Notices by Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE (timwardcam@c.im)

@Em0nM4stodon No, their goal is not to show their content. They don't give a shit whether you read their content or not. Their goal is to make money, by whatever means.

@Em0nM4stodon If competently done (which I agree is a bit of an "if") they'll have numbers which support the way they're doing it.

@Kimberley Back in my day, one didn't seem to have to apply for a PhD place, I was just told that one was open to me (in the same institution where I was finishing my first degree), with X as supervisor.

Then I was chatting to Y, another academic in the department. "Y'know, X's students don't usually end up with a PhD" he said.

I was too politically naïve to understand what he was saying, and did nothing in response. I started the PhD course with X as supervisor and dropped out after a year.

I realised some considerable time later that what Y was suggesting was that I should request a change of supervisor, presumably that Y should be my supervisor instead. But he couldn't say that explicitly - it would be unethical to poach someone else's student - it would have to look like my idea.

So, to answer your question, I should have asked "can I have Y as my supervisor?"

@datenwolf @dalias @aeva It was ever thus. A typical three year academic contract consisted of (and still does for all I know)

* one year scrabbling around to get the grants to buy the necessary kit

* one year doing actual work

* one year applying for the next three year job.

@freci @aral Same with Twitter. So my account there still exists but has been abandoned for some years.

@skinnylatte Hadn't noticed that, although I've probably cycled past it numerous times. But then the shops along there pop up and disappear again quite rapidly.

@adammoe2022 Oh, might that be a flaw in the American Dream?

@adammoe2022 Weird. I thought the USA was The Land Of The Free, where you could have anything you liked. Provided, of course, that you were willing to pay for it.

@ccferrie Farmers have only used fuel for tractors for a tiny fraction of the industry's history. I'm not saying that they could all revert to horses overnight, but hey, some contingency planning perhaps?

@aral The USA has been rampaging round the world bombing the shit out of people for no good reason for rather longer than 47 years, hasn't it?

@ai6yr Having said which:

(1) When I've taken passengers flying I've trained them in opening the door as part of the safety briefing.

(2) When I have overnight visitors I should them how to open all the outside doors in case of fire.

(3) It has *never* occurred to me that I need to give *car* passengers a safety briefing on how to open the door.

@ai6yr It's solved for pilots. It's called "training" and it works fine.

Oh wait ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs

@anon_opin You keep onions in the fridge?

@quinn What's a "food desert"? My wife has on business trips to the USA stayed in neighbourhoods where it's impossible to buy what we in Europe would regard as real food - the only thing on offer is (extremely) junk "food" that is completely incapable of sustaining normal life. Is that what "food desert" means?

@ChrisMayLA6 And if one day the Greens win power ...

... they will suddenly realise that FPTP isn't so bad after all, and that in fact voting reform is a long way down their priority list.

@bmacDonald94 The consensus seems to be something along the lines of:

"There is no physical basis for free will, therefore it does not exists. But ... as we can't in practice predict how anyone is going to behave in the future, including ourselves, we might as well live our lives as if free will is a thing after all."

@bmacDonald94 "The beginning of wisdom is the awareness that there is insufficient evidence that... we are responsible ... for our own destiny"

And the next stage of wisdom is to discover physics and learn that actually there is no such thing as free will ...

@bmacDonald94 On our open day at Churchill, before our exam results came out, one of the party asked "what happens if we fail the Use of English?" (this was a bunch of mathematicians who were taking science A levels).

After a pause ... "we don't know," said one of the dons, "it's never happened."

RE: https://wandering.shop/@vapaad/115975141052792861

Yes. This is how politics is done.

@forteller FSVO "we".

When I was on a council committee organising HMD events the other victims of the Holocaust, and other genocides (eg Rwanda), *were* given attention. YMMV I guess, depending on where you live.