This brought me to tears

"What're you lookin' at? Never seen devastating cuteness before?"

PSA: If you have a Bank of American credit or debit card, many museums are free the first full weekend of every month!   More.


Preface: The ending of this interview with Roland Fryer on education reform brought me to tears.*

As did this quote I just came across:

Wollstonecraft inveighed against marriage as the only means for women to “rise in the world,” which in turn reduced their aspirations to those of “mere animals” [sic] and made them act as children once they did enter this institution of wholesale dependency. What she called for instead — equal access to education and an emphasis on the intellectual and moral development of girls, rather than their looks, dress, and manners — seems banal by our present standards, almost embarrassing. The luxury of being embarrassed by it — in just five human lifetimes, in a species 7,500 generations old — is the measure of our progress.

from Dying Mothers, the Birth of Handwashing, and the Bittersweet True Love Story Behind Frankenstein emphases added

*Russ Roberts: But, you've had a huge impact. Not the impact you wanted, but when you lay in bed at night and you look back on this part of your career, will you ever come back to it? Is it just something that you sometimes wish had turned out maybe better? Do you feel satisfaction? Just reflect on it in your own life.

Roland Fryer: It's a phenomenal question, and I'm going to answer it in a brutally honest way, as I always try to do. I am wholly unsatisfied with that work. I'm happy we did it. I think it changed some lives, not enough. I'm going to tear up, man. But, we also lost some students on the way, Russ. There's a kid named Marcus that was in a high school there. And, they came to me, and they said, 'Hey, Marcus is maybe not make it. What can you do?' I flew down to Houston--this is just one of several examples like this--talked to Marcus, and a phenomenal kid. Phenomenal kid: smart, witty, thoughtful, could get science concepts like that. But, he's in jail now for 20 years for armed robbery. And I failed him. I failed him.

There's another kid in the Crown Heights, P.S. 399 [Public School #399]. He was a fifth grader, and I was told that his gangs were starting to kind of circle around him, and whether I'd take him under my wing. I said, 'Absolutely, 100%.' Gave him a flip phone at that time--I'm so old. I told him, 'Call me any time.' I was just about to get on stage to do a keynote, and he called me and he needed help. I looked out at an audience, and there was a thousand people waiting. I said, 'I'll call you right back as soon as I'm done with this.' And he never spoke to me again. I failed that kid.

I lay awake at night, and I don't sleep much because I feel personally responsible for what's going on. These are my people. They're your people, too. And, we have to do absolutely everything we can, in my opinion, to change their lives.

I tried hard at that stage of my life. I worked as hard as I physically could. But I don't think it was enough. Yes, we had some impact, but it wasn't enough.