tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

@telescoper.blog
Wat! What arcane process means you have to write (and presumably hand over) an exam a full 9 months before it will be taken?!

Is there some old custom about giving the cheating students, as ever bound for the retake, a fair shot at stealing the questions?

@kjhealy
is it possible to make one showing the cumulative attainment, that is counting those graduating college also in high school and lower levels too?

@Doug_Bostrom
As stated, the question has a well established answer: with good moderation. Details of what constitutes "good moderation" get hairy very quickly, but the same is true of health care or construction, but those aren't areas seen as being a single problem.

The commercial social networks have the problem that hiring moderators costs money and establishing norms takes time and community deliberation, which again costs money. Meanwhile they make money by distributing largely unwanted speech, making for a stupendous conflict of interest with regards to moderation.

@wdlindsy
"What this suggests is that pointing to poor socioeconomic performance by democratic governments and citizen anger about that performance as the primary drivers of democratic backsliding is a mistake. The onus for backsliding belongs on those leaders who gain power for a wide range of reasons, including in many cases by promising to renovate democracy, but then once in power relentlessly amass unconstrained power by overriding countervailing institutions and undercutting basic democratic norms and procedures. Backsliding in these cases is thus less about a failure of democracy to deliver than about a failure of democracy to constrain—that is, to curb the predatory political ambitions and methods of certain elected leaders."

Carothers and Hartnett, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2024.a930425.

@wdlindsy
Big yikes over that final sentence, I suppose it is written from a state of deep grief, but still...

@kevinrothrock
Yikes, who set that headline? Bump it up several points guys, the headline is supposed to be bold and not a shriveled little raisin in a corner!

I suppose it does communicate how the editors feel about their future...

@muiren
I think it only made me happy? Well, seeing that name made me think about my age, which complicates the picture...

Going to have to see what Gramuglia has to say about turning into a small black pig.

@muiren
Did they say your specific brand of bike was too expensive for a Black person, or was it more that any new bike would be too expensive?

To me it seems very strange to claim that a bike would be too expensive for someone and but also say you own a more expensive one, I just don't think of the bike market as having a structure that makes it plausible to happen.

Honestly I would have expected "black people can learn to bike?" as the more likely type of racist reasoning around bikes.

But I'm neither black nor American, so I obviously know very little about the texture of American racism (in general and in your region specifically).

@franco_vazza
How did he formulate the question? Was it a straightforward "Prove you're really post-doc1, what is the D_{pp}"? Or did he word it more delicately?

And what happened to the real post-doc? Did their phone get stolen?