Not the funniest XKCD, but I use xkcd.com/1179 in my intro course slides.
09.09.2025 21:17
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Not the funniest XKCD, but I use xkcd.com/1179 in my intro course slides.
A few years ago I was puzzled by a FB post in which a Maga-ish high school classmate decried racism. It seemed out of character until I realized he meant perceived reverse discrimination against white males.
Ya think?
But if you give them legal protections, the farmers might not be able to pay them so little and might have to provide better working conditions. Can't have that.
I think there are limited domains in which "usually right" is probably good enough, because consequences of a wrong decision are small. There are larger domains in which what we need to verify is that a decision is "good enough", where optimal is desirable but not required.
I think he's leaning forward in an aggressive gesture. That facial expression, the hint of smirk, is a threat. Which probably appeals to his base.
Of course it's what they want, but in some way that they can pass off as not being cuts. Some conditions or requirements that look reasonable at a glance but cut out as many poor and brown people as possible.
The brain-drain will take place over time, because it is not easy for an established academic to pull up roots. The main effect will be schools in affected states hiring their fourth- or fifth-choice candidate instead of their second-choice, who chose elsewhere. Real, but hard to measure.
If facts don't matter in one domain, why would not science equally become a shouting match?
Well said, Paul. I would add about the "liberalizing" influence of a liberal education is that it (purposely!) throws together people from many backgrounds and cultures, building mutual understanding and empathy. Meeting the people you are supposed to hate and fear is fatal to bigotry.
Can you calculate what fraction of the four mile route the remains of your canceled grant will fund? Maybe a few feet?
Photograph of trees growing in a seasonal pond
Wet prairie along the Fern Ridge multi-use path.
There might be other vulnerabilities I am not aware of, since this is not in my wheelhouse. Signal is very good at encryption. There is little chance that even a foreign government can decrypt a transmission. The vulnerabilities are at the endpoints.
A second major vulnerability is in authentication, which is distinct from transmission. Are you really sure you're talking to who you think you are talking to? That's a major consideration in highly secure apps, and not so much in Signal. [more]
I am not a security expert, but in my understanding there are two major vulnerabilities in an app like Signal. One is compromise of the device, as you note. And location could be relevant here, as "side channels" can be exploited at device level (e.g., remote sensing of the display). [more]
The encryption in Signal is end-to-end, so whether he was in the U.S. or in Russia probably didn't matter much, especially if he wasn't active in the conversation while there. There are vulnerabilities for sure, but eavesdropping on the transmission is not one of them, and a VPN would not matter.
We extensively use undergraduate "learning assistants" (different name to distinguish from graduate teaching assistants) to offer help hours. It's the best thing about our intro courses. But student use of help hours is declining, and I worry that students are depending on LLMs that can't do this.
A foundational feature of Trump's world view is that every transaction must have a winner and a loser. Since the European Union was good for Europe, it must therefore be bad for the U.S.
I think she is writing for a developer community who, she hopes, will build tools for end users. But developers can lose sight of what end users find approachable. Maybe if there are enough, a few of them will hit the sweet spot.
An advertisement claiming a limited edition DOGE shirt is reserved for me.
All grift, all the time.
The Apprentice "reality" TV series rebooted, as stupid as ever but with much higher stakes. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/u...
In related news Trump bans all university math departments from researching homomorphisms, especially group homomorphisms because that is particularly disgusting.
Do you mean the Wikipedia article is slated for deletion, or something else? I didn't see anything about that in the associated Wikipedia "talk" page.
My first term off teaching starts in a few weeks. I'm going to have to follow your example to make it feel real.
We are seeing it multiple ways, including hold-ups in faculty hiring. We hear that some universities have canceled faculty searches, and others have decided not to admit new PhD students this year. We are admitting PhD students, but we don't understand how the university can make that commitment.
Photo of a small cluster of bright crocus flowers
I always watch the border of 13th street at UO for crocus as my "spring is really here" signal ... they have been in full bloom for about a week now.
This made my day.
With the doggy boys firing NOAA scientists who track hurricanes, maybe they can compensate by issuing sharpies to whoever is left.
"Speaking truth to power." That's what Zelensky did today. Trump and Vance were pathetic bullies, unprepared for for an encounter with someone who would not grovel.
