Log in
On technology that needs to get into a very cold sea.
A great many, and perhaps the majority of Americans now between their late twenties and early sixties, have spent time in Mister Rogers’ neighborhood. My own period of regular visitation would have been in the nineteen-eighties, a decade when Fred Rogers introduced his preschool-age viewers to guest stars from Lou Ferrigno, in and out of Incredible Hulk makeup, to a ten-year-old boy with spina bifida. He also took on geopolitical issues, up to and including mutually assured nuclear destruction, and social ones, as on the memorable “divorce week” of 1981. Such topical broadcasts were mixed in with re-runs produced as far back as 1969, the year Mister Rogers got the country’s attention by inviting Officer Clemmons to share his wading pool.
What those of us then tuning in didn’t see was anything from the first, black-and-white season of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which comprised an astonishing 130 episodes that aired in 1968 alone. You can watch the series premiere at the top of the post, just recently uploaded onto the show’s new official channel.
It may come as a shock to see a 39-year-old Mister Rogers, whom most of us remember as the embodiment of avuncularity or even grandfatherliness. But what’s even more striking, if unsurprising, is that his onscreen persona, with its disinclination to talk down to children, never really changed. That surely owes to its apparent identity with his offscreen persona: as he liked to put it, “kids can spot a phony a mile away.”
“Aside from clips and compilations,” writes the New York Times’ Sopan Deb, “the channel will make a selection of full-length episodes available globally for the first time as well as some that haven’t aired in several decades on PBS stations.” With the show’s 60th anniversary coming up the year after next, the time does seem right to make as many of its 895 episodes as possible available to a new generation. As of now, the channel also offers the episodes with Officer Clemmons and the pool, Koko the Gorilla, and the mesmerizing look inside the crayon factory. There’s even the crossover between Mister Rogers and Bill Nye the Science Guy from 1997, by which time the latter had become a television icon to us millennials. Though we probably didn’t catch his visit at the time, we can now keep it bookmarked to show our own kids — assuming they don’t discover it first.
Related Content:
Mr. Rogers Takes Breakdancing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)
Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speaking to Children (1977)
Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968)
Watch the First Episode of Sesame Street and 140 Other Free Episodes
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the author of the newsletter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
My Students Can’t Read. “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.”
Lately I’ve been strengthening my professional network by shitposting on LinkedIn. Keep scrolling to unlock my FREE course on how you can too!
My LinkedInfluencer journey began when I was reflecting on the evil fake polycule that I tricked 3 million people into believing in. I was baffled that so many people believed it was real, and my theories on why already sounded LinkedInesque, so I figured I’d post them on LinkedIn.
Also, my friend Mackenzie has been regularly posting on LinkedIn after starting a job in B2B SaaS, and she enthused its untapped potential. I thought it’d be funny to follow her LinkedInfluencer arc but post meaningless garbage instead, which is just like most posts on LinkedIn, but a little bit funnier.1
My LinkedIn post performed unexpectedly decently. And almost immediately, a swarm of other LinkedIn satirical posters requested to connect, I suppose I inadvertently blasted out the shitposting batsignal.
So I began LinkedInifying other schemes I concocted, like when I made men oil up and fight “to the death” to even out the gender ratio in SF.
At this point, not only did I receive no negative reinforcement, I actually got positive reinforcement, so I wanted to see how far I could take that, and posted about my charity strip show.
I should mention that I actually used to work at LinkedIn, which probably made this saga even more exciting for all my former coworkers on the platform.
Then the spirit of professionalism possessed me; I began blacking out and letting the soul of a middle aged salesman take hold.
The above post was reshared by LinkedIn Lunatics (a Twitter account dedicated to sharing cringy LinkedIn posts), but so many commenters thought it was a genuine, unironic post, which was insane. I mean, look at it.
And since I was resharing my LinkedIn shitposts on Substack, a bunch of Substackers started connecting with me on LinkedIn, which was so funny. It’s like when you see your friend dressed up in a little business suit for a formal event, but you just see them as a silly little guy, and the dichotomy is hilarious. I’ve seen your worksona, I know what you really are…. a PROFESSIONAL!
This one came to me in a dream.
While my LinkedIn posts did not reach the viral heights of the “I am humbled and honored to share” announcements on LinkedIn, they did get outsized attention when I reshared them on Substack. Why? Perhaps, the rebellion against society’s idolization of professional life. Perhaps the voyeurism, the little portal through which to peer at another platform, a far darker and more evil place, while remaining safely behind the white-picket suburban, Substackian fence, clutching one’s pearls in horror while one can’t help but look on in grotesque curiosity.
Funny enough, accomplished business professionals, the caliber of which I would want to network with anyway, reached out to ME because of my stupid shitposting. As well as like 50 randos that just wanted to strengthen their professional network or whatever.
Why did you do this?
Because it’s funny.
Also, I’ve recently started taking this approach in life, where whenever I’m scared of doing something, I just do it immediately. I’m a chronic over analyzer, and I waste so much energy stressing about crossing the line.
But if I don’t know where that line is, I will forever needlessly constrain myself. So I have to find it at least once. And in my search to find it, I’ve lost conviction that it even exists. Or at least, it lies far beyond the bounds of what I even want to do.
As I grow older, I’ve also become increasingly dispassionate about optimizing my life around any career or institution.
There’s this parable of the Mexican fisherman and the American investment banker. Basically, the fisherman says he just fishes enough to support his family’s immediate needs, then spends the rest of his day with his family and friends, drinking wine, and sleeping in late. The banker scoffs and says he should spend more time fishing, to afford a bigger boat, then get more boats, then open his own cannery, etc, and become a millionaire. The fisherman asks, what then? And the banker says then, the fisherman can retire, and describes the life of leisure the fisherman is already living.
So imagine instead of fishing, the hero of this story was really passionate about posting stupid shit on the internet.
I don’t want to wait until I’m retired to live my ideal life, I want to live it constantly. Why would I postpone that to when I’m too old and tired to even fully enjoy it? Like, I digital nomaded around for a bit, and already felt the difference of how hard travel is on the body between my early 20’s and late 20’s. Plus, when I’m old I might become out of touch and less funny, the true horror.
Besides, to be honest, we are all tiny cogs in a huge machine and I don’t think other people care much about what you’re doing. Sure, you’ll hear some horror story of someone posting something and getting fired, but also, people go for a walk outside and get hit by a car. It doesn’t mean it’s probable, and the severity of the consequence multiplied by the chance it happens isn’t great enough that you shouldn’t live your life.
I eventually told people at my “big prestigious tech job” about the time I summoned hundreds of people to the park for Sit Club (my parody run club), or my fake steakhouse that went internationally viral, and the worst thing that happened was they asked me to bring more of that creative zest to team events.
“But Danielle, you don’t understand! My job is so big and serious and important, this doesn’t apply at all!” Sure, there’s granularities to it. Don’t start an onlyfans or become a weapons influencer if you want to be taken seriously in a professional career. But I think people overly sterilize themselves for companies that don’t even care enough to read cover letters and would lay you off on a whim because they overspent on Claude credits that month.2
Maybe shitposting on LinkedIn isn’t your first priority after embracing your newfound knowledge that you do, in fact, have free will. But I urge you to toe the line of something, tap your foot against it and see if it even exists at all.3
I took this approach in other areas of my life too - texting friends I’d fallen out of touch with when they came to mind, without overthinking it; shipping projects and only being a bit obsessive about the details; posting things without worrying about every possible person’s reaction to it. Opportunities and good luck only come from putting yourself out there.
TLDR; Think less, create more.4
Love,
Danielle (𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁)
P.S. Gargantuan thank you to my patrons - Anne, Jon, Cori, Jen, Travis, Jeff, Dan, Bathtime, Roland, Jey, Erika, Adam, Tamsin, Ryan, Mariarita, Lucy, Patrick, Emily, Kat, Miranda, Sasha, Jade, Francesca, Fanclau, Cristin, Patrek, Eli, Yush, Tomer, Cynthia, Adler, Joana, Gillian, Judy, Christina, Tanairi - for funding my scheming. All subscription funds go straight to the mischief budget.
1
We actually met at LinkedIn, where we both used to work.
2
Plus, your hobbies and dreams are probably not as out-there as mine, so the risk of a catastrophic offense is much lower.
3
Obviously don’t do anything ethically wrong, I’m talking about learned but ultimately meaningless social norms here.
4
This is only a good approach for overthinkers, SOME of you are underthinkers and need to be thinking more fr.
The University of California at Berkeley discovered the percentage of failing grades in multiple CS classes this spring "is significantly higher than past semesters," reports the campus's student newspaper.
"Instructors point to students' increased reliance on AI, lack of mathematical preparedness and understaffing as potential contributing factors."
According to [coursework platform] Berkeleytime, 35.3% of CS 10 students and 10.6% of CS 61A students received F's in spring 2026. In spring 2025 and spring 2024, the percentage of F's did not exceed 10% for either class. The electrical engineering and computer sciences department's grading guidelines state that 7% of students in lower division courses, including CS 10 and CS 61A, should receive D's and F's...
[UC Berkeley teaching professor Dan Garcia, who taught both classes] believes the "primary driver" of these abnormally high failing rates is due to a "vast increase in academic dishonesty" due to students' usage of large language models, such as Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini. "Some of the numbers that you saw from the number of students who receive failing grades were because we caught them (cheating) and prosecuted them and are sending their cases to the Center for Student Conduct," Garcia said. "But in other cases, it's students who are leaning a little too hard on LLMs to do their work for them, and then at exam time just really aren't ready." According to Garcia, nearly 30 students in CS 10 were "caught cheating on take-home exams" in spring 2026...
In addition to overreliance on AI, Garcia also pointed out that many students are underprepared mathematically, a concern echoed by campus associate teaching professor Gireeja Ranade. Ranade noticed a similar lack of prerequisite mathematical skills in her spring 2026 EECS 127 class, "Optimization Models in Engineering," which she described as "differently challenging" to teach this semester. The class saw a 16.8% F rate, far higher than the 5% of D's and F's that the EECS department describes as "typical" for an upper division course...
Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It's worth asking whether LLMs are actually making us more productive at all—and if so, what we might be sacrificing in return.
Next Page of Stories