Apparently @imperialcollege starting this Monday “we will be delivering all teaching remotely.” Unfortunately they haven’t yet bothered to tell those of us actually doing the teaching.
Statuses
Just had a wonderful rendezvous with old friend and present-day Bohemist @PeterZusi, made possible by the otherwise unpleasant #USSstrike. We haven’t seen each other since University — only our friends know how long that is (a long time).
Unconscious bias: Walked into the men’s room at the V&A museum. The walls were pink, so I immediately walked back out to check that it was really the Men’s room — even though the first thing I had seen was a row of urinals.
I was one of the first customers at the excellent new Guillam coffee house. If you’re around South Kensington in London, I definitely recommend it—one of the best places for a drip/filter coffee around (& espressos too).
Lovely interview by Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) with Freeman Dyson on his eschatological musings.
Come hear me give today’s @ImperialUCU #UCUstrike teach-out talk on “The Random Universe” — cosmology, Bayesian probability, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and more. Monday 2 March at noon in the @ICunion Metric Room. http://ucu.imperial.ac.uk #UCU
RIP Freeman Dyson. I was lucky enough to hear him speak at my high school after his first memoir, “Disturbing the Universe”. I might not be a physicist today if it weren’t for that meeting.
Thanks, @TfL, for the personal email… I know that the New Routemaster has problems, but using the middle and rear doors was the best thing about these buses! Did I miss a “consultation”? Are you really losing that many fares to scofflaws?
Amused by my #UCU comrade who thought “Workers of the world, unite” was a reference to Morrisey, not Marx. #UCUstrikes
So, @TfL, what exactly is a “signal failure”, why do they happen so often, and why wasn’t this Victorian-sounding problem solved some time in the last century?
UK university staff to strike for 14 days in pay and pensions row
Workers express frustration in run-up to action involving 50,000 staff at 74 campuses.
Yes, including us at Imperial — workers of the world, unite!
It’s an honor after all these years to be able to support @rxgau — I just subscribed to Christgau’s And It Don’t Stop (the best use of Apple Pay so far…)
Bus-stop ad in Lambeth, London, the most pro-remain constituency in the UK. Do you think HSBC is pushing this ad campaign in Brexit-supporting areas?
Old stuff, new view, a little chaos.
Moving day. 😬
Anyone out there having trouble getting macOS mail to fetch Exchange email? I need to “Rebuild” the mailbox to see any new mail! Behaviour started suddenly two days ago. iOS mail, outlook web, and outlook on mac all work. (Catalina on a 15” 2019 MacBook Pro and and 2014 iMac.)
This is niche, but important to a small techie group: news.gmane.org is gone, replaced by news.gmane.io (back up soon). This is actually a big deal, albeit under-appreciated, in the overall history of the free internet.
Holiday buns, from scratch (not iced yet).
I have been hearing equally strong arguments that Labour lost because it backed Remain too strongly, and not strongly enough.
No offence to the Chief Rabbi (and I am no fan of Corbyn), but this will be worse for the Jews than a Labour government.
Other student feedback includes an excellent comparison to Jeff Goldblum and the less excellent “Astro=confusion ☹️”.
I really shouldn’t have ordered a new 15” MacBook Pro back in July.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/11/apple-introduces-16-inch-macbook-pro-the-worlds-best-pro-notebook
https://marco.org/2019/11/13/mbp16
https://daringfireball.net/2019/11/16-inchmacbookprofirstimpressions
Best response (in full) to my request for midterm feedback from my students.
The Hubble constant: a mystery that keeps getting bigger – Science – The Guardian
— featuring Daniel Mortlock from @ImperialAstro.
Proud to have achieved a “personal worst” after too little training and two small kids’ worth of regular sleep. But I finished. #RoyalParksHalf 🏃🏻♂️
Our four-year old insists that cowboys and cowgirls greet each other with “ni hao, pardner!”
Abseiling outside my 10th-floor window. There is no ledge.
I’ve got a long (4+ hrs so far) wait at “Setting up…” during my macOS Catalina install, like others.
Question: has anyone w/this problem had it successfully finish, eventually, or is a reboot actually necessary?
Congrats to Peebles, Mayor & Queloz on the 2019 Physics Nobel “for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe & Earth’s place in the cosmos”. Jim Peebles is a physics hero, helping us understand the statistics and physics of the Universe.