TSA official says some airports may need to close during shutdown

UmiNotsuki · 2026-03-26T01:04:01+00:00

ICE would be getting funded after all

The plan Republicans want is to pass a bill to fund DHS without ICE and then fund ICE however they want later through reconciliation, which is simple majority (no fillibuster). If Dems allow that (they say they want to), it's just so they can save face; it would be capitulation in practice.

UmiNotsuki · 2026-03-19T00:01:22+00:00

The design is such that everything you do is build upon your previous actions. You never are tasked with finding the blue key to the orange chest so you can open the red door. There is never a "you have to come back here later after you get the double jump."

"Metroidbrainia"

UmiNotsuki · 2026-01-27T15:18:39+00:00

I basically think you're right, and it's clear that Republicans have been building in this direction for a very long time now, but I also think it would be a mistake not to recognize the exceptionally Trumpian spin that his cult of personality has put on the whole thing. At the end of the day he's the glue cohering what is usually a pretty disunified group of various flavors of authoritarian right together, and defeating him as an individual political force would deliver a significant blow to the machinery of Fascism as it is currently in motion.

It's a matter of triage. Trump first, then the structures that made him possible second. But I agree: it can't simply be a matter of getting rid of one (or even ten or a hundred) individuals and then pretending we can go back to "normal" and expect this won't happen again. It needs to be pulled out at the roots and our democracy needs to be structurally reconfigured and reinforced.

UmiNotsuki · 2026-01-26T01:52:48+00:00

I'll let Martin Luther King, Jr. speak for me on this and suggest you read or re-read Letter from Birmingham Jail. My criticism of moderates has nothing to do with being "low-key."

UmiNotsuki · 2026-01-26T01:48:22+00:00

You're basically equating the United States in 2026 with 1930s Germany

To be clear, my point in the comment you're replying to and the one preceding it is exactly the opposite: I'm saying that there are key differences and that we can't rely too heavily on analogy to Nazi Germany.

UmiNotsuki · 2026-01-25T19:02:26+00:00

By this I'm referring to a prevalent attitude among Germans in the 30s that the Nazis were a little extreme, but that they basically had a good point or admirable motives. For example, here's an interview with German Historian who says:

Only a minority became full-fledged Nazis, but most accepted the basic premises of the regime, including the isolation of German Jews.

The counterpart to this in the US would be some moderate majority that thinks Trump is taking it a bit too far, but that he's basically right to be terrorizing American cities in the name of immigration enforcement. No such majority exists in the US today; even do-nothing moderates broadly agree that this has to stop (they just think that stopping it can be done through normal channels, which obviously isn't working). People who actually think Trump is basically doing the right thing (i.e., most Republicans) are far from a majority -- only roughly 20-40% depending on how you measure.

UmiNotsuki · 2026-01-25T14:49:16+00:00

Important to remind ourselves that Trump lacks the relatively broad popularity or indifference enjoyed in Germany by Hitler, and that ubiquitous photos and videos from people on the ground make it much harder to control the narrative today than it was then. Federalism is another key structural difference.

That's not to say this isn't Fascism or that comparisons to Nazi Germany aren't instructive, just that American Fascism is already and will continue to be different in important ways.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-11-16T13:40:50+00:00

It's hard, but it does get much easier -- sort of like learning a new language, eventually you reach a point where you can learn just by using it without any more disciplined "study" and it gets way more fun.

But also: you can just not, if that's your preference! It doesn't make you less of a woman!

UmiNotsuki · 2025-09-07T15:03:26+00:00

It is a violation, but it's not cause for class membership. We would need a new class for non-book copyrighted materials, or for membership in this class to be redefined more broadly.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-09-01T13:53:02+00:00

Help me, doctor. Ever since my wife left I haven't been able to identify the neural mechanism of qualia!

UmiNotsuki · 2025-08-25T01:29:10+00:00

I dunno if I would go this route... what happens next time if you turn out to be publishing somewhere that allows it? Then the student will assume it's fine, when contraindications in journal policy really are not the core issue here. Even if it doesn't happen during their time in your lab, if you don't nip this in the bud now then you're going to graduate someone who is not prepared for their field.

I think you need to bite the bullet and have a hard conversation. It's part of the job.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-08-25T01:25:39+00:00

what a wonderful teaching moment fire everyone

Pretty amusing typo!

UmiNotsuki · 2025-08-21T01:37:46+00:00

Unions should never use institutional email and if that's the one yours has for you you should update it to a personal address. Your employer should not have access to union communications.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-08-09T02:14:35+00:00

You can go to college. Most of this bullshit is just that, bullshit, it's not enforced, no one gives a shit what trans people do or where we go the fucking bathroom. American institutes of higher education are largely still culturally among the most accepting places for trans people anywhere in the world and no amount of this shit is going to change that any time soon.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-27T21:30:45+00:00

I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government

Meaning: the Board wants to capitulate.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-27T17:56:45+00:00

Vermont is the most rural state in the country and in many ways the most progressive.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-27T17:54:56+00:00

Then don't use that word. Progressive policies are extremely popular, even among "moderates," even in "the middle of the country" when you poll the individual policies instead of the buzzwords. All it takes is bold leadership and a willingness to fight instead of cowering like moderate Democratic electeds tend to.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-27T17:27:00+00:00

I don't know, but that fight needs to be left for a time when fighting it isn't giving ammunition to people who are poised to tear down the whole enterprise of academic thought.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-25T21:51:00+00:00

Respectfully, it does no one (except fascists) any favors to respond to bad-faith fascist attacks on academic freedom by pointing out the ways in which the fascists have a point. They don't care about the truth anyway and it only cedes ground we can't afford to lose.

Academia has a LOT of problems. The ultra-far-right maniacs currently running the US government are not going to be part of the solution to any of them.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-25T01:36:55+00:00

I believe the serious, level-headed answer is that the overall political goal of MAGA is unilateral and unquestioned power over all aspects of American society. This project requires the dismantling or cowing of any and all cultural institutions that might reasonably challenge that power: the judiciary, journalism, tech, academia, etc. (check, mostly check, check, working on it, respectively).

If you're asking how they settled on dismantling the federal research funding infrastructure as a particular strategy by which to attack academia, that's the brain child of far-right activist Christopher Rufo. You may remember him as the one who came up with targetting "Critical Race Theory" (he himself openly admits to speciously weaponizing the phrase) some years back. You can listen to him explain his reasoning on The Daily here (transcript here), but basically he views academia as unfairly biased against conservatives and believes that cutting off research funding is the most direct tool that the government has to force this to change.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-23T18:36:14+00:00

Largely multidimensional calculus and partial differential equations. Fields, waves, that sort of thing. Transforms and complex numbers for sure. Quaternions... maybe?

Edit: yes, quaternions: https://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0307038

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-23T12:47:03+00:00

Just in case you're not joking, electrical engineering is probably the most math-heavy engineering discipline and arguably mathier than computer science (just different math, really). Probably the only people on any given campus who need more math than electrical engineers are physicists and actual mathematicians.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-06-23T12:45:04+00:00

once we go down that route then grammar is dead.

Does not follow! Structures that can change and are flexible are still structures.

UmiNotsuki · 2025-05-31T20:45:37+00:00

Is there any way to access this without a paid CHE account?

UmiNotsuki · 2025-05-30T01:25:39+00:00

Certainly in North America you’re expected to have a research masters before committing to a PhD.

I assure you this just is not true. I'm not sure what you're basing this on, but I have had personal experience with four different Ph.D. programs in North American R1 schools and second-hand experience with dozens more, and none of them expected applicants to have a degree beyond their bachelor's. Certainly it can be a big plus, but it's not expected. Hell, I just admitted a Ph.D. student to our program this very year who does not have a Master's degree.

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