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ArbitraryValue

@ ArbitraryValue @sh.itjust.works

Posts
2
Comments
735
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

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  • The headline is overstating things quite a bit. From the article:

    DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody

    I wouldn't call that manufacturing fake terrorists.

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  • Maybe some graduate-level classes need to be taught by a researcher in the field and so students will simply have to deal with any deficiencies that researcher may have as a teacher, but IMO undergrads will probably learn more at a community college because the professors are actually there to teach.

    I still wouldn't recommend the community college because the diploma from there won't get the graduate as much respect, but I do know a community college graduate with a bachelor's who makes way more than I do. She had trouble getting her first job but once she had some work experience, employers cared a lot less about where she studied. I also know another graduate who got her associate's at a community college and then transferred to somewhere more prestigious; she saved money without compromising her education.

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  • Your argument is reasonable, although I don't think the fact that Google is aligned with the USA and Western Europe is a coincidence. This anti-trust action is itself a demonstration of the power that the US government does have over Google, and Google knows better than to provoke the use of that power. Anti-trust law is largely a matter of the government's opinion rather than objective rules, so Google has no effective legal defense other than keeping the government's opinion of it favorable.

    I don't think Google could get away with deliberately manipulating elections in the way that you propose. Even if it were to tilt the outcome from one established party to another, that party would not be beholden to it. (If the party that it helped knew that it helped, then unless that party controlled Google, it would rightly consider Google a threat rather than an ally.) Furthermore, manipulating elections would have a huge risk of being revealed and facing devastating blowback. Engineers rather than the board of directors are the ones who actually make Google function and those engineers would be neither oblivious to nor loyal to some plan for domination by the board of directors.

    With that said, I disagree with you primarily because I'm very risk-averse when it comes to matters like this. Right now, the "juggernaut like Google that is The Internet" is working in our favor and if we break it up then we won't have a juggernaut working in our favor anymore. We would be better off if we were able to accomplish what you propose while retaining dominance of the internet, but IMO the reward is not worth the risk of forfeiting that dominance. Those who are losing need to take risks but those who are winning should not, and right now the USA is winning.

  • Jill Stein Is Killing the Green Party

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  • Was the Green party ever alive? I don't think so.

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  • I wouldn't be opposed to more funding but there would still have to be some way to decide who to fund and making a good case that one's research is worthwhile is always going to take a long time.

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  • This post reports that the requirement to use words like "novel" and refer to ourselves using the third-person "we" was circumvented following our transition to industry. Furthermore, the capability to write original text without using the passive voice was gained. These developments represent a significant improvement in clarity. Additional increases in the efficiency of communication may be possible as the ability to express concepts in a straightforward manner is developed further.

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  • But God is a beetle, isn't he?

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  • I think it's funny how academia selects people based on their scientific aptitude and research experience and then puts them into positions where they have to spend much of their time teaching (something they may not have the aptitude for and definitely aren't trained to do) and writing grant proposals. The more experience people have, the less time they have to do research (with the exception of a relatively small number of celebrity professors).

    With that said, I'm not sure how things could be changed for the better. I'd say that some training in teaching would be good, but I think most academics don't actually want that. Being a TA was already an unwelcome imposition back when I was a grad student, so I wouldn't have wanted to spend more time away from my research to become a better TA.

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  • I don't see how this is bootlicking. I don't gain anything from saying it; it's just my sincere opinion. The USA as it is now, with the tech billionaires, is very rich and very powerful, and this does benefit ordinary Americans and not just tech billionaires. My impression is that many people on Lemmy focus on the problems in the USA and lose perspective of how good it is here compared to pretty much everywhere else. There's a reason why so many people are desperate to immigrate, and that's because they will be better off here even as poor Americans.

    I expect some people are going to think of countries like Sweden where the standard of living is claimed to be better than it is in the USA. I'm not convinced that it actually is; I'd rather live here than there. However, even if people in Sweden do enjoy a higher standard of living, it's because they benefit from the world order established and maintained by the USA since the second world war. Their defense and their access to international trade is subsidized by the USA. (That's one thing Trump is right about, although the way he went about saying so was foolish because it undermined the perception of NATO unity that is so important.) If they USA declines, Europe will decline with it.

  • MRW tall people lift me off the ground as a joke without asking

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  • But I love lifting short people off the ground! (I wouldn't mind being lifted off the ground but I don't know anyone tall enough.)

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  • And yet somehow I trust Google acting in its own self-interest to benefit Americans more than the government breaking up Google with the intent of benefiting Americans. American companies dominate the internet (outside of China), this is to America's great advantage, and I don't think the government should risk losing that advantage.

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  • Wasps stung a man in Reno just to watch him cry.

  • Instagram makes all teen accounts private - npr

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  • Nothing can fix things because teenagers will not cooperate. If Instagram could identify all its teenage users, those users would move to a platform that couldn't. The only thing the restrictions achieve is a reduction in the market share of the platform with the restrictions.

  • What's your least favourite thing about your smartphone

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  • The fact that it won't have any record of calls I missed while the phone was off or didn't have reception, although actually that's probably the fault of the service provider. They can send me texts I missed. Why can't they send me a list of missed calls?

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  • My worst review said that my paper was technically sound but my entire specialty was a "cottage industry" generating computational models with no real-world relevance and therefore the paper should be rejected. The editor offered the opportunity to rebut but what could I say to something like that?

    (The reviewer still lives, as far as I know.)

    On the plus side, this meant that I was rejected by PNAS but then published in BJ.

  • Removed

    ‘Do not store guns in your oven’: Loaded gun stored in oven fires multiple rounds after getting overheated

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  • But who can stop an oven with a gun?

  • Nightmare at 60,000 Light Years

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  • He doesn't look particularly concerned.

  • I could use some context

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  • There's already a genetic mutation that does that.

    Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy is not known to cause any medical problems, and affected individuals are intellectually normal.

    And it makes you look like this:

    That's a house-cat, and it looks like that without having to lift weights. Some people have this mutation too, and it's particularly dramatic in children who would otherwise never be that muscular. (I'd post pictures but I'm not sure about the ethics of sharing photos of other people's swole toddlers even when they're already available online.)

  • I could use some context

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  • And Picard is nine feet tall. I guess that's why he's in charge.