This meeting could have been a crumpled-up napkin with the words "your work is irrelevant" tossed on my desk.
@bikepedantic oh the fed doesn't pay out weekly like a lot of places here in Mass?
@andr_w nope, every two weeks, as brought down from the mountain by moses
@bikepedantic 1 week down and 1 week up, i suppose.
@bikepedantic A famous professor visited our lab when I was a student and I was picked to spend some time presenting my work to him. On slide #2 he interrupted to say, “Just so we’re clear, none of your work is interesting or novel. Okay then, proceed.”
Same vibes lol
@dx @bikepedantic similar experience on a visioning roundtable not along ago when a famous urbanist* told the group, right after I spoke, that my kind of research is meaningless.
*a term I use here to describe someone who has a seat at the table only because they are opinionated and loud
@DrTCombs oh and i just cited your research two weeks ago as a bunch of dumb white guys were debating how we demonstrate that Covid shutdown traffic fatalities were due in part to excess roadway capacity.... well what if we had a database of places that implemented capacity reductions, and could test if there was a different experience there? @dx
@bikepedantic @dx WHAT IF???
I've been pleading with my state overlords to fund just this sort of evaluation, but I think they find it threatening.
@DrTCombs @bikepedantic @dx I sometimes wonder how much really interesting data you could gather based just on things people *won't* fund.
@wordshaper @bikepedantic @dx well that's not a remotely distracting thing to think about.
my god, it would be SO INTERESTING.
@DrTCombs @bikepedantic @dx It's only nerdsniping when there's resources to follow up!
And boy, I so, so wish I had the resources to fund studies like this. It's always good when you can dual-use your cash, and getting "proper people-moving studies" *and* "troll dudes who never moved past their love of muscle cars when they were 12" with the same money would be :chefskiss:
@wordshaper @bikepedantic @dx I just learned my new favorite word.
@wordshaper @bikepedantic @dx I was asked recently how I plan to deal with the traffic congestion my research would provoke.
Like it's so scary that my research's mere existence would cause our entire highway system to grind to a screeching halt.
@DrTCombs @bikepedantic @dx Whoa. A power so great it can only be used for good or evil!
Sadly things like "38% fewer people would be in congested traffic" never seems to fly here. I'm sure the fact that the people whining about it are the ones who would get caught in traffic (because they drive -- after all, only "those people" take public transit or bike, don't be insulting) has nothing to do with it and the objections are entirely altruistic.
@bikepedantic my condolences, I have had a couple of those lately too 😞
@bikepedantic that sucks.
For you, and for the rest of us. Because your work is highly relevant.
<checks bank app> oh well they pay me every two weeks