Eric J. Korpela @SETIEric@social.cleverlibre.org

A Saudi academic may be sentenced to death.

His alleged crime? Using WhatsApp and Twitter to "share news considered 'hostile' to the kingdom".

Just a reminder: the Saudi government continues to invest in Twitter, and has increased its stake since Elon Musk took over.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/15/saudi-arabian-academic-on-death-row-for-using-twitter-and-whatsapp

Trying to find people I relate to on Mastodon. Please boost if you:

-don't believe in palindromes.

-once saw a psychic who told you that you will die in a tragic mini golf accident.

-think that cops should give you one chance to rock, paper, scissors your way out of a speeding ticket.

-microdose bananas to keep your potassium levels stable.

-constantly say sorry whenever you're walking just in case you bump into a ghost.

The catastrophic failure of #SouthwestAir over Christmas 2022 was the worst single-airline aviation failure in American history, stranding over 1,000,000 passengers. But while it was exceptional, it was also foreseeable: 2022 saw Southwest and the other carriers rack up record numbers of cancellations, leaving crews and fliers stranded.

1/

Greetings. I wish I'd gotten a screenshot of this one, but I saw a registration form today that was one of the worst examples of "password hell" I've ever seen. I think it had about 10 lines of requirements, stuff like:

Must be 9 to 14 characters.
Must include both lower and uppercase alphabetics.
Must include numbers.
Must include special characters.
Can't have more than three alphabetics in a row.
Can't have more than three numbers in a row.
Can't have more than three special characters in a row.
... and so on.

OH, and of course, copy/paste was disabled for both username and password, so this all had to be hand typed TWICE for confirmation. AND ... the typed password was obscured with no way to choose to display it.

And you wonder why the Galactic Federation has quarantined this planet.

Best, -L

Tax the rich?

WE ALL KNOW why Congress won't tax the rich.

WE ALL KNOW that bribery is why We the People can't get what we need. WE ALL KNOW it is corruption.

WE ALL KNOW why Congress won't stop the bribery.

It's the most obvious thing in the world.

#corruption

Earlier today I posted something about the history of the h-index in which I stuck to the point and didn't go into a long digression about why the h-index is a poor metric for many of the uses to which it is put.

This post is to serve as notice that the h-index basically tracks career stage, albeit with different slopes for researchers of different impact—but that the effects of disciplinary and subdisciplinary citation conventions on slopes swamp researcher differences in productivity.

Do I have this right: Republicans added ~$7 trillion to the national debt under Trump, but now they want to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare before raising the debt ceiling?

Hello Mastodon! I'm new to this site (potentially migrating from Twitter). I post primarily about health policy (book under contract with Harvard Univerity Press), American democracy, and politics more generally.

1. Pretty much every right-wing politician will mark MLK Day with the same quote, stripped of all context

REMINDER: MLK SAID MORE THAN 35 WORDS

No one talks about #utilities and what a monopoly they are. They are free to charge people outrageous amounts while they enrich shareholders. They don't get paid to do maintenance so they let their infrastructure crumble. They have enormous influence in state legislatures because they contribute so much to political campaigns. They are a failing system whose infrastricture won't withstand #climatechange The commissions that were formed to regulate them are controlled by them. It must change.

I play Ojii-chan in Allegiance, the spirited and funny grandfather character. Here’s a shot from our production photos. It’s opening week for our show in London!

Tix: https://Allegiancemusical.com

Moderna is planning to charge $130 for its COVID vaccine, but the vaccine only costs $2.85 to make.

Meanwhile, over the last two years, the company made over $19 billion in profits off the vaccine.

Folks, this is what corporate greed looks like.

For #FossilFriday. This is a fossil #Pleistocene #raccoon (Procyon Lotor) skull.

It was recovered from a mixed alluvial deposit in #Florida's Bone Valley Formation. Peace River, Hardee County, Hawthorn group.

Trash pandas have been around a looooong time.

#Paleontology #fossils #fossil

So, if the FTC's non-compete rule fails, maybe law schools should start making students sign agreements not to transfer as condition of admission and make new professors sign non-competes.

I hear they are beneficial agreements.

#Lawtwitter #Antitrust

Here’s a #Caturday picture with a #Retro twist. My cat Loki is posing with a doohickey that was very common in US households in 1980, and sometimes present in them in 1990, but is now long gone (unless you thought to keep one of them). What is it?

Why are ethics questions always like:
"is it ethical to steal bread to feed your starving family?"

And not:
"is it ethical to sell bread when families are starving?"