Joe @twitskeptic@qoto.org

@chockenberry I once saw a bike accident where a very large card deck flew out of someone's backpack and scattered across a road. In the rain.

Also remember the feeling of waiting several hours around the end of the quarter for the campus mainframe to process a card deck and getting notified of a compilation error. Good times.

@ct_bergstrom I just find it ironic that their fake paper detector failed to detect their fake paper.

@kjhealy Why do people buy expensive proprietary stuff from tiny, unstable companies? Imagine risking $80k on a Rivian truck...

Go corvids! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/11/crows-and-magpies-show-their-metal-by-using-anti-bird-spikes-to-build-nests?CMP=share_btn_tw

Someone really likes physics. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/us/massachusetts-overdue-book-119-years.html?unlocked_article_code=zNjt4zUQQFMz4ACM2_WYjF1kWWw1QXOAmDwccxZxRdFCbNtCA23t17rV9s66z4WIHzbmVIUn0GNvNyAL7WNlAegE7mUy1VmB3dNL0OaMKI3uQHh3o7lXGwjg2ohHlvE1sCGIA9wFTFTy_jMVA4sDEmq03cVBib-J1sy1xcgHFx8WBG_Fv1s7-QyrucNE1rMPvcOwR2QkuTCfMVOFJYkVFhp_rmJoNc5JfjpadmPU0mP5QXObZv3wlPZR6jxJQIKsjJwLDa2Zq1532WLGWx1fQ8HdT1D9P6eLJgiac1ZaE0ipUZcRcHXhZZGgQmL604aClMrynWiMvhU5Mptyk1Bi16YIWr-89mDQKAQ&smid=url-share

@MarcAbrahams Agree that it was weird - equivalent of condemning Houdini for exposing seances in the Victorian era. OTOH, the author (David Segal) got us a refund on a defective microwave back when he was "The Haggler" on the Times. So I'll give him the same room he gave Geller.

Anyone unhappy about this, if true?

@ct_bergstrom Here he was a few years ago, just weeping at the prospect of machines replacing humans.

@ct_bergstrom How could you leave out Max Tegmark? Look, here he is rediscovering Schrodinger's equation AND Einstein's field equations just for the article.

Post July 4th air quality is not good near where I live. Dumbest holiday of the year.

@ct_bergstrom At day 10 of covid + rebound covid, I most certainly don't understand the immune response problem.

Fuck yes I'm complaining.

@Riedl If you are childless and then adopt a child are you allowed to vote? Does someone lose their vote if they give up a child for adoption? Or if their only child dies? Should you get extra votes for every child you have? Does a semen or egg donor that results in a birth get a vote even if they are childless?

@histoftech OK, instead of failed let's substitute "mistakenly switched off". My point is that this was an obvious vulnerability that could easily have been mitigated. If someone could ruin their research by tripping a breaker, how were they protected against power outages?

@histoftech Alternative take - extremely bad lab management to place 20 years of research at risk from a failed circuit breaker. Lots of not particularly expensive options, like a UPS or even distributing the cultures to multiple freezers on different circuits. Seems like they're looking for scapegoats here.

Totally agree with Twitter's new CEO here.

Great Andrew Gelman piece on the professionalization of hyped science claims. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2023/06/27/they-came-in-through-the-window-the-migration-of-tech-hype-from-the-fringes-to-the-media-and-academic-mainstream/

@ct_bergstrom I wonder if there's any evidence of increased risk taking on the part of researchers in fields where the cost of a failed high risk proposal or project isn't as high as it might be in other fields? For example, what about MD-PhDs in medical research or academic computer scientists? In both cases, hefty compensation is still available as clinicians or industry researchers, respectively, which would minimize wage risk aversion.