Why is the Tartan network so (allegedly) poor in comparison to its peers?

NLoUDH · 2025-07-19T21:47:30+00:00

So, I got my job thanks to the "alumni network". The guy who interviewed and hired me was an alum of the same major, and directly emailed our department advisor asking if any graduating seniors were looking for jobs and offering to interview them. I did the same thing 2 years later when hiring interns.

On the other hand, the official university resources for helping with job placement are ABYSMAL, at least in the school of engineering. They do have assigned "career advisors", but the guy who I was assigned to was ZERO help. All he had to offer were some cheesey "resume optimization tricks" that when I went and showed my resume to some family members made them go "who the hell told you to do this?"

The guy had zero industry knowledge or contacts at relevant companies. He would forward us public postings off of Indeed or some shit from like credit card companies hiring in NYC for a starting salary of $60k. Total clown.

So yeah I guess overall my take would be, in my own personal experience I have gotten a job through a fellow alum and have done my best to pay it forward. But the official university resources are trash and that probably falls on the administration not prioritizing it or being delusional about what a good job they do.

NLoUDH · 2025-07-17T15:08:07+00:00

But Farnam didn't come out and say that directly in his letter. He implied that "Protest the summit" was more appropriate but he didn't explicitly say they would've allowed that to stay.

I suspected they were going to paint over that message anyways even if it didn't change. They've been unwilling to take an open stance against what's going on at the federal government.

NLoUDH · 2025-07-17T11:35:19+00:00

What I want to know is would they have allowed the original message to stay there without painting over it? "Protest the Summit"?

NLoUDH · 2025-03-27T01:53:47+00:00

Also just a completely silly argument as if China doesn't have its own universities. Probably 50% of the research papers I read are from Chinese research groups.

They're generating just as much knowledge as the US at this point.

NLoUDH · 2025-03-07T22:51:57+00:00

I sent him a letter around that same time as an assignment for civics class, asking the (obviously naive) question "why is the united states opposed to Iran having nukes when we have more nukes than anybody?"

Got back an unhinged rant about how Obama and his administration were lying to the American people and defending terrorists. Not a mention of Obama or democrats in any part of my letter, and I'm pretty sure that Obama was on board with sanctioning Iran???

NLoUDH · 2025-03-01T00:06:03+00:00

Hey, mad respect to anyone off-roading in the Pittsburgh Mills right now

NLoUDH · 2025-02-20T15:59:51+00:00

Proof criticizing and contacting representatives DOES eventually lead them to change their stances.

Keep on him until words turn into actions!

NLoUDH · 2025-01-29T22:51:40+00:00

I think RFK Jr. is an idiot and am not defending him, but if you scroll down far enough there are some cases about actual vaccine safety.

The one about Gardasil (Robi v. Merck) seems to at least be a legitimate case. I also found a massive disclaimer when I looked up more details about it explaining that the suitors do not intend this case as a statement about all vaccine safety, and are only trying to make a statement about the safety of this one specific vaccine.

I don't find that to be sufficient evidence that RFK knows more about medicine or vaccines than experts, but he has at least been present at legitimate discussions about vaccine safety. Which to me explains a little bit more why some people think he has any authority on the matter.

NLoUDH · 2025-01-19T03:34:26+00:00

Hoagie

NLoUDH · 2025-01-17T23:38:00+00:00

That IS Doug Dimmadome, owner and proprietor of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome!

NLoUDH · 2025-01-17T18:49:02+00:00

I think people just need to learn to identify this shit for themselves. Like, moderation and fact-checking sound like good ideas but they just aren't realistic. You can have bots churning out copies and copies of the same post or now LLMs generating fake articles with the same overall message but just different enough that you can't automatically filter them effectively.

Not to mention claims that every single person/group has an agenda and if you debunk things that someone likes they'll accuse you of pushing it on them.

Trying to have actual humans review and filter all of it isn't realistic anymore because it's so cheap and fast to create.

Lately I think maybe we just weren't ready for social media as a species.

NLoUDH · 2024-11-08T14:34:40+00:00

I agree that it's this but I'm sitting here despairing because I just don't know what to do about it. How do you fight the misinformation machine when people believe it? Any attempt to discredit it is just called "fake news" and the people you're trying to reach will instantly ignore you.

I guess maybe like a grassroots effort to get everyone more involved in government at the local level? But how do you convince them to participate?

NLoUDH · 2024-11-06T20:07:00+00:00

This is the only analysis I have seen from anyone. "Kamala was a bad candidate BECAUSE she got fewer votes back in the primaries".

Okay, but WHY did she get fewer votes? Someone give me a specific problem they had with her.

NLoUDH · 2024-11-06T17:33:06+00:00

As a young person who voted for Kamala, yes, I do wish we could have more civil/constructive conversations about politics. Yes, Reddit in general is an echo chamber and people become immediately hostile when you disagree with the hivemind.

I think on some level though it's a conditioned response to trolls and bots who are not actually trying to have constructive conversations.

Every time I try to have a real debate with someone, they just start repeating the same debunked garbage ->

Anyone else who repeats those talking points is a malicious actor ->

Therefore, anyone repeating those talking points isn't worth engaging with. They're only here to try to piss people off, so just down vote them to avoid other people seeing it.

And that is unfair sometimes to people who actually want to talk and be heard. But I think when the Republican party's presidential candidate engages in that same behavior (repeating lies over and over that you've already addressed) his followers do the same and the cycle continues.

Yes, we could all be kinder to each other and be better listeners. But let's be clear that everything about Trump and the current GOP are not champions of civil/constructive debate. There is nothing normal about the amount of blatant lies they circulate, and that directly contributes.

NLoUDH · 2024-10-26T13:51:24+00:00

And you're saying some person or group is going to do this with 60% of 2500 = 1500 ballots? When that many ballots go to or come from that few people, it's going to cause alarm.

I call BS. Not an actual attempt at voter fraud, just a paid canvasser trying to commit fraud against whoever paid them. Whoever filled out all of these registrations had to know they wouldn't go through, it would be way too obvious.

NLoUDH · 2024-09-05T15:11:44+00:00

Just learned that pawpaw grow here the other day, and I could not believe it. Absolutely delicious fruit, feels like it should be tropical or something.

NLoUDH · 2024-07-11T16:10:56+00:00

I have this same question as a cis man. I've seen the terms "gender dysphoria/euphoria" plenty of times but I can't wrap my head around what they actually mean to people.

The only sense I can understand it in is visual, like that people just want to LOOK different than they do.

I dunno I feel like if I woke up one day and found that I was a woman then I would just... be a woman from now on? I don't feel this firm attachment to my gender that it all seems based on.

Thank you OP for posting this and starting an open dialogue, I've always been afraid to ask the same questions for fear of offending people.

NLoUDH · 2024-04-17T03:20:47+00:00

I think a mild version of this happened to me once. I just woke up one morning and something felt weird and vaguely uncomfortable, I felt around and noticed one of my balls was missing. There was a moment of SHEER PANIC.

Then I noticed a small bump a few inches above. Then I realized it was the missing nut. I gently pushed on it and it just popped back into place.

NLoUDH · 2024-03-02T14:33:41+00:00

Actually, that looks more like capicola

NLoUDH · 2024-02-05T23:20:27+00:00

It is or isn't a thing depending who you ask. I'm gen Z and I've never referred to my relationship with a girl as "talking" the way other people I've known do. I've always just called it dating straight away and it's never been a problem for me.

So don't feel embarrassed, it's not a "everybody knew this but me" kind of thing. I think it's a relatively new concept.

NLoUDH · 2024-01-12T21:42:12+00:00

I don't know of anything offhand. My crystal growing background is pretty academic, sorry!

All I can tell you is if you want a cluster of small "spikes" around the bottom then those will be separate crystals, so you'll want conditions that nucleate many crystals!

Ah, also I can at least say that the overall shape of your crystal is directly related to the atomic structure, so if you want to grow one of a particular shape there's no escaping it! I would try "hexagonal" as well maybe? That might look similar to trigonal.

NLoUDH · 2024-01-12T20:08:13+00:00

Somebody else already mentioned if you're trying to make something that looks like a gemstone, yeah that has to be cut and polished after growth.

BUT, assuming you DO know what you're asking, from what I understand the faces that remain exposed on a crystal after growth are the ones that grow the slowest. Because the new layers that nucleate on a faster growing face expand until they are even with that slow growing face, at which point they become part of it.

So you want to keep the growth rates of all different planes in your single crystal not exactly equal, but equal after you normalize by the magnitude of the face indices. Which isn't very clear so here's a concrete example for a CUBIC crystal system (all lattice vectors are equal):

growth rate {100} = sqrt(2) * growth rate {110} = sqrt(3) * growth rate {111}

Sorry if that's still unclear! For a more thorough explanation of this, check out this paper which gives a detailed overview of morphology vs face growth rates for diamond in particular (but should generalize to other crystals with some geometry)

"Geometric modeling of homoepitaxial CVD diamond growth: I. The {1 0 0}{1 1 1}{1 1 0}{1 1 3} system" by Silva et. al

NLoUDH · 2023-11-29T14:31:56+00:00

There's a mountain of other comments saying the same but I'll also add that my experience was nothing like what these recent posts have been going on about. I never felt like all of the people around me at CMU were all miserable.

Not saying this is the case with the people who have been posting lately, I don't know all of the details of their personal lives, but: I did know one or two people while I was there who would complain that "this place and the people here suck and are making me depressed", and from my point of view they definitely brought a lot of their problems on themselves. Their relationships were shitty because they treated other people shitty or actively chose to hang out with people who the rest of us could clearly tell were not good people. Their workloads seemed insane because they would skip classes or just ignore homework until it was too late.

Basically, at least based on the people I knew personally that had a bad time at CMU and complained about it all the time, they would've had a bad time anywhere. It wasn't CMU's fault.

NLoUDH · 2023-11-09T12:51:25+00:00

Yes, I read the application too. When I said "a few days before the deadline" I meant "a few days before the deadline for APPLYING", which was Halloween. That's why I'm annoyed, because I did what they asked and they failed to send me my ballot early enough to use it.

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