Being a small collection of links from my Twitter posts this past week that deserve a few more than 140 characters.

For many years we’ve been told that we need to differentiate our instruction. But, according to one writer, it doesn’t work. More specifically, “Differentiation is a failure, a farce, and the ultimate educational joke played on countless educators and students.” I wouldn’t go that far but I’m concerned the concept is being used to push “personalized” or “individualized” instruction which, as I wrote in an earlier post, is often about automating the learning process. That could be the ultimate joke.

One writer seems to believe there’s Too Much Damn TV: “1,715 TV series aired in 2014, of which 352 were scripted.” Yes, that is insane. It also makes me wonder how producers found 1363 subjects in the “real” world that were interesting enough to record.

Last week saw the first serious talks with Cuba in nearly 40 years. It’s great progress but also represents just how pig-headed US leadership can be. This “normalization” is long overdue and hopefully will lead to rethinking some of our other stupid foreign policy.

And finally, a milestone for anyone who has flown on US carriers in the past thirty years, Sky Mall is filing for bankruptcy. The cause is supposed to be “internet access and more gadgets on planes” but I’d like to think that people just got a little smarter about spending their money on that catalog’s crapgadgets. Or maybe not.