mineralfellow @ mineralfellow @lemmy.world

Posts

7

Comments

116

Joined

2 yr. ago

Stopped at re-entry to the US.

Just had a prominent colleague return from a conference in Italy. He was stopped at the border and questioned for several hours, making him miss his flight.

Yeah, defense spending is something like half the discretionary budget. Obviously the place to start when cutting waste, but not politically viable for arcane reasons.

1. The Colour of Magic
2. The Light Fantastic
3. Everything else

You need to read more Terry Pratchett.

Of course, everyone does.

I am a useless person with a PhD...

Are they hiring?

It has added some new jokes at the braai. Also spawned arguments about who wants Elon the least.

Deporting legal immigrants with proper documentation has happened already.

Deporting valid visa holders after cancelling a visa for no clear reason has happened.

Tarrifs have been instated, removed, reinstated, and modified based on whims of the president.

Judges made legal decisions, which is their job, and we're subsequently harassed by ICE.

DOGE has done irreparable harm to the well established, decades old infrastructure that the country runs on. Because of their decisions, top-level scientists are fleeing the country, programs to help people around the world and project US power have been dissolved with no warning, and institutions across the country have been thrown into disarray. There is no indication that the individuals involved know what they are breaking or have any plan to repair it.

If you are, in fact, living under a rock, then looking into all of these things might be a good start. You might then want to look into the history of Nazi Germany in the mid 1930's to see how they destroyed democracy back then, and see how things happening now mirror what was happening then.

I live in an area that routinely has 70% humidity. My prints are consistently stringy, and I know it is because of the wet filament. I use an A1 Mini with AMS. Is there a solution, or am I doomed to stringy prints?

They can be cold as a frozen thermometer in December if you ask about the weather in July.

Yeah, I was enjoying some videos about dumb Steven Seagal movies, but then I realized that every single one would have jokes about women being bad drivers, being overly emotional, etc. At first I took it as a humorous way to look at Seagal's misogyny, but then it became apparent that it was being applied in other cases where it didn't make sense. It was subtle, in the context of the rest of the videos, but a definitely present part was the manosphere mentality.

You misread the first sentence.

We could have had the trans Pacific Partnership. Had it been signed, we would probably be in great shape globally, with trade securing peace and economic stability.

The endowments are earmarked for particular use. The grants allow individual researchers to do their research. University funding math is weird.

Yeah, my first thought when I saw this was that it was definitely not made by a scientist.

Depends somewhat on the particular negative. We can claim with certainty that dinosaurs are not alive today, even though there are theoretically places that are not sufficiently explored where, in principle, a dinosaur might live. We are well aware that the fossil record is globally consistent and demonstrates the timing of their extinction, as well as the lack of any fossils of dinosaurs since then.

Similarly, I can claim with confidence that a force does not exist in the universe that would allow me to teleport from place to place instantaneously, because such a force would violate many of the known laws of physics.

There are various types of god-beings that cannot exist because of a logical contradiction. An omnipresent entity, for instance, would be always detectable if it had any measurable effect on the world, but no such measurable effect can be observed. If it is not capable of a measurable effect, then it is indistinguishable from not existing.

Other types of negatives are not easily proven. That is why scientists will say things like, “Based on 3478 measurements, there is currently no evidence to support the existence of higher values than those reported here.”

What was going on five years ago?

I was at the conference he was supposed to attend - the Lunar and Planetary Science conference. There were a lot of people showing Los Alamos data there.

I love Tartu, but last I heard, the pay and funding sucked. How is it now?