Ben Somers
@ben_m_somers
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Tweeting about education & Building https://t.co/ljB95T2SFG — prev: early at https://t.co/hYek54tJMg
San Francisco, CA
Joined April 2019
Today, you and Jeff Bezos have the same phone. More money can't buy you a better phone. We will do this for education. A kid sitting in Bulgaria or Lagos will have access to the same quality of education as a billionaire in silicon valley.
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It’s amazing how the act of doing work makes you more optimistic My worst pessimism / cynicism is always after not getting anything done
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My fiance slept at the foot of my bed for three nights in a row and rubbed my feet to distract me from the pain In that moment, I realized I had already won at life Now, i am attacking work without fear of failure. It is a great privilege to have a good life
Had neck/spine surgery last night and feeling much better Currently wondering if oxycodone makes me better or worse at tweeting, Wdyt??
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If you love meditations by Marcus Aurelius and learn from it You really should learn more about his life I think you’ll stop taking his advice
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Kaelin is a killer engineer who is obsessed with how to engineer effectively with AI. Recommend giving him a follow! Also, we’re hiring. If AI x Education is exciting to you and you want to be at the forefront of the field, You should apply to join us!
I have fully converted from coding in an IDE to a terminal + Claude Code. CC knows terminal best. I check type errors using tsc command. I can focus on agent management. All that was holding me back is a diff viewer and file tree. (@warpdotdev helped here)
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I’m not being nearly controversial enough when talking about Recess We have almost no haters, probably should change this
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Had neck/spine surgery last night and feeling much better Currently wondering if oxycodone makes me better or worse at tweeting, Wdyt??
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❤️ we will keep recruiting outstanding teachers and working with great software to help Chris give his kid a great education
If you haven't experienced this type of learning it probably does seem fake or unbelievable. But it's 100% real. My son used Kerbal Space Program in a @recessgg class this evening and asked if he could add it to his homeschool curriculum every day moving forward.
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Quality of training data in = quality of tokens out True for computers and for kids Give your kids great books! Avoid slop But more importantly, teach them to desire great and avoid slop themselves
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Need to learn to multiply and do math without a calculator, then marvel at how useful the calculator is Same for writing
High-school teacher friend of mine says there’s a discontinuity between (i) 17-18 year olds who learned basic research/writing before ChatGPT and can use LLMs effectively, vs (ii) 14-16 year olds who now aren’t learning core skills to begin with, and use LLMs as pure crutches
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We are bringing this form of education back and it costs $20k Kids are set up with caltech phd's as math tutors, harvard philosophy majors as writing tutors...etc Then, they also get interest-based apprenticeships. One kid is working with a staff writer from the Tonight Show.
Good read on an important topic. Nearly all geniuses were: - privately educated with elite tutors - introduced to complex topics young - around adults instead of peers when young Thoughts: -great contemporary thinkers should teach the youth -apprenticeships
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Amboy’s own Alvin Cailan just dropped a “Touchdown Chicken Dip” that goes crazy on a Wheat Thin. Pull up to Family Style Food Fest LA on 9/13 to try this and four more custom recipes. Sponsored by @WheatThins
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We are building a Browser For Kids that removes all brainrot and slop from Youtube, but otherwise leverages the algorithm to show your kid their favorite content And TODAY it goes on testflight
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~50% of Kids can and should start Calculus by the age of 12
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I am Weaponizing Social Media to get kids to do more Math (similar to how strava weaponizes it for running) There are dozens of kids on Recess arguing about how to solve this problem. There are actually ~30 comments on this post (threaded replies don't get counted)
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homeschool is currently at ~5.5% 5x growth coming
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A new proposal from @CMSgov under @DrOz wants to add catheters, ostomy & trach supplies to Medicare’s competitive bidding program. This is a bad idea and will worsen outcomes for seniors & Medicare recipients. My latest in @MedPageToday explains why ⬇️
medpagetoday.com
Limiting urological, tracheostomy, and ostomy supply options will do more harm than good
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the public schools may crash in the next 5 years they have very fickle "business models" / rely on consistent enrollment & need to be at >80% capacity and them failing will be a good thing
A homeschool co-op we are apart of hoped to have 2-3 new families join this year 53 families joined Data point
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On a 6-8 year vest this could make sense But very hard to justify giving someone 2.5% of Amazon to someone who worked there from 1994-1996
Founding engineers/growth team members should have more equity. The range should be 2-5%
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We are building a Browser For Kids that removes all brainrot and slop from Youtube, but otherwise leverages the algorithm to show your kid their favorite content And TODAY it goes on testflight
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This is a wrong take tbh. GenAI will not replace all core academic materials Purpose-built tools will always beat generic tools
“All educational content is obsolete. Every textbook. Every lesson plan. All of it is obsolete because gen ai is going to be able to deliver a personalized lesson just for you.” - @jliemandt
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If interested in education, I highly recommend watching this Joe is the single most important person in education right now. He's advancing multiple key technologies, proving out which business models work in the new landscape, and merrily investing in competitors
How you know tomorrow’s episode with Joe Liemandt is going to be a banger…
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we spend $20k/student per year For $300/year you can give a kid a macbook every 3 years whole categories of great software are off-limits to chromebooks, e.g. the rocket-building-simulator Kerbal Space Program. Modern software/games are what sci-fi writers dreamed of
The worst part of middle school used to be the bullying. Now it’s being forced to use a Chromebook.
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Always curious and full of energy, Beagles turn every walk into an adventure 🐾🎉.
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