It’s shockingly true that the tar trapped in the filter can never stain your teeth!

This entire thread is a time capsule, but gonads and strife just threw me into a time machine against my will.

Traffic enforcement cameras have been routinely abused by the government…

People focus on the nasty abuse like stalking etc. but in my experience traffic cameras (specifically stop sign cameras) are abusive in another way: the fines are low, the crime is classed as civil, and no points are added to the drivers license. Which means if a citation is issued, people just pay it because contesting a false positive case is impossible because you have to schedule a court date, take a day off work to go to court, and pay the court fees even if the judgement is in your favor (which are higher than the actual fine). This only gets worse as more of these cameras switch to AI flagging with “human review,” which we know translates to “no one fucking watched the video, they just isssued the fine.”

Is he going to make it, doc?

cries

You say it’s unfair, and it might be, but the fact is that an individual is individually suing a corporation where he’s personally claiming damages. This isn’t because of corporate personhood, it’s because it’s one person versus an organization; he’s literally going after the entire BBC apparatus, not just one dude.

I think the real advice is that you shouldn’t do post-graduate studies unless it’s paid for, comes with a stipend, or comes with an assistantship. Too many people (including myself) have paid for advanced degrees out of pocket only to find that they were pure coursework with no tangible experience.

The other piece of advice that isn’t often given is that post-graduate work really is training for jobs in academia. If that’s not where you want to end up, then those degrees are rarely useful (outside of academia). There are a few fields where masters-level is required for entry level jobs, but setting your course for a PhD is really a course to an academic post.