Dress

Ugbad Abdi at the 2025 Met Gala

Printed Wool Challis Wrapper

1860s

Augusta Auctions

Dressing Gown

c. 1900

unknown maker

Chicago Historical Society

Wedding Dress

c. 1900

by W.T. Waters & Co.

Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa

The post on that reading comprehension study is good (and reminded me of some of my complaints about GPT a couple years ago, although the LLMs have gotten much better since then).

But the thing that really stood out to me is that I feel much this same way about math instruction:

i have seen this repeatedly, too - actually i was particularly taken with how similar this is to the behavior of struggling readers at much younger ages - and would summarize the hypothesis i have forged over time as: struggling readers do not expect what they read to make sense. my hypothesis for why this is the case is that their reading deficits were not attended to or remediated adequately early enough, and so, in their formative years - the early to mid elementary grades - they spent a lot of time "reading" things that did not make sense to them - in fact they spent much more time doing this than they ever did reading things that did make sense to them - and so they did not internalize a meaningful subjective sense of what it feels like to actually read things.

One of the big problems I have primarily in Calculus 1 (which is the lowest-level course I've taught) is that students just don't expect math to make sense. There's a bunch of rules to follow, which you have to memorize, and then you look at an expression and use some rule that seems like you could use it.

But that's not how competent mathematicians (and I use that word in the broadest possible sense) interact with mathematics. Mathematical formulas mean things. They have syntax, and semantics, and you can break apart a computation and talk about what individual terms mean and are doing, and what manipulation you're doing and what that corresponds to.

(Sometimes, of course, that's easier than others. Calc 2, in particular, involves a lot of "tricks" where it's hard to explain the logic in the middle of using them. But that's why I'm focusing on Calc 1 here, which is mostly not like that but does have a lot of application-y problems where this semantic understanding is important.)

But if you've never worked through a math problem and felt like everything was meaningful, you don't expect meaning in what you're doing, and you don't expect your own work to make sense. And then, well, it won't, and you'll struggle and get lost in the middle of every problem.

This is one of the more ambitious pieces I've done for a bit, and I did it on an absurd deadline, but my trans dragon back patch is done! The project ended up taking 130 hours of working time to finish, using two strands of cotton floss for both fills and outlines. The base pattern was from my own collection and was originally from 1936.

Hello! It’s been a while. I’ve been meaning to do an update post on Doris’ new tank setup but honestly I did not have the motivation to write it. To make it up to everyone I’ve decided to write on something equally if not more exciting:

Doris’ first shed (with me) !!!!

For a while I’d found Doris to be more reclusive. She’d stopped asking for handling sessions, was fully hiding under her substrate (whereas she would usually keep her head on the surface) and would make puffing sounds to signify irritability. While at first worrying, after discussing these changes with my mentor, we figured out the reasoning for this behaviour change… she was starting her shedding cycle!

I very quickly got to work accommodating her shed; I bumped the humidity up to 90% and gave her more moss to hide under. Within a few days her eyes started clouding over, her skin started dulling and her face seemed somewhat baggy. She was definitely not looking her best…

Then, one day as I came back from uni, a wonderful thing happened. As I entered my room, I noticed an odd stick that wasn’t usually in Doris’ tank. And then I realised… it wasn’t a stick! Doris had shed in one long piece; it was a perfect shed!!

I was overjoyed! My first shed with Doris coming out so perfectly was a sign that she was healthy and comfortable with the conditions I had provided for her.

I very quickly grabbed my microscope to have a close up look at her shed. There is so much beauty in how life is constructed and I felt so privileged to be able to have such a personal relationship with it.

And when I saw Doris again… she was stunning.

Posting a new photo to pin to the profile. Hi! <3

First - Genesis 1:5 "and the evening and the morning were the first day" Anon - Matthew 13:20 "But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it" Hate - Genesis 24:60 "And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them."

By - Genesis 7:2 "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." Price - Leviticus 25:16 "According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee."

Baby's first Anon hate by fisher price

I don't think any of those words are in the bible

Night out at a jukejoint in Greenville, South Carolina, 1956.

Photographed by Margaret Bourke-White for LIFE Magazine.