Yeah, condensed matter is full of fraud stories. And it's almost always interesting, if disheartening, to read about them.

It's a shame showing a lack of successful measurement isn't rewarded or even encouraged. I end up hearing stuff through the grapevine how the idea I thought worth revisiting was already tried by some small team back in the '90s, and it's only mentioned at the back of the supplemental materials. There's a binder (and database) on my desk (laptop) that catalogues excerpts and mentions of such misses that may end up being my biggest contribution to the field.

So many grad students will run the labs for like 80 hours a week, gather the data sets they were told to, and then have no idea what any of it means.

To be fair, grad students span gamut from 'wait, why isn't B a constant?' out-of-their-depth beginners to the likes of you, who probably shake their head at visiting professors' inexperience with methodology. Not really trying to defend how some people run labs, but I know in my heart there were times when prof wasted his breath on explaining my role in the grand scheme of things.

I wasn't in a hurry, it was nice to have front row seats for such a prescient demonstration.

When every foodhole in Warsaw connected with delivery service overnight, outgoing orders had much much higher priority. So, during pandemic, you had a crowd of deliverers, normal line that moved at snail's pace, and a nearby crowd of people who placed their orders in an app to game the system. This lead to a situation where people from the last group placed order to <restaurant's address> and added comments like "I'm the one wearing a brown hat with a gigantic pompom" or "I'm already behind you."

Insert something about follies of idiots with access technology. I don't know, I barely slept since Friday.

We'll tell our grandchildren "we used to make our own handsome faces".

Cyrodiil's Jesus! No, I tried generating something a touch less 4chan-does-Amnesia and more Balkan Romani without the perpetually disappointed look.

Since I'm self-righteous, I'd like to think one of the last things it'll come for is physics and math.

Theory is much less about hand-waving connections between deeply understood parts and more about doing the math with as little preconceived ideas as possible. Don't imagine what atom/potential/sun is, calculate and interpret what comes out, see if anyone tested something similar / calculated it in a similar regime. Propose an experiment, try to make a feedback loop with someone (or something) that'd bounce ideas back. It's everything else that ought to be automated, 'cause the amount of paperwork they try (underline: try) to pile on me is just fucking ludicrous.

The problem is that models aren't better at determining they're wrong than humans, and are unlikely to learn it since their very nature is numerical bias. And, frankly, LLM/models/AI/whatever should have less of a problem replacing philosophy, because doing proper math requires pencils, paper and a wastepaper basket for wrong ideas... whereas philosophers seem to only ever need the first two.

Otherwise, I kinda stopped paying attention to anything that isn't directly related to my interests tbh. Seems like everyone is losing their shit over anything and everything in the news/work/word holes, while I'm tackling the deeper mysteries of is it better to keep seeing someone with a 3-year-old and see where it leads or cut it loose before things get difficult for the kid moreso than us.

Anyway, I hope you are well. :)

Same to you. We gotta do some meetup. I wanted to organize one in January, but my health took a dip, maybe it's time to try again.

Maybe they launch from a milk silo into another one? Scary times to live in Wisconsin.

Oh, I didn't mean to underplay Fifteen Hours. My approach was cautious, but I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Kinda makes me wish I had time and folks to play Only War with, but that's gotta wait. I'd be also interested in your takes on Horus Heresy books and 40k in general. Got any other IG recommendations?

I dropped reading GoT around the middle of book 1, in the chapter where old-ass lecher betroths his whichever daughter to one of the Starks where we get name-drops of no fewer than thirty characters and I knew this is just author trying to waste my time by putting in hooks that'll never pay off. It annoyed me enough to ignore the show by association, but maybe it'd be fair to give audiobook a go.

Huxley is interesting, with a lot of ideas thrown from the get go, and it's more likely my current workload and family bullshit at the distance preventing me from enjoying the story. I rarely don't give a book multiple chances, so we'll see. Right now, it's flatter than my color perception, but the language isn't a problem.

re 40k: I usually recommend people start with Sandy MItchell's Ciaphas Cain books, who's pretty much Blackadder given a role of a commissar (political/morale officer) and a gun to execute morale problems. Comedy of errors/accidental hero is a good framing for grimdark.

Hey, glad to see you back!

What made you take the plunge on Expanse? Did you watch the show?

Thank you for reaching out, I might get back to you on it. But you're from the USA, though, right? I'm not sure how much overlap is there with Polish forces.

While looking for one of the sources to Ghost Wars, I had happened upon a book at the university library which, roughly 100 pages in and leafing through the rest, think you may enjoy: Poisoned Peace by Gregor Dallas.

I think people and conversations will return once there's an actual distance from the bullshit of the last couple years. From COVID straight to Ukraine, now another not-war brewing... dunno about all y'all, but my day-dreams all too often construct self-sufficient cloisters from first principles.

It's not the first one and what it does is illustrate completing the square.

Using and proving are two different things, though. The 3-4-5 right triangle was widely used in what Herodotus called Ancient Egypt, but I'd be hella cautious about inferring they have done more than formulate it. It's an achievement, absolutely, just not as major.

Finished reading Hoffman's The Dead Hand from kb's geopolitics list yesterday. I'm mulling it over, but heartily recommend. There's a lot in it echoing what I heard from older academics, and offers a sober look into Russian outlook/condition. From my perspective, and so far, the most relevant of the books on the list. Which I nearly finished after years of on-again off-again attempts, though doubt in ever getting through Zinn and Tuchman. It's not what they write about, but how they write, which grates me.

I took the teaching contract mentioned last month. Went over the syllabus, talked with the rest of the cadre. It's definitely nothing permanent, but it's nice to have that extra bit of income and autonomy/authority. Since the students will be mostly econ and 30-and-corpo-wants-a-paper IT folks, I opted for adapting the hands-on example-heavy method from Stroud&Booth's Engineering Mathematics. Time will tell if it was a good move, but I mostly want to make the class full of utility and comprehensible, but minimal on student pain.

This sounds like good advice for someone who has reached the level of mastery at which "nerves" have become the biggest obstacle.

The 'nerves', whenever they grow beyond healthy-for-motivation levels, are the obstacle regardless of skill. My ability to play and enjoy chess was severely hindered by anxiety, but skyrocketed when I separated performance metrics from self-worth or approval and the like.

I've spent three weeks sick, mostly doing literature review and playing Stellaris. It's pretty dope, but I get the criticism of people who sum it up with "fuck off, space is full."

I can host a meetup in two weeks, hopefully won't sound like Dr. Mrs. the Monarch by then. It was usually beginning at 18:00 EST, but with all the folks moving, I'm open for suggestions.

The only actual time there might be a "cross-class encounter" is if your family is one of the three that actually fits in the foyer in front of reception because otherwise you're probably waiting in your car.

You need simple interaction to calculate anything in those high energy sociology models.

It's a comedy underlined with realizations like "The Marian would be half the length, thrice as technical, and five times more 'rednecks in space' with him around." That version would probably also include a chapter where you scrounge for copper to make a distillery that isn't shit.

Keep those updates coming, please.

I'm bound by the sci-fi discussion cliché committee to add the obligatory "book is different and generally considered superior, but both are enjoyable for their own thing" response.

Perhaps it's because of my niche, but I hated to even see titanium anywhere near my reagent list. If it was in a catalyst, you just assumed it reacts with water even more violently than the product. If it had to end-up in the end product, I just assumed it'll need to be condensed and chilled below -30 C or else it'll explode or turn the teflon plumbing into serpents. It doesn't surprise me to learn that the metal is equally uncooperative when machining or purifying.

The aside on PV solars lacks the nuance of the rest of the article, but it's good overall as far as I can tell. Thanks for posting it, I could try filling some of that in when my schedule clears a bit.

So, non-honours physics majors take a year-long course in linear algebra that, during the third semester, merges in this unholy abomination that combines Calc III, differential forms (TL;DR: different lingo to express vectors/tensors more generally), and differential equations... during the same semester you have your first Big-Boy Pants physics classes (Classical Mechanics and Phys III: Vibrations and Waves). It's a horrible abortion that my uni perpetuates for no fucking reason, and I don't blame anyone who needs help connecting the dots.

I also made it a tad simpler than the problem was, so that non-STEM hubskiers' eyes won't glaze over. Didn't mean to downplay their ability.

You're gonna find something. Probably sooner than later.

Being a generalist with a massive diversity of experiences gives me confidence in my abilities but also makes it hard to pass the HR filtering.

Add 'Oxford' or something equally in-demand in white 6p font in your CV's footer. Might help with all the machine-models between you and an interviewer.

aureola

I'm sorry but, in context, it's an amazing typo.

[...] and I don't think we played anywhere close to how it was intended. We tried, it was just so over the top that we opted for a dumbed down version.

The problem here lies in generality: it's not always easy, or possible, to simplify something and still have a viable game. Best case scenario, you can render one of those overengineered things into their simpler predecessor. For example: removing about a dozen of disconnected victory mechanisms from Game of Thrones boardgame results in something like Chaos in the Old World.

We didn't even finish. Just called it quits after a couply beers and a couply hours.

At least the night was eventful, and the boardgame facilitated some of that fun.

Good to see you back.

Yeah, I never got into the nitty-gritty of Battletech lore. Picked up one book and didn't finish it, because it spent 40 pages setting up a dozen people who then get wasted in the span of a paragraph or two. It'd be like the first hour of The Rock was filmed from the perspective of those soldiers who get killed off in the showers.

You won't find me objecting to blaming anything on MtG, but I have no knowledge of that in your part of the world. Here? I know D&D was just some import-exclusive game that costed an arm and a leg, required real English proficiency, and had no less than a dozen strong competitors all the way until the 3rd edition came in 2002-ish. It could be close to the top today, but it's still just one of the games to most folks. There was a phase when everyone and their mother wanted to play 5th edition in 2016-2018, but now it normalized again and it's no biggie to get 3-5 folks to play Neuroshima.

As to computers, maybe? I know that when I play on platforms like roll20 and the like, it's a godsend to have all those mechanical macros. It helps to move players' focus from rolling and cross-referencing to fun and roleplaying even during chunkier parts of the game. It may not work as well for Car Wars or Phoenix Command and similar, but I wouldn't know.

I'm from 98, so for sure the game is older. So are Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer, Cyberpunk 2020, Traveller, Paranoia, and a bitchload of other games I prefer over much of the recent dross. Between accessibility of legal reprints and easy ways to yar-har those games, they have sort of a renaissance nowadays.

To me, and I'd hazard most of my friends, a boardgame failed its role if it requires so much focus, socialization is impossible or heavily hindered. Carcassonne, Chaos in the Old World, Talisman, Battlestar Galactica, and the like are my jam. Beyond those, it's too involved to talk, while not being meaty enough to really engage my inner Ender. Lack of play testing could explain most of it, but I think it's also a fashion for those overengineered mechanics. All too many people equate depth (chess) with complexity (competitive cord untangling), and I think many designers genuinely don't (want to) understand the difference. Feedback or testing be damned.

To the best of my knowledge that was the last time that group of friends every played Battletech.

Ha! Had a similar victory story, but instead of mechs I channelled inner Zukov/Ludendorf, deployed a force consisting entirely of gunboat hovercrafts, and suicide charged his line of heavy assault mechs. Because it was on the tabletop simulator, for the life of me, I couldn't tell if the guy was laughing or apoplectic. Never got a rematch, though.

Well, yeah? Hell, many people in India are--by necessity--trilingual, and it's not like they're a nation of geniuses.

Personal bias aside, I'd say that polyglots are, on average, more curious about other cultures or places. Maybe more aware of the differences, too. Scoring higher on whatever subset/spinoff of Cattel/Raven/WAIS tests? Memory/number games? Fucking shape and colour dominoes? Tenuous idea of those being connected to language anything, most parents I know would dominate these metrics by virtue of doing that stuff with their kids on a near-daily basis.

And I'm glad it worked for you. Note that I don't deny any effect, just that most accounts were wildly overstated and done on 'dopamine high' of overall improved mood; cf. the whole nofap crowd where your average NEET stopped yankin' it every five minutes for three days and proclaimed themself Son Goku, PhD. ;)

I feel meditating does something positive for me, but think it's just a type of mental priming. Kinda like making your bed in the morning may give you the illusion of beginning your day with a small accomplishment, so it's easier to muster some confidence going into other task in the day. My problem was that either nobody bothered explaining this stuff beyond telling me which app they use or 'explained' in such a handwavy way it made alchemical treatises look like a model lab journal in comparison. The real change in my life was brought by quetiapine and therapy. I also recently got in touch with a place that does ketamine treatments, though I'm undecided about messing up the good thing I have going.

Excuse frustration, but I hope you can understand where it came from.

Not greeting people over doorsteps and not turning back on your way from home. First is so ingrained in Poland, I thought it's good manners until someone mentioned it. The second is allegedly about bringing bad luck home with you, but IMO it's just common sense/punishing absent-mindedness away. Regardless of motivation, I consciously avoid doing either.

Yup, and that's a pretty standard density for meteorites. Depending on error bars on that corgi, it could be a chunkier/less porous type of chondrite (very common), but that's about all I'd be willing to put forward. Enstatites are less dense (3.5-ish), iron-bearing composites are denser (4.5-ish), and that's about the extent of my geological knowledge.

To put that in perspective: Chelyabinsk meteor was the size of a ball 30-corgi wide and weighing in excess 78000 baby elephants, moving remarkable 2100 times faster than an African swallow.

A corgi-sized meteor weighing as much as 4 baby elephants reads as metals to me.

It gets better. If that corgi-sized meteor was the size of Earth, its electrons would have 60 nanometre radiuses!