Ben Reinhardt on X - "Our ability to do things is dying a death of 1000 cuts. It's nice to talk about bottlenecks and silver bullets, but my hypothesis is that stagnation is the accumulation of many small frictions. My plan is to continuously update this thread with examples as they pop up."
Ben Reinhardt on X - "Grants and contracts often need a full-time administrator to handle compliance."
Science of Science on X - "We also find that proposal success is correlated with a high level of topical overlap between the proposal references and the applicant’s prior publications."
Toward predicting research proposal success
Gerald Barnett on X - "The average amount of time required to prepare a single proposal ranges from 170 h to 270 h .... This equates to roughly $8500 to $13,400 USD in salary costs alone. Actual costs per proposal can be $20,000 on average when administrative overhead rates are included."
Pirate Wires on X - "18 King Cove residents have died trying to travel to the Cold Bay airport for medevac transport to Anchorage. Despite the seriousness of the issue, the Biden admin and environmental groups refuse to let them build a road to it "
Opinion: The Biden administration’s betrayal of King Cove - "The lack of respect and hypocrisy in the Biden Administration’s application of its policy of Environmental Justice toward Alaska Natives was on full display when on March 14 the White House forced Secretary Deb Haaland to withdraw from the July 3, 2019, Land Exchange in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge that the Department of Interior had agreed with the King Cove Corporation and the Agdaagux and Belkofski tribes. This land exchange was intended to provide the people of King Cove with the opportunity to seek the permits to construct an 11-mile gravel road to medevac people from the all-weather Cold Bay Airport when the weather prevented aircraft from landing in King Cove... Why did the White House suddenly withdraw from the land exchange on March 14? Well, the day before the Biden administration had ever so reluctantly agreed that the Willow Project in the National Petroleum Reserve could proceed. This was the right call from a national energy security perspective. But hyper-outrage about the Willow decision from environmental groups went into overdrive. So, a sacrifice was needed... every Alaska governor and delegation member has supported an 11-mile gravel road between King Cove and the all-weather runway at Cold Bay. Why? For humanitarian reasons. There is no certain way out of King Cove in a medical emergency during one of its notorious and frequent bad weather events. It is my understanding that 18 people have died in airplane crashes that have occurred while trying to get in or out of King Cove during a medical emergency in bad weather... It is disgusting that the environmental groups are not concerned for the health and safety of people who live there... Alaska’s problem is that our transportation lanes go through federal land and transportation access is always opposed by environmental groups (Willow, Ambler Road, Tongass Roadless Rule)."
Environmentalists claim the planet is overpopulated, so
Ben Reinhardt on X - "You need OSHA training to go down a ladder"
Meme - Tucker Jones (tuckerjones.bsky.social) @tuckcomatus: "It took about 2,500 days from President Kennedy's "We Choose to Go to the Moon" speech to the Apollo 11 moon landing. It will take about 3,300 days from first Connecticut Avenue NW safety study to expected completion of construction in Winter 2028. DC deserves better."
ᚇ Darragh Rogan on X - "The one winding me up lately (as I have similarly been affected) is people cannot get permitting to put bicycle sheds in their front gardens for various aesthetic reasons, despite national policy to shift away from car centric travel"
Federal law prompts Chick-Fil-A, other chains to add allergen to menu - "A federal law requiring that sesame be listed as an allergen on food labels is having unintended consequences — increasing the number of products with the ingredient. Food industry experts say the requirements are so stringent that many manufacturers, especially bakers, find it simpler and less expensive to add sesame to a product — and to label it — than to try to keep it away from other foods or equipment with sesame. As a result, several companies — including national restaurant chains like Olive Garden, Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A and bread makers that stock grocery shelves and serve schools — are adding sesame to products that didn’t have it before. While the practice is legal, consumers and advocates say it violates the spirit of the law aimed at making foods safer for people with allergies... The new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, requires that all foods made and sold in the U.S. must be labeled if they contain sesame, which is now the nation’s ninth major allergen. Sesame can be found in obvious places, like sesame seeds on hamburger buns. But it is also an ingredient in many foods from protein bars to ice cream, added to sauces, dips and salad dressings and hidden in spices and flavorings. Advocates for families coping with allergies lobbied for years to have sesame added to the list of major allergens. Congress in 2004 created labeling requirements for eight: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans... If the ingredients don’t include sesame, companies must take steps to prevent the foods from coming in contact with any sesame, known as cross-contamination. Food industry experts said the new requirements aren’t simple or practical. “It’s as if we’ve suddenly asked bakers to go to the beach and remove all the sand,” said Nathan Mirdamadi, a consultant with Commercial Food Sanitation, which advises the industry about food safety. Some companies include statements on labels that say a food “may contain” a certain product or that the food is “produced in a facility” that also uses certain allergens. However, such statements are voluntary, not required, according to the FDA, and they do not absolve the company of requirements to prevent cross-contamination... United States Bakery, which operates Franz Family Bakeries in California and the Northwest, notified customers in March that they would add a small amount of sesame flour to all hamburger and hot dog buns and rolls “to mitigate the risk of any adverse reactions to sesame products.”... Bob Huebner, food safety/quality assurance manager for Pan-O-Gold, told Fitzgerald in a string of emails that the company was forced to add sesame to the product and the label. “The unfortunate reality is that our equipment and bakeries are not setup for allergen cleanings that would be required to prevent sesame cross-contamination and was not an option for us”"
Time for more regulation so greedy companies don't kill consumers!
Giant phallus-shaped iceberg floating in Conception Bay surprises residents of Dildo, Canada - "Mother Nature has provided more than a handful of phallic shapes to giggle about. In 2021, a man went viral for his photographs of a penis-shaped rock tower in Arches National Park. Cambodian authorities have had to beg people to stop picking the carnivorous plant Nepenthes bokorensis, which just so happens to look like a penis. And don't even ask about California's plague of penis fish, which washed ashore on Drakes Beach in 2019. (They were actually marine worms, which have a long and storied history of looking phallic.)"
Jacky Martin on X - "Did you know that some companies put weights in their products to make them feel higher quality? It's because we associate heavier with better quality material. I am curious, is there something similar for games?"
Grummz on X - "Yes. When games shipped in physical boxes, we always included a blank notepad of Blizzard stationary. This was to make the box feel heavier and increase it's perceived value. We knew gamers would pick up the boxes and turn them over to see the back. When they did, we wanted Blizzard games to feel heavier than the competition."
Meme - Kangmin Lee | 이강민 @kangminjlee: "A symmetrical, orderly, and warm-lit meeting room is fascism"
*Bukele in El Salvador* Paul Graham @paulg: "This looks like a shot from a dystopian movie. The symmetry, the shininess, the flags that look like cones, the guards with capes. Everything says dictator."
Left wingers think everything is 'fascism'. So when they warn about 'fascism', no one should take them seriously
Soldiers Strip and Rebuild Jeep in Minutes - "Canadian army soldiers from the 3 Area Support Group (3ASG) Technical Services Division stationed at CFB Gagetown strip and rebuild a Willys MB US Army Jeep in under four minutes during a local army services parade in Halifax"
Katie Price's 'desperate last attempt to save Mucky Mansion' as she's evicted over £3million debt - "Katie Price is reported to be desperately seeking an emergency court intervention to avoid being booted out of her infamous Mucky Mansion. The former glamour model, whose fortune once peaked at £50 million, is grappling with two overdue mortgages on her West Sussex property valued at £1.3 million, alongside a hefty unpaid tax bill of £750,000 contributing to her overall debt of £3 million... Katie is not giving up without a fight, subsequently requesting a court hearing to argue for her right to remain in the property, which serves as both her family home and the hub for her OnlyFans content creation business... The model recently caught media attention again as she dodged her second bankruptcy hearing, electing to jet off to Cyprus with her current partner, JJ Slater. Faced with bankruptcy for the second time earlier this year after failing to settle a tax bill exceeding £750,000 with HM Revenue and Customs, Katie purchased her home back in 2014 for a neat £1.3million. Since then, the property has become famous in her Channel 4 renovation show as she transformed it from a state of disrepair. In March, Katie confidently reassured her followers that her 'Mucky Mansion' was safe despite her financial issues, proclaiming: "You've followed my life, my journey, I say it as it is. Yes, I'm in a bankruptcy. But guess what? I own my house. No one could take it off me as well."... Regarding her financial insolvency, she has even said that she's been in a courtroom "more times than I've had hot dinners", and that going to jail wouldn't faze her."
Katie Price's £2M mucky mansion left abandoned with piles of rubbish after she moved out to rent 'eye-wateringly' expensive home despite double bankruptcy woes
Scientists put Jared Diamond’s continental axis hypothesis to the test — here’s what they found - "Their research, drawing upon a vast array of cultural, environmental, and linguistic databases, challenges the notion that Eurasia’s geographic layout inherently facilitated a quicker spread of critical innovations compared to other regions of the world, such as the Americas and Africa... In line with Diamond’s hypothesis, the researchers found that environmental barriers do indeed impact the likelihood of cultural traits being shared between societies. For example, traits related to subsistence strategies, housing types, and social organization showed significant correlations with environmental and travel barriers, indicating that the ease of cultural transmission for these aspects is closely tied to ecological factors. However, the researchers discovered that these environmental barriers do not consistently favor Eurasia over other continents. This finding directly challenges Diamond’s assertion that Eurasia’s geographic orientation provided a unique advantage in the spread of agricultural and other critical innovations... The study underscores the complexity of cultural transmission, revealing that the spread of innovations is influenced by a myriad of factors beyond environmental and geographic barriers. The findings suggest that factors such as the movement of peoples, direct and indirect cultural exchanges, and perhaps even historical contingencies, play significant roles in shaping the distribution of cultural traits. Co-author Russell Gray from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology summarized the results by saying, “Our findings point out that geography, like genetics and ecology, matters, but it is not destiny.”... The study, “Geography is not destiny: A quantitative test of Diamond’s axis of orientation hypothesis,” was authored by Angela M. Chira, Russell D. Gray, and Carlos A. Botero."
World’s Oldest Cave Painting Unearthed: At Least 51,200 Years Old, Scientists Reveal - "In an astounding revelation, researchers have determined that a cave painting in Indonesia is the world's oldest known artwork, dating back at least 51,200 years. Knewz.com has learned that the painting, discovered on the island of Sulawesi, is also considered the earliest example of storytelling through art, as reported in the journal Nature."
Colby Cosh: Planets could be the reason early humans revolutionized farming - "In a world that was more or less the same year-round, hunter-gatherers didn’t have to worry about food storage: they could migrate cyclically within a small range, following wild game, to keep up with modest seasonal effects. But if the seasons then got more intense, food storage would become more important to the long-term survival of the group: one winter could now finish everyone off. Those hunter-gatherer skeletons from Neolithic times really are bigger and stronger than those of the farmers, but they are also marked noticeably, Matranga says, with “ Harris lines ” like the rings of a tree — a biological signal of periodic starvation. Those sedentary idiots eating grass — ancestors to most of us — might have been hungry year-round, but they prevailed, and eventually stumbled their way into civilization. For better or worse, as some would say ."
Tehran police close Turkish Airlines office after its employees defy Iran's headscarf law - "Iranian authorities have over the past years shuttered hundreds of businesses across the country — from shops, restaurants to pharmacies and offices — for quietly allowing their female employees to forgo wearing the hijab."
Weird. Muslims keep insisting that no one is forced to wear the hijab. Either that or they dig up ancient history to claim that nuns abusing children in the 20th century means Muslim women being forced to wear the hijab in the 21st century is exactly the same and you can't be concerned about the latter without being a hyporite
An engineer opens the door to reading ancient, once-unreadable history - "The incinerated scrolls are so sensitive that they tend to explode into a cloud of ash at the slightest touch. Occasional attempts to unravel the scrolls — which were rolled very tightly for storage in the first place — have been made over the past 300 years; the chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), for example, gave it a shot using newfangled stuff called chlorine. But none of these projects ever came especially close to success, and they typically involved destruction of some of the “books” in the library. In recent years 3D imaging techniques for “reading” documents like this in a non-invasive way have been making great headway. The leader in the field is a University of Kentucky computer scientist named Brent Seales, who in 2015 led efforts to read a fragile, desiccated Hebrew Bible parchment scroll dating to the third or fourth century AD. The text was from the book of Leviticus, and proved to be a letter-for-letter match with the Torah of today — which is a disappointment to scholars from one point of view, and a finding of awesome significance from another. (It goes without saying that this scroll came from the territory of Israel, near a kibbutz: this is a fact that would, in any other political context, be regarded as a supreme affirmation of indigeneity.)"
Ancient mysteries soon to be solved by decoding ancient Roman scrolls - "A computer programmer, Luke Farritor, had won a US$40,000 (C$54,000) prize by extracting a single legible word from one of the Herculaneum papyri that got flash-fried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. This papyrus scroll was one of those extracted from an entire library unearthed near the volcano in the 18th century: over the centuries, hundreds of these tightly-wrapped and then incinerated scrolls had been retrieved from the Villa of the Papyri, but had defied attempts to physically unroll them. Even modern, non-destructive imaging techniques employing algorithmic assistance were at a disadvantage, for the original ink on the scrolls was made of carbon. Farritor, provided with open-source 3D scans of a few scrolls, had thrilled classical scholars with his revelation of a single word, Greek “porphyras” (purple). But the really big prize was yet to be claimed. The funders of the Vesuvius Challenge, a prize pot designed to summon the attention of amateur coders like Farritor, promised US$700,000 to anyone who could decipher four passages of at least 140 characters from one of the scrolls. On Monday morning, Farritor and two other young Vesuvius Challenge notables, Youssef Nader and Julian Schillinger, were announced as winners of the grand prize... At this moment antiquarians know the titles of dozens of lost plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes; we are missing major works of Aristotle and Euclid and Archimedes and Eratosthenes. We know that Sulla wrote his memoirs and that Cato the Elder wrote a seven-book history of Rome. Any of these old writings, or others of equal significance, may materialize suddenly out of oblivion now, thanks to the Vesuvius Challenge."
Meme - "Hey, I know all these songs! I love these bands! You guys play great music here"
"Thanks! love listening to the Oldies station, it's so retro"
"OLDIES. RETRO"
Meme - "Why I didn't text you back:
I was asleep
I was driving
I was ignoring you
I forgot
I saw your text and told myself that I was going to respond, but I wanted to finish what I was doing first. After that, I got side-tracked and went to do something else and completely forgot your text even existed because I was stuck in my own tiny world until I went to text you days or even weeks later about something completely unrelated"
Meme - Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil: "How long is your tax code on a scale from Switzerland to America?"
"Whose Tax Code Contains the Most Words? Swiss German Moroccan Canadian French American"
Meme - "diagnosed with awwtism because im such a cutie"
Meme - "I think the panda knows *people dressed as Pandas interacting with Panda, and Panda looking traumatised*"
ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 on X - "Paul Kagame may have once had a Twitter Burner Account called ‘Richard Goldston’ which on different occasions he possibly used variously to deny Rwandan involvement in the Congo, call the African Union ‘useless’ and call South Africa’s President a ‘Black Retard’"
Meme - Kiwi Edward Lim is feeling thoughtful in Singapore.: "Tips on how to recognise Love Scams: Guys who fulfill all 3 criterias below are usually love scammers 🤭
* Good looking / handsome
* Wealthy / earning a good income
* Appears to love you faithfully
Chinese govt educating ladies on recognising love scams 😒 Have you encountered a love scam before? #ScamAlert #lovescammer #lovescams #lovescamsingapore"
Meme - “Bad” Billy Pratt @KILLTOPARTY: "Every man simple wants a beautiful mid to call his own" *Michele Alves*
Actual Fact Bot: Revived | Facebook - "Smile Mask Syndrome is a psychological disorder in which subjects develop depression and physical illness as a result of prolonged, unnatural smiling. First described in Japan in 1983, this is attributed to the great importance placed on smiling in the Japanese service industry."
How eating records have changed and why you can't attempt to eat biggest meal ever | Guinness World Records - "Eating records have changed a lot over the years. As more has been learned about the effects of gluttony, the world of record breaking has had to adapt. These days, we don’t monitor record attempts for how much a person can eat in an unlimited amount of time. Instead, we set a short time limit (three minutes at the longest) for a person to eat the most of one particular item, or we time how quickly they can eat a certain thing... But there was a time when we monitored a record called largest meal eaten. It is still active today, but it’s not one that you can apply for. It was featured in an episode of Guinness World Records podcast Behind the Book, when Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday shared the shocking and tragic tale. It was 8 a.m. on a Sunday in 1983 when a 23-year-old woman arrived at the accident and emergency department of Royal Liverpool Hospital complaining of abdominal pain. Her belly button had popped out like you’d expect to see during pregnancy, and she was finding it difficult to breathe. Nurses questioned her and she confessed that between midnight and 4 a.m. she had sat down to a late dinner. What she ate was what doctors believed at the time to be the biggest meal ever eaten by an individual. According to correspondence published in the medical journal The Lancet (Volume 325, Issue 8432, 6 April 1985), her meal weighed 19 lb (8.6 kg). Craig said: “That’s heavier than the heaviest bowling ball you’ll ever find at your local bowling alley. “Little wonder then that this young woman is now, four hours later, in agony.” The gigantic meal comprised 1 lb (453 g) of liver, 2 lb (907 g) of kidneys, 0.5 lb (226 g) of steak, two eggs, 1 lb (453 g) of cheese, two large slices of bread, 1 lb (453 g) of mushrooms, 2 lb (907 g) of carrots, one cauliflower, 10 peaches, four pears, two apples, four bananas, 2 lb (907 g) of plums, 2 lb (907 g) of grapes and two glasses of milk. An abdominal X-ray confirmed the diagnosis of acute postprandial gastric dilatation. Various efforts were made to save the patient but tragically she died as a direct result of her final meal... These days, we wouldn’t accept applications for records such as the largest meal eaten, at least not from members of the public. This is the kind of record that’s researched and submitted by medical experts and one that’s not considered safe for people to attempt themselves. As well as stories like this from medical history, we’ve reported on the competitive side of eating ever since our first edition. The book included records from people who had consumed huge amounts of food in one sitting, and even chronicled records for downing astonishing amounts of alcohol. By the 1970s, records like this covered half a page of our book. There was even a record for eating live goldfish (210), but this is certainly not something we would condone or monitor today. In the 1990s, the editors of Guinness World Records decided to draw a line under uncontrolled gluttony. However, there had been warnings in the book since 1966, with the first ever one reading: “From a medical point of view, record attempts must be regarded as extremely inadvisable”. But at the start of the 1990s, all consumption records were taken out of circulation and placed under review. Craig said: “When gastronomic records were later reintroduced in 1997, the focus shifted from unfettered gluttony to the rate of consumption... One thing that hasn’t changed is how popular these food records are"
Sending birthday cards to colleagues could count as harassment - "Sending a card to a colleague who has said they do not want their birthday celebrated could count as harassment, an employment tribunal has ruled. The conclusion came in the case of a tax worker who has successfully sued HMRC after bosses sent her a birthday card when she expressly said she did not celebrate it. Kani Toure was off sick with work-related stress when she asked for correspondence to be kept to a minimum and via email, the tribunal heard. However, in the month that followed she was contacted “more than once every other day”, before being sent a birthday card despite informing her boss the previous year she did not want one."
Good luck keeping track of who wants a card and who doesn't want one
Codpiece (Character) - Comic Vine - "Codpiece is a Doom Patrol villain with a giant transforming weapon attached to his groin."
Pcwelds on X - "My dad went to a doctors apt with my grandma & found out she was diagnosed with dementia over a year ago but she never told anyone because she forgot lmaoooo"
Wife suffocates after being buried in cow dung to treat a snake bite - "A wife suffocated to death after being buried in cow dung to treat a snake bite in India. The 35-year-old woman, named as Devendri, was out collecting wood for her fire when a snake bit her on the hand in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, northern India. She ran home to tell her husband, Mukesh, and the pair decided to call a local snake charmer called Murarey, who suggested his bizarre treatment may succeed in sucking out the poison. Villagers gathered outside the house and watched as Mukesh covered Devendri in cow dung. The snake charmer sat beside her and chanted mantras but after 75 minutes Devendri died."