Thwompthwomp

Oh this touches close to him. I got into pgfplots since it would generate plots in latex at compile time and keep fonts consistent, etc. plots looked amazing though.

The worst was when a colleague couldn’t get a pdf to upload into a google doc, so he just made an ugly ass bar chart in excel for the final draft since that was easier. The only reason he could do that so quickly was because he could read the data so easily from the plot I made. Ugh. Still burns

Pointless?? Really? We should have just stuck with postscript? I’m pretty happy with pdf for almost anything as there’s a good chance it’ll render how whoever sent it to me was seeing it. What would you suggest/do different?

I teach undergrads, and every year basic computer skills get worse and worse. I guess it’s not entirely their fault, but things like just asking them to save a file to their computer is insanely difficult. Lots of universities are starting to get task forces to figure out how to teach (or where to teach rather) basic digital skills, it it’s all going to hit the workforce really soon en masse.

My heart goes out to those who suffer with poor editors where this is a problem. I do empathize with them. It’s important to love others and help. That’s the code for my life: love others. Except vim users. Straight to jail.

You can hold to an ethical code while breaking your moral code. This seems to be an example of that, and my frustration with ethics codes of many professional societies/organizations. You can be entirely ethical yet still spend your life crating efficient life ending tools.

Why do you think so? I know post docs basically only looking for jobs outside of the US, and several friends who got funding for grad or summer students cancelled, and know if one case getting pressure to change titles of dissertation to better align with the administration stance.

Science is getting hit hard here, the damage is done, and this could take decades to recover from. And that’s assuming things are able to shift back to where things were.

Either blue moon or fat tire. Can’t remember which was the first one

I think you’re right — body armor of some kind. He’s scared.

I have a much longer response, but I’ll try to make a short one. I think there’s a lot more a college degree does (should?) offer/signal, but over the last 50 ish years, that has largely eroded away to just being a professional training program or a gatekeeper to a job. Higher ed in society he mostly turned to social efficiency as its guiding principle instead of several other curricular philosophies. Combine that with the increasing and intense research pressure and it’s the exact situation you describe. Neoliberalism has pushed away long term thinking and risk from corporations, so that burden of risk is taken now by universities (and young people in the form of graduate students) which can be subsidized by government grants. This funding scenario pushes professors to focus on grants and research and to not care about their teaching. It’s not good.

I am totally out of the loop on the Kendrick/drake battle and don’t listen to them. But, without verging too far into me being exactly who this meme is about, compared to other half time shows it seemed smaller? Like there didn’t seem to really be any other guest artists and it felt like it was building to a big moment that just never really happened. That could have been the A Minor song, but I just didn’t get it. The audio mix on the broadcast didn’t help. The music seemed turned down very low. I was watching it the whole time thinking I feel like I’m missing something and this might be really cool. /shrug

I guess I was just thinking of full on 3-way flavor in ice cream form. I can kinda see how a hint of the spice could be interesting.

I teach computer engineering, and Macs have gone from wonderful to the bane of labs in the last decade. Students never have the right dongle, the permissions are a mess, compilers are locked down. It’s sad actually. Macs took over cs departments and a lot of tech usage, but they seem to have entirely turned their back on that audience