My understanding is that if a professor realises they risk a pacing problem in a course where the material builds up on itself in advance, they're asked to slightly favour earlier rather than later content. This is for three reasons: 1) students who feel left behind at the start of the course are less likely to catch up than a bunch of confident students suddenly realising mid-course that there's going to be an unusually large difficulty curve to climb ahead 2) students who are lost at the beginning of the course can and often will transfer. Students who lose track towards the end are more likely to stick it out and make the best of it than those in a similar predicament in the first few weeks. 3) professors who get everyone who diligently attended class, paid reasonable attention and did adequete outside preparation/in-course work to a modest pass level fare better than those with a very uneven profile of star students and people who failed despite their best efforts and a reasonable chance of passing on paper. Obviously, this is with the caveats that even pacing, accurately conveyed in pre-signing-up materials is always the best policy. Also, the sort of lopsided EKS describes would never be considered good policy for any professor, even one running a deliberate "weeder" course.

The UK has an 18% drop in positive tests in the last 7 days... ...and a 15.6% drop in tests. There's definitely a reduction in the number of cases (and there were 10.1% fewer people getting hospitalised this week), so the reduction is real, but it's not clear how that will hold when masks go away in most places tomorrow (along with most other rules - though care settings will still have the same rules for now, and private places like shops are still free to set their own rules. Most have been considerably more cautious than the government in my area). 85% of people are fully vaccinated and almost 2/3 have had the booster as well. (Bear in mind 10% of the population got dose 1 in November or December, thus can't have a booster until next summer).

One of the purposes of the Ancient Olympics was to create a truce between Greek city-states for the duration of the festival. If the articles are correct, then "Winter Olympics stopping Russia from attacking the Ukraine" may be the most traditional thing that has happened all Olympics. I've not watched the Winter Olympics because I've been getting the vibe this was a particularly badly-organised edition (the most north-east and north-west parts of China, unlike Beijing, still get reliable natural snow*, the COVID-19 app was a mess and less thought appeared to have been put into social distancing than the not-distanced-enough Tokyo Games), in the middle of a pandemic. Hard to get excited about an event when "super-spreader event" is the overriding feeling when considering doing so... * - The Beijing resorts usually expect natural snow until March, so there is a bit of surprise that artificial snow was needed despite not picking the optimal part of the country. However, it does seem like there was a missed opportunity to highlight parts of China that often get less attention than the capital and reduce the risk of having to resort to technology. Even as a political event, I have issues with how China has proceeded with this event.

I kept growing until I was nearly 18 (apart from an inexplicable inch gained in my late 20s), although the rate of growth slowed dramatically after I was 15. Which I'm happy about, because it means most of the T-shirts I wore then still fit me. I think everyone finds their own growth pattern, and some of my classmates didn't grow after age 11.

The graphs on the US vs other countries graph aren't on the same Y-axis scale; the lines are set to 100 and 200 per 100,000 infections on the overall graph, but 10 and 20 per 100,000 on the Omnicron. Thus it takes less difference in circumstances to show, say, twice as many deaths on the Omnicron-only graph than it does for the whole-pandemic one. This is relevant to figuring out if the different way the USA's death toll went is Omnicron-only. It seems that the USA's difference compared to the UK is Omnicron-specific. The USA's difference with Belgium is Alpha/original-Beta and Omnicron-specific (that is, the B1/Delta-phase was handled about equally well by both). However, the difference with everywhere else on the graph appears to be pandemic-long (apart from a few weeks at the beginning, possibly due to Italy being such an important initial hub for spread within Europe in February and early March). This may help tease out likely reasons. (Vaccination is definitely a big factor but it's not the whole story). I could imagine part of the Omnicron discrepancy between the USA and other countries being explained by lack of universal healthcare. In particular, because it's milder for most people who catch it (thus encouraging complacency because people think they can power through it or ride it out with home medicine because they always have before and their friends currently are doing so), it's apparently possible to be OK for a week and then "crash" (which is harder to manage if unwilling to check out danger signs on a precautionary basis) and because when they do get to hospital, the staff are that bit more exhausted from dealing with the other consequences of an overtaxed health system (universal healthcare by itself doesn't cure overtaxing, rather it's a large thing that helps if correctly managed). The stricter insurance policies in the Omnicron phase Faith-manor mentioned matter too. While universal healthcare is likely to b a minor piece of the overall puzzle, though. A point to add on @Corraleno's comment about UK deaths after 28-60 days increasing; these deaths won't be included on the headline UK death toll, because it only counts deaths up to 28 days. The UK is believed to have 400,000 people stuck on Universal Credit (the UK's main government benefit, primarily for jobseekers and people with certain disabilities) and unable to work due to Long COVID (to put this into perspective, it's nearly 1/3 of the official UK unemployment rate), and another 800,000 with diagnosed Long COVID (some of whom may have given up on getting a job at all and thus not necessarily eligible for Universal Credit, others who are working as much as ever and just happen to be ill). The UK's estimated to have had around 12 million people infected with COVID, although we'll probably only ever have a ballpark figure. So that suggests approximately 1 in 30 people who get COVID end up with a case of Long COVID bad enough to be reliant on benefits (bear in mind that's likely to be skewed towards people whose jobs were physical). Vaccination apparently decreases the chance of Long COVID although I've not seen statistics on this. The Denmark data makes sense because of the discovery last year that COVID-19 infections, however minor, tracked with psychiatric episodes (first or recurring). Thus an increase in cases this wave would be expected to link to a subsequent increase in psychiatric hospitalisations. An increase in requests for various forms of psychiatric help been true in the UK anecdotally, though given that mental hospitals have been at capacity for several years, it's not clear how the UK would go about producing inpatient statistics comparable to Denmark. The latest infection numbers are going down across the UK and also my local area. There are so many fewer cases of COVID at my local hospital that visitors are now allowed on the same basis as before the pandemic (except for having to wear masks and obey infection protocols appropriate to where they're visiting). Visitors are even allowed to eat in the restaurants (at designated, socially-distanced tables). This is a big morale boost to patients and the first couple of days of relaxed rules in the hospital have been pleasingly orderly. Staffing is still a concern, but staff absences for COVID are well down on last week too. There's a plan to give all staff paid time off to attend well-being courses later in the year, which is nice, but I think a lot of people are going to want a holiday when the situation stabilises. The seven army staff are remaining, as much as a "just in case" measure as because they are strictly necessary. The only caution I have about this is that people in my area (outside the hospital) struggle to access tests. While the fact hospital COVID rates are reducing gives me confidence, it's hard to know how accurate the community's infection fall is. Obviously, I'm being careful to avoid COVID, but it feels like the efforts are sustainable - and paying off. If a fourth jab is approved for people who aren't immunocompromised or otherwise especially at risk of COVID, then I'll need to get it by the third week of September in order to have complete freedom of role in my department. In theory, unvaccinated people can stay in my department, but not in specific roles that have potential contact with patients. (I say in theory because I think everyone in my department is already vaccinated and most people got a booster jab in the last three months).

My entire household has avoided it, though my cousin has had it, along with quite a lot of people I know.

Novovax has been approved in the UK. This is good news for everyone hoping it will get formal approval in the USA (it started a formal filing on Monday) because it means it has likely solved the manufacturing issues that previously stopped it from getting mass approval. That it has a good record against Omnicron with two doses, including among 12-year-olds, is particularly heartening to hear. (Novovax's peak effectiveness is 89%, though it's not clear how useful that statistic is any more). The UK now approves 5 different vaccines.

Latest is that it's been through some testing, and according to a study in JAMA Network Open (summary at UC Santa Barbera), the smaRT-LAMP test (requiring a user's own smartphone plus a miniature lab kit) has had good results at detecting COVID-19 (including variants) and flu. The app exists for Android on the Play Store but isn't much use without the lab kit. No word on when the lab kit will enter mass production. Also, it looks like the method now involves taking a saliva sample and having the smartphone camera do imaging on it, which seems much more hygienic and less prone to false positives than coughing on a phone would be...

Can confirm that the majority of customer service roles I know about that have been recruiting over the last 12 months aren't training people in customer service, or even to do checklists of the steps they need to do to communicate something to someone (which would itself have prevented some of the fails in this thread). Many places had no particular training system even pre-COVID (and even those who did mostly no longer have time to walk people through the whole program beforehand due to staff - including trainer - shortages), relying on "experience elsewhere" and the ability (real or perceived) to figure stuff out on their own to cover this. Although plenty of customer service courses exist, a lot of them aren't considered much use at teaching actual customer service skills (as opposed to a set of loose principles that, it turns out, are difficult for large swathes of students to apply to specific workplace situations). The main tool a lot of employers are using to prevent hopeless customer service at the moment seems to be relying on interviews... ...which often don't resemble actual work situations much (especially those where something goes wrong, which is when customer service skills are most important). Ad hoc messaging also gets used, but in a subject as complex as customer service, there are many different ways to get it wrong. Customer service, like pretty much every other working/middle-class job, has got quite a bit harder in the pandemic. However, the customer service problem that has been slowly developing over many years is likely to come to a head sooner rather than later. People are just done.

In my Japanese entry-level exam about transport, I tried to order a reserved seat. Being quite certain of the translation, I repeated the same phrase when challenged, whereupon the examiner nearly fell out of her chair laughing. After wiping away her tears, she told me I had somehow accidentally ordered an oxygen seat. (I failed the exam. For anyone wondering, "reserved" (shiteiseki) and "oxygen" (sansoseki) sound nothing like each other, and as I was informed in the exam room, most Japanese trains lack an oxygen seat!)

Ironically that was how I ended up in the forum. Unfortunately, as you probably surmised, I mostly specialise in Windows-based PCs 😞 Congratulations to @Amethyst for fixing the issue, and to @iksloand @domestic_engineerfor supplying better ideas than me 🙂

Great work finding your path to that feature! It's unfortunate that this is not the explanation for the issue. Unfortunately the only other cause I know is an outdated update (that was fixed a couple of years ago), so unless you had updates on at some point but not for the last 2 years (which seems unlikely), all I can do is ask if anyone else in the Hive has any better ideas. Sorry.

It's not just it being the Mac version that makes a difference, but also the version of it on the Mac. I should have asked before answering... When you click "File", do you have a "More" option? There is at least one version of Word that does, and that version hides its "Options" there for no good reason. (In that version, "Advanced Options" appears to simply be called "Advanced").

As far as I can tell, the only improvements have been to the comfort levels of the masks.

There is an option to turn dragging-and-dropping on and off, and it's possible the switch somehow got flipped. Here's how to check: Open Word. Click on the File tab, please. Next, please click on Options. Under Options in the left pane, click on Advanced. In the Editing options section, please turn on the Allow text to be dragged and dropped check box (if it's not on already). Click on OK.

The ScienceDirect meta-analytical research I quoted in the article. Obviously, both its research and your observations will be samples, and since it is likely different people were involved, a different result is always possible (after all, nobody is an exact average human in all aspects, and there's a limit as to what degree a given sample size can be assumed to reflect a global average. 1 in 8 NHS trusts in England are in "critical incident" mode - which means they cannot guarantee a comprehensive service due to undue pressures on them (in these cases, staff absences due to COVID). Others are watching and waiting as cases and admissions start to rise. 1800 soldiers are assisting the NHS at the moment (with things like deliveries and marshalling at test sites), but there's a limit to what they can do to help, of course.

I've been alerted to another issue with the UK situation specifically (potentially applicable elsewhere). Staff. Staff working with COVID will pass it on to other people unless isolated. The NHS got warned to prepare for up to 25% absences due to COVID positivity or isolation. Well... ...I know of one department that's on 50% absence today. Not a patient-facing one, thankfully, but it's a matter of time until some patient-facing department, somewhere in the UK, will have this issue. When that happens, the department won't be able to provide a safe patient service. 100% staffing is based on expected requirements for a safe and efficient service. Those 5% / 10% / 25% drops are achieved by allowing things to be a bit less efficient, but still maintain patient safety. 50% requires either dangerous conditions or cancellation of part of the service (generally elective stuff, but there's a limit as to how far that measure can go to enabling safe practice). Omnicron in itself probably wouldn't lead to an increase in ventilations. Inability to provide needed care just might, in hospitals with staffing issues in the wrong places. Also, let 'er rip is something I'm very wary about because a meta-analysis indicates that about a third of people with COVID end up with fatigue, and a fifth with cognitive impairment (there's overlap). This doesn't seem to reduce much in the 3-6 month period, nor with mildness of initial infection (this tallies with the 11.5% incidence of certain serious conditions found by a study several months ago). It's also indicated that over a quarter of adults who got COVID have been unable to return to work for at least 6 months after contracting confirmed COVID. Children are more resilient but still get significant problems bouncing back from the fatigue and cognitive impairment issues.

Infections are typically 2-3 weeks before hospitalisations are required (a bit less for the oldest and people with weakest underlying health). Hospitalisations in London started rising 2 weeks ago, which is about when I'd expect to see a rise in ventilator use if that's going to happen for Omnicron. 1-2 weeks after that is when the deaths land. Thus, deaths would be expected to start rising 5-7 weeks after the case rise starts. However, it's arriving in different places at different speeds - my local area (also in England) hasn't started getting the hospitalisation rise yet (which is surprising as that would have been expected to start last week), possibly because restrictions started kicking in before Omnicron showed up (my area's cases are currently rising at 2/3 of the national average, which logically means 2/3 of the hospitalisation increase if the demographics of those catching it reflect the national average - and restrictions ideally mean the people who do catch it are less likely to be those with the least ability to self-recover from the virus). The Eastern Mediterranean has been experiencing a drop in cases through the whole autumn. Some places will have had the misfortune to find themselves in the opposite situation. I've heard some horror stories from certain parts of continental Europe, as well as parts of the USA (via this board). On the other hand, cases started rising globally 10 weeks ago (mid-October), and global deaths have been falling for the last 3 complete weeks. This is a hopeful sign, though we must be cautious as the effect of Omnicron on deaths in Americas and Africa is not due to show until some point in January due to their only reporting region-wide (as opposed to nation-wide) case increases 7 or fewer weeks ago.

The UK does not count any death after 28 days of a positive COVID test as COVID-related - but if someone's been hospitalised (for any reason) for more than 48 hours, or they are in hospital for a planned inpatient procedure for more than 24 hours*, they would be part of the inpatient COVID test rota. A positive test on any of those tests resets the 28-day counter, unless it is beyond the reliability horizon of the tests (I think that past 21 days of continous positive tests, the 28-day counter stops resetting and the separate scenario of Long COVID is assumed, giving a reliable window of around 7 weeks). * - The large windows are to take into account staffing, technical and medical reasons to not do the test immediately upon arrival. Someone with COVID who died while waiting to be seen or during initial triage/diagnosis in A&E would not get COVID on their death certificate unless they'd tested positive - and if done at home, registered said test - in the previous 28 days... ...or they were admitted to a Welsh hospital (Wales includes suspected COVID-19 cases, not just confirmed ones like the rest of the UK). Rather, they'd get something descriptive of their symptoms such as "respiratory failure" or "heart damage". Thus, if someone was admitted to hospital COVID-positive and took 6 weeks to die, they'd have COVID recorded on the death certificate. (If they were admitted for a different life-threatening reason, that reason will probably also be recorded on the death certificate somewhere). So someone who was COVID-positive and died in a car crash would have both noted on their death certificate, as a general rule (with the crash listed first). However, people who are not testing (or registering home tests) in the community, get severe COVID and wait too long to go to hospital are missed by the measure, since the test has to be taken while the patient is still alive for it to count. This is particularly apt to undercount elderly people in home care (who, unlike their counterparts in hospitals, are not regularly tested), but can also undercount those in care homes (some settings only test once every 28 days, which means there's a window where someone could catch the virus and die of it without having tested positive at any point - especially if they were frail and they had an advanced care directive indicating they wanted to die away from hospital if a fatal illness was diagnosed due to subsequent care being the same either way). There are no "hospitalised outside infectious period" or "period of complete recovery" clauses in the UK, and in fact there are reports in the Sunday Times today (not the best scientific standard, I realise) indicating that 5 days after a positive test, 30% of people are still infectious for COVID, and some are still infectious 10 days after a positive test. As long as a positive COVID test exists for that person within 28 days of death (subject to reliability horizon) and while still alive, the UK will classify that person has having had COVID contribute to their death, which is enough to get it on the death certificate. @popmom , do your hospital(s)' networks or local statistics board have websites with dashboards on them? If so, there's a good chance you can find the data you seek there. In the UK, the NHS (in effect, the network for most UK hospitals) gathers the information and sends it to the UK's statistics board. Individual hospitals and local groupings of hospitals report locally, national-level gets reported via the Office for National Statistics on the official UK government webpage. Hope this helps with finding the information you seek. (Short version for the UK's national situation, which hopefully gives some idea of an example national lived experience: significant hospitalisation increase in the last few days (increasing faster than the increase in positive tests, both of which are approaching 50% increase in the last 7 days) 8% drop in number of tests done in the last 7 days 11% positivity in tests (this surprised me as my local area has positivity of only 1.1%) 0.9% of positive cases admitted with COVID average hospital stay 6.22 days 7.2% of people admitted to hospital require intensive care for COVID 8 in every 10,000 people who test positive of COVID get COVID on their death certificate. No division available of people who die in hospital vs the community, though statistically, some people must be dying in the community as there are more COVID deaths than people in hospital intensive care).

There is officially a county shortage of PCR tests and a national shortage of lateral test supply (note the difference: there aren't enough PCR tests to go round, but lateral flow tests do exist - just not necessarily where people need them to be to use them). As a result, community positivity counts can only be used as a lower bound, not an upper bound. (Positivity in the community is largely in children, with significant amounts among 20-50 year olds and hardly any among older people - who have nearly-universally boostered or started an initial vaccination series in the last 5 months). Note: half of the adults in my county who had previously been unvaccinated, accepted a dose of vaccine in November or December (which in the current system, means they have automatically received a booking for dose 2 at the same place in January-April). For the first time in many months, there's been an increase in "Pillar 1" (hospital and health worker) positive tests in my county. Given the patient situation, that increase must be due to positive tests among staff, and of course no hospital wants to find itself with a staff shortage when a pandemic wave is in progress. So this all makes sense. Sadly, so does the ban on non-essential visiting. If everyone in the county had taken a single test in the last fortnight, the community at large would have 1.11% positivity. However, the supply issues mean actual community rates will be higher than this. Door-to-door testing is about to start in the worst-affected parts of the county (delayed until now due to holidays), with the potential to skew the raw county positivity rating further. Though this is a good thing because it means people who are unknowingly infected can find out they have COVID and avoid spreading it further. The latest healthworker scheme where I am is for people in most roles to return to work after 7 days (assuming a negative PCR test on day 6) but only if they can do a test on days 8, 9 and 10 before arriving at work. However, if they cannot get test, they must treat it as if they were positive and isolate while waiting for a test to become available. Rules are more complex for close contacts (as opposed to if staff themselves test positive). People working in the most sensitive locations will continue to isolate for 10 days and require a PCR test to start. A lot of other measures got announced to increase staff time on wards, including a delay on training not necessary to do basic work in a given role. In theory, all home tests in the UK are meant to be registered at a central website. However, only a few employers are enforcing this (in practise, most couldn't if they wanted to). This means that lots of people aren't registering home tests (especially negative ones), be that because they don't know how, don't have internet access (and don't have/want to use the phone number), don't see the point or simply can't be bothered. Supervised tests are automatically registered. On the other hand, the 6-month natural immunity rule for getting into nightclubs and other domestic locations are acting as an incentive for young people to register positive lateral tests (whether they seek confirmatory PCR testing or not). Thankfully Long COVID treatment isn't dependent on proof of COVID (although a lack of knowledge among doctors is a problem for many seeking treatment), although registering a postive test does automatically get the result (thus risk of Long COVID) entered onto one's medical records.

NYE: went to work, got the new testing and isolation advice, played computer games for a couple of hours, ate turkey and leek pie, attended a virtual party with some friends (these ones live in several different countries, so it was always going to be virtual), went to the top of the hill with the family carrying a mug of elderflower pressé for midnight. The surrounding houses had been letting off quite a few fireworks at 9:30 pm and just after 11 pm, so we didn't have much hope of a decent firework display. However, we all agreed that the midnight display was the best display we'd seen since at least 2018 (people seem to buy and use more fireworks when they think the future looks brighter than it has for a while). The local radio station had not received this optimistic memo, and appeared to think the perfect song to ring in the New Year was "Nothing Compares 2 U". NYD: had a lie-in, played computer games, ate more turkey and leek pie (this time with stuffing and spinach), generally relaxing.

The places near me require proof of age/eligibility before issuing senior discounts (I say eligibility as some outlets also give the same discount to people with certain disabilities, and locally, identical cards can be used to prove age or disability for that purpose. The same scheme also does discounts for youth, which means there's some degree of plausible deniability - and if it doesn't suit your purposes to get the discount, you simply don't wave the card at the servers). So I don't expect ever to get an unsolicited discount.

Does eBay have anything? (Given the tight timeframe and the potential to need alterations for comfort or to tailor to requirements, I'd opt for collection if feasible). As well as using the actual sizes, "plus size" is a term that may provide useful results (even though I wouldn't strictly call the size you posted "plus", some "plus size" ranges do go down to Large). The problem with this size is because it's so hard to find good items in the size, people don't tend to let them go once they have them in case they are needed again, so I am sympathetic. I have never owned or rented a ballroom dress; when I had my proms, I wore a skirt (which was considered unusual but acceptable) because all the dresses in my size that I deemed an acceptable cut and style were too expensive. At this point, I buy all of my clothes from 3 shops - none of which do ballgowns.

I wonder if this might help define a scheme for long-term vaccination - perhaps 1 Pfizer followed by 1/2 OxfordAstrazeneca, with doses 12-24 weeks apart?

That text would have been sent back to whoever was running the course at my alma mater, because all text within a section must be relevant to the subject heading and there's no indication the bracketed part is relevant to the rest of the paragraph*. In fact, some courses might even expect their students to report it as a data security violation! (This would also go for the sticky note example). Even at 18, I would have considered claiming the locker unethical, but I would definitely have reported the issue. A lot of my fellow students would not, because they'd have treated it as an error (granted, many didn't read the syllabus because the important parts are generally provided in the pre-course materials and lesson 1, or are considered common sense or a repeat of standard information). The other issue is that students who did read the syllabus may well have a reduced opinion of the professor based on providing such a garbled text, making them less likely to a) attend lectures and b) pay attention to what the lecturer says. Come to think of it... if the professor is teaching in a field where data protection is an active concern, a better-written version of this would be a good teachable moment about the importance of reading all text carefully and reporting security issues. The department is more surprising than the fact this was attempted (performing arts doesn't generally expect graduates to have professional knowledge of such topics). One of my professors reported a situation about 15 years ago where a small software provider released an EULA (that document appearing before program installation that is also rarely read in detail) which had a clause that the Devil claimed the soul of anyone installing this software and anyone mentioning the claim to the software developer before a particular date would receive £10 as thanks for reporting the bad clause. (Nobody reported it, apparently). I could well imagine that professor (who taught computing-related subjects) doing something like this had the department permitted it. * - Also, absence policies are devised by department and are issued in department guidance, thus not something an individual course would be writing about. But that varies by university/college.