You should absolutely refuse such a request because if a UK minister is telling you to focus on "defense" they are clearly a foreign spy. The english word is defence.

Yes it is only once or twice a year but it's not something I'd be willing to give up so it's an important once or twice a year and it's the main reason I'd not replace the vehicle we use for such trips with an EV at the moment. Even a fast charger takes 30-60 minutes to charge you vehicle which will reduce your driving time by 1-2 hours assuming ~2 rechargers/day unless you are willing to run it down to almost zero and have a town with a charger in exactly the right location.

I'm sure the technology will improve - it's already come on by leaps and bounds in terms of charging speed from a few years ago - but until it does long distance road trips in an EV are much more hassle than in a ICE.

No, billionaires should not have any increased say over elections and laws due to their wealth than any other person. However, they should still be allowed the same voice as everyone else in supporting or opposing ideas although in practice holding them to that is going to be extremely hard to do.

Well, your buying power would be crippled.

This is yet another predictable side effect of people misunderstanding the stimulus and response reflex of capitalism: Apply dollars, make things happen more.

I have played a handful of FTP games and put a not insignificant amount of time into them... but never any money. If I don't get to own the thing, defined by being able to use it (not even "as I see fit", just at all — but on my schedule) then I won't pay more for the thing than it's worth to me right now, like going to see a movie. If I don't get the server, or if there's DRM which requires activation, that severely reduces what I'll pay.

LLMs invent invalid moves. It is somewhat miraculous that they can sometimes generate valid ones, but the real miracle is that people think there is intelligence there. It's a miracle for the people selling "AI" anyway.

It's very common for mechanics to be required to provide their own tools.

It's California law that you cannot require an employee to provide their own tools, unless you are paying them at least twice the minimum wage. This is true in general, not just for auto shops. I worked in an RV shop. I had to provide my tools. I got in a wage dispute over it. I received a settlement.

Only the low-end guys in the shop don't typically have to provide tools.

Thank you for putting this so clearly. I said basically the same thing in the first post, and I was soon modded as flamebait.

The no-EDI directive already went out at few months ago. I know because I work outside the US but in an US-led collaboration and our US collaborators have had to shutdown participation in any and all DEI initiatives. However, if you read further down the article you will see the following:

This cut is much, much more than the funding spent on DEI and will basically mean that the NSF has to slash lots of major research projects. I'm not tied into the US system enough to know what this will mean in practice but in my own field of particle physics I suspect we are going to see one or more major US-led collaborations terminated and US involvement in others stopped or heavily reduced.

This isn't the pendulum swinging the other way, it's someone cutting the pendulum's cord.

Ok, so let's just assume for the sake of argument that your assertion is correct. How you would fix that? The obvious approach is to revamp the grant selection process and/or provide better guidlelines and criteria for studies you want to fund. The NSF had a less and 50% success rate for grants before the cuts so it is not like they had more money that applications and just had to fund whatever came along, if they really are funding "idiotic" studies it is because they are selecting the wrong studies to fund.

Taking a slash and burn approach to major science funding agencies budgets while simultaneously providing no guidance or instructions about what studies you want to fund is not going to fix the problem you claim exists. All it will do is decimate science across the US, culling both the research you like and that you do not equally because you have done nothing to change the selection process only reduce the level of funding.

That being said it is going to be great for those of us outside the US because now all the best students are going to be looking elsewhere to do research. However, overall we will not be able to fill the funding gap left by the US which means that some future excellent researchers and research projects are going to fall through the cracks and that's bad for science in general but terrible for science in the US. This is brexit-level stupidity and the consequences will last at least as long.

If you actually mean maize then I'd agree because the US select varieties for human consumption rather than for use as animal feed which is what most other places us it for. In the rest of the world corn is a generic term for cereal crops like wheat, barley etc. and the US varieties of those are different to Europe and so much less popular there.

I have a browser plugin that removes it so I don't have to remember to ignore it.

You paid for a closed-source service where you're at the mercy of the publisher's whims. What did you expect?

The solar system consists of multiple objects each with velocities that differ enough to make the question about which part of the solar system the object's speed is measured relative to important. Logically it would make the most sense to quote the speed relative to the Sun but since I'm guessing the speed measurement was done from Earth it may be relative to us. The difference in velocity between the Earth and Sun is sufficient that it makes a big difference.

For a car it's pretty obvious that the speed is relative to the local surface of the Earth - it's both the most relevant number and the one that is easiest to measure. Here the easiest to measure number (reltive to Earth) is not the most relevant (relative to the Sun).

You are completely missing the point. Apolitical is not "both-sideism" it's "not-taking-a-sideism". Trump's policies ignore scientific fact and his budget is slashing science research funding that will cause the US to lose its scientific lead. There is plenty there to criticise scientifically i.e. using rational, reasoned arguments based on evidence without any need to take a political stance.

Just because Trump is destroying all the social, legal and ethical norms does not mean that everyone else has to join in.