It would be very hard to start a show like Sesame Street because of the fascist right. Swings and roundabouts.

My university in Germany operates entirely in English. The academic world is very international so it often falls back to English to support the faculty and students. Issues in the community will also be run through the university news routes, so while I’ve been learning German, I’ll also have a big resource with my work community.

There’s a few places to check for positions. I interviewed in Ireland and Scotland as well (didn’t get the jobs). There’s also Australia and new Zealand hiding out there. Or Canada. Hell, Mexico has a great university system you could look into.

Your PhD does open new doors. It’s by no means a guarantee of a faculty spot, but it’s valued so you can leverage it.

The position is in Germany. It might be out of the frying pan and into the fire given Germany’s right wing rise, but that’s happening across the western nations and we’re all in trouble.

I don’t have a ton of advice for you. I defended over 10 years ago, so I’m moving straight into a tenured/permanent position as senior faculty. For an ABD, I’m not sure what the landscape looks like these days.

If you want to make the move, start talking to people. Reach out to people publishing in your field and talk shop. Collaborate with them, talk about the future, and be willing to take a postdoc (or german system W1) position. It’s more ramen and a small bedroom, but it’s one where there’s healthcare and civil rights.

Academia (and most professions) are all about networks. Talk with people, collaborate, and grow that network. Something will come along.

Good thing I’ve just accepted a faculty position outside the US.

I’ll get to move to a country that doesn’t persecute academics and I think I’m just beating the crowds on the way out.

When our household was at full bore with the kids home, we could go through three dozen per week. It’s not just eating them, it’s cooking. Two eggs for a some cake, brownies, etc. one day of french toast (not doing that into the foreseeable future), if I did breakfast with eggs it would take anywhere from 6 to 10.

At our height of consumption we had four teenage boys, one teenage girl and a 10 year old who could out eat anyone at the table.

I’m just fortunate that our kids are mostly grown, but now they’re struggling to keep food on their own tables.

I actually kept a small flock of chickens for a while because we would go through so many eggs.

It’s what the Internet is for, anyway:

https://youtu.be/LTJvdGcb7Fs

But it’s got electrolytes! It’s what plants crave.

Yes, and sorta no.

Statistically, US children’s non-health related mortality causes are sitting with firearm deaths at #1 and vehicle related deaths at #2. That said, it’s not just school shootings for the firearm deaths, so they’re more likely to die in a car crash to and from school, but firearms overall throughout their lives.

Both of these categories are climbing year to year, with firearms growing faster than car deaths.

Overall, cars are the third highest reason US adults die after cancer and heart issues.

All of this sucks hard.

They can surge all they like. Our family just stopped buying from them (and most fast food places).

It’s not a time saver to sit in a drive thru instead of making something for meals at home.

The calories are very much what matters. I’m relearning that the hard way right now:

“You gain muscle in the gym. You lose weight in the kitchen.”

I’m current adjusting my diet for a lower calorie intake and slowing my junk food tendencies. Hopefully a long term change will pay long term dividends.

They had to change their venting and airflow system for that building after it formed a cloud and rained inside. When your room can have weather systems, I feel you’ve entered a whole new category of ‘room’ by definition.

I got lucky at a conference. They got us a VIP tour of the Boeing Everett factory, which walked on the assembly floor. It was a phenomenal experience. The sheer scale of the operation, the size of the planes, and the detail work was astounding.

I did.

I was there 5 months before heading back to grad school.

I had one interview where they literally got me to fix their Sendmail server while I was there.

In LaTeX, a single hyphen is just - while getting a range hyphen (the longer one) is --. I got chewed out by my graduate advisor for getting that wrong in a research paper. The difference is visibly small, but it does matter for clarity.

… It’s nice, though you’re still driving a two ton weapon, but now you’re used to it.

Yes, yes we are. And it’s getting worse in many cultural groups.

They’re afraid to be called unfair after he said that they’d be unfair. It’s one of the strategies that us uses to suppress fighting back against his lies and ineptitude.

First, your preemptively accuse someone of something. Second you do awful things that would normally rightfully get a response, but the authorities have to be careful otherwise you’ll accuse them of doing the thing they should be doing. Third, you get your way even though you broke the rules, or you get to yell about how you knew, just knew! That you’d be treated badly.

Incel shit.

My feeling was that President Obama kept compromising. It seemed that he was trying to get people moving together and he went too far into the appeasement side of things with the alt right racist arm. It was also the real power growth cycle for Fox News and early online podcast/streamers. They are fast on the backs of the racist counter swell… And we got the fallout over the last decade now.