Engineer, trying to kick the habit by doing humanities and science; that doesn't work but I like it. Not a specialist to "follow" for a single subject, but I might know how some things are connected. High Reading-to-TV ratio. Ardent #cyclist (MAMIL).
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2026-07-23T10:14:10Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas One more post about "Firefox AI": npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Sometimes it's more in what it doesn't contain, while still containing (obscure) references to it. A few known historical versions of text may indicate political action by priests, long term plots through forgery. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Spotted today while cycling, a lesser butterfly-orchid (Plathantera bifolia). This orchid is rare in this area. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas older tech, DDR4, is still affordable. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas That's one mile... npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Early summer - when work in the orchard isn't a chore. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Meadow, field, forest, sky in the spring evening sun. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I don't know but that sounds like a container use case to me (or maybe a root-jail). npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas it's more like I visit the local blackbird's garden daily... npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas yes, that one is amazing - I took the photo below 18 months ago. I also first had a "chainsaw" impulse but, who knows, maybe some wood-boring beetle loves it that way? Besides, I don't usually take chainsaws on bike outings 😉 npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas One of our favorite spots in the forest - wild garlic likes it here, for the trees it's a bit difficult. This is a place for moss and frogs. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas the Anthropic tools are quite good, especially for getting inroads into a domain with a high degree of specialization (i.e., all areas of knowledge well documented, but with some technological depth from a history of division of labor). npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas The "Portable Tie Presser": yet another "invention" that, to our good fortune, didn't make it. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas a turkey vulture, I assume... aren't those called "buzzards" by the Southerners? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Just use it as some kind of strange database for building blocks a hobbyist doesn't have time, skill, or resources to create on their own. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Thanks - Europe more and more feels like it's a dangerous place. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I've read your post about the scrambling for positions in the pecking order between A-1st and MAGA alpha males with great interest. Now I understand that this is not an abstract problem but the temptation to use theories from primate studies is strong. These are hard times. Stay safe. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I had asked myself where the NRA stands on this. For anyone hard-right this must be a rare occasion of cognitive dissonance. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas For example: npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas The strength of the 1920s "Electrical Experimenter" reading young man (i.e., nerd) also, allegedly, comes from perfect command of all things electrical (or other technological magic), not from muscles. Yet it's muscles that would protect them against the schoolyard bullies. I guess that you have the answer there. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Have you ever seen ads in 1920s magazines from the USA that targeted nerds? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I found a copy of Brouwer's 1949 paper "Consciousness, Philosophy, and Mathematics". npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas This morning, it was unusually cold during my bike commute: -13°C (8.6°F), and a good part of the track would have been dangerous to navigate with studded tires. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas French language: Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France... and Canada - if you don't want go to Africa, or one of the many other places that have French as the official language. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas "In an unpublished note, Peirce wrote, “Now if we are to accept the common idea of continuity...we must either say that a continuous line contains no points...or that the law of excluded middle does not hold of these points. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas True. What came to my mind after the accident was "professional cyclists" - after an accident they just go on, and so did I. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Thanks, yes it keeps the doctor away! npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I just discovered that by cycling 100+ km for the last 4 days to achieve my stretch goal of 28,000 km this year, I've crossed the year-over-year 28,000 km line today. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Words are weak vehicles of meaning and a science of words can be useful to understand the limitations. The below article is quite good. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas well, as Finnish is a synthetic language you can construct a word for almost anything (even if it takes a bit of malice). npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas That's the rumor. I might have first heard it from a Swedish source. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas The only thing we may disagree on is the "if we stop them" part. We can't. It's a scaled social system. Stopping them means it falls apart, and as that's your concern it might not the thing to do. I have confidence in the ability of humans to construct their world. Mine will end in a few short years, and that's not the end of the world. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas You're right, but that doesn't mean that one can't opt out. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas there is no biggest thing that keeps society from falling apart - it's the constant activity of many. Making sense of daily acts is the one single condition. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas you're right, doing these things persistently is hard. What I mean to say is make it redundant, spread it around, automate re-build, keep the skill alive. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas depending on how much space you need it's maybe not that bad. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I noticed that spoken Finnish is a very different language. As a German native I can sense some of the possibilities of the feel of a synthetic language, so many nuances that can be expressed, and ambiguities that may be implied. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas don't ask me about Finnish - sufficient to say that I never got beyond YLE Selkuutiset 😉 npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Je crois que lire des BD, c'est une bonne methode. Au minimum ça fait du bien 🙂 npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas c'est une belle tomme. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Sillage? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Thanks to suggestions from @npub12n5…9dex I learned a bit about *BSD and PC hardware by tracing my touchpad and keyboard problem in #NetBSD: npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas The dmesg log provided a hint: " pms0: autoconfiguration error: unsupported Elantech version 2.34 (2 0 22)" npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Kernel stuff... interrupt controller might be it. There is also an occasional debug message finding its way to the console (i.e., the laptop screen) indicating that a WiFi interrupt timed out: "ath0 device timeout (txq 1, txintrperiod...)"; that's without X11 server. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Running ping was a good idea! Ping stalls for up to 9s during the 47 it takes to run startx, and it finally times out. As soon as the X11 window manager takes over ping springs back to life. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I tried to watch Xorg.*.log with an ssh session. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas driver bug sounds reasonable - no hardware issue. Debian or Ubuntu work just fine. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas A hint: the keyboard works until I use the touchpad (e.g., try to move the mouse pointer). From then on it's unresponsive (and the mouse pointer never moves). I've never seen that in any default installation of Linux on that machine. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas When asking around what's a dependable OS for old hardware (e.g., my ASUS Eee PC 900A with a 32bit Atom N270) #NetBSD was recommended. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas original storytellers, that's something I would subscribe to. It's also so that all these stories are somehow intertwined... arbitrarily many constructions with just so many degrees of freedom. The humanness relates to that like the body of the dancer to the dance. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I don't believe that humans will ever tell a story that's not biased by humanness. Narratives can be surprising, but that's because depart from the ordinary. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Ah, de polder - daar heb ik Nederland leren kennen. Zo veel mens-gemaakte geometrie in het photo: de tocht, de windturbines, het hekwerk, de condensporen en het platte land. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas your parent's bookshelf, I assume? A few books from when they were very young, and a few that were from their parents or older relatives. Not passionate readers, I would say, unless there are a more bookshelves. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas thanks - reading these numbers I have to admit that VSCode is beyond bloated. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas no I'm curious - what's the OS of our laptop, and how much RAM does it have? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas in a world where a substantial part of the meaning of a text can be translated with stochastic models, choosing a human language for communicating a thing might be seen, by some, as something alike to choosing a typographic font. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas why not? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Does anyone have a copy of the paper below? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas what you're at is difficult to do - apparently not attractive enough as a market outside of law enforcement. In my opinion the safety of people with dementia ought to be a prime target for the #homeautomation community... npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Did you observe that the phishing posts originate from the same Mastodon instance? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas an external link should make users suspicious, right? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Sometimes, by rejecting a statement as erroneous, we might be missing a new world of insights - our agreed-on theory might just not be good enough. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I have yet to explore Orwell's work. There is so much to read in this world of ideas, so much to learn. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Go ahead and read it :-) I recommend to look at the whole cluster - Susan Haack was my (quite opinionated) guide. I got help from more guides; learned to know the city that's late 19th and early 20th century philosophy and logic. Right now I'm again learning to know a different angle, through Orwell - and my reading of 1984 is distinctly metaphysics-critical. Lakatos confirmed my hunch. Popper is, of course, also an interesting read (even if Haack hates him with a passion). npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Solar Branka posted the Wittgenstein quote "If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done". I replied that "daft is the limiting case". npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas some, I've read, some. I like his work because he managed to come to the conclusion that complexity can't be overcome with rigidity (already the Tractatus shows that). On the other side, Tarski and Carnap, in that group, misled the gullible, and Russel, well, I can't take his position too seriously. Whitehead looked deeper. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas That's certainly true, and I agree. Daft things are the limiting case, of course. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I saw spiderworts for the first time last year during a visit to the southern states - the still look exotic to me! npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I highly recommend reading Lakatos Imre "Proofs and Refutations" to anyone with an interest in methodology. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas The larger problem is that the sense of reality has been manipulated by the entertainment industry for a long time. Fan-fiction and other productions now enter a agnostic next-token predictor as a part of a uniform text corpus, to be shaped into simulacra of interpersonal exchange. What could possibly go wrong? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas both bikes don't look like they have seen much of an adventure - they look new (even if a bit outdated) npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas #Meta is giving their millions of users in Europe a phony "legitimate interests" cover-story for circumventing the #GDPR. It's no longer about selling data to 3rd parties, now it's about using data for impersonating people through #MetaAI. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas A dear friend sent me a copy of Lakatos "Proofs and refutations" with the words "this should be fun to read". npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas That reminds me of Robert Rosen's Anticipatory Systems - the system analysis regarding response time looks quite interesting. On the philosophical side, knowledge of a "Fundamental Solution" depends on the system frame of the observer. Also that is an interesting problem. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I'm getting the idea that the distribution of intellectual faculties in society regresses to the 18th century normal. We'll see. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas The modern human has the highest potential for being ignorant in evolutionary history. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Homo erectus definitively used to cook food. Very likely Homo habilis already did that. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Yesterday, after work, cycling brought me to backwater villages, not hard to reach, but away from the usual flow of traffic. When I saw this house in the village of Weinsbach I stopped. The 1970s have been unapologetically retained, the style frozen in time, left to the weather like a forgotten monument. #Germany #photography #countryside npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas good point. Text/graphics switching also applies to video editing. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas This keyboard is an attic find at my parent's. I believe I purchased this keyboard in the late 1980s from a surplus mail-order. It looks highly specific, e.g., as a part of a historic CAD system. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I've never seen anyone around here growing carrots in pot - tomatoes, peppers, chillies, yes, but carrots? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas #silentsunday npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas ich mag die Schwebfliegen auch, nicht nur die Efeublüte! Sehr gutes Bild! npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas #RobertRosen, in Anticipatory Systems, provides a rough-and-ready, yet systematic and formal approach to epistemology. Especially discussion of mereology, the swampy ground on which "the last ontology" can never stand, is now trivial. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas 1970 - by that time the people in the audience had 5 years experienced of US ground forces in Vietnam. Now, 54 years later, some of them believe in Trump, others don't. Boomers - what a generation. npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas here are a few more #SheepOfMastodon - just for you :-) npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Here are some more sheep for your timeline from the Löwenstein hills in southern Germany :-) #SheepOfMastodon npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas I like the photo. May I ask how you made it? npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas splendid photos - they make me want to be there! npub15frjasec92l788z448lrtlykj87pz2czk8z3jstkvzujxstrlnzsrvltmz Thomas Robert Rosen in Life Itself formally describes the Machine Paradigm as a class of relational graphs and shows that machines are a very special class of systems that aren't suitable to describe the universe (or just the most simple organism).
