从Netflix新片Gray Man到要不要做homework 到亚裔的学术成功 以及Zuckerberg 的内部“坦言”

# The Gray Man Takes the Stoic-Spy Cliché Way Too Far

Netflix 寄予希望的大投入制作，线上和院线几乎是同步的。个人觉得在spy 类型的电影里面是属于好看的，只是影评人的反馈普遍不是特别好。

这篇文中从男主Ryan Gosling 的角度评论了下该片。文中开头损人的方式很有意思：

Stoicism has long been a powerful weapon in Ryan Gosling’s cinematic arsenal. One of his best-remembered films remains the taut 2011 thriller Drive, in which he played an unnamed stunt driver who is cool behind the wheel but monosyllabic in conversation. As Officer K in Blade Runner 2049, he was quite literally robotic, an artificial “replicant” designed to be void of emotion. In First Man, he portrayed the astronaut Neil Armstrong as prickly and standoffish, far more ready to face his work than any interpersonal relationship. But as remote as he seemed in each of those movies, he was always grappling with a complex character, proper story stakes, and a touch of internal weirdness. His newest lead role, in Netflix’s action blockbuster The Gray Man, has none of that.

大致的意思就是先夸了下Ryan Gosling 在之前的作品里面各种各样的好，最后转折，但是在这个Gray Man 里，每一种“好”都没有落上。?

还没完，文中还把Ryan Gosling 和Brad Pitt 类比了下 （The actor he’s frequently reminded me of is Brad Pitt...）,说人家Brad Pitt 演的好的角色的特点都是“帅而不自知”...

Pitt found the principal roles that worked for him by pairing up with directors such as David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Soderbergh. Their protagonists had more of an oddball energy, handsome men who seemed ill at ease with their God-given looks.

# The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong

从“标化”考试成绩只是反应家庭背景，不是考生的能力开始。目前类似的说法适用范围已经越来越大：不仅仅是标化考试，所有的学校指标反映的都是家庭背景，而不是能力：

“Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

这个话题终归还是严肃了，但homework 的题目是考试比较喜欢的，所以倒是可以积累一些语料：

homework 无用

Do students really need to do their homework?

As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. 

homework 有用

It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. ... I’m not sure what good it would do if the kid didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom...

# Asian American Student Success Isn’t a Problem

当名校取消标化考试比如SAT申称要促进多元化的时候，我们就听听就好，这个是特别站不住脚的，因为促进diverse 有个很容易的方式：扩招。

Many of the universities that have dropped the SAT requirement have cited a desire for diversity and equity and a de-emphasis on hard-core academic competition. (This has always struck me as errant and, frankly, self-serving reasoning. If elite colleges actually want economically and racially diverse campuses free from the academic stressors that plague high school students, they should take their own advice and stop competing so fiercely to prove that they are the most exclusive places of higher learning in the world.)

而为什么学校会弱化考试或者分数呢？

一个Tufts 教授（Natasha Warikoo）的研究结果

So what happens when a big influx of wealthy Asian immigrants, mostly from China and India, come to a liberal, wealthy suburb that has always prided itself on its academic accomplishments? Warikoo correctly notes that for years, scholars and sociologists have simply assumed that these relatively privileged and upwardly mobile Asian Americans would simply melt into the upper middle class. What she found through her research is that the transition isn’t quite so smooth, in large part because many of the white families who live in these suburbs are worried that the new competition from Asian students will harm their own children’s chances of getting into elite colleges. As a result, some white parents in Woodcrest called for a de-emphasis on academics and a prioritization of mental health. Much like the moves away from the SAT, these changes sound worthwhile, but it’s worth examining the motives behind them.

# ‘Operating With Increased Intensity’ : Zuckerberg Leads Meta Into Next Phase

员工内部会议，“你们中的一些人会不喜欢这里，我OK；我觉得你们中的一些人并不适合这里。”

In an employee meeting around the same time, Mr. Zuckerberg said he knew that not everyone would be on board for the changes. That was fine, he told employees.

“I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”