Chobbes @Chobbes@types.pl

Until the US is safely walkable or bikeable, people will continue to buy urban tanks in self-defense.

Since my kids were three years old, they've known to raise their hand as high as they can and wave it around whenever they hear a car engine start.

Some strangers smile and wave back when they see my kids do this. They think it's cute! But it's not really that cute.

Scenario: The world has ended and we live in post-apocalyptic times.

Libertarian Fantasies: "Yay! Morality is dead! Now, I can (attempt to) murder anyone I want!"

My Fantasies: "Yay! Intellectual Property is dead! Now, I can (attempt to) make anything I want!"

One of my professors during PhD used to say “You can drive a truck through the holes in any given paper. So you look for what you *can* learn instead.” And being the smartass grad students we used to think driving that truck was fun. After so many years, I now appreciate her wisdom more than ever. All scholarly work has limitations but it’s refreshing when people critically evaluate what’s the actual value of the research. It's about humility, honesty, rigorous intellectual work.

"I'm using Linux. A library that emacs uses to communicate with Intel hardware.”

– Erwin, #emacs, Freenode.

Reminder, folks: the COVID19 pandemic is NOT over, it's just that the big commercial landlords decided it was hurting their business rents so leaned hard on the politicians and media to SAY that it's over.

Right now China is in the FO phase of FAFO, and involuntarily providing an amplifier for a new extra-virulent strain that'll make an end run around our half-assed vaccines AGAIN.

Stay safe in 2023!

This

Yet another cycling skill that has been lost over the years.

10 Image #CaptionTips from a transcriptionist:

1. Any words are better than nothing.
2. You don't need to say it's "a picture of…" screen readers will already say it's an image.
3. Start with the framing or format (i.e. close up, landscape, meme, text).
4. Think about the reason you're posting the pic and describe that first, add background details if you have time.
5. Pretend you're talking to someone on the phone and want to tell them about this cool thing you're looking at.
6. Transcribe any and all text in the image, even if it's the only thing you do.
7. If you've described the image in your post, you don't need to copy and paste it again in the caption. But again, don't leave it blank, just put something like "as described."
8. You can add small subjective notes, but don't give too much interpretation of the image in your own opinion.
9. Caption jokes are fun, as long as they still describe the image objectively.
10. Use punctuation, and capitalize words properly. A lot of us have interacted with this tech when calling customer service or talking to Siri, so keep in mind that you're writing for a computer to read, and it needs all the help it can get.

@koronkebitch I feel like everyone who I talk to not in academia misunderstands why people do PhDs - like it's not a rational decision based on some big life plan/goal, it's just how to do the thing I want to do (mess around with symbols and logic)

Everyone is asking "What's the next Twitter going to be" and bemoaning the fact that the userbase is splintering. But splintering is a GOOD thing. The internet would be a lot healthier, more diverse, in instead of 3 or 4 dominant platforms, we had dozens or even hundreds of upstarts. Yes, centralization is convenient, but as we're seeing, it's also dangerous. If the result of the Twitter turmoil is to drive people to a more diverse, less convenient, less centralized web, I say AWESOME.

Please boost if you’re still masking indoors (in public places)

I just learned that a member of a local band I saw died. He was also a PhD candidate and "died suddenly." I suppose suicide isn't the only possibility but it seems very likely. And it is awful and sad.

Grad school takes a lot of us to dark places. It's never the only factor, but it seems to be a factor all too often.

I kinda went off 😳​

This one makes me laugh every year… because it is so very true.

A less-known feature of IA Scholar is that every search result page has an RSS feed, via the link under the search bar.

Quick and easy way to keep up with a specific topic, venue, or author in your feed reader!

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