jltsiren

35 ms·

751.
by jltsiren 2y ago
Or there could a supply problem, but the employers can't pay more than their international competitors, or they will lose business. Global markets are unforgiving when the same quality of talent is available in multiple countries. If y
752.
by jltsiren 2y ago
Both game designers and role-players thought that D&D-style game mechanics were obsolete. Instead of classes and levels, popular RPG systems of the time had you develop each skill independently. Some options could only be taken at chara
753.
by jltsiren 2y ago
I still find "fans of D&D" something like a category error. Back when I was more involved in the local RPG community and started dealing with the SF community, I found their choice of terminology weird. While we were talking a
754.
by jltsiren 2y ago
The real issues are climate change and biodiversity. If you only consider short-term crises, I don't see Taiwan being bigger than Ukraine. The loss of TSMC would impact tech industry, but it would be a loss of capacity rather than capa
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by jltsiren 2y ago
You don't get paid for talent, or education, or responsibility, or any other reason that could be plausibly presented as fair. You get paid for friction: how easy it would be to replace you, and how much harm it would cause if a good e
756.
by jltsiren 2y ago
It has nothing to do with unions in this case. It's generally accepted that a professional civil service is superior to a spoils system. That it's better to have a civil service that promotes people based on merit and retains expe
757.
by jltsiren 2y ago
There is nothing unbelievable about this. Everyone knew that this was one likely outcome (among a few), and it was discussed widely long before US elections. It's one thing to understand something on an intellectual level and another t
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by jltsiren 2y ago
This sounds like a terminological issue. Without further context, I would assume that "lead author" means the last/senior author, not the first/junior author. But I guess that's a life sciences tradition. "Who
759.
by jltsiren 2y ago
The conventional wisdom is that high speed rail is competitive with flying when travel time is at most 4.5 hours. But China has been challenging that with some ridiculously long routes, such as 2760 km from Beijing to Kunming (10 hours 43 m
760.
by jltsiren 2y ago
That debate has been going on as long as the EU has existed. Some would prefer a stronger and more centralized EU, while others prioritize national sovereignty. As long as the member states are sovereign, it's basically guaranteed that
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by jltsiren 2y ago
I don't find lost luggage that annoying. It has happened to me twice out of ~300 flights, and I received the bag the following day both times. Missed connections and rerouted flights due to weather, strikes, and other random issues are
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by jltsiren 2y ago
The other side is that an empire can remain irrational longer than you can remain alive. There can be clear signs of impending collapse, but the actual collapse can be a year or a century away.
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by jltsiren 2y ago
One upside of sea launches is the ability to choose any heading, which makes reaching the desired orbit easier. When launching from land, you have a limited range of possible headings, unless you are willing to launch over populated areas.
764.
by jltsiren 2y ago
I've started to prefer small checked bags over large carryons. Boarding a plane is more pleasant when you don't need overhead space for you bags. And you don't need special travel versions of stuff to get around carryon restr
765.
by jltsiren 2y ago
You have misunderstood a number of things. Overheads are expressed as a fraction of direct costs, not of the total grant. If the total grant was $650k, 55% overhead would be $230k. If the direct costs were $650k, the total grant was $1M. Un
766.
by jltsiren 2y ago
There is a difference in the required granularity. Today there are usually only a handful of overhead rates for the entire university. Accounting only needs to be precise enough to attribute the spending to the right categories. Nobody need
767.
by jltsiren 2y ago
That's a common trope. People often complain about administrative bloat. Then there is a budget deficit and some administrators are cut (as it often happens in public institutions around the world). And then people start complaining ho
768.
by jltsiren 2y ago
Tooth-to-tail ratio is a useful concept if you want to think about overheads. In modern military operations, there are usually ~10 people in various support functions (tail) for for everyone who fights (tooth). The Gulf War was exceptional,
769.
by jltsiren 2y ago
There are different definitions of direct and indirect costs. According to the strictest definition, only billable hours are direct costs. All other costs of employment are indirect. But at least for applications from the academia, NIH cons
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by jltsiren 2y ago
It's not a billionaire problem. It's an America problem. The symbolic moment when humanity lost the fight against climate change was July 25, 1997. US Senate passed the Byrd–Hagel Resolution 95–0, effectively saying that it would
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by jltsiren 2y ago
You can easily use a million cores if you have a million independent tasks. Which you often have, if you are dealing with data rather than building a big centralized service.
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by jltsiren 2y ago
A Finn who has lived elsewhere for >10 years here. The economic issues are both structural and a consequence of a number of crises. Baby boomers didn't have enough kids, and it was already obvious decades ago that there would be eco
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by jltsiren 2y ago
The best estimate I can find is that about 3.5 million people in the US have a PhD or another research doctorate. That includes non-immigrants who study or work in the US. According to AAUP statistics, there are ~200k full-time equivalent t
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by jltsiren 2y ago
There is a similar justified mechanical model with vaccinations. A toy version is that vaccinated people are X% less likely to get infected and Y% less effective at spreading the disease if they get infected. If compliance with vaccination
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by jltsiren 2y ago
Maybe every grant has a DEI component, because every grant is required to have a DEI component, or it will be desk rejected without review. But just because the grant has a DEI component doesn't mean that the actual project will have o
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by jltsiren 2y ago
Roughly speaking, there are 10-20 PhDs for every faculty position. But not every PhD wants a faculty position, even in principle. Many want to do research in the industry, or in public research labs. Many do a PhD because it opens doors in
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by jltsiren 2y ago
The actual chances of getting a tenured position (or another permanent academic position with research opportunities) are more like 1 in 3, or even better. Most people who get a PhD and are in priciple interested in staying in the academia
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by jltsiren 2y ago
Corporations can also kill you, enslave you, steal your property, start wars, and take over your country. Think of something like Pinkerton, United Fruit, Wagner, or the East India Company. Governments, corporations, and criminal organizati
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by jltsiren 2y ago
But can you still get $125k directly after undergrad? How many employers are willing to pay 2x the median wage to someone with no experience and no demonstrated skills, simply because they went to a school? To someone who is likely to make
780.
by jltsiren 2y ago
Because 3% would already be enough to make the US irrelevant for European security. At that level of spending, the combined military power of European NATO member states would eventually be comparable to the US. If Trump kept insisting for

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