I suspect the reason for empoyers being very reticent to hire someone with an unsual past is due to all the job-protection legislation there is now. I'd love to take more risk on people with somewhat unsual backgrounds but, working at a university in the public sector, once we hire someone it is exceptionally hard - to an amazingly ridiculous extent - to fire them which makes it a massive risk.

As a result it is a lot safer to hire someone whom you know has been at a similar job and is working well there. While we clearly do need legislation to protect employees if it goes too far it makes employers extremely risk adverse because they know they are going to be stuck with whomever they hire.

AI is not eliminating jobs it is changing them, just like computers and robotics has in the past and the assembly line did before those. Everytime we have had a leap in technology it has made some jobs obsolete but the reduction in costs leading to cheaper prices has increased demand leading to more people being employed to run the new technology.

Yes it is disruptive and it will require people to retrain for different jobs but that has been the case with all leaps in technology: short term disruption but longer term higher employment and increased quality of life. There is absolutely no reason to believe that AI will be any different.

Exactly, so how is it that guns are perfectly legal while you are banning fireworks? The UK has very strict gun control laws but every Guy Fawkes day lots of people set off fireworks in their back gardens perfectly legally. California had 11 deaths due to fireworks while the UK had zero firework related deaths in 2022/23 and only 7 deaths in total from 2010-2023.

So making fireworks legal - while putting some limits of the types of fireworks allowed - seems to save lives, especially when you factor in that the population of the UK is 70% larger than California.

Yes, we are all going to die at some point but if we can avoid all the problems and health issues that typically come from aging before we die who wouldn't want to do that?

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.

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.

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.

Would it? I'm not sure I could tell you the political affiliations of the supreme court justices in either the UK or Canada.

Well I'm trying to warn you about the problems of politicizing science and clearly my karma is paying the price but that's a price worth paying.