest episode covered "Bloody Sunrise", obviously a reference to Bloody Sunday and other similar violent suppressions. We can guess how it will go: tensions will flare until an explosive outburst, then the upper class will try to take over (perhaps will succeed for a while), but ...
"But if you think this - then I'm afraid you've never really looked at human history, which is replete with examples of people stubbornly, stupidly, myopically following through on terrible ideas because they think in the end it'll all work out."
@mikeduncan.bsky.social "No one could possibly be this committed to pushing through policies whose impact would create ten times as big of a mess as what he was attempting to clean up."
He loves his villains. Timothy Werner takes over as CEO of OmniCorp and really starts messing things up. He's an out-of-touch Earthling who doesn't REALLY understand the plight of his Martian workers. Duncan references King Charles I and Tsar Nicholas as other idiots who didn't take the hint.
The events and people clearly evoke the themes he has hammered for years about our own history. Mabel Dor is a rich, upper class Martian who ends up siding with other Martians against the oppressors from Earth; reminiscent of figures like Lafayette in the French Revolution.
Just like his previous revolutions, he covers a ton of "history", introduces a few too many characters to keep track of, but he still adds lots of color to make you appreciate the ones you really should notice.
The Martian Revolution is excellent science fiction. He does introduce some new super techology (a new material) that both motivates and enables interplanetary colonization, but otherwise assumes regular humans doing their typical human things.
Just three months ago, he started releasing episodes again! But he skipped a few centuries - now he's covering a revolution that took place in the 23rd century, on a totally different planet: Mars.
"The Russian Revolution took him three years and over a hundred episodes to cover just an enormous range of history.
After that one, Duncan was done with the whole show and it went on ice.
But, it turns out, he wasn't totally done ..."
