https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1755032183557829073

This is one of the papers written by this "mechanical engineer". That's it. That's the entire paper.

From the webpage of the Dean of Engineering at the University of Reno:

>Dr. Erick C. Jones is a former senior science advisor in the Office of the Chief Economist at the U.S. State Department. He is a former professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at the College of Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington.

According to this source, his salary in 2022 was $372,127.

https://www.nevadafacultyalliance.org/resources/Documents/PUBLIC_DOCS/2023_UNR_Budget/UNR%202023%20vs%202022%20salaries%20top%2050%20f.pdf

According to wikipedia, UNR is the state's flagship public university.

I was curious to see what else Jones had published so I searched him on Google scholar and took a look at his three most-cited publications. The second of these appeared to be a textbook, and the third was basically 8 straight pages of empty jargon—ironic that a journal called Total Quality Management would publish something that has no positive qualities! The most-cited paper on the list was pretty bad too, an empty bit of make-work, the scientific equivalent of the reports that white-collar workers need to fill out and give to their bosses who can then pass these along to their bosses to demonstrate how productive they are. In short, this guy seems to be a well-connected time server in the Ed Wegman mode, minus the plagiarism.

He was a Program Director at the National Science Foundation! Your tax dollars at work.

Can you imagine what it would feel like to be a student in the engineering school at the flagship university of the state of Nevada, and it turns out the school is being run by the author of this trash. I can't even.

P.S. The thing I still can't figure out is, why did Jones publish this paper at all? He'd already landed the juicy Dean of Engineering job, months before submitting it to his own journal. To then put his name on something so ludicrously bad . . . it can't help his career at all, could only hurt. And obviously it's not going to do anything to reduce train accidents. What was he possibly thinking?

P.P.S. I guess this happens all the time; it's what Galbraith called the “bezzle.” We're just more likely to hear about when it happens at some big-name place like Stanford, Harvard, Ohio State, or Cornell. It still makes me mad, though. I'm sure there are lots of engineers who are doing good work and could be wonderful teachers, and instead UNR spends $372,127 on this guy.

I'll leave the last word to another UNR employee, from the above-linked press release:

“What is exciting about having Jones as our new dean for the College of Engineering is how he clearly understands the current landscape for what it means to be a Carnegie R1 ‘Very High Research' institution,” Provost Jeff Thompson said. “He very clearly understands how we can amplify every aspect of our College of Engineering, so that we can continue to build transcendent programs for engineering education and research.”

Haven't really checked this channel out, but this was a fun watch, and it goes down really smooth with some physics/dynamics background

The AIR-2 Genie was an unguided air to air nuclear missile. It was developed early in the cold war prior to ICBM's and guided air to air missiles. By the early 50's, the Soviets had reversed engineered the B-29 Superfortress into the TU-4 which could theoretically bomb the United States in a one way mission. The bomber's routes would take them over the Arctic Circle.

An air to air guided missile sounds like something Curtis LeMay would come up with in a fever dream. However, the mission profile makes sense in the context of its time. The Genie was designed to be fired into bomber formations, as that was the only delivery mechanism at the time. The 1.5kT warhead would be detonated at the cruising altitude ~33,000 feet. The missile didn't need to be guided since the blast radius would take out the bomber formation over the uninhabited Arctic Circle. It was never intended to be fired over civilian population center and the Air Force was keen to show that it was ""harmless"" to people on the ground.

_{Curtis "Bomb's Away!" LeMay}

To demonstrate , during the Plumbob John test, five Air Force personnel stood below the blast.

The AIR-2 Genie was deployed to the Royal Canadian Air Force in a Dual Key arrangement. This ment that the Leafs would deploy the weapon, but the Burgers had to give the order. The Genie was obsolete by the mid 60's when guided missile technology improved and ICBM's became the main delivery systems.

_{Titan 2 ICBM at the Titan Missile Museum}

I got to see one in person when I went to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, AZ. Well worth it if you're in the area.

_{Inert AIR-2 Genie at the Pima Air and Space Museum}

!trekkies

I upgraded my PC for two reasons. First, the old one was having very bad network issues and was relatively old. Second, to not lose a frame in Blender under any circumstance. So three reasons.

Despite the significant upgrade Blender performance is exactly the same.

The network issues have come back, and I can't sneed.

I woke up today and my computer has identical issues to the one it replaced. No other computer in my house has network issues. My shitty 10+ year old laptop does not have network issues. That laptop's wifi card does not work, so it has a USB adapter for that. If I plug that adapter into my PC, it has connectivity issues. Neither of my LAN ports work. This is a 100% brand new PC.

I have updated every driver. I have updated the BIOS. I have set to metered connection. I have disabled searching for other networks once I am connected. I have run antivirus scans. I have run one program at a time to see if one was causing issues.

I cannot figure out what is wrong. When I get back to the house tonight I'm reinstalling windows.

Total software developer death.

If I had unlimited resources I would have the microsoft HQ's parkinglot firebombed until connection issues improved. I don't even need the internet to get my work done this weekend, I just wanted to play Hunt: Showdown and get the cool skin.

The entirety of my day has been spent trying to figure out why my ping spikes to 2000 every minute or so. The only breaks were eating or when I went on a four hour hike to scream at god.

If you have any guesses as to why this is happening, let me know.

Someone ping dixie and britbongs

A full 2 hour cover of Ted's Ph.D dissertation if any of you are curious with the first half an hour covering all the prerequisites to understanding.

I will admit even though I've taken 2 semesters of measure theory once it reaches ~1:15:00 I have no fricking idea what he is talking about.

Cool video though

!math

You're looking at the first direct image of another planetary system located about 300 light-years away around a star like our Sun. pic.twitter.com/UWoSHGpVRs

— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) January 25, 2024

https://www.science.org/content/article/our-first-direct-look-multiplanet-system-around-sun-star

I've never run Mint or Debian on my home desktop but those seem like the obvious options.

I'm not installing Gentoo or Arch because my choice of distro is not based on insecurity about my peepee size and I'm looking for everyday ease of use and a large support base.

edit: currently installing mint debian edition pray for me brothers

edit2: mint debian thus far seems better/less buggy than ubuntu without major downsides

part 2:

It would be funny if this was true and the reason nobody fucks with Earth is that it is very intimidating that we’re just blasting our signals out nonstop like “come at me, bro.” https://t.co/NcR8gWycGl

— Open Source Stupidity (OSSTU) Starfish (@IRHotTakes) January 21, 2024

This isn't drama but I think it's cool.

Encounters of the homosexual kind:

Thank you for sharing your weird porn taste with us:

This is profiling and you know it:

Just burn your equivalent of chinx and sexy Indian dudes for fuel duh:

OH SNAP:

Idk what this means but hopefully you neurodivergents will:

>inb4 this is r-slurred

Also I hate the way this guy pronounced Michelson's surname

Parts 1-4: https://www.ashbybowhunting.org/ashby-reports

She cute

Produced, directed photographed and co-written by Michael Jorgensen, this Emmy® award winning film examines the high-stakes battle between the world's largest aerospace companies as they build and fly the most versatile warplane ever created – the Joint Strike Fighter. Go inside classified facilities with the only filmmaker ever allowed inside a US weapons competition as Boeing and Lockheed Martin battle for the largest contract in military history.

boeing and lockheed were each given $1 billion to develop and build a prototype aircraft to fulfill the requirements of the joint strike fighter program, this documentary is about that competition

it's really good