john mitchell @daeyoung@qoto.org

#TIL the curb-cut effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect

@taylan I don't hate her (in fact, I find her entertaining and hilarious) but people tend to dislike her for her over-the-top, theatrical performances. And I'd be like "THAT'S WHY SHE'S SO FUNNY!!!"

@tinysapien oh i see you clarify that it's about spoken communication. I should've read till the end of your thread. I agree with you 100%.

OTOH, I do think people want to be themselves, be funny during talks and conferences. But some are afraid to do things differently; some are just lazy. At the end of the day, the ultimate issue is that there's no incentive to "present well" because we've structured academia based on elitism and credentialism: the "your inability to understand is a mark against you, not me" mentality. Raising awareness about effective and enjoyable communication is a good place to start, but I'm just saying something bigger and structural is needed

@tinysapien I totally agree with this. Unfortunately though, there is safety in numbers, and whoever departs from the horrible way everyone does things runs the risk of being judged. It's the senior scientists and scholars' responsibility to pave the way and establish what's OK and what's not, because I don't think they want papers to be overly informal

@miermont oh my… I just assumed gas pipelines would be airtight with no leaks. The thing about Japan and South Korea is that there’s not enough sunlight to go fully solar, so I heard they’re both investing hugely in hydrogen energy. If the pipelines can’t contain natural gas, it definitely can’t contain hydrogen. 😓

@miermont I’ve always thought the 2011 nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan would spook them away from nuclear power. Natural gas is still better than coal but still… I didn’t know the giant tankers leak methane either 🤯

@miermont I was poking jokes though lol. Your toot about Japan is crazy. They’re **fucking ready** for this winter

@miermont no, a nonbreaking space is the most neutral choice and the metric system standard

@miermont be careful, that apostrophe as the thousands separator can start WWIII

Recently came to know of this scholarship (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/computer-science/study/scholarships/aspire-award-undergraduate-scholarship) selected and awarded by a prestigious British university, and one of the eligibility criteria is "must be black or mixed-black." Along with the recent U.S. Supreme Court case on affirmative action (Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College), this rekindles my skepticism of race-conscious affirmative action.

1. Logically speaking, UCL's criteria are connected by "and" (i.e., A and B and C and ...), so the fastest way to whittle down candidates is to pick the most stringent one and apply it first. Nonblacks don't qualify anyway so that criterion alone can strike lots of people out. It's arguably the sole reason for rejecting an applicant. Also, how do you quantify blackness? We surely cannot go back to the "one-drop rule."

2. If this were a U.S. public university (as UCL is public), the strict scrutiny analysis is that you need a compelling state interest and it must be narrowly tailored for the public and the government. My question is how can a (black-only) scholarship program that discriminates against diverse candidates in favor of one racial group be narrowly tailored to advance the interest of diversity? This runs directly afoul of Grutter v. Bollinger.

3. The UK does not have a compelling reason to erect a reparative criterion for black migrants, especially with British taxpayer money. I sound like a raging conservative but I don't think I'm being irrational or extreme here. The UK parliament can do all sorts of things to help underprivileged people through legislation, but doling out public resources such as scholarship programs and public university admission cannot be one of them.

#AffirmativeAction #UCL

@strawd I see. I used to never use hashtag. I guess I'll have to get used to it

@davoloid I mean I’m not new to the concept of underrepresented groups. I just think it’s on shaky grounds because most underprivileged groups experience a lack of opportunities not because they’re of a specific racial group, but rather because they’re poor.

But even without all this, affirmative action precedents in the U.S. ban race being the sole reason for admitting/rejecting an applicant. So yeah, that won’t pass

@Pat you have a point. I’ll perhaps stop using CW for political toots

@Pat I heard that’s a standard practice here on Mastodon and I intend to respect it—although I don’t quite understand if it actually really matters that much

@strawd the search bar does the same thing so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t that be more an issue of whether there’s enough people in your area using this platform? Which given that Elon keeps fucking Twitter up at some point there will be