Not really my experience in a science department at a top university in Canada. I've served on several hiring committees and also been involved in about 20 hirings over the years. Yes, there are typically 100+ applicants, but only about 5-10 of them are truly excellent.
In contrast to what the writer described, I had an experience where a colleague strongly opposed considering his former PhD student for a position because their research interests were significantly different from the advertised position.
One thing that has consistently surprised me during these hiring exercises is encountering candidates who appear exceptional on paper and deliver a decent public talk about their past research but completely fail when it comes to their proposed research talk.
At least in science, if you're truly exceptional, you will find a position at a top place, despite whatever politicking or EDI considerations are influencing the hiring process.
It does get by the "Please wait..." that you get in Preview or Chrome but Firefox 93.0 doesn't actually load the form properly (e.g. it's 6 pages in Acrobat but only 3 pages in Firefox and those 3 pages aren't even rendered properly).
Which version? For me 90.0 shows the "Please wait" message which some JavaScript or something is supposed to replace, and 93.0 force downloads it, even when I try to open it from a local file.
Working from home last fall, by far the biggest source of noise was leaf blowers. So loud and so constant. It was impossible to work without noise cancelling headphones during the day. The name "The Devil's Hair Dryer" is very appropriate.
Not many people realize that leaf blowers remove a ton of top soil from grass and tree roots. It does a ton of damage to so many plants. All those exposed roots we often see should not be exposed that way.
The commercial lawn and tree trimming in Southern California is almost criminal what they do in the name of “landscape maintenance”.
We rented a house for several years, and the summer we moved in we told the landlord that the sprinkler system wasn't working right, and we wouldn't be using it to water the lawn.
The yard guys our landlord hired proceeded to blow all the topsoil off the yard that summer, and even when I tried to re-seed the lawn, it was impossible because they'd just come by every week and blow everything around. One time we were cooling off a birthday cake outside when the yard guys came and it almost got covered with dust when they arrived unannounced on a day they didn't normally come.
Leaf blowers are awful, noisy, and mostly don't do anything useful - unless you're ACTUALLY moving around fallen leaves.
I don't see the need to label your hatred as irrational. Just about everyone hates them (including leaf blower owners!), and seems quite rational to me.
Yes, but the much quieter, battery powered electric ones are lighter and more powerful. Anyone not using electric leaf blowers at this point is just being a cheapskate. And considering the lower or nearly non-existent maintenance, they aren't even being a good cheapskate.
Anyone in a position to do so should require in their lawn care contract that only electric leaf blowers or none at all must be used.
Much faster than a rake depending on what you use them for. We use them to clear driveways and pathways all the time where I live in the bay area - you'd be spending 30+ minutes for a 1 minute job with a leaf blower.
I prefer the 1 minute of leaf blower versus the 30+ minutes of hearing a rake. Rakes are pretty loud too.
That was also the situation in the late-90s when I was listening to the radio all day in Toronto. I would argue that it actually hurt the development of the Canadian music scene in many respects because it made everything so top heavy. You were either the Hip, BNL, or OLP or you weren't on the radio. A select few bands reaped all of the benefits. Ironically, these bands would have found success without the MAPL system, but with it they were incredibly over-exposed in Canadian markets. The scene was also quite stagnant because even a "New Rock" station like the Edge would play the same set of Canadian songs for years at a time.
Whenever I come across a typo in something I've published or in a paper I'm reading I'll do a google scholar search with quotes and see how many other people have made it. E.g. "expensively studied", https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22expensively+studied%...
That reminds me - when I was younger I had trouble remembering how to spell definitely vs defiantly and would often get it wrong on my papers. So, I spent some time trying to think of a situation where it would not matter. I came up with the following: "My dad said I can't go to the party to night, but I'm [definitely/defiantly] going anyway.".
