Adam Forte
@topoismyforte.bsky.social
980 followers 480 following 1.7K posts
Associate Professor at LSU leading the SPATlab and studying mountains, rivers, and the things they do to each other | AE of Tektonika | Software tinkerer | he/him/his | https://sites.google.com/view/adam-m-forte
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Reposted by Adam Forte
ryanmarino.bsky.social
ER doc here! This is a lie. Wait times are up because the American healthcare system is an unsustainable business model and a for-profit national healthcare system just doesn’t work. These problems will continue to get worse until we change that system. It literally has nothing to do with immigrants
atrupar.com
Vance: "If you're an American citizen & you've been to the hospital in the last few years, you've probably noticed wait times are especially large & very often somebody who's there in the ER is an illegal alien. Why do those people get healthcare benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens?"
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Best bet (though it feels sort of oddly petty, though justified given the context) might be to try to assemble funding estimates of others in your unit to highlight that this criteria is not being applied equally and bring that to the higher ups.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
And maybe the interim is basically going to your chair (who is presumably the person telling you this) and asking to see the policy statement / bylaws section / etc. that sets up the criteria for maintaining lab space. If they cannot produce them and won't reverse, then time to see the dean.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
I.e., if there is not a document that states "lab space allocations are contingent on [insert funding metrics]", I feel like a case could be made that there is no basis for their demands.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Yeesh. I guess in the more tangible advice, is there, to your knowledge, any actual policy at either the department or institutional level dictating criteria for maintaining lab space? If there is no policy, that seems a basis on which to go the next admin level up and ask for a resolution.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
That's nuts. Here we have emeritus (some of them dead) who still mostly have their lab/office space.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
It's probably annoying to complain about home ownership given that's out of reach for so many in the US, but every time some new random thing breaks in my house, I kind of pine for the days of being a renter and being able to email my landlord like, "Pipe broke in ceiling, you want to fix?"
topoismyforte.bsky.social
If they wanted to acknowledge that they might lose your stuff in a less annoying way they could reverse it. I.e., standard rate includes lots of insurance and guarantees, but you could pay less for an, "I actually don't care if this arrives" parcel class.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Perhaps not 100% across the board, but quite often any time someone starts a statement with "in my humble opinion...", it should actually be phrased, "in my completely uninformed and totally uneducated opinion..."
atrupar.com
Sen. Roger Marshall: "Look, President Trump picked Robert F Kennedy Jr to be a disrupter to the CDC, and that's exactly what he's doing ... in my humble opinion not every person needs every vaccine"
topoismyforte.bsky.social
All sorts of other comments aside, surely this should be named, "The Concrete Slab That Was Formerly The Rose Garden Club" instead.
mollyjongfast.bsky.social
I really resent my tax dollars being spent on this
topoismyforte.bsky.social
It's amazing just how often I can't access my email because Outlook has some random error or just doesn't respond and yet organizations, like my employer, just keep on choosing it as their email service.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
I've always wondered if enough LLM training data came from sites like reddit (and maybe more so from long, detailed answers to things on reddit) that part of the LLM writing style is effectively just parroting a lot of the writing style of people writing long answers to things on reddit.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
I mean, as a frequent contributor of detailed answers on reddit in science subreddits, I get accused of being a bot / AI all the time now, which is both kind of hilarious but also depressing given that I've been making those types of comments for over a decade (i.e., long before gen AI was a thing).
topoismyforte.bsky.social
This is hilarious and vindicating, but it also suggests that most universities should really force all of their admin within the educational side of the university without any prior teaching experience to teach at least one, preferably large enrollment, class early on in their time.
jackiantonovich.bsky.social
I am fascinated by this guy who was a Higher Ed administrator and has now moved into teaching classes as a faculty member. He is documenting his whole journey on TikTok. Over the summer, he had so much excitement 🧵
Reposted by Adam Forte
nicolegasparini.bsky.social
#hydrology USA friends- what happened to all the precipitation time series data? I used to get data from USGS and NWS, but I can’t find gauges I used to use for class. I can find derivative products (eg recurrence interval distributions) but not raw data. Hopefully I’m overlooking something
topoismyforte.bsky.social
In my random thought / annoyance for the day, what UI designer for Mac OS thought that putting "Eject Disk" and "Erase Disk" right next to each other on the pop up menu when selecting an external hard drive was in any way, shape, or form a good idea?
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Ha. Yes, well, it does often remind me of a poster I had in college from The Onion which said, "There are no stupid questions, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots."
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Yeah, but I'm a moderator of a science subreddit. If someone posts demonstrable bullshit, I just remove it and spare others from having to read their drivel.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Virtually every example of posts from Linkedin that I see make me even more confident in my choice to never log onto Linkedin.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Seems like this also implies a constant influx of new sand.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Is there a sudden growth in the prevalence of bucket drum buskers in the area immediately surrounding UNO?
topoismyforte.bsky.social
This proposed rule would effectively make it impossible for international students to complete a PhD in the US. This is a dumb rule that benefits no one and is designed to solve a non-existent (and/or completely made up) problem.
osamet.bsky.social
I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Reposted by Adam Forte
matthewcort.land
CTA: Call Your Member of Congress and U.S. Senators
Regardless of which party your Member of Congress and U.S. Senators belong to, please call them (actually call them on the phone if at all possible) and tell them:

www.patreon.com/posts/137525...
Urgent CTA: RFK Jr Moving to Destroy CDC. Call Your Reps

Hello my name is [$NAME]. I am a constituent calling from [$CITY/TOWN, $ZIPCODE]. I'm calling to urge [the Senator / the Representative] to demand the removal of RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary.
RFK Jr. is a clear and present danger not just to the health of the American people but to the entire world. Firing CDC Director Dr. Monarez because she was carrying out her duty to ensure that life-saving, safe, and effective vaccines against COVID, a disease which has killed more than 1.2 million Americans, are available to all Americans is inexcusable. RFK Jr's deliberate, determined campaign to undermine the public health mission of CDC has caused the principled resignations of four other senior CDC leaders, including the expert who heads the national center that combats emerging infectious disease — the top CDC official in charge of preventing bird flu from killing millions of us. RFK Jr. is compromising the biosecurity and national security of the United States and endangering me and my family.

Shouldn't Need To Be A Lawyer Patreon.com/mattbc
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Discussions of the destruction of the CDC, HHS, etc. by RFK Jr that do not lay a hefty part of the blame on Senator Cassidy feel woefully incomplete. He could have stayed true to his principles as a medical professional and blocked RFK's confirmation. He did not and he should not be given a pass.
topoismyforte.bsky.social
Yeah, us too, but alas... I think many of the brave souls who submitted to our session ended up in a sediment transport themed session that looks good (including Greg Tucker who was our invited speaker).