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The full second episode of The Network Society is now available on X.
It’s our best production yet.
We visited Puerto Rico’s biotech hub to explore new cancer and blindness treatments, then returned to @Prosperahn to discuss startup-driven regulatory alternatives.
Enjoy it.
Jean Hansen retweeted
As a father who just chose not to send my older son to public school, here's what's happening:
1. NYC public schools are full of woke, mentally ill people. The teachers, the students, the counselors, everyone is wacked out. If you're just a normal parent that wants a normal school with a normal focus on education, good behavior, friendship, manners, etc. you are shit out of luck.
2. While there are some good elementary schools, most middle schools are atrocious, and result in some of the biggest drops in education outcomes. Even if you send your kid to a good elementary public school, you're 100% going to move in time for middle school. And if you make it to high school, your only hope are the specialized schools, but mamdani the islamist is intent on destroying them, which would completely fuck your kids.
3. The average kid in an average NYC public school is stupid as hell. 70% do not read proficiently for their grade level. They can't do math. They have a ton of behavioral issues and are bad influences on your kid.
As a normal father of a normal family I'm paying an absurd amount of taxes and for what? My hard earned money is being wasted on the comically evil teachers union, paying adult day care fraudsters, and subsidizing the "73% of public school students in poverty." This is just a scam. Those kids are not in poverty. Their parents work under the table, don't report anything to not pay taxes, and get ridiculous government subsidies.
Everyone is running a scam and families like mine are paying for it. It's no wonder so many of my peers left and despite living in NYC for coming on 30 years, I probably will too at some point.
Today my office has released a major new report on student enrollment in NYC.
We found that k-12 enrollment in our public schools has fallen by 187k since 2013, with a projected decline of an additional 128k students by 2034.
As total enrollment declines, NYCPS is serving a student population with growing needs. The number of students with disabilities is increasing. In the most recent school year, approximately 73% of students were in poverty and 14% were homeless or living in temporary housing.
Our report finds the drop in enrollment is driven by declining births and families with children leaving NYC, with a particularly notable drop in public-school enrollment as students transition from elementary to middle school.
These trends have massive implications for our schools that we have only barely begin to grapple with. My hope is that this report will spur a long overdue conversation about what the era of falling student enrollment means for NYC, and what we can do to reverse or slow it. 🧵
This week I met with @exojason to learn more about @_MathAcademy_. The engineering work he, @justinskycak, and the team are doing is seriously impressive.
They've built a very sophisticated math knowledge graph and algorithms to help students learn faster.
The system identifies gaps in students' knowledge, interleaves topics, optimizes spaced repetition, and much more.
There's never been a better time in human history to learn.
Frontier tower @frontiertower is awesome.
@XenofonofAthens is building some cool shit there.
Very cool to run into @AleeeM1 there. Latin America all over the place.
Spending the day in SF. What should I do?
If you're building at the frontier of tech, let's grab a coffee.
Jean Hansen retweeted
The thing that blew him away is the tutor responded to a wrong answer with “I see what you’re thinking…”
We are fanatic about handling wrong answers. Otherwise, students give up on the product and maybe themselves.
Today we visited the @synthesischool office and talked to cofounder @chrisman. Such an inspiring conversation, thanks Chris for having us.
I've been a big fan of this startup for years.
The quality of Synthesis AI Tutor, which teaches math, is truly mind-blowing.
After talking to so many great founders building the future of education, I definitely wouldn't want to be betting against them.
AI is a wrecking ball for legacy education.
Today we visited the @synthesischool office and talked to cofounder @chrisman. Such an inspiring conversation, thanks Chris for having us.
I've been a big fan of this startup for years.
The quality of Synthesis AI Tutor, which teaches math, is truly mind-blowing.
After talking to so many great founders building the future of education, I definitely wouldn't want to be betting against them.
AI is a wrecking ball for legacy education.
We just arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area after almost a week of filming.
Austin → LA → Carmel → SF.
We've met with many founders, visited a family homeschooling their son, and filmed at a microschool.
10 stories in total.
It's only been one week, and we already have incredible material for the documentary. The stories are insanely inspiring.
It feels especially symbolic to be producing this documentary while Brazil is in the global spotlight amid political turmoil.
I've chosen to work on building alternative systems. I have absolutely no hope for legacy institutions. And this last week has only confirmed that this is the right path for radical transformation.
Onward.
Jean Hansen retweeted
We all want AI to help us learn faster and turn ideas into action. A second brain can make it more useful by giving it context from your own knowledge and projects.
This Thursday, join our @ipecity Community Assembly with Lorin (@lorington) and Iggy (@iggynore) for practical approaches and tools to build your own second brain.
October 29 · 12 PM Brasília (UTC−3) · Online, in English.
Join us: luma.com/9i4dn2vr
Jean Hansen retweeted
How would you build a second brain around your own knowledge and workflows?
Join @lorington and @iggynore at Ipê’s next Community Assembly to explore that question, with control over your knowledge as a guiding principle.
Our assembly will have two parts:
- Learners · @lorington
Lorin will share the architecture and design philosophy behind his second brain, built from years of journals, essays, and personal notes. He’ll also share a customizable GitHub starter repository to help you build your own.
- Builders · @iggynore
Iggy, from the Ipê community, will explore tools and practical choices for building a setup that works for you.
Bring your questions, share what you’ve been building, and join the community discussion.
Register here: luma.com/9i4dn2vr
First impressions of Austin have been awesome.
No time to rest or explore much, though.
Tomorrow morning, we'll be visiting our first project: an independent microschool.
The activity of the day? Kids will be cooking chicken adobo for Filipino Heritage Month.🙂 Just another casual day of learning for them.
The school is part of the @KaiPodCo network.
It's a really interesting project that supports education entrepreneurs who want to start their own microschools, with hundreds of schools in their network.
We'll be interviewing the founder, @AmarKumarEdu, in a few days too.
Sounds weird, right? School networks, microschools, kids cooking, entrepreneurs building independent learning spaces, accelerators...
Yea, that's just a small part of a much bigger revolution we're witnessing in the US and other parts of the free world.
A revolution we're documenting at networksociety.film/episode3.
Join us!
Jean Hansen retweeted
In 2002, Brazil had a higher Human Development Index than China, Turkey, Thailand, Peru, Colombia and five other countries shown here. By 2023, all had overtaken Brazil. The world has been moving faster.
🇧🇷
In which I praise the food of Brazil: worksinprogress.co/issue/com…, it is too bad Brazilian food in the United States is not better.
