The New York Times just discovered parallel computing.

Humphrey Crogart walking the docks

Big "Hillary is Antichrist" vibes.

The US News and World Report just released their annual College Rankings — and you should ignore them.

A reminder that last year their "Chief Data Strategist" somehow admitted in public that every year they screw around with the ranking algorithm until it gives results they like.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-news-college-rankings-yale-law-fe24f0b2

I love how Springer-Nature has hopped so unapologetically onto the grift train that they are trying to sell unframed "posters" (read: silly certificates of merit) to their authors for 189 bucks.

A Saudi man has been sentenced to death for criticizing the government on two anonymous twitter/X accounts with a total of ten followers.

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/1196776390/saudi-arabia-man-death-sentence-tweets

Gosh, NPR, I can't imagine how the Saudi authorities could have verified his identity on X.

I somehow didn’t know that wallcreepers exist and now I still feel a bit suspicious that the entire internet is playing an elaborate joke at my expense.

https://www.vogelwarte.ch/en/birds/birds-of-switzerland/wallcreeper

In recent editorial, Nature stated that "Apart from in articles that are specifically about AI, Nature will not be publishing any content in which photography, videos or illustrations have been created wholly or partly using generative AI, at least for the foreseeable future. "

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01546-4.pdf

This is interesting, because as written this would include e.g. Powerpoint's Designer feature.

Below, an example of the sort of thing it generates. Should this really be banned?

Wow, #evernote is going all in on enshittification.

A common misconception about academic life is that once a professor has tenure, they can simply coast and have no incentive to do otherwise.

This might be true if salaries were guaranteed for 12 months. They rarely are. For example, the UW pays 2/3 of my salary. I raise the other 1/3 on grant funding, or I don't get paid.

So when I write a multiyear grant, I may have a year's salary riding on a proposal where to be funded I have to be ranked above 90% of other, similarly motivated faculty.

nostr:npub1yk67q98wp2s8asr3pdvkmdmmh3x4566fz55m5rlvwsu0dj62s72q804zz4 Thank you so much!

Fledgling #crow just a few hours out of the nest.

#crows #corvids #birdphotography

Each year, #[0] & World Reports rank colleges and universities, as follows: they try a bunch of different ranking algorithms, see which generates the results they like, and then choose which to deploy.

I mean we all knew that the #[1] & World Report rankings were absolute crap, but the fact that anyone would out and admit this in public—while not under oath–is truly remarkable.