@simonbp Ahh, poor bloke! Easy done! I had a call from a neighbour who was on duty as a police officer, lots of calls coming in about a flickering, multicoloured light, darting around close to the horizon. Local airport couldn't see it on radar. It was Sirius, doing its sparkly thing.
I've included "UFO consultant to Scottish Police" on every CV I thought would get away with it since. Got at least 2 unrelated jobs.

RE: https://mastodon.com.br/@xkcd/116480390342730879

There's honestly a certain element of truth in this. A mathematician specialising in topology once got chatting to a lady who was knitting, fascinated by the parallels, of which there are many.
He approached her, very excited, a week later, with a whole new way of doing it.
"Yes, dear, that's called a purl stitch."

@_thegeoff Isn’t that a Dirac story?

(Possibly featuring Peierls’ wife as the knitter …)

RE: https://mastodon.com.br/@xkcd/116480390342730879

There's honestly a certain element of truth in this. A mathematician specialising in topology once got chatting to a lady who was knitting, fascinated by the parallels, of which there are many.
He approached her, very excited, a week later, with a whole new way of doing it.
"Yes, dear, that's called a purl stitch."

@_thegeoff @simonbp

My father, as an airborne air controller in Korea, was directing a fighter aircraft returning at night who reported a pursuing aircraft that he could not shake. Sent two fighters out to deal with it. Confusion when they arrived. But they quickly identified the light as Venus.

RE: https://mastodon.com.br/@xkcd/116480390342730879

There's honestly a certain element of truth in this. A mathematician specialising in topology once got chatting to a lady who was knitting, fascinated by the parallels, of which there are many.
He approached her, very excited, a week later, with a whole new way of doing it.
"Yes, dear, that's called a purl stitch."

@JeffGrigg @_thegeoff @simonbp Planets: Threat, or Menace?

@_thegeoff @ShaulaEvans When I was young I got very excited once when I came up with a sorting algorithm. Until a more senior dev looked at it and said: great, you invented bubble sort This is btw exactly what’s happening in tech over and over, made worse by LLM’s so now everyone can reinvent something

@johan @ShaulaEvans Independent discovery at least feels a bit satisfying when you find out you'd have been cutting edge or won a Nobel if you'd done it 100 years ago...you don't even get that with "AI" stuff. (Researchers using ML properly aside, e.g. protein folding.)

@_thegeoff @ShaulaEvans Oh very true, I felt super smart even after he told me I just reinvented it

@johan @ShaulaEvans We do the zinc electroscope and UV light experiment without initial explanation, a few ~16yo students have independently proposed the quanta