I’ve seen this with a PhD student publishing several rapid fire papers in MDPI journals. They are repeating well understood physics work done 50 years ago using off the shelf commercial simulation software. They don’t cite any papers older than a decade and claim without irony that the work is “significant” while none of their papers are cited. They will go to events where no one is an expert in the field and win prizes for showing lots of pretty pictures but nothing that isn’t already well understood.
When I, an expert in the field, tell them they need to produce something novel at their research panels I’m told I’m wrong. When I list all the work they are ripping off I’m told it’s somehow different without explanation. When I question the obvious sloppiness in their work (the simulation data showing major artefacts) they blow up at me screaming and shouting.
I’ve never experienced arrogance like this before. It’s shocking. Their supervisors tell me that they are close to firing them but then also celebrate all the publications they are getting.
> When I, an expert in the field, tell them they need to produce something novel at their research panels I’m told I’m wrong. When I list all the work they are ripping off I’m told it’s somehow different without explanation. When I question the obvious sloppiness in their work (the simulation data showing major artefacts) they blow up at me screaming and shouting.
At risk of relying totally on assumptions, that wouldn't be a surprising reaction for someone facing first serious criticism after an entire life of probably being unconditionally lauded for their smarts (or the projection of it). When parents push children towards something relentlessly without providing any constructive feedback on account of living their dreams through their children and/or the fear of discouraging the child, any criticism can feel like someone is trying to destroy your life goals.
> Their supervisors tell me that they are close to firing them but then also celebrate all the publications they are getting.
Probably trying to protect themselves from being in the crosshairs of one of many things that can blow your career apart.
This individual is pretty unique in this regard. I’ve never seen anything like it. Most students will acknowledge that I know the literature and will accept guidance. This person seems to think they know everything but their work is the equivalent of a tutorial case in the commercial software.
Ok to be fair the original is probably a badly scanned tech report from GE from the 70’s with minimal implementation details. Whoever has tried to implement an obscure physics paper from that age knows how tough it can be.
I think there is value revisiting some of this work with our modern toolsets and publishing the code in some public repository.
But of course with a clear citation chain, and no pompous lies that a new discovery was made.
It’s a really basic engineering problem that was studied extensively in many studies and we teach it at undergraduate.
When I made the point that there is no scientific novelty here they insisted that their PhD was a ‘generic’ one and that means they can continue to run basic simulations according the to the recipe.
I'm all in favor of intellectuals, it's academic bureaucracies I'm not fond of.
I think Socrates was a hoot, and he taught in a cave or something like that.
Priests teaching rural peasants to read in their monasteries, and collegial colleges for the public benefit are definitely meritorious.
But,I mean, there is enormous corruption going on.
How did Ren Youzai get into MIT? He was a body guard. Just because you've married into a billionaire's family MIT says "hey, send anyone you want in"?
And I'm sure MIT isn't alone in mysteriously average students who not only get in but graduate when linked to massively rich and powerful families. A recent US president comes to mind. Is that anti-intellectual?
You’re arguing about highly specific cases while the vast majority of institutions get on with the job of educating large numbers of students and doing what research they can.
The highly specific cases are glaring examples that the unbiased meritocracy they pretend to be is, possibly, not so.
And the "large numbers of students" covers up the possible cronyism and/or corruption of the institution.
I provide an example of a totally unqualified individual being allowed into a prestigious institution solely on the basis of his marriage family. Your response is that they mostly do a good job for most people?
I've suggested that the research they do is not obviously beneficial to anyone except perhaps the person doing the research, possibly simply to advance their own careers (in or out of academia). Others have suggested the same.
It sounds like you can't defend your position and resort to (I think?) name-calling, although I have no idea what a "culture war poster" is - I used to have a poster of Farrah Faucet in a red bathing suit, is that the same thing?
And I have no hobby horses, just a high horse, and you better hold your horses or else you'll be just be whipping a dead horse.
Your unwillingness to defend and advance your position is duly noted. Have a nice day.
> I think Socrates was a hoot, and he taught in a cave or something like that.
I'm not sure whether you're joking or serious, but in any case, Socrates didn't teach in a cave, and you're probably referring to Plato's allegory of the cave.
The interlocuters and followers of Socrates were mostly the wealthy elite of Athens.
Accessible? Meaning it's available for purchase if you have the money? Or actually affordable?
(first quack)
"For example, in 2022–23, the average total cost of attendance for first-time, full-time undergraduate students living on campus at 4-year degree-granting institutions was higher at private nonprofit institutions ($58,600) than at private for-profit institutions ($33,600) and public institutions ($27,100).4"
You can say luxury sports cars are "accessible" if you want to finance a $150,000 car. And effectively that's what many (most? all?) college degrees are: luxury sports cars.
I went from a 2560x1600 27” 2012 iMac to a 5K 2015 iMac. The 2015 model was the first not to offer target display mode, so it’s even worse than you say. For a while I ran the 2012 as a second display for the 2015.
The 2012 iMac is long gone, passed to a friend, but I still daily drive the 2015 5K. I’m interested in the new iMac but the 24” screen feels like a downgrade. The 27” studio display seems like a nice option but for similar money I get an extra computer in a smaller screen.
Naturally I could buy a cheap monitor but I don’t want to.
I used your iMac as the daily driver for years, and now use the 27” Studio Display. I don’t know what’s more frustrating: that it’s still effectively the same panel 10 years later, or that it’s still the best one (for reasonable money).
I was tempted to gut it and stick in a display driver board but that comes with a risk of destroying the thing. It’s still running fine and I could find use for it elsewhere.
Low key, not expensive; they drive a couple old Panasonic plasma TVs I have. St one point, I was a big Chromecast fan but that seems to have been largely abandoned and Apple TV seems more functional.
A lot of our students use Overleaf, I’ve never seen the point; especially now that most of their thesis documents no longer compile on the free tier.
I suggested one my students simply install LaTeX and he went down some Docker rabbit hole a fellow class mate sent him. Students do love to over complicate things.
Docker sounds about right for Latex given its gazillion dependencies with multiple alternatives and choices for several of those. I haven't really needed or used it in many years but it always was a bit of a beast to install. Early Linux in the nineties of course came with convenient package management that somewhat hides this. But dealing with e.g. windows or mac setups exposes a bit more that it's quite a bit of cruft that is getting installed.
The macOS installer is very easy to use and you can even install a basic version that installs the main latex packages you need (91MB). If you need to install more than the basic ones there is a package manager UI for that (TeX Live utility). Of course I just install the full version and I have everything. It is 5.7GB download.
I prefer to run LaTeX locally, but when I need to write something with more people I use Overleaf, as it allow to edit collaboratively. They are not excluding as you can use Git to push and pull changes.
It’s easy to laugh at the silly US HOA stories but here in Ireland (and the UK) people have had similar issues with building bike storage units in front of their homes.
I think people laugh at US stories more because they are the ones harping on about Freedom all the time. There might be 150+ free countries in the world but nobody talks about it more than USA.
America runs on the principle of localism, which basically means that laws should be passed at a local level to deal with their own specific issues. Hence the United "States". This is compatible with some areas having stricter HOAs or laws.
I think both of us know that is not how capital F Freedom is used in any public discourse by Americans or otherwise. That is what makes this funnier. The contrast in how freedom is talked about and how it's implemented.
Do you know many Americans who think "capital F Freedom" means laws don't exist? I've lived here a while and never met anyone who think that way. Most of the time when Americans I know talk about their freedom, they're referring to the 1st and 2nd amendments. I've never really understand freedom to mean "freedom to do whatever you want without impunity."
Is that how other countries perceive American's idea of freedom?
You are missing the point. Nobody thinks Americans mean laws don't exist. But they do mean they are free to do mostly whatever they want. And when reports come out that they aren't even allowed to have grass the size they want in their own front yard the irony of that is super funny. There, now I've dissected the frog for you and ruined the joke for myself.
The real constant is that people get very possessive about their neighbourhood and are keen to defend it from any change or deviation from the perfect image. To the detriment of everyone else's property rights. I do wonder whether this is mostly an Anglosphere thing, though. Edit: oh and Germany, see rest of thread.
I think it's the opposite. They buy a house in a certain environment, and they'd like the house and environment to remain the same (and not be devalued). It's not exactly a hard to understand perspective, even if you disagree with the level of enforcement.
That's one big factor why I don't have an e-cargo bike. Live in town, in a detached, Shops are <1km away. I want an bakfiet style e-cargo, but I've got no place to store one.
Can't get a decent sized bike down the alley, it's difficult to pull one through the house to the shed, and the entry hall already has a tandem in it, which is wide enough to step around.
OTOH, I could get a trailer and park it in the front, and that would be totally legal.
Solution: buy an old, rusty, barely functionnal van, paint it the most provocative way for the conservative people while still abiding to the law. Boobs, penises, vulvas, LGBTQ+ slogans, drawings of Bin Laden with huge neon colors, whatever. Park it in your driveway if you have one, or on the street in front of your house if you can. With an amovible ramp, here is your bike shed.
Now after a few months you can apply for a permit to have a bike shed, maybe the concil will be more tolerant.
People have been tolerating thousands of ugly eyesore vehicles that do not match at all with the architecture but crack down on small, well integrated bike shed. This is just hypocrisy and jealousy by people who refuse to evolve to a new, better world.
A few years ago, a local residents association protested and actually got blocked the opening of a daycare in an actual commercial space due to "traffic" concerns and, I literally quote "The heritage status of area properties would be “eroded” by the daycare use, he said, and the idea of plastic toys, jungle gyms and signage in pastel colours “truly distressing.”.
I fantasized about being a billionaire, paying whatever it would have cost to purchase the property, then opening a private "biker bar club" that would operate at insanely late hours and just paying any noise bylaw fines that came our way. I would have sponsored harley noise competitions at 3am and would have said that it's a pop up club that would end when the application for it to become daycare was granted. I'd have named the daycare "little trikes daycare" as a constant reminder.
But the HoA/council/government can often make your life hell by selectively over-enforcing other laws and taking up a lot of your time and/or money. If I were rich and retired, it'd be "fun" to pass the time (though I wouldn't want to live in such a community anyways).
I _have_ a trailer, but it's got too much bike holding stuff inside to hold a large bike.
(It's a tall box, sorta horse trailer shaped, with benches on each side. Luggage goes underneath, 4 bikes go on the left on the bench, 2 on the right (including the tandem), with front wheels in the nose. We travelled around Europe with all our stuff in it.)
We've had similar struggles and something like a babboe or urban arrow won't fit.
I was 95% close to ordering a Libelle https://leichtlast.de/
The non-motorized unsplittable version weighs around 20kg, the splittable slightly more, but it is splittable.
Ireland being carbrained is an understatement. I have neighbours who will drive to the local Lidl which is _in_ the housing estate. I cycle or bus to work and you see so many motorists glued to their phones. Just awful attitudes because of their addiction to their cars and their phones.
Ireland has appallingly draconian rules, which the councils enforce extremely unevenly.
I did a self build there and it was like every meddling old church biddy in the county got to have a say on what kind of siding I could have, which kind of trees I could have, and whether my fenestrations were appropriate. I'm still annoyed they couldn't comprehend the value of eaves.
Although, you also learn that some rules are OK to break. You can park your car on any pavement in the country without fear of a fine.
To be honest these bike storage (at least those in the three links you gave) are fuglier than fugly. It's kinda a disgrace to the human race that such monstrosities are even conceived and built...
But then people do wear Crocs, so what do I know about taste.
I really don't mind the green ones, in particular when the bikes are used as an alternative to a second car, which to my is significantly more "fugly".
The government in the UK (I know less about Ireland, but I think it is similar) might stop you building something but they do not do things like tell you what to grow in your garden and to what height the lawn should be mown, how you park etc.
When I, an expert in the field, tell them they need to produce something novel at their research panels I’m told I’m wrong. When I list all the work they are ripping off I’m told it’s somehow different without explanation. When I question the obvious sloppiness in their work (the simulation data showing major artefacts) they blow up at me screaming and shouting.
I’ve never experienced arrogance like this before. It’s shocking. Their supervisors tell me that they are close to firing them but then also celebrate all the publications they are getting.
The mind boggles.
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