It’s not an aarti ritual. They’re bringing in the mehndi that is brought in with diyas. Maayoon, mehndi, dholak, ghori charhna, ubtan/haldi/mehndi lagaana, vail dena, and a lot else are all part of our syncretic culture. 60% of Pakistan is Punjabi. These are Punjabi traditions. There’s zero ‘identity crisis’ around them for most people.

The Arabic word for "jinn" and the Arabic word for "baby" come from the same root. So does "paradise." So does "madness." So does "shield." So does "heart." Three letters. ج - ن - ن One meaning: hidden. Let me show you how deep this goes.

Literature is humanity’s longest conversation with itself about what it means to be alive. It has been going on for thousands of years. You are not late, you are not unqualified, you are not too much or too little or too broken. Pull up a chair. This conversation was always about you.

Civilization was built by people like this, and there is a stunning lack of gratitude in our culture for their work. In this specific case, at least half of the apple varieties in Brown’s collection were considered “lost” until he personally tracked them down and saved them. He literally went on quests where he did things like, tracking a lost variety back to a stump of a long-ago-cut-down tree near an abandoned homestead in remote Appalachia, took cuttings from the green shoots coming out of the stump, brought them back and planted them. Absolute legend.

The sun you see right now exploded 7 minutes ago and you'd have no way of knowing. You'd still feel its warmth. Still see it in the sky. Still orbit it. For 8 minutes and 20 seconds, you'd live in a universe that no longer has a sun and have absolutely no way to detect the difference. This is because gravity also travels at the speed of light. If the sun vanished, Earth would continue orbiting the empty space where it used to be for the same 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Einstein proved this. The gravitational wave carrying the information "the sun is gone" propagates at exactly c. Light, gravity, and information all share the same speed limit. Now scale the paradox in this post. 90 light-years is nothing. The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away. Every photograph of it is a 2.5 million year old snapshot. The entire galaxy could have collided with something catastrophic 2 million years ago. We'll find out 500,000 years from now. The James Webb Space Telescope routinely photographs galaxies from 13.4 billion years ago. Those galaxies no longer exist in any form we'd recognize. The stars burned out. The civilizations, if any, rose and fell billions of years before Earth formed. Webb is photographing ghosts. The deepest implication: "right now" is a local phenomenon. It exists only in the space you can physically touch. Beyond that, everything you see, measure, or interact with is a time-delayed recording. The further you look, the older the recording gets. There is no method, even in principle, to know the current state of anything beyond your immediate surroundings. The entire observable universe is a 13.8 billion year old museum where every exhibit is labeled with a different date and nothing is current.

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”

If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal. If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.

I went to the biggest human gathering in history This festival only happens once every century, and I got to see it with my own eyes! Welcome to Mahakumbh Mela. Thanks to @AdaniOnline for making it happen. #SevaHiSaadhnaHai

Nietzsche can hype you up

Direct instruction is joyful & leads pupils to success. Here is a *clip* where I use high frequency & high participation questioning in 3 phases: 1. Check for listening 2. Rehearsal 3. Check for understanding Established routines: all hands up, turn & talk, SLANT & ruler reading

I'm so serious, if you stop using your creativity, imagination and thinking abilities you will LOSE them. Millions of people willingly giving up their intellects, the very thing that makes them human, is a nightmare straight out of our darkest science-fictions.

Nietzsche asking the hard questions

Do not be sad when you find out your original idea was perfectly articulated some thousand years before you were born; rejoice that your mind and heart and soul have connected to the same fount of knowledge and beauty as did the greats before you.

-History teaches us to interrogate sources -Maths teaches us to think procedurally and logically -English leads us into examining narrator and character motives and perspective -Religious studies teaches us that faith claims and truth claims are often divergent -Science teaches us to test our hypotheses, and to lean on tangible evidence. Etc. The architecture and foundation of critical thinking are imbedded and embodied by the disciplinary skills intrinsic to the existing taxonomy of academic subjects. It’s not an assembly on why Andrew Tate is bad (which he is) or Facebook is stuffed with inane rubbish (which it is). It’s the whole academic experience of a school’s curriculum- when taught thoroughly.

In 1962, C.S. Lewis was asked to name the books that had most influenced his thought. The list he came up with was packed with time-honored classics. Here’s his list of 10 works🧵

Teaching isn’t the easiest path, but it’s a life worth living. In a healthy school community, gratitude is the essence of the culture. Ending my first term in my new school on a positive note. School’s out! 🔔

I worked in a school before and after it raised expectations for behaviour. It became safer, calmer, happier & outcomes soared for disadvantaged children. Middle class policy makers will never have to send their *own* kids to the chaotic schools they create.

“To survive, you must tell stories.” — Umberto Eco

RT @tombennett71: The danger with trying to make a curriculum ‘relevant’ to children is that an important purpose of education is to bring…