No I have a full time position with insurance etc

Dude. Those stories all suck and make. To explain mine sounds like complaining about nothing, but I started the thread, so I’ll tell it.

It’s not exactly being laid off. I am a Visiting Assistant Professor at a liberal arts college. Our duties are primarily teach, and we work on one year contracts. I went into my chair’s office to show her an online homework system I deployed on a 15 year old optiplex, because fuck the publisher. She was really impressed but that was when she gave me the news.

Now I’ve not had my contract renewed before (fucking assholes gas lit me about it last time), but this is where it becomes a layoff. The college didn’t renew ANY of the VAP contracts.

The part that sucks about this is I love my department. Typically VAPs teach only intro courses, but they let me teach a junior level computational physics class. They understood I had a lot offer, and they gave me a shot. I love this department and it sucks to go.

I have one more shot. The provost really wants an interdisciplinary data analytics program. The head of it contacted me to teach a course. I emailed him telling I would but can’t do it. Here’s the kicker. As far as I know, I’m the only one who has done computational work with the humanities. I pitched him on creating a different position, he seemed interested, but this was last week.

I have my fingers crossed, but am not holding out hope. It’s also worth mentioning. All of this comes from the buisiness and finance division. Academic affairs (the faculty) is pissed about it. The two have been feuding for a long time anf academic affairs almost always loses. I think it is a general lack of leadership from all levels and just generally paying too much to their own research, but that is another post haha

Humans have mouse movement that, on August 8, 2024, are very hard to reproduce. But just like regular captchas we are just teaching computers to do the same thing.

If they are this much of an asshole, why are you friends?

The earth will be fine. It’s us that are fucked

Must be a Texas thing

No more burn in!

Remember when batteries had ‘memory’ and would charge dramatically less over time?

Holy fuck. Have you ever seen one of those full grill panels? Brighter than the god damn death star. When it’s foggy the beam extends 3/4 of a mile

And they run cool. My office has a fixture that was too bright which would normally take those 4’ fluorescent bulbs.

I got on a ladder take one out. Turns out they were LEDs. Cool to the touch. I put electrical tape over them and called it a day.

No kidding. Remember when an electric drill took 4 D cell batteries and you could more easily make holes with a screw driver and a bow? Now you can mow your lawn, cut down a tree, and brush your teeth on the same charge

Perhaps today is a good day to die. Prepare for ramming speed!

The most important thing is to talk to your partner and establish boundaries and expectations for your parents. Boundaries could be something like “We are only free on thursdays. Please call Tuesday if you’d like to have dinner.” Or you can losen boundaries like “we’re both off of work this week. Come over whenever you want”

When I think expectations, I think about my weekly call with my sister and parents once a week. I can expect that will happen. Maybe you could set an expectation like we’ll have a meal at least once every two weeks.

No

Depends what you mean by “what it is today.”. Mass isn’t fundamental. It is a particle’s coupling to the Higgs Boson which generates mass. The Lagrangian of the Standard Model is an energy equation. Not a mass one.

In 14 hundred and 92 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And also committed genocide

Define the speed of light to be 1 (gaussian units). Then Einstein’s E=mc^2 becomes E=m. Mass is energy. In physics mass is not fundamental. Energy is.

I’m a 36 year old professor. My only negative evaluation this past semester was that I didn’t give homework. Though, most of them hated my guts from using grades to tell them their work was mostly average. <Insert Boomer comment about participation trophies>

The students realized they needed to change to improve their grades. And subsequently, they grew the way I expected, which was far more than they thought they would. They recognized I was teaching them more than the material: I was teaching them the meta. That was valuable enough to them to forgive me for being such a dick about the numbers that define their self worth.

So, want the students to give you those glowing 10/10 evaluations? Piss them off and make them glad that you did. Give them something of value that no one has. But, based off of how much you seem to care about the difference between a 95% and 100%, I think, much like my students, you are chasing your participation trophy. Think on it.

Knowing ‘the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell’ means absolutely nothing sans any context. It should make you sad that people’s knowledge of your field is as shallow as a puddle. (Kidding mostly. Also projecting)

Physics can be done without mass. Next question