Mossy Character writes: "More than half of the nation's four-year colleges and universities have dropped the SAT and ACT requirement"
And will the replacement admissions standards not be equally inegalitarian, but more fragmented, and thus even more arbitrary and costly to administer?

Heebie's take: I think this is mostly good, but also the haves will always find a way to re-establish priority over the have-nots. So I imagine that the admissions teams will try to rely on other metrics and possibly invent new ones, mostly in good faith. For a few years, you will in fact find that entering classes are more socio-economically and racially diverse, while the SAT prep coaches figure out how to game the new admissions system and start charging wealthy parents for their new expertise. As they say, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while. There is no way it could function as that sentence implies, but it's still nice to have a thread.

Episode 79.

I just got back from posing for three hours as a model at my mom's art class. (Fully clothed, thank you very much.) I was very nervous about this. The idea is that you hold a pose for twenty minutes, and then get ten minutes off, and then resume the original pose. They chalk the tires, so to speak, so that you can find your exact position. It's like excruciatingly slow tabata.

I was extremely worried about my ability to comply, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong, and I think that helped me pick a position I could hold. My traps and neck muscles tend to get tense and sore, so I ended up kind of lounging back in an easy chair, with my legs gathered up near me, and I had a little towel to help support my neck in a steady position, and I was fine.

An interesting thing is having an express obligation to not give murmurs of assent or facial expressions of encouragement as people chat. I found that a little liberating, especially around strangers. They chatted freely. I also wasn't bored like I thought I might be, because it was calm enough that I could let my thoughts drift freely.

Also interesting is watching the conversation move in and out of topics that I know my mom knows a lot about, and watching her select when to contribute and when not to reveal, out of a lifelong tendency towards not being the tallest poppy. Usually I would just interject on her behalf, but again, I had to just sit there silently and let it unfold.

Now I have some drawings of some old lady from the future, idk.