Not all states support recalls. California kind of goes all in on the democracy thing with the ease of introducing ballot initiatives and recalls and such. It’s mostly fine, but it can also result in pretty stupid plays like this.

It’s an abbreviated article that I refuse to pay to access, but as a (former) academic - and a student before that, obviously - this is beyond concerning.

I also do language research and know the importance of training data, but this has all the appearances of a naked cash grab from an institution who nominally justifies its existence on educating students and conducting research. I was never even fully comfortable with commercial funding for academic research (unless they fully disassociated the commercial aspect from the funding and open sourced the results), but this seems beyond the pale.

I’m not even comfortable if they got “informed consent,” because those forms are so often misunderstood and signing them feels like forced compliance. I’m absolutely against it if they didn’t even go that far.

So if they want to show good faith, all of the deans and administrators of U of M should make recordings of all of their phone calls, meetings, and schedules available for research purposes.

Yes. Yes, I do.

Edit: Bought some. Will update if any other plants or ants start glowing unexpectedly.

In our research as experts in the study of people’s employment over time

On the one hand, I think that this would be a terrible job to get fired from. On the other hand, you would be able to write a ten page paper well supported by citations to explain the gaps in your resume.

God damn it. I don’t think that reviewers and publishers are aware as to the potential long term consequences of publishing shit papers that ultimately get retracted. It’s one thing if it’s some physics paper on a new superconductor, it’s another thing if it leads to an antivax movement that’s still going to this day.

I wish we still had David Graeber around. I really appreciated his insights on this kind of dynamic.

Kara Swisher is by far my favorite writer in tech. She’s been around since the beginning, she knows everybody, and she’s smart as hell and isn’t afraid to just let fly.

Yeah, they found what it wasn’t.

It’s a bit of a cliffhanger.

TiVo was an early digital video recorder that dominated the market for a while. Broadcasters brought lawsuits against the company saying the recording of videos was violating copyright laws, and advertisers hated it because you could skip commercials. TiVo argued in court that they weren’t pirating, but just time shifting the content. Similar arguments were used for people who ripped rented dvds and so on.

You should not discontinue medication until you speak with your healthcare provider.

Neuroanatomy and neurochemistry are complex systems. A high level symptom like depression could be coming from any one of a myriad of causes. A given medication works against specific causes, but will not work if your symptoms are being caused by something not targeted by that medication.

Until our technology and understand improves to the point that we can do some kind of neuroimaging to diagnose, the only thing we can do is to listen to your symptoms and make a best guess. If it doesn’t work, it means that guess was wrong, and you either need a dosage adjustment or a medication change. If it does work but has unmanageable side effects, that’s the same. Any continuing symptoms or side effects have diagnostic relevance, and you need to work with medical staff to dial it in.

TiVo has entered the chat.

Here’s a fun fact: “Doctor” was an academic degree. It was originally meant for theology, but expanded as the scope of academia expanded and natural philosophy became the sciences. We still call the degree “Doctor of Philosophy” as a result of that. Being a doctor of something meant that you were qualified to conduct research and teach at the university level. It eventually meant that you have made a contribution to your field - your dissertation - and the expectation was that you had and would continue to publish research papers in scientific journals.

The idea of a “medical doctor” was a new addition. MDs don’t do research, didn’t do a dissertation, and in general are not equipped to teach and advance the academic understanding of their field.

So I agree. Scientists should get the blue shirts, physicians and surgeons should just wear scrubs.

Some people find period tracking apps very useful.

7 is the most random number, because when you ask someone to choose a random number between 1 and 10, most people choose 7.

Whenever you need a random number in your code, don’t use rand() or a similar function. Use 7. It’s faster, and it’s the choice of the people.

TFW when all of your bugs are like cockroaches that run away from the light but hide in the dark where you can’t see them.

Having dealt with this kind of thing before, it gives a new and more literal definition to the phrase “bloody idiot.”

Just a reminder for when you listen to people being presented as trans persons who regret their surgery:

Norma McCorvey - Jane Roe of Roe v Wade - was presented for decades as a devout Christian (evangelical and later Catholic) who regretted her decision. She was used as a prominent voice in the anti-abortion movement and in the attempts to overturn Roe.

She revealed on her deathbed that she was being paid to take that position. The narrative was also complicated by her 35 year relationship with Connie Gonzalez, later claiming that she was no longer a lesbian before confessing that she was paid to say that as well.

Also remember that when they call the child survivors of school shootings “paid actors,” it’s because that’s exactly the tactic they engage in.

For me your comment history shows about a half dozen comments from 6 months ago with body=“null”

If I remember correctly, Yahoo started exactly like this - curated communities and subsets made of links with perhaps a couple of sentences about each site. I think I might have had a handful of communities back then.

I think it’s an interesting for a bespoke community where people are experts on a set of areas and create essentially catalogs. It can’t compete at scale, of course.

And my opinion is probably an artifact of the fact that, when I first read the Dune books, there were only 3. Being a) young and b) a fan of sf and fantasy literature, I sort of assumed that the trilogy was the natural literary format for wide ranging stories. That thought process did make Children a bit confusing, of course.

Ultimately I agree that Paul’s story is the real thing they’re telling. I was just looking for clarification on the “trilogy” idea because of my own history with the series.