Mine is they shouldn't have made the sequel series without George as a consultant.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22758570

Archived, if you prefer that: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/Bif16

The article has full details, excerpts below

The week before Thanksgiving, Marshall Brain sent a final email to his colleagues at North Carolina State University. "I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university," wrote the founder of HowStuffWorks.com and director of NC State's Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Hours later, campus police found that Brain had died by suicide.

Marshall David Brain II established HowStuffWorks.com in 1998 as a personal project to explain technical topics to general audiences. The website grew into a major success that Discovery Communications acquired for $250 million in 2007. He later expanded his educational reach through books like The Engineering Book and television shows on National Geographic Channel [...]

Brain was also well-known in futurist and transhumanist circles. In 2003, his "Robotic Nation" essay, published freely on the web, predicted that widespread automation and robotics would cause a massive labor crisis by 2050, warning that up to half of American jobs could be eliminated, leading to unprecedented unemployment and social upheaval. [...]

At 4:29 am—just two and a half hours before he was discovered dead in his office, Brain sent a final email, obtained by Ars Technica, to over 30 recipients inside and outside the university. In the detailed letter, Brain disputed an announcement made by his boss, Stephen Markham, executive director of NC State's Innovation and Entrepreneurship program. Markham had told staff Brain would retire effective December 31, 2025. Brain wrote that he had instead been terminated on October 29 and was forced into retirement as a face-saving option.

The termination followed Brain's filing of ethics complaints through the university's EthicsPoint system about an employee at the university's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The complaints stemmed from an August dispute over repurposing the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program meeting space.

"What got us to this point? The short answer is that I witnessed wrongdoing on campus, and I tried to report it," Brain wrote in his email. "What came back was a sickening nuclear bomb of retaliation the likes of which could not be believed," Brain wrote in the email. He stated that the accused person "excommunicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to her."

In his email, Brain wrote that the school's head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering later informed him the department would stop recommending students for Brain's Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. According to Brain's account, this led to disciplinary action against Brain for "unacceptable behavior."

"My career has been destroyed by multiple administrators at NCSU who united together and completely ignored the EthicsPoint System and its promises to employees," Brain wrote. "I did what the University told me to do, and then these administrators ruined my life for it."

[...] Dror Baron, an NCSU professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, wrote on X, "A professor I know died following various investigations. I know the people mentioned here, and call for a transparent and independent investigation."

So far, that investigation has not been forthcoming. University spokesperson Mick Kulikowski declined to comment to The Technician about Brain's death or the allegations. To date, the university has not issued a public statement about Brain's death.

Barry and Kashani expressed disappointment in the university's lack of public response. "It's been six days now," Kashani said at the time to the school newspaper. "There hasn't been any acknowledgment of mistakes that were made, systems that failed, no resignations, not even a call to celebrate Marshall's achievements."

On Windows, if you click MMB on some windows, your mouse cursor will turn into a little ↕️ icon, and then you can scroll by moving the mouse cursor up and down, with it going faster the further you drag away from the position it was originally at.

This is one (1) behaviour I miss from Windows. Hours upon hours of scroll-wheeling makes my joints quite tired.

But well. Linux is nothing if not customisable, so I'm wondering if there's a way to recreate this behaviour on it.

I'm on KDE Plasma.

Donald Trump's stated intention to block the sale of U.S. Steel to the Japanese firm Nippon Steel Co. for $14.9 billion triggered howls of outrage, reported the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review — including from a number of steelworkers who backed Trump for president.

Dammit Sony, you just had to improve upon it and then you went and fucked it up with the Vita :/

The gift needs to be able to come off as a genuine gift so there's some plausible deniability...

Edit: Just so it's clear, this is purely hypothetical. I just thought of the idea and thought it would be funny to see what a random person on Lemmy might think. This isn't a serious request and none of the suggestions will ever actually be used.

Remember this?

UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate-forces-elderly-out-of-rehab-nursing-homes-suit-claims/

Queue Le Meme™

What can we post?

• Any weird, bizarre, or oddly specific playlists you find that you think the community would like; you don’t have to make the playlist yourself. We also accept music-themed memes, as long as they don't break the rules (the rules are on the sidebar)

• An ideally finished playlist would have: unique cover art or an image that inspired you, a weird, bizarre, or oddly specific title or theme, a detailed description in the post, and a link to the playlist-BUT! thats the ideal, and your playlists do not have to be finished to that level; if you’ve got a vague but really unique idea go ahead and post it!

What can we comment?

• We can talk about anything! Posts may have specific requirements, but comments can go in whatever direction they want. Just be nice, no singling out and mocking a persons taste in music, and no complaints about someones playlist. General discussions about music you like and don’t like is fine, just don’t make it personal. Let’s keep our community as chill and drama-free as possible.

Some examples of playlists:

• instead of a “gardening playlist” try something more descriptive and particular like “I’m an angry gnome, tending to my garden in a rainstorm”

• a “break up playlist” wouldn’t be very unique, but “you broke my heart so hard I developed pyrokinesis” sounds like a pretty good playlist

• “popular music playlist” wouldn’t work, but “I was raised in a cult and haven’t listened to popular music since 1983” would be interesting

What are the post requirements?

• Please try to be as specific as you can. Check out the examples I posted above. If you're making a playlist I find the more specific you are, the better. It's helpful to ask yourself, what's the vibe or aesthetic I'm going for? Is my playlist meant for any particular music genres? decade? mood? song titles? bpm?

• Remember to tell us if you want/don't want song suggestions!

• If you’re using an image as inspiration, post it! But please tell us about the image and what you’re going for. If you need help you can always ask by commenting in this post.

• Ideally, I'd like you to post a link to the playlist (on spotify, apple, youtube, etc.) If there isn’t a list built yet, please consider creating one yourself and sharing the link

• Please don’t overpost or repeat posts. Let's go for quality and variety over quantity.

Future ideas:

• We will need ~~an icon and~~ a banner at some point

• We might end up choosing a day of the week for posting memes eventually, but for now I'm gonna be pretty lax about posting til we get bigger

• I’m also thinking maybe we’ll have off-topic days?

• maybe community built playlists?

• how about theme posts, everyone shares their playlists that fit the theme?

• sometimes I like to nerd out about really specific bits of music history; if people are interested we can do posts like that as well

• maybe we can do music recommendation threads? or we can have a day of the week where we do this?

Any suggestions or questions, please ask them in the comments on this post. Thanks!