kayaeb

I'm not positive that's true. I think the most challenging thing for MOND is that basically no one will touch it unless they already have tenure because it's a death sentence.

I saw Pavel Kroupa (big name in Milgromian gravity) present in Heidelberg (big concentration of Astro), at the time Volker Springel (author of widely used LCDM simulation code "GADGET") was there and Illustris simulation sets (LCDM major project) had just been rolled out. And Pavel basically got heckled (in a very erudite and respectable way, but constant interruptions from the LCDM majority audience).

But Pavel had one slide, I can't find it now, but it was like 72 different problems that LCDM had not solved (ok, 72 is an exaggeration; you can troll his website for mentions of a lot of them https://astro.uni-bonn.de/~pavel/kroupa_SciLogs.html).

And like, Pavel's a big boy, he has some of the most cited papers in all of astronomy, he's got tenure, and he's set, so he can take it and not care. But grad students / postdocs I imagine would constantly have their work politely ignored and get shunted into underfunded groups.

I'm just trying to say that LCDM has things it can't explain, and MOND has things it can't explain, but the amount of resources in each theory is seriously lopsided so LCDM can frequently "tweak" itself to solve problems that MOND just doesn't have time or resources to to the same (for example disk formation in LCDM models used to be impossible until they had the supercomputing resources for the resolution required, and they found that the feedback coefficient could a) not promote disk growth, b) promote disk growth, and c) destroy disk growth, depending on how much they cranked it up. That's NOT a triumph of LCDM making an amazing replication of the observation, that's some grad student in a lab with enough CPU to tweak a meta-parameter until it looks good.

Also the CMB is extremely tightly constrained... and multiple huge tightly-constraining studies, WMAP, PLANCK, Gaia, are more than 3-sigma outside of each other's results, so... perhaps too tightly constrained.

Edit: Found it, here is the great astronomical bloodbath of 2014: LCDM (Springel and Rix) vs MOND (Kroupa). Great watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPVGDXNSBZM

This isn't the case with thorium salt reactors or, if we had enough funding to finally crack it, fusion.

I'm not sure if "accidents" count as "cooked" statistics... modern nuclear plants are much safer than 20th century ones as well, so if we're updating numbers I think nuclear is still an extremely safe contender (and if you split nuclear deaths by country, USA is an order of magnitude again safer than all nuclear). Maybe I misinterpret what you mean by cooked though, I would be interested in reading more about it, if you have a good piece? Wind also relies on pizoelectric elements, I'm not sure what their carbon footprint is compared to nuclear fuel, probably would be less in the future if like CA/OZ stepped into the rare-earth supply chain.

And new types, like thorium salt reactors don't have classical issues like uranium waste products and much much smaller possibility of runaway reactions. And France has been "5 years away" from fusion reactors for like 30 years on a shoestring budget, with real money that could be a possibility in maybe another 30 years and also dodges all the horror-story problems.

Overall, I agree, modern solar, especially reflector-steam plants shouldn't be lumped in with silicon panels, especially when talking about total carbon footprint. But I do think nuclear carries a lot of unfair baggage that has kept us on oil for way longer than we should have been.

Not on the scale of "we need to move the bulk of the energy from Texas to New York for 3 hours, then when the sun sets shift state-level power supply routing from the cornbelt to cover the drop."

Handling a plant going offline is totally different from the logistics of shuttling variable regions of production across the entire country.

if you look up deaths by energy production method, nuclear is far and away the safest, in every single country by orders of magnitude, even wind is deadlier.

Is it though?

Renewables that are popular now, like solar and wind, are weather dependent, which means the grid needs to handle variable input, which it's not designed to do and would need major fixing. Also means you need to store the energy for when it's not abundant, Germany does this by pumping water into mountain lakes to produce hydro on demand, but they've run out of lakes, so you need batteries. Batteries of a grid-size magnitude need carbon-expensive materials and have their own plethora of problems.

These two problems are only feasibly conquerable in a reasonable timescale by a few countries, for others they are prohibitively expensive, far beyond the small subsidies proposed in things like the Paris Accord. Now, sure, USA, Europe could implement these, but it's not going to fix the problem if Asia, Africa don't, and additionally it's going to add significant economic and geopolitical pressure between these nation-blocs, those who are hamstringing themselves and those who aren't.

Hydro has serious geopolitical issues as fresh water supplies grow more tactically necessary, consider Egypt / Ethiopia right now with the Nile, or China's tibetan plateau snow-seed cannons to capture water before it reaches India.

Tidal has extremely short lifespans, any moving system in salt water is difficult to keep going for more than a few years.

Geothermal is good, but also one of the most expensive and a bit of a "slow burner," not going to be powering anything serious with that without sinking billions into the plant.

The only real solution I see is nuclear, but that's a naughty word for some reason.

OCD isn't double-checking your line-spacing in a document, it's being unable to leave the house in under 45 minutes because you check the stove twenty times, then the door lock twenty, then turn around 5 minutes down the street to check again, then make a deal with yourself that you'll check the stove 3 times in a row and then not allow yourself to do it again, only you do it again anyways and finally take a picture of it so you can discretely check the photo on your phone when you're out on your date that you showed up half an hour late to.

This really rubbed me the wrong way, the closing sentence sums it up: "What if a doctoral program’s prestige arose, in part, from the way that it treated its students? We should dare to dream of such a thing."

There is a huge problem in academia where the number of PhDs is growing exponentially, and the number of positions is staying basically flat. I strongly disagree with this "participation award" mentality of "you deserve it." It's... leading a lot of people to make really stupid career decisions and I think a lot of people are doing it just to get this gilded club to bludgeon people who don't have PhDs -- that's the only reason I can think of for a person to hope for an "easy" PhD experience.

My advisor being rough at the right times (and in good spirit) was absolutely essential to the defense, which is essentially gladiatorial combat against your father (well, mother in my case), when both you and your advisor hope you can defeat the master in your specific realm. I would not have been able to do it if my advisor pranced about making everything pleasant and easy and convenient.

protip: if your prof is tenured and still first author on more than 2 papers a year, they're siphoning their student's work, or they're setting you up for pipelining positions (which are not horrible, but, be aware that's what's up).

I've never had a prof insert my work into their own papers, they've hooked me up to contribute to other teams, but with us it was always "my" project.

If you get a chance to see them present at a conference (lots of these are on video online nowadays), check if they specifically mention their students in the presentation, that's a green flag.

Really depends on your mentor. I've seen some gross abuses where the union was absolutely essential.

Also the union hooked up like BBQs and whatever so like, that's nice.

I disagree a bit about freedom and flexibility in switching faculty, and I disagree strongly about the phrasing of "willing" to work with x faculty on y problem.

I don't care how smart a student is, they are in no way prepared to select a project that will lead to interesting findings, which is a must if you plan to continue in any capacity. A good mentor will have a project with proprietary data that has a 95% chance of successful publication. In this way the student won't get scooped (not through any fault of their own, it's just that a PhD student, even a good one, just can't compete speedwise with someone like me who already has a code library built up to do complex analyses, this is why proprietary data is essential, or an extremely good prof who has an idea that they are confident no one else is on). My projects were a mix, I had one with proprietary data, and one which was a legit eureka finding. But as you say, most profs just aren't good enough to do these Eurekas (not an insult, 90% of science is gruntwork), so they need the cloistered data playground that the child student can crash around in until they manage to build their horrible little sandcastle. That data depends on funding, which depends on a proposal, which depends on a promise to do project X on data Y, and the prof is going to get reamed next time they apply for funding if student Z decided it wasn't "fun" and went to some other prof.

Caveat: We had one turkish guy who was straight up getting academically abused by his advisor (like literally timing his lunch breaks, sending spies to make sure he attended class, super weird shit), and thank the heavens there was a judicial oversight in place for him to get a new placement.

Caveat the second: I thrive in a low-input environment, so my prof just put me in the sandbox and I built the most magnificent and beautiful sandcastle the world has ever seen and roared my way to a whopping like seven citations (lol). My prof was also the director though and the low-input environment wasn't like optional, and not everyone did well in this low-input environment.

FAST can also move it's "mirror," the shell has some huge number of triangular sections on wires, so it should be able to point even more than arecibo which has an immutable reflector. Both have adjustable focal points (sensor head) on wires like you describe.

FAST is actually having difficulty hiring (on-site specialists like operations director) the smartest minds because it's in a jungle in small-town China.

But yes, overall China is executing an excellent "brain drain" (not meant in a negative sense) by being willing to invest in these "keystone" projects when other countries are tightening budgets.

Not sure why you're being downvoted.

This is correct to an extent, the surface of a mirror needs to be polished to a degree such that abnormalities in the lens are small relative to the wavelength being observed (I think it's the diffraction limit equation, not positive atm). Radio telescopes (with cm wavelengths) require much less precision than optical ones (with sub-micron wavelengths). This telescope, FAST, actually is made out of a collection of triangular (I think) sheets arranged into a kind of dome, if it were observing optical it would act like a disco-ball instead of a parabolic mirror. Arecibo is literally a hole in the ground with rocks and crap on the reflector.

This thing actually had "first light" observations with several holes in it from triangular sections that were fritzing just kind of fluttering in the breeze. The first radio telescopes were literally built out of post-coldwar trash just kind of rigged up in the back-yard. There's a major array going in in south Africa where the antennas are like christmas tree wires that are just kind of hammered into the ground, one of the PIs showed video at a colloquium I attended of his 10 year old kids setting them up. If anything in modern science can be called "low specification" it's radio telescopes.

Why does this scientific publication read like an op-ed? Absolutist language strikes me as exceptionally unscientific.

"it’s time to panic." "We are in deep trouble." "That’s it. Forever." "Forever. Think of what that word means."

Disregarding that, the paper seems to address the idea that stratospheric albedo modifications cannot counteract atmospheric carbon buildup since they operate on timescales of decades versus millenia. Specifically they state that:

"Deployment of albedo hacking does not in any way “buy time” to get carbon dioxide emissions under control, since once emitted, carbon dioxide cannot to any significant extent be unemitted with known economically feasible technology"

Which seems to rest on the absolutist premise that we will never know an economically feasible way to go negative carbon. Otherwise, buying time should absolutely be a reasonable thing to consider.

The author closes with a sentence along the lines of:

"To decarbonize, however, requires building a political movement that regards the climate crisis as a top priority."

Which strikes me as... not exactly impartial (Why would not an economic reason work? Or a grassroots social reason?). Which is obnoxious when the author makes specific appeals to the authority of their profession which has authority by the very virtue of being impartial:

"As a scientist, I viscerally dislike repeating myself; I like to think that once the truth is out there, it will somehow win out and it is not necessary to belabor the point."

This "article" rubs me wrong.

In NLP (specifically vectorizing words, ala word2vec) there's a famous test of whether or not your training has worked properly whereby you calculate the vector of "king" and subtract the vector of "man" and add the vector of "woman," if your machine is properly tuned, you should end up with a vector close to "queen" or "princess."

I wonder if similar things can be done to address specific (i.e. racial or gender) biases in computer vision.

There's a good book on this called "Why Nations Fail," [1] they posit that extractive economic policies (corrupted governments) essentially de-incentivize entrepreneurial businesses, while inclusive policies cause them to thrive.

They use this argument to counter "Guns, Germs, and Steel" [2] to explain dramatic economic differences across country borders in similar environments.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12158480-why-nations-fai...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_and_Stee...

Some people claim to have ruled out type III civilizations [1], which I think is what you're referring to.

I thought also that some researchers claimed a star had signals consistent with a type II [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

[2] https://www.space.com/30832-kepler-telescope-alien-megastruc...

Sure, but those "constraints" could be compared to switching from a piece of letter paper to a canvas. The modern "liberations" would be having a box of a million tiny artistic legos which are getting tinier and tinier.

In all situations you want the best piece of art, it's not entirely clear to me that a million hand-painted legos is superior to an artist's canvas painting. Sure, it's a lot easier to grab all the blue legos and have 30 hours of deep house, but it's very difficult to end up with starry night, with bits of euphoric light trance and depressing shadow dub melded together into your blue canvas, unless you go back to your 1980s flirting skills and spend 20 hours making a thoughtful mixtape.

A paranoid individual might claim that this ink could be tampered with or replaced with washable ink.

Can the same argument not be made for requiring voter IDs? youeseh I'm replying to says it's "few numbers" adding up. Another thread from sverige in this tree links vox and nyt saying that requiring ID has small numbers effect of turnout. So saying that their concern of voter fraud is a small numbers thing kind of lacks heft as an argument.

If these are both the case, then why not go with the requirement (and possibly make the requirement "easier" by issuing IDs at the same time/place) so there's no possibility of contesting the election results with regard to this particular issue?

What are better suggestions to prevent voter fraud? We know from history that voting fraud is a thing, in the 1800s it was known that political parties would pay fresh immigrants to vote (like the scene in Upton Sinclaire's "The Jungle"), or to even kidnap people and force them into voting [1]. So we can't rely on good faith.

I'm under the impression that to vote you must register in a voting district, surely that registration requires something like a birth certificate or a SSN, which I believe is the only requirement for a government issued ID... Operating on the idea that the requirement for government IDs may in fact be a good faith measure to prevent voter fraud, would perhaps an optimal solution be to bring a web camera to that voting registration area and simultaneously issue IDs there?

To be honest, I thought it was a non-issue since my voter registration is also my draft registration, so I assume I provided some form of citizenship proof when I registered. It was a while ago though so I don't recall the details.

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/election-fraud-in-the-...

I said that not having 400$ is a failure of fiscal planning and doesn't indicate that the population is poor.

Declining life expectancy is not an indication that the population is poor either. Consider that obesity, which is linked to higher mortality rates, did not become an issue until the 1900s in countries that passed wealth thresholds allowing such a problem at scale. Similarly with allergies, car crash fatalities, lead poisoning in paint, any number of life-shortening effects come from wealth in a society and are counterbalanced by improving health care levels.

1) It's not great, however it's not Xi's main point, wealth was Deng Xoaping's promise to China, respect is Xi's promise. Xi is actively expending wealth in trade for respect (military, belt and road, space program, etc.). This was foundational in Xi's being chosen as leader, he cut his chops preparing Beijing for the olympics 2008 international show -- a respect event, not an economic one.

2) No. USA is the leading economy not because of economy but because of dollar hegemony, which insulates it from shocks that the RMB is subjected to. If belt-and-road nations start using RMB as reserve currency (and non-swift banking systems), regardless of economic power, that would challenge USA as leading economy. This is being attempted, but not covered much, for example the sino-russian deal to trade oil and gold in RMB instead of using the OPEC petro-dollar.

3) India is a more socially volatile than China, considering regions like Kashmir and social discord like lower-castes. If India were the #2 or #1 it would suddenly have these situations magnified the way China's situations are scrutinized on the world stage, leading to more aggressive challenges. India currently gets a free pass on inequality and climate etc. because it's a 'democracy.' Vietnam doesn't have the framework to challenge either effectively.

4) Not super, but again not terrible. The main thing is income distribution, not GDP. It may mean less iphones but doesn't necessarily mean less Huaweis, inside the mainland a Huawei is only about 60% the price you see in USA and doesn't represent a major drop in quality of life.

5) This is more a function of capital control I feel. They are a long long way from panic-flight ala Venezuela. Expats at this point are more luxury expats. Lots of other asians immigrate into China for a better life. Regardless, the China diaspora is already huge, and largely welcome in every country the immigrate to.

A chinese person does not age faster. The chinese people are aging faster because they have less youth than is needed to pay for the social support for the generations approaching retirement. In response the 1.5 child policy was dropped around 2016, but birth rates didn't pick up as much as expected because of high cost of raising children.

Living paycheck to payckeck with a new phone every 2 years, a new car lease upgrade every 5, a mortgage on a 3 bedroom house, and eating out 4 times a week, and 1000 TV channels is hardly what someone would consider 'poor.' It's just sustainably stressful and largely optional. This is why I feel the paycheck-to-paycheck metric/rhetoric is obnoxious, on 100k a year I can live paycheck-to-paycheck if I so desire, on 20k a year I can live at 75% of my means and save 400$+ as well. People's personal choices are not a comment on the economy, they're a comment on the fiscal education system. I personally save about 33% of my paycheck on 32k per year in one of the top 10 most expensive global cities.

I don't care about the graphics, I just want support returned. I quit when they dropped support because ladder just became a maphack infested hot mess

The hero mechanic is what made WC3 WC3... If you weren't a hero-guy, go with undead, their heros were 50% supplementary and stupidly weak, and you could just focus on your army. Orc was like 90% hero action though, with a single Blademaster being the equivalent of an entire army at the cost of the fact that orc armies were stupid expensive and their air-force was laughably horrible (except the year or so when wyvern poison was massively overpowered)... And this was representative of the racial strengths as a whole, orc grunts were the most expensive, and most powerful of the tier 0 fighters, and undead ghouls were the expendable zerglings. It's one kind of rush to see two 300 apm pros go at it in SC with max-food armies, and entirely another to see a level 10 demon-hunter face off solo against a lv 6 archmage, lv5 mountain king and lv 3 paladin. Additionally adding in terrain hazards of creeps and day/night and manipulable trees made battlefield mechanics so much more interesting than the colonial line-warfare of SC. The decision to drop food limits in WC3 compared to SC (dramatically limiting max army size) was purposely done to enhance this difference. The inclusion of items was less about RPG elements and more about tactical versatility allowing heroes mercurial abilities to shift roles at the drop of a hat.

The addition of heroes made early game harassment, specifically the sub-2 minute fastbuild archmage rush, possible and exciting, much more interesting than zergling-rushes.

It was a new game, WC2 was great but it was chess, all sides exactly equal in all cases (except I think 1-2 ogre-mage vs paladin spells). SC was an incredible feat because each race was distinct yet balanced. WC3 was just as much a feat because they maintained that balance (with notable exceptions, like the year or so when sorc-rushes just dominated all levels of competitive play) with the introduction of super-units.

Also WC3 is definitely RTS more than RPG, I mean one of the first basics one learns is peasant pathing with farms to optimize gold-flow... or fog-of-war manipulation to distract the enemy by popping a single unit in and out of their sightlines while you're busy elsewhere... If you watch pros playing in first-person camera-mode you'll see that 50% of the action during battle is base-management. Battle could conceivably be considered more distraction than main-thrust.

I think tower defense was originally a SC custom map? I might be wrong. It got huge with... WC3s Wintermaul?'s version? I think... I'm disappointed most modern versions are pre-pathed instead of build-a-pathed. Build-a-path adds a whole new element to your strat depending on your faction. Zerg-like factions thrive on building ultra-long linear paths, protoss-like factions are good building wrapping paths leading the enemy past expensive cannons multiple times. In desperate times you can block the path and take enemy assault to the towers instead of letting them walk. So much more depth than pre-pathed nonsense

FFT is one of the greatest games of all time. It has a little community of people making custom mechanics / storylines / etc.: http://ffhacktics.com/

Not sure why you're being downvoted

I disagree on one point specifically though. Reviewers must remain anonymous. What if I harshly review / reject a crap work from the department head of some group at Harvard? then, in anger, I get blackballed by s/he and their friends, which could be the whole field in some cases?