The seven stories presented here reveal Parker’s manifold strengths. We see her as a chronicler of contemporary New York, in both its manic, flapper highs and its bread-line lows. Her playwright’s ear for the nuances of dialogue is discernible in stories like “Diary of a New York Lady.” Whether set in Downtown speakeasies, tawdry hotel rooms or Fifth Avenue ballrooms, all have heart — at times almost too much. Even at its most amusing (and it can, of course, be riotously, incisively, funny), Parker’s universe is fundamentally cruel, and stories like “The Garter” and “Mr. Durant” look on compassionately as characters are rocked by a hard-boiled world …
4. Why were officers able to arrive on the scenes of the attacks more quickly on that particular day? The article goes on to say, “Still, it was not fast enough.” What details develop this point?
5. Who is the suspect? What appears to be his motive? How long did it take police officers to apprehend him?
Finally, tell us more about what you think:
The related Opinion essay “The Roots of the Christchurch Massacre” argues that “All those who have helped to spread the worldwide myth that Muslims are a threat have blood on their hands.” Wajahat Ali writes:
Upon learning about the massacre in Christchurch, a Muslim friend messaged me, “How will we keep our kids safe?”
I didn’t have a good answer. But I know the threat we’re facing isn’t just individual terrorists. It’s the global ideology of white nationalism and white supremacy. We have to take it seriously, and call out politicians, academics and media personalities who give it a platform under the guise of exploring both sides, fostering debate or avoiding political correctness.
The cost is too great. Just look to Christchurch and the 49 worshipers who should have returned home to their families and community instead of attending their last prayer.
Do you share Mr. Ali’s stance that attacks like those that took place at two mosques in Christchurch are not caused just by individual terrorists carrying out the attacks but also the “global ideology of white nationalism and white supremacy” to which they subscribe?
Elsewhere in his essay, Mr. Ali incorporates in his argument President Trump’s rhetoric about immigration in the United States and in Europe:
If the idea that Muslims are a threat sounds familiar, it’s in part because it was used by President Trump to argue for a wall to protect America from a “caravan” of Central American migrants seeking asylum. He asserted that “Middle Easterners” were in the caravan, a claim he admitted he could not back up. During a summer trip to England, Mr. Trump warned that Britain was losing its “culture” and that immigration had “changed the fabric of Europe — and unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was.”
Arguing for his travel ban aimed at mostly Muslim countries, Mr. Trump said, “I think Islam hates us,” lied about seeing Muslims celebrate the Sept. 11 attacks, and retweeted a fringe anti-Muslim group’s fake videos of Muslim refugees committing violence. No wonder the Christchurch manifesto praised Mr. Trump “as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
It’s clear that the dangers of white nationalism aren’t limited to the United States. This attack is a reminder that this dangerous ideology also threatens immigrant communities worldwide, and that it’s fueled by leaders around the world.
What is your reaction to these ideas? Do you think world leaders like Mr. Trump can or should be held responsible for the spread of anti-immigrant ideology? Why or why not? How has New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, responded to the attacks? Do you think she can use her position and words to help heal her nation?
Finally, what role does social media play in fomenting hatred of certain groups? It is known that the shooter in Christchurch streamed part of the attacks on Facebook. Do social media companies have a responsibility to block extremists from using their platforms to spread hate and inspire violence? Explain your stance.
1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:
• What is going on in this picture?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What more can you find?
2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern Time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.
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Codecademy’s very own Nick Duckwiler (left) and Ryan Tuck from Warby Parker (right) in our office. (📷: Mitch Boyer)
Last month, Codecademy and Warby Parker came together to work on a special Learn SQL from Scratch Capstone Project. It was during this time when I met Ryan Tuck, a Data Engineer at Warby, who played a major part in this partnership. So when he decided to drop by our office for the final QA round, I had to break out my notebook and ask some questions. Enjoy.
Hey Ryan, let’s start off with a question I’ve had for a while — what is a Data Engineer? (Is it similar to a Data Analyst or a Software Engineer?)
At Warby Parker, data engineers are responsible for creating and maintaining the plumbing required to support the data and reporting needs of the business. We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.
What languages/frameworks do you use at Warby?
On data engineering, we use Python as our general purpose programming language, as do most of the other teams in our Technology department. When it comes to databases, we use PostgreSQL for the majority of our SQL needs, and are beginning to use Amazon Athena and Google BigQuery for some of our larger datasets. We use Looker as our exclusive business intelligence entry point to all of this data.
What are some of the projects you worked on?
I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of of smart people in every department at our company to help them solve their varied data needs, from reconciling financial data with the Accounting team to automating and modeling standardized performance metrics for our team of over 200 customer experience advisors.
As part of a team of five supporting the data needs of a rapidly growing company, I’ve tried where possible to focus on helping our analysts solve their own problems. This includes helping people learn Python and commit to our codebase, guiding the creation of data models in SQL, and encouraging people to submit pull requests to add features in Looker, our BI tool.
Seeing dozens of otherwise “non-technical” colleagues opening up PRs on a daily basis, and consequently being part of the democratization of tech that we value at Warby Parker, is probably the most rewarding “project” I’ve been a part of.
One project finished recently during our first annual “Hackweek” is called Pipes, which allows anyone at the company to easily move large amounts of data from wherever to wherever (Looker, Google Sheets, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, etc) on a regular cadence, or manually through a simple one-line chatbot interface. The adoption has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re looking to grow this sort of tooling out even more.
“We use software engineering practices to automate the work of data cleaning, normalizing, and model building so that data is always ready to be consumed by data analysts in every department.”
What got you into the data field?
I’ve always been drawn to analytical fields like math, and became pretty proficient in Excel during some internships in college. Once I had learned to program and learned more about data science and its applications in artificial intelligence, I knew that anything I could do to immerse myself in the world of data would be a step in the right direction.
Three and a half years ago, I landed a job as a junior software engineer at Warby Parker not fully knowing what I was in for, but am so glad I got the opportunity to help build tools to support an interesting and ever-changing data-driven culture here.
Where did you learn SQL and Python?
I had a background in C++, and was exposed to Python through an Intro to Data Science course. When Warby Parker hired me onto the Data team in 2015, I had never written a SQL query in my life, but picked it up quickly and within a few months started up internal SQL training classes, which I still teach on a monthly basis.
What does your tattoo say?
The ultimate cheatsheet.
This is Bayes’ Theorem, which is an equation that describes how to update probabilities given new evidence. Two summers ago I worked on building a tool to help predict weekly fantasy football performance. Some colleagues suggested a Bayesian approach would be appropriate, since there aren’t really enough data points in an NFL season to be able to use statistical approaches that require larger datasets, and I’d want to regularly update my predictions after each player’s latest performance.
I did a deep dive into understanding the (simple) math underlying Bayes’ Theorem and came out of that experience with a whole new worldview, understanding my entire knowledge of the world as a big and intricate probabilistic model that I was continuously updating with every experience I ever have. It was pretty transformative, and I figured that was worth a tattoo.
What is a concept in SQL/Python that’s essential to your work?
Donald Knuth said, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I’ve generally found this to be true, and try to live by it in my work. For example, I’ll generally prefer to keep a data model simple by rebuilding it for all time on a daily basis using a single SQL query instead of making a more complicated model that requires iteratively adding to a table, keeping track of state, updated timestamps, when something last ran, etc.
A wise man once said, “Duplicating data makes things go fast,” but databases are already impressively fast to begin with, without implementing anything to improve performance. Ultimately, I almost always approach a problem thinking about optimizing for my time over machine time, for readability over performance, and for introducing as little cognitive overhead as is required by the problem at hand. Only once performance issues or readability issues present themselves will some code be worth a rewrite.
Last question! Since you wrote Warby Parker’s internal SQL training courses, I know there gotta be some inner Curriculum Developer in you. Can you teach a SQL concept in 2 minutes?
Sure! Have you ever written a query that yields some result set and you think, “I’d love to query the stuff I just produced like it was a table?” Enter the WITH clause.
Suppose I have a mega query that gives the transaction summaries:
select
transactions.date as transaction_date,
sum(items.price) as total_cost,
count(*) as number_of_items
from
transactions
inner join
customers
on
customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
transaction_items
on
transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
items
on
items.id = transaction_items.item_id
Using WITH, I can create a temporary table within my query that I can SELECT from and treat it just like a regular old table.
I will put everything from the previous query in a parentheses and use WITH to give it the name transaction_summaries.
Then I’ll apply the date and customer filtering down below for a more readable query, to separate out all the JOIN logic from the actual WHERE filters that I want to apply on that data.
with transaction_summaries as (
select
transactions.date as transaction_date,
sum(items.price) as total_cost,
count(*) as number_of_items
from
transactions
inner join
customers
on
customers.id = transactions.customer_id
inner join
transaction_items
on
transactions.id = transaction_items.transaction_id
inner join
items
on
items.id = transaction_items.item_id
)
select
*
from
transaction_summaries
where
first_name = 'beyonce'
and
transaction_date > '2018–01–01'
order by
total_cost desc
limit
5
If you’re familiar with subqueries, this does a similar thing but makes the SQL far more readable, even if your query isn’t quite as performant as it would have been. This is essentially an implementation of the mantra “Don’t Repeat Yourself” that’s common in the world of programming.
Incredible. And love the SQL styling! 😍
Huge shout out to Ryan and the whole Warby Parker team for making this partnership happen. Special hat tips for behind-the-scenes support from:
How involved do you think parents should be in their children’s lives? What can young people do if they feel their parents are crossing lines in trying to ensure things like academic success, placement on sports teams and, yes, acceptance at their top-choice college or university?
In “How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood,” Claire Cain Miller and Jonah Engel Bromwich describe “snowplow parents” who, in trying to “keep their children’s futures obstacle-free,” prevent their children from learning necessary skills and having experiences that will help them prepare for challenges they’ll face in college and beyond. They write:
It starts early, when parents get on wait lists for elite preschools before their babies are born and try to make sure their toddlers are never compelled to do anything that may frustrate them. It gets more intense when school starts: running a forgotten assignment to school or calling a coach to request that their child make the team.
Later, it’s writing them an excuse if they procrastinate on schoolwork, paying a college counselor thousands of dollars to perfect their applications or calling their professors to argue about a grade.
… Learning to solve problems, take risks and overcome frustration are crucial life skills, many child development experts say, and if parents don’t let their children encounter failure, the children don’t acquire them. When a 3-year-old drops a dish and breaks it, she’s probably going to try not to drop it the next time. When a 20-year-old sleeps through a test, he’s probably not going to forget to set his alarm again.
Snowplowing has gone so far, they say, that many young people are in crisis, lacking these problem-solving skills and experiencing record rates of anxiety. There are now classes to teach children to practice failing, at college campuses around the country and even for preschoolers.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
— What, if anything, from the article resonates with you, either based on your experiences or on what you have witnessed with friends and classmates?
— Does anyone you know fit the description of a “snowplow parent”? If so, what examples can you give about the person’s words or actions to support your claim?
— Why do you think some parents try to shield their children from difficulty? Make a list of the advantages and disadvantages — both short- and long-term — that these children may have.
— What are some signs that parents should stop doing things like waking their children in the morning, interceding with coaches, teachers or employers, and setting up playdates? Or is there a certain age at which the child should no longer have such things happen?
— The article mentions Cathy Tran, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania and the daughter of people who immigrated from Vietnam who did not attend college. Ms. Tran states, “I actually think that I have a sense of independence and confidence in myself in a way that some of my friends whose parents attended college might not have.” Do you think Ms. Tran’s experience might be common among other young people in her situation? Why or why not?
— In “Building Grit in Girls Through Mountain Biking,” another recent article about resilience and young people, A.C. Shilton writes about how mountain biking helps participants find strength in themselves, in part by having no place for parents to be involved:
Even better: Parents are often left sitting in cars at the trailhead. “Parents are parents,” she says, and every now and then one gets aggressive about his or her child’s performance. But as soon as the kids ride off and into the woods, they’re free to recreate on their own terms.
What they do, once they get into those woods, can be pretty empowering. “There’s a certain work ethic you have to have to be a mountain biker,” said Annika Peacock, who is now 15. “If there’s a section of the trail that’s really hard for me, I’ll go try it five more times. I say to myself, yes, yes, yes, I can do this.” And then the next day? “I go back and do it again.” She now competes against other teens as part of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, an organization working to bring mountain biking programs to high schools throughout the United States.
Annika’s mother says of her daughter, “She’s this petite little bundle of smiles, but she has this self-talk inside her that says ‘I can do this’, and she will ride and re-ride something until she gets it. There’s this resilience she’s trained in herself. She’s fierce.”
Are there any activities you’ve taken part in that are similarly empowering? To what degree, if at all, do those activities limit or prevent parental interference?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
Glenstone aims to admit about 400 people a day, to ensure that visitors can have a contemplative experience. Instagram photos are discouraged indoors, where the space has a naturally lit, Zen-like serenity, with benches for resting designed by Mr. Puryear and meandering paths.
Indeed, the collectors said they wanted plenty of breathing room — no “Mona Lisa” crowds or selfie sticks, very little wall text and no stanchions forcing people to keep their distance from the art. The message to visitors is clear. “Look — really use your eyes,” Ms. Rales said. “Allow that to be your primary experience.”
Have your parents ever talked to you about drugs? What did they say? What questions did they ask? Who initiated the conversation? Were the discussions helpful? Welcomed? Embarrassing? Enlightening?
The assignment was to write a four-page research paper on any biology topic. My son, Sebastian, is a high school freshman, and it was his first real chance to shine. I expected him to pick something like photosynthesis. He went with psychedelic drugs instead.
Let me tell you what would have happened if I had made that choice as a ninth-grader: I would have been grounded until graduation. In northeastern Pennsylvania, where I grew up, my mother worked for the county commission on drug and alcohol abuse, and she could literally smell stoned people. The breath of a pothead, she warned, as if hunting dragons, has the odorousness of burned rope.
One night she shook me awake after finding a tiny tube of Krazy Glue under the seats of her Buick Skyhawk.
“Are you sniffing this stuff to get high?” she said.
I wasn’t. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I cried.
In my mom’s defense, the narc approach was more common back then. In 1984, when I was in high school, Nancy Reagan first uttered the phrase “Just say no” after a student asked what to do if friends offered her funny cigarettes. Later, the public ad campaign “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” made us believe our teenage minds would be fried — sunny side up — if we even thought about weed.
The article continues:
My struggle is to update the proactive messaging for the age of the legal buzz. I don’t care that every other billboard in Los Angeles makes casual drug use look as harmless as hailing a Lyft; I don’t want my child messing with his still-developing brain and body. I don’t want him self-medicating to escape. I definitely don’t want him Juuling, snorting, dosing or dabbing while driving. I also don’t want to wait until his grades tank, and I catch him gorging on raw cookie dough and “Dark Side of the Moon” before stepping in. (I know this makes me sound very old-fashioned.)
That’s why I created “prehab.”
If rehab is a way to recover from drug addiction, prehab is a program designed (by me, at least) to avert the whole mess in the first place. It’s like pulling a Marty McFly with your future party self, pre-empting poor decisions way before you’re drunk texting your ex and sleeping through Mondays. So I enrolled Sebastian as the test case.
Eventually the author comes to question his prehab creation:
I made a dad joke about not lighting up, but Sebastian wasn’t laughing. He looked at me and said, “I actually understand everything you’re telling me. If it makes any difference to you, I’m not really interested in trying drugs. But that could change someday. I really don’t know. For now, can we be done talking about this?”
It hit me in that moment that Sebastian wasn’t the one needing prehab. I was. I’d been so focused on finding the formula for guiding him down the right path that I forgot that he’s the only one who can make these decisions. My task isn’t to steer him around every bong and backyard keg gathering for the rest of his childhood. It’s to be there for him, to set basic guidelines. I also want to support him in figuring out what he truly enjoys, what he dreams about for his future, what he needs more of — and less of — from me. I’d do anything to help him make the most of this one shot he’s got.
Above all, prehab is about letting go. I can talk to Sebastian about drugs until the psychedelic cows come home but I can’t control his future, and why would I want to? Even if he ends up experimenting, I need to have the faith that he’ll be fine. Would it have done John Lennon’s father any good to worry about his kid’s toking habits? Would I be typing on this Apple computer if Steve Jobs just said no to LSD?
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
— How should parents talk to their children about drugs, alcohol and tobacco? What do you think are the most and least effective ways parents can talk to their children about this issue? Why?
— How have your parents talked to you about drugs? Were these conversations effective or helpful? How open and honest were they? Did your parents take the “narc approach” Mr. Hochman ascribes to his mother? Or did they try more of the “prehab” approach Mr. Hochman used with his son?
— Do you feel comfortable turning to your parents with questions about drugs, alcohol and tobacco? Do you think it is easier to talk to parents about drugs now versus when your parents were growing up?
— What conversation do you wish you could have with your parents about drugs?
— What do you think of Mr. Hochman’s advice to parents? Do you think parents need to let go and have faith that their children will be fine? Or do they need to provide direct teaching, guidance and rules around drugs?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
After reading over 100 comments, we found out that Ms. Reed is not alone. Many students had a painful story to tell about being excluded, whether it was a memory from first grade or a slight that stung just last week. Below, their stories — of being left out, of doing the leaving out themselves, and of learning hard but useful lessons from the experience.
It hurts.
Statistics show how social media can even increase levels in anxiety and depression which in my opinion, is very accurate. It’s hard not to feel even a little disappointed when you’re scrolling and you see a picture of a group of people from your school, smiling left to right. Then you look around to see your lonely room and you can compare yourself to the people on the internet.
My usual Friday nights are absolutely miserable. I usually spend it sitting on my bed reading or stuck in my bedroom fiddling with my robot. I spend these nights alone, kept company by my mind solely. But that’s not the miserable part. Being alone is something that I have become used to, and started to take a liking to. The bad part is when my parents ask what my friends are doing, and I am always forced to respond with “I don’t know.” In their voice and faces after I say that, I see, hear, and feel sadness, and it seeps into my mind. It makes me believe that I have no friends, and that I socially amount to nothing.
When someone else points out your loneliness, it makes it 100 times worse. Just recently, I was a part of a group conversation. A few jokes were made that I did not understand at all, and I seemed to be the only one not getting. I realized that they all had a group chat, all 13 of them. I immediately felt like in their minds, they didn’t really consider me as one of them, or at least not good enough to be on the chat. It made me feel worthless and unimportant. I have not, and do not plan on, making a comment, because what if they said no? Or worse, said yes with hesitation? The even slight possibility of social humiliation is enough for me to say nothing.
When you tell your friends an idea of having a bonfire in the summer, suddenly your friends had gone ghost, then you watch your friends on social media at the bonfire, without you. It will make you have an internal feeling of not having anyone, isolation, abandonment. Leaving you to assume that you are not good enough to hang with the crew, trying to pretend like you are not bothered by the isolation. The feeling of isolation and abandonment will make you think about walking right out of their lives all from betrayal.
“Bye Marta, Chiara and Ali, I hope you guys have a great weekend.”
These three girls were what I considered best friends for most of my life. ”Come on girls, we are going to be late to get parking space at the beach.” My grandpa drove us to the beach on Friday afternoons and quickly, this became our tradition. When the day of his passing came around, they were the first ones there to visit me at the hospital.From that point on, I knew friendship couldn’t get better than this.I was walking down the carline opening the door to my moms car, I turned around to realize that Marta’s car had two other people in it, even though she had told me her weekend was going to be a “girls trip” with her sister Gaia, at a beach house. I was convinced that it was Gaia’s friends last minute deciding to go on the beach trip. I soon realized I was too blinded by the “best friend promises.” I checked instagram as a new post appeared on my feed. “Wouldn’t want to hang out with any other people.”-Marta. This quote was captioned under a picture of the beach spot my grandfather always brought all three of us to. My heart shattered in a million pieces because I felt like I lost my three best friends. They ruined the only place left that reminded me of my grandfather. We all lost a part of ourselves that day.
Recently, I came to school and met my friends as usual. It was a Monday, and I thought it had been a normal weekend, with no big plans or parties, but I was wrong. My friend came up to me, showing me a video of her and some of our other friends. “Look,” She said, “We went bowling on Saturday. It was so much fun!” I looked at the video, laughed, and tried to shrug it off. It didn’t work. I kept thinking about it, wondering why I wasn’t invited. I knew I shouldn’t dwell on it, but I couldn’t let it go. I felt that short moment of sadness that makes you feel inferior. I know I have been left out before, and I know I will be many more times in my life. I only hope I will learn to get over it, and cherish having friends, even if I don’t spend every weekend with them.
