Gabriel54

I'm sympathetic to this argument, but as an example someone from NJ could easily drive up to Secaucus Junction and hop on the NJ transit into Penn Station in about the same time as it would take to make it through tunnel + Manhattan traffic. If there are not good connections inside Manhattan or other parts of the city then that is a good argument for better public transit.

If I'm not mistaken this is pretty universal outside of the US (and maybe the UK).

So you are suggesting that international law vis a vis war does not apply during war?

Suppose I am a country at war with the United States. Do I have the right to kill every American journalist? Also, it is not clear what "working in Hamas" means since they formed the government of the Gaza strip, so people "working in Hamas" would include all public officials, civil servants, etc. Does Israel have the right to kill all the sanitation workers of the Gaza strip since they also "work in Hamas"?

It is incredible to me how as humans we are capable of harnessing rationality and abstraction in science to the point that such technology has become possible (think from the perspective of someone 200 years ago, the development of physics & math -> electricity -> computers -> the internet -> LLMs) and yet we are still totally incapable of rationally dealing with our different backgrounds and experiences.

It was an anecdotal example. Other examples I saw include drug paraphernalia (e.g. needles) littered all over the sidewalks, vast encampments of homeless people, and no police presence. Maybe a bad day? I've been to Houston many times and never seen anything like that. I've also seen shadier parts of NYC but the level of despair appeared much higher in SF.

First time driving through San Francisco I saw someone shooting up heroin on the sidewalk. Seen lots of stuff in NYC, Trenton, Camden, etc., but never such obvious issues with drug addiction and homelessness.

Amazing how much of the NYC waterfront is still recognizable over 100 years later. One structure I didn't recognize looks like some kind of dock for ships?

In the great state of Texas, as I understand the process:

-walk into a licensed firearm dealer

-show government ID (e.g. drivers license)

-fill out ATF form 4473 (approx. two pages)

-wait for background check (called NICS, Near Instance Criminal Background Check System)

-pay for firearm

Did I miss any steps?

I know I'm going to get a lot of pushback for raising this point, but I'm somewhat incredulous to see people bring up safety as the reason for these restrictions, when this country simultaneously (in many places) allows young adults to buy a gun (or lots of guns!) simply by walking into a store and asking for one. But heaven help you if you want to build a three story building with one stairway.

Of a civilization.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. Anecdotally this seems to be the case. In my personal experience, HR is only accountable to the executive level.

In my experience, most mathematicians are too shy to speak their mind about this topic for fear of rocking the boat. But I am sure many talented folks are getting turned away at the gates of academia by this DEI game.

The Palestinian Authority administers the West Bank. No country in the world considers them a terrorist organization.

I had a cat that would fetch only one particular kind of Christmas tree decoration (like a little stuffed animal). Anything else wouldn't interest her, even if it had a similar shape and size.

What makes your example particularly interesting is that this US law will almost certainly be enforced by the other country. I.e., if they want to avoid invoking the wrath of US sanctions.

Or, if you are from New York / New Jersey, the correct pronunciation is 'budder'. :)

I'm not going to dispute that there are hidden agendas behind news organizations. The point is that in any case, the work they do is important, and the people working for these organizations should not be targeted and killed.

The arrogance of sending weapons to a country that is killing journalists and their families, and then telling those same journalists to stop talking about it, is astounding.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/11/shireen-abu-akleh-i...

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/26/arab-world-speaks-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-killed-11-p...

Very touching story.

> PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

Not out of character for how I always imagined his personality.

I find it incredible that when a British "freelance" journalist goes to Syria (!) and upon return gets questioned about their work there, the default reaction is to... blame Turkey?

- While the K-3 visa technically still exists, in practice it is rarely granted (i.e. on the order of 1 or 2 every year globally) [0]. You can apply for it in addition to the CR-1 visa but in practice, once they approve your I-130 petition the K-3 visa application will be cancelled automatically (and you will move forward with the CR-1 visa application)

- The first step to get a CR-1 visa is to file the I-130 petition, which as per [1] is taking about 12 months on average. Your luck may vary.

There is no magic pathway unfortunately but on the positive side, your spouse will be a permanent resident as soon as they enter the country.

[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

[1] https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt

Then it sounds like you don't enjoy your job, in which case it is normal to feel bad when receiving negative feedback, and it also sounds like there are bigger issues.

Two points: is your goal to be perfect (i.e., make no mistakes), or is your goal to improve the product? In the later case, constructive criticism is only moving you closer to that end goal, and can be welcomed happily.

Second point, do you respect the person giving your work criticism, and do you accept that it is useful for the product? If yes, then great, why feel bad if the goal was to improve the product, and their criticism will only make your work better. If no, then this can be a difficult situation, and I personally have been here before. I try to see things from their perspective, ask questions, etc., but there are definitely times when you will fundamentally disagree with the utility of the criticism, and this can indeed be a hard spot.

This all said, the manner of delivery makes a big difference. "Do better" is not useful feedback because it is not actionable. If you are getting this kind of feedback, consider finding a new job / manager. Feedback that is well thought out and actionable (e.g. "this can be refactored like so", or "this function needs another test case") is more than likely coming from a perspective that has seen many things go wrong, has an intuition about what can go wrong, and can be a learning experience for you. Sometimes, the problem cannot be articulated so clearly, in which case your manager should be careful to say so and they will have to put in some thought themselves into the problem and how to find a solution. If they are not then they are only doing half of their job.

I found Halmos' Naive Set Theory to be very helpful when first learning about proofs. Don't be offput by the title - the material is fundamental to any working mathematician. It is also quite short.

As a TA at a certain public institution in Texas, the level of some students' incompetence by the time they reach their final year in undergraduate studies is shocking and saddening. And yet, almost no one fails, because there is pressure to pass everyone. One would literally have to do nothing in order to fail. Few professors have the time or energy to deal with these issues, so standards get lower and more students pass without knowing their subject. The only thing protecting professors from retaliation (not acquiescing to pressure from administrators / deans to pass students) is tenure. We can see clearly what will be the effect of this legislation.

One basic misconception people often have is that the subset relation implies smaller cardinality (i.e. "size"). E.g., all odd integers are integers, so there are more integers that odd integers. But this is not a very useful notion of size. For example, how would we compare the set of multiples of two with the set of multiples of three? We want a notion of size independent of the underlying "objects" in our sets. This is why we define cardinality in terms of mappings between sets.

This is a logical and natural conclusion of what happens when we give up on the idea of meritocracy.

This position is totally at odds with that of many members of the US Supreme Court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textualism

The Ottomans had some of the oldest (recorded) military marching bands [1]. Lots of great recordings on YouTube [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_military_band

[2] https://youtu.be/FuqwJmPc_8I