j-wags

I got the RayNeo Air 2 since they had the largest field of view.

Pros:

- Price (~$200 one year ago)

- Display quality/resolution is fine

- Brightness is excellent, can use it in direct sunlight without issue

- Build quality is fine.

- It really is just a plug-and-play USB-C monitor that overlays on whatever you're looking at.

- The focal distance (~4 meters) is really nice since my eyes often get strained when working on my laptop screen

Cons:

- (BIG con) it turns out that the field of view is TOO large - I often can't see the system clock in the corner of my screen or the quickbar in games.

- It just has normal pads like for glasses, and they can get a little sore/leave a red mark since they're heavier than normal glasses

- It's powered by the same USB that delivers the display data, so while it works fine for my macbook, it won't display from my phone. I've seen that there are battery/power converter dongles to add power to the cable but haven't tried one.

So if I did it again I'd just check reviews and get whatever is cheap and well reviewed currently. I was thinking about finding some sort of airplane-friendly keyboard+mouse setup as well but it turns out that just using my laptop keyboard and touchpad works fine.

I also got usb-c display glasses and they've been great as an external monitor while traveling. I strongly recommend them to folks who want to be able to work comfortably on airplanes or other situations where you don't have an ergonomic desk.

At least in CA, the DMV does issue Real ID state IDs. I have one.

Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for including the full transcript. I strongly prefer reading to listening and so I was able to read this over my morning coffee and send it to friends who prefer podcasts before they started their morning commutes.

And generally, I'm a big fan of the weekly newsletter from successful forecasters. Keep up the great work!

I just got a pair of TCL Rayneo air 2 display glasses since I'm farsighted and my eyes become fatigued after a day of working on a conventional monitor. The increased focal distance seems to help, but the nose piece is weirdly designed and the pressure under the pads becomes a little painful after an hour or two. Also the field of view is too wide and so the edges are blurry (hard to see clock, corner buttons in fullscreen windows, health bar in video games, etc).

Worked great to avoid eye fatigue/posture issues on airplanes though. I'm happy I have them, but in hindsight I'd have gotten a Viture or something with a better nose bridge and a narrower field of view.

Thanks for sharing this. I basically agree, and have a lot to say about the neither-black-nor-white state of academia but have never managed to communicate my thoughts as well as you did here.

I'm mostly out now, but I would love to return to a more accountable academia. Often in these discussions it's hard to say "we need radical changes to publicly funded research and many PIs should be held accountable for dishonest work" without people hearing "I want to get rid of publicly funded research altogether and destroy the careers of a generation of trainees who were in the wrong place at the wrong time".

Even in my immediate circles, I know many industry scientists who do scientific work beyond the level required by their company, fight to publish it in journals, mentor junior colleagues in a very similar manner to a PhD advisor, and would in every way make excellent professors. There would be a stampede if these people were offered a return to a more accountable academia. Even with lower pay, longer hours, and department duties, MORE than enough highly qualified people would rush in.

A hypothetical transition to this world should be tapered. But even at the limit where academia switched overnight, trainees caught in such a transition could be guaranteed their spots in their program, given direct fellowships to make them independent of their advisor's grants, given the option to switch advisor, and have their graduation requirements relaxed if appropriate.

It's easy to hem and haw about the institutional knowledge and ongoing projects that would invariably be lost in such a transition, even if very carefully executed. But we have to consider the ongoing damage being done when, for example, biogen spends thousands of scientist-years and billions of dollars failing to make an alzheimers drug because the work was dishonest to begin with, or when generations of trainees learn that bending the truth is a little more OK each year.

It may have to do with how liability insurance requirements are quite low - generally a few tens of thousands of dollars. So serious crashes (both those involving small and large vehicles) might easily blow past that, causing insurers to charge about the same amount for both.

Thanks for sharing these numbers. I'm actually baffled to see the on-time performance so high and the passenger injury rate so low. I wonder how these numbers would look if they broke it down into greyhound vs. other operations, and whether cancellations are factored into their on-time performance. I've seen verbal aggression on so many of these buses and stations that I can't square it such a low injury rate. Maybe I've just been a major outlier in my travels.

We do have a pretty extensive greyhound network in the US (it was recently bought by flixbus, but I think they're keeping the greyhound branding). But it is a totally different experience than long-distance buses in Europe.

I've taken a number of flixbuses in Europe and they were decent. Most cities had some sort of bus terminal where you could sit and grab food before the trip, the bus was clean, the advertised power outlets worked, seat assignments were respected, and they'd make stops at places with clean restrooms.

I've also taken a few flixbuses in the US west and wouldn't recommend people do that. The cleanliness is poor, the on board amenities like power outlets/wifi are frequently broken (or don't exist), paid seat assignments have never been enforced, bathroom stops are disgusting, and there is a lack of order/safety on board. And the bus terminals simply don't exist - in Los Angeles you stand in an uncovered parking lot outside the central jail and there is no notification of which bus goes where. Everyone just runs (literally) up to each bus as it arrives, preventing passengers from disembarking, and asks the bus driver where it's going, and then tries to cram on immediately because that's the only way to avoid getting an undesirable seat.

Safety is a huge issue on these buses. I conduct most of my life on foot and by public transit in southern California and there's some sense of safety from knowing you could avoid/move away from people acting dangerously. But on the bus you're stuck, and I often arrive with my nerves frayed by the behavior of other passengers. They don't publish stats on this but my friends who have taken these buses also reported they also feel extremely unsafe, with one telling me they were on a trip where a stabbing occurred.

I regularly take the Amtrak from San Diego to LA to see friends and family, and during the track closure last year I tried flixbus a few times. After 4 tries, I simply stopped discretionary travel to LA for the better part of a year because it was such a bad experience.