@pop-goes-the-weasel - Tumblr Blog

I've decided to liveblog interesting bits from my (non-grad school) reading under the tag #an indian ecologist reads

My assignment for Winona Nelson's SmArtSchool class: Choose a favorite book and illustrate a cover for it.

I picked "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller, and my goal was to capture the bittersweet emotional tone of the novel.

Prints: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kgehrmann/

#patroclus #achilles #the iliad #tsoa #the song of achilles #greek mythology

key-pair

in case folk outside the UK aren't abreast of our news, the British press just hounded a black academic to death

key-pair

a rough timeline of events (from memory, there may be inaccuracies, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic

the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal

this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately

somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large

following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor

today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea

the British tabloid press remains, and will always be, fucking evil

pop-goes-the-weasel

Can't believe he was accused of academic malpractice when he certainly would have needed an anti-plagiarism certificate to submit his PhD thesis, a certificate which is generated through some detection software

#academia

kitkat-the-muffin

Epic the Musical needs at least one more song

I’m imagining in the Ithaca saga, between The Challenge and Hold Them Down, is a song focusing in Telemachus’s trip to Sparta

Helens tells Telemachus the story of how she too dealt with a horde of suitors, and that it was Odysseus’s plan to draft an agreement to honor her marriage to Menelaus. They mourn the thought that Odysseus’s 20 years of suffering were caused by his own actions, and he may be irreversibly changed by that guilt and grief

Menelaus also tells the story of how Odysseus tried to dodge the draft by feigning madness until he stopped to save his son’s life, and Telemachus is like “dang my dad sounds awesome”

He then sings a line about how the gods have told him his father has returned to Ithaca and he must return as soon as possible to help him. Menelaus gives him vague advice to hide from the suitors as danger may await him at the shores

That then leads into Hold Them Down and Odysseus

I imagine this Sparta song would have motifs from Little Wolf, Horse and the Infant, Legendary, and The Challenge

#epic the musical

oshadefiant

my feelings right now as an academic

ankhegs-in-my-salad

Actually fuck it, I will risk putting some extra info on this because it's important for academics to know.

If you get a reject on reports like this: APPEAL.

A lot of academics are afraid to appeal or think that a rebuttal will just get sent back to the same reviewers, but any publisher worth their salt would send this to an advisory board member to adjudicate. It's shit that it needs to be done, because it creates work for authors AND editors and it slows everything down, but it is worth doing if you have a case! Do not let lazy fucks win and ruin your chances!

Do NOT be afraid to say:

- This comment is beyond the scope of the work presented, this work focuses on [x,y,z]

- These additional experiments are not relevant because [insert reason]

- I disagree with this point because [reason]

It's impossible for editors to be exact experts in every manuscript they handle, so rely on reviewers and authors. If there is a fundamental disagreement between author and reviewer, a good publishing house will ensure it is policy that board members are consulted for their expertise (this is what they are for!).

Peer review is a million miles from a perfect system, but good publishers do actually care about trying their best for authors and scientific integrity. I'm not going to pretend that there aren't a lot of dodgy publishing houses out there because there absolutely are, but it's worth pushing back if you get a bullshit report, because a good one WILL get an adjudicator.

Oh - and publishers do blacklist bad reviewers. They just need to know who the bad reviewers are.

Also, only tangentially related, do not be afraid to ask for extensions during a revision period. The publisher does not want to lose your manuscript. They get granted for all kinds of reasons and often you don't even need to provide a reason to get one.

pop-goes-the-weasel

Certain publishers also give you the option of refusing certain reviewers from looking at your manuscript

badpsychicadvice

Sorry folks but no one's ever gonna come up with a better network name than

Bravest little signal of them all.

#funny

susiephone

Dracula Daily Accountability Poll!

August 14: If you were a vampire, which person would you try to bite and get under your otherworldly control first?

Mina

Lucy

Jonathan

Seward

Arthur

Quincey

Renfield

Mr. Swales

Lady Westenra

Captain of the Demeter

Sister Agatha

Dracula (#traumatizeyourdadback)

Remaining time: 5 days 8 hours

Explain your reasoning in the tags if you like!

#jack #i just want to torture that man

official-megumin

sorry for having to do this again. But me and @a-sentient-cup are still in a very precarious situation legally.

We are currently appealing the decision about our family union. With the documentation we have, we, to my knowledge legally have the right to live in denmark together. However I do not trust the state to uphold the actual laws set by the UN.

Because of this, we are in dire need of funds. Both for the likely upcoming legal battle for us to have a life together. But also for the deposit needed for the unification to begin with.

So we have remade our fundraiser due to it only getting one donation for half a year.

Currently we have about a third of the 10000 usd we need, we've gotten this far mostly due to donations from you all so far

At the moment we are waiting for an appeal on a decision on … Remanje Carter needs your support for Support us for our fight for being abl

Please help us if you can. We are running out of time, and neither of us really have anything to return to if this falls through. Especially not me who's been fully reliant on Cup to stay alive this long

srsfunny

Finally, a win

saintofpride201

This dumbass stigma that "hick" states are somehow dumber than the more urban ones because they're from poorer areas has to cease...

animenutcase

Hicks are the ones who put us in space.

delicatefury

You know what they changed? What Alabama is doing so different from California and New York?

They’re teaching the kids phonics.

It is legally required.

Turns out, actually learning to read improves students’ skills across the board. Who woulda guessed?

indecisiveavocado

The reason that California and New York don't do it, by the way, is because they fell into the trap of "well, someone bad [in this case George W Bush] supports this, so therefore this must be bad!"

Anyway, that's how they wound up with "whole language instruction" where it's okay if you read "eq" and assume it's "equality" when in fact they're talking about "equity" because ehhh the words are similar enough and it's not like small differences in meaning have ever mattered!

pop-goes-the-weasel

Unrelated, but many of India's academics (especially for Physics, Maths and to an extent, Chemistry) come from rural public schools. These schools need better funding, but the general philosophy is that these subjects are best taught with a thorough grounding in the tried-and-tested fundamentals.

These scientists have landed on the lunar South Pole and were the first in the world to send an Orbiter to Mars in the first try. Some have ended up in universities in the USA and in Europe and even in NASA. And mind you, many of them come from families which are not financially well-off, some even from refugee families displaced during the communal violence during the Partition. (I know of a person who had to perform manual labour for a living before getting a doctoral position)

So yeah, educational reforms and methods need to constantly monitored and tested for best results

molabuddy

does anyone else think about how the sky can literally rock any colour it wants to

molabuddy

red, orange, yellow? sunset/sunrise

green? the rarest and not one ive seen personally but it can happen

blue? classics of sky

indigo? violet? twilight babyyy

pink? also shows up at sunrise/sets

black? night. get goth with it

white? grey? her clouds

molabuddy

do you love the Fucking colour of the sky. bitch

rebelwhodoesntknow

Green and pink sky from when the auroras went nuts a few months ago!!

#nature

everythingwsnormalhere

i feek like its crucial to the odypoli dynamic, whether its platonic or romantic, that polites - much like penelope - would love ody over and over again, no matter what. he will follow odysseus wherever he wishes, and although he'll attempt to stir him in the right direction, if ody decides to be stubborn, polites will still be by his side. above anything, no matter what, they are best friends.

this, too, is the difference between ody's relationship with polites vs eurylochus. odysseus is polites's friend before his captain, yet he's eurylochus's captain before his friend, his brother-in-law. that's the important thing, and in good part, the reason polites's death broke ody so much: polites was the only person he didn't have to prove to be above in order to be listened to, because he already had his unwavering loyalty. he was the only one with whom he didn't have to perform a role. lacking this space destroyed him.

odysseus, despite everything, needs polites. and polites, despite everything, wants odysseus.

#epic the musical #odysseus #polites

yrkanho9

do what you do best, jonathan.

#john wick

grumfy

Theseus and The Minotaur

#backrooms #bloody brilliant

asnowyplover

Do any of my beloved mutuals / followers have leads on US jobs, either based in Chicago or remote? This is a long shot but I am actively looking, mostly in marketing/content writing or some kind of project management, but I have an extremely eclectic resume and I'm pretty much up for anything at this point. Okay sending this out into the ether. Love you allllllll

soundcarvings

Haley is one of my favorite people in the world everyone please reblog!!!

jthm-moved

hobo-rg

“spicy pillow” jokes aside, I think @flowerkrone’s tags deserve a serious reply:

#my old phone looks like this on my shelf lmao #im too scared to touch it to throw it away #idk what trash this even goes into when its at this point

The pillow-shaped object here used to be the phone’s battery. It’s not a battery anymore. Now it’s a balloon full of corrosive, pyrophoric chemicals and hydrogen gas and it’s one puncture away from burning your house down. I am 100% serious. You should be scared to touch it.

But you gotta touch it, because you gotta get it out of your house before the pressure builds up to the point where the balloon pops. This isn’t going to happen soon – there is no need to panic – but it will happen eventually.

And, indeed, it doesn’t go in the ordinary trash. You put this in the ordinary trash and you’re gonna set the garbage truck on fire. Don’t do that to the garbage collectors, their job is hard enough already.

The first thing you need to do is get a fireproof container. The most common household item that qualifies as a fireproof container is a cast-iron cookpot with a cast-iron lid – often sold as a “Dutch oven.” Any other cooking container that’s unreactive, has a very high melting point, and has a lid made of the same materials will also work: enameled or stainless steel, Pyrex with glass lid, etc.

However: Do not use a pot with a PTFE-based non-stick coating. If the battery does explode, the fire will probably be hot enough to degrade a PTFE coating, producing toxic smoke. (Not that you should breathe the smoke from the battery fire either, but PTFE breakdown products are worse.) Do not use a pot made of aluminium or copper. The fire might even get hot enough to melt those.

Whatever container you use, you might have to throw away along with the phone, so don’t use your good Dutch oven for this. Go to a thrift store and buy a cheap one.

Once you have the fireproof container:

Gently pick up the phone and put it in the fireproof container. If possible, gently tape the phone to the bottom of the container to prevent it from bouncing around. Don’t put any padding in there, that’ll just make a fire worse if it does happen. Put the lid on and tape it shut.

Put a label on the container, something like “DEFECTIVE LI-ION BATTERY – FIRE HAZARD”.

It is now reasonably safe to move the container around. However, if the battery does explode, the container is very likely to leak smoke and get hot, so keep it in a well-ventilated area and away from things that will be damaged by heat. Don’t leave it exposed to the weather, either.

You need to find either a hazardous waste disposal site, or an e-waste recycler that will accept defective Li-ion batteries. I can’t help with that because I have no idea where you live.

However, your local fire department, if you have one, will probably be happy to help. Call their non-emergency number. Nothing is on fire yet, so this isn’t an emergency, but things that can easily start a fire are still within the fire department’s responsibilities. Tell them you have a phone with a bulging lithium-ion battery, you put it in a fireproof container, and you want to know how to dispose of it safely.

If the fire department tries to tell you this isn’t dangerous or it’s okay to throw it out in the regular trash (with or without fireproof container), hang up on them and write a cranky letter to your local government representatives, then keep looking for a proper disposal site.

When you do find a a hazardous waste disposal site or an e-waste recycler, call them and make sure they will take defective Li-ion batteries, before showing up. That’s also a good time to ask if they will let you have the fireproof container back.