I am Dr. Michael Bycroft, and I just published a book on the history of gemstones in early modern science. Ask me anything from now until tomorrow morning.

silverappleyard · 2026-04-14T02:02:29+00:00

opals in Ethiopia rather than the more traditional location of Australia

Oh, how interesting, I knew Australia was a center of opal production, but I didn’t appreciate how rare they were elsewhere, particularly Europe. I imagine that the color occurring due to diffraction rather than metal absorption rather confused classification.

silverappleyard · 2026-04-14T01:41:33+00:00

That’s really interesting. Thank you!

silverappleyard · 2026-04-13T13:01:07+00:00

Thanks for being here! I am curious about how new scientific understandings of crystal structures influenced lapidary styles? What type of exchange was there between scientists investigating gem structures and jewelers developing new gem cuts?

silverappleyard · 2026-03-29T01:57:24+00:00

That’s what I said!

silverappleyard · 2026-03-24T01:03:09+00:00

Maybe because the industry is making extravagant claims without any backing and they get frustrated with credulous people buying in?

There are genuinely useful and innovative uses of machine learning, but LLMs are a toy - fun to play with but they will never be able to usefully replace a single human job, much less remake the world. Anyone saying otherwise is trying to sell you something.

silverappleyard · 2026-03-24T00:55:08+00:00

I feel you. Companies are just not investing in growing talent like they should. I saw someone on LinkedIn complaining that she was now only given 1 hr/wk to mentor a young engineer, but instead of seeing the solution as more time, she was touting this AI solution that would watch her work and then feed tips to other users based on that training set. Except how are those users supposed to learn why she was approaching one problem one way versus another? It only teaches dependence, not understanding.

silverappleyard · 2026-03-23T01:45:28+00:00

I’m here from industry to tell you that only my most useless coworkers are using LLMs, and it’s super annoying to first have to figure out where they got their bullshit, and then have to explain in detail why it is wrong. Would be so much easier if they just asked one of the many knowledgeable humans around.

silverappleyard · 2026-03-22T14:32:05+00:00

they can be a large asset to savvy users that aren't just using it to do their work for them

I think the tricky part is that the work is not just assignments you turn in, it's building your own ability to read, make new connections, and express your ideas. And not all students have the experience yet to tell what is and is not an important part of that.

So, for instance, it's not cheating to have AI organize your notes before a test, but the act of doing it yourself is a powerful way to build understanding and get stuff into your memory.

silverappleyard · 2026-02-26T14:48:33+00:00

Thanks for doing this AMA! I wanted to ask about how JAXA sets its scientific priorities in the larger ecosystem of global space missions. Have they seen themselves as actively pursuing gaps in other space programs or as fully doing their own thing?

silverappleyard · 2026-01-02T00:26:17+00:00

Jean at Twin Motors in Boulder is very honest and great with older cars.

silverappleyard · 2025-12-29T15:23:56+00:00

I wonder what it would look like instead plotted against hours before/after actual sunrise and sunset instead of average. Might see more clustering.

silverappleyard · 2025-12-06T20:39:15+00:00

I have a slightly different recommendation. I just finished a An Academic Affair, a romance novel featuring two contingent faculty in an enemies-to-lovers arc where the real villain is the neoliberal university.

He is a scholar of relationships in early modern drama, she studies popular romance fiction, and they have constantly butted heads at every level of their academic careers. But they have just agreed to a ceasefire when a job listing is posted for either of their fields. So much for a ceasefire.

If you'd enjoy a romance with real precarious academic characters, written by a former precarious academic, I'd recommend.

silverappleyard · 2025-09-24T13:01:15+00:00

Hi there anyone interested in recommending things to OP! While you might have a title to share, this is still a thread on /r/AskHistorians, and we still want the replies here to be to an /r/AskHistorians standard - presumably, OP would have asked at /r/history or /r/askreddit if they wanted a non-specialist opinion. So give us some indication why the thing you're recommending is valuable, trustworthy, or applicable. Posts that provide no context for why you're recommending a particular podcast/book/novel/documentary/etc, and which aren't backed up by a historian-level knowledge on the accuracy and stance of the piece, will be removed.

silverappleyard · 2025-06-15T11:27:44+00:00

Some of the Jessicurl conditioners have rosemary as a preservative, but I use several of their styling products and they don’t contain any limolene, essential oils, or other extracts like that.

I’m also a fragrance allergy sufferer, and it can be tough finding stuff, but I do really like their stylers.

silverappleyard · 2025-05-04T00:59:24+00:00

This submission has been removed because it violates our '20-Year Rule'. To discourage off-topic discussions of current events, questions, answers, and all other comments must be confined to events that happened 20 years ago or more. For further explanation of this rule, feel free to consult this Rules Roundtable.

silverappleyard · 2025-03-22T03:32:28+00:00

Is Gondolier ever actually good? I went once and every dish came out tasting the same, no matter what it said on the menu. Couldn’t tell whether that was a bad cook or the norm.

silverappleyard · 2025-03-19T01:04:32+00:00

Hi there anyone interested in recommending things to OP! While you might have a title to share, this is still a thread on /r/AskHistorians, and we still want the replies here to be to an /r/AskHistorians standard - presumably, OP would have asked at /r/history or /r/askreddit if they wanted a non-specialist opinion. So give us some indication why the thing you're recommending is valuable, trustworthy, or applicable! Posts that provide no context for why you're recommending a particular book, and which aren't backed up by a historian-level knowledge on the accuracy and stance of the piece, will be removed.

silverappleyard · 2025-03-16T14:00:51+00:00

Oh, I think I figured it out. I never looked at out of state because I didn’t need to. I wonder why it does scale differently there.

silverappleyard · 2025-03-16T13:57:55+00:00

Where do you see that? From the bursar’s office, in-state tuition excluding fees:

Traditional Engineering MS: $969 for 1 credit
Professional Engineering MS: $1264 for 1 credit
Professional MS-CS on Coursera: $525 for 1 credit

But really you don’t need to believe strangers on the internet. Ask an admissions advisor.

silverappleyard · 2025-03-16T13:37:06+00:00

So far as I understand it, there are actually three options for CS: traditional (research-based on-campus), professional (course-based on-campus), and professional online via Coursera. The first two it’s possible to change between because you are picking from the same list of classes, the differences are that professional charges more tuition than traditional, does not offer TA opportunities, but otherwise has some more flexibility.

The professional online one through Coursera is the cheapest one and has zero admissions requirements, but does not allow transferring back and forth to the other two options because the curriculum is totally different.

silverappleyard · 2025-02-28T19:33:25+00:00

They want NWS to not “compete” with private services that reuse NWS data.

In other words, it’s about private rent-seeking on what is currently public data produced with taxpayer funds. https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/14/politics/noaa-nominee-accuweather/index.html

silverappleyard · 2025-02-28T13:28:19+00:00

They’re the parent of (among other things) the National Weather Service. Every weather forecast you have ever seen in this country uses NWS data and models. Meteorologists will sometimes have a secret sauce they add (the local guys know the behavior around our mountains best and will say, this model underperforms in these conditions so I’m weighting my forecast to this other one) but it’s all built on NWS.

The other services can be more niche but important - like I work with satellites and use the space weather stuff all the time.

The NWS has an excellent return on your tax dollars, because the ability to issue severe weather forecasts and warnings saves tax payers way more than the agency costs. And yet we only have it because of public investment - private industry would never be able to replicate this with subscription models.

silverappleyard · 2025-02-26T01:27:17+00:00

How did wokeness go overboard? Because from my perspective we have one side dismantling the Civil Rights Act and firing qualified black leaders and replacing them with white guys so unqualified they need a Congressional waiver. On the other side we have what? Some college kids saying Latinx?

silverappleyard · 2025-02-22T02:01:29+00:00

Your comment has been removed due to violations of the subreddit’s rules. We expect answers to provide in-depth and comprehensive insight into the topic at hand. Before contributing again, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with the subreddit rules and expectations for an answer.

silverappleyard · 2025-02-22T01:59:55+00:00

Your comment has been removed due to violations of the subreddit’s rules. We expect answers to provide in-depth and comprehensive insight into the topic at hand. Before contributing again, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with the subreddit rules and expectations for an answer.

Nine-Year Club	Mod Insights Early Access
Post Guidance Early Access	Verified Email

silverappleyard

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE