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Random Jetship
@randomjetship.bsky.social
Mostly incognito.
I think of it as "please clarify this (usually small) point." C.f.:
–The regarde-moi question (5-min talk disguised as a question).
–The please-expand question ('What does this have to do with my stuff?')
–The fuck-you question ('You're wrong. What do you think about that?')
Some overlap may occur.
July 8, 2025 at 3:33 AM
You know, Steve Martin's 'King Tut' could very easily be rewritten for King Chuck.

♪ When Charlie was a young boy,
He never thought he'd see
Dear old Lizzie die,
And turn him to a king! (King Chuck)♪
April 16, 2025 at 10:38 PM
Well... touché.
January 28, 2025 at 8:00 PM
There used to be scientists, too, who insisted happily that it was. Been reading this with new eyes...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The Common Ground of Science and Politics
View all access options to continue reading this article.
www.science.org
January 28, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Will do!
December 13, 2024 at 1:59 PM
Job 1—Advisor knew committee chair; other candidate tanked
Job 2—Didn't get offer til someone left for another position
Job 3—Got fellowship in a slow year
Job 4—No offer til first choice got permanent post
TT—Candidate w/inside track tanked; I'd met committee chair at another interview a week prior
December 13, 2024 at 1:58 PM
But thanks for the source, incidentally. Salient to me in light of the soft matter people I've been talking to, many of whom came through Exxon labs in the early 1980s, which appears to have been a bit of a mini-Bell.
December 13, 2024 at 1:21 PM
At the risk of muddying the waters... Not "Diversification: The New Oil Game"?
December 13, 2024 at 1:01 PM
A hockey stick has a "lie"—the angle between the blade and the shaft—that is typically between about 133° and 137°. The smaller the angle, the higher the lie. Here we're looking at, what, about 100°? That's a very high lie! You can't buy a stick like that, and I certainly couldn't play with one.
December 12, 2024 at 8:48 PM
This is the obligatory "seven words too long" post.
December 10, 2024 at 4:05 PM
That is the thirteenth chime of the 'tech' fetish. If an investor who got rich from the U bend had started taking plumbing wealth as cause to rake in unrelated accolades and pontificate on politics, everyone would have said, "siddown, Bruno." But here we are.
December 10, 2024 at 1:14 PM
I doubt there's much to ESP (I share the prejudice)—but I would say that method alone can't explain why one null experimental result (e.g. the ether) is healthy scientific inquiry and another is a sign of pseudoscience (e.g. ESP).

Michael Gordin is good on this point:
academic.oup.com/book/45901
Pseudoscience: A Very Short Introduction
Abstract. Pseudoscience: A Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation between scienc
academic.oup.com
December 9, 2024 at 12:54 PM
The prayer case has a long history: www.jstor.org/stable/27845...

Interesting to note that some influential scientists (e.g. Nobel laureate Brian Josephson) would argue that it was prejudice, not method, that led science to abandon fields like parapsychology.
The Prayer Test: The proposal of a "scientific" experiment to determine the power of prayer kindled a raging debate between Victorian men of science and theologians on JSTOR
Stephen G. Brush, The Prayer Test: The proposal of a "scientific" experiment to determine the power of prayer kindled a raging debate between Victorian men of science and theologians, American Scienti...
www.jstor.org
December 9, 2024 at 12:54 PM