I dont hope to put anyone on blast, as it wasnt my presentation or my paper and I may be wrong.

I also think Im not being clear here when I say "theory" and considering the topic, I probably shouldnt throw that term around. I meant more the argument of looking at modifications of GR rather than for undiscovered particles. Which modification one supports is a different discussion.

>I think you misheard what that guy said, because the leading theory is still 100% an unknown subatomic particle, and I would hazard to guess that 90-95% of physicists in a field involving dark matter believe that it is just that— matter that only interacts with gravity, or interacts extremely weakly with the other known interactions.

Ah, well yes then, I suppose that is the leading theory. That was not however the theory he presented.

He did not speak directly to or for its existence, but he did speak about how many of the effects attributed to dark matter may well be explained through re-examination of the theory of general relativity itself.

He began the talk with a criticism of a lot of high energy physics and particle physics. The association may have been one I made on my own, but the implication seemed to be that this theory was an alternative to the subatomic particle theory.

I mean doesn't exist in the sense of it not being-- as is commonly implied-- a "thing" that is invisible to us. It does exist in the sense of being the name of an observed inconsistency with our models, but the theory he presented was that it is a failure of the models to accurately model what we already know about, rather than it being that there is something out there (invisible mass, undiscovered particles etc) we don't know what it is.

Just one guy though. I'm sure opinions differ.

I'm not an expert, but I did attend a talk with an expert last week. It seemed his* theory is sort of neither, but rather that general relativity models just aren't being applied correctly. So underlying theory is the same, dark matter doesn't exist, but the math isn't mathing.

Edit for clarity

Dark matter isn't actually "proven". The name really means more "stuff we don't know what it is yet". As such, you can't really model it, because we don't know what it is.

>There might be communities within schools but a school is not a community.

So pep rallys, sports teams, mascots and school colors, school dances, yearbooks... should we get rid of all of those? Those are community activities and signifiers.

We could just send the children to all sit in little pods by themselves and watch videos abut the things they need to learn. No need to worry about them interacting with other humans or being anything more than-- as you put it-- "a percentage of the population". Imagine the efficiency!

>If the teacher wants to hang out with the kids and show them TikToks she can do it on her own time outside of the classroom.

???

>The disturbing nature I see regardless of sexual identity is when teachers have their personal lives involved with students that fall outside the window of appropriate and professional topics.

I'm sorry but I disagree. Just because something is personal does not make it inappropriate.

There is a line of course, but teachers should connect with their students as community members, not cold and harsh authority figures. That was that kind of schooling we had in the 18th and early 19th century-- cruel headmasters and unsympathetic teachers and nuns slapping everyone's wrists. Not an ideal learning environment.

Should we now require all teachers to avoid disclosing their relationship status? Keep their families a secret? Hide their disabilities, never speak of their personal hobbies, never ever *ever" bring up what they did over the weekend?

Or is it only "inappropriate" when gay teachers do it?

What is "disturbing" about what occurred? A teacher shared a social media username, a couple of those videos showed the teacher posing in a sexy-but-not-pornographic way, the school let her go. That's not disturbing.

People get fired all the time for posting things they didn't realize they should have, mixing up accounts and accidentally liking porn, etc. 99% of the time it's an accident.

This article and others imply it was intentional because they have a political agenda-- to make trans women look like sexual predators going after kids. The implication is that for this case it was no accident, this was intentional predation!! But there's no evidence of that and it's really, really unlikely to be true.

I think the appropriateness of sharing social media is up for discussion, frankly. When I was in high school, my best friend's mother was my government teacher. My algebra teacher rented a room from my other friends parents and came to their Christmas parties. My drama teacher held a summer BBQ for all the graduating seniors.

Saying teachers cannot share any of their private life with students seems needlessly cold. There's nothing wrong with a teacher relating to their students on a human level. Talking about the birth of their new child, talking about where they grew up, bringing their husband/wife to the school recital, etc.

Social media profiles can be very private, but often times they aren't. Often times it's no different than a digital resume, especially on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Tbh this push to dehumanize and automate teacher/student interaction is a really sad by-product imo of this whole trans debate. Is there a line? Of course, but schools are still communities, not factory assembly lines.

>Broadcasting your social activism to classrooms... eh... not the same thing.

I understand this point, but for LGBT people and especially trans people, the simple act of existing is often social activism in and of itself.

When I was in school we had a gay teacher who could not legally marry his partner. When he became able to, he told us he was getting married. This is no different than a straight teacher saying they are getting married, very PG and acceptable, but the fact he was gay and doing it carried significant political baggage.

It seems unreasonable to ask people who's identities themselves are topics of public debate to avoid bringing politics into the classroom. I don't see anyway they could reasonably do that without intentionally hiding aspects of their lives that non-LGBT teachers would never be expected to hide.

Not to mention education itself is far from "neutral" politically anyway, but that's a different conversation.