Joel VanderWerf

Mathematician. Applying semigroup theory to distributed computing, convergent replication.

Bay Area and SF content: Joel VanderWerf (npub1kxe…4xgq)

twitter: AYFKM
my country: America
my hometown: San Francisco
github: https://github.com/vjoel

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npub1pnz6xq8w90v97hxcxdpyg77ff8f8x3z8rypuy8pr793l77kmnhpq6k08ry

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[email protected]

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Last Notes

2026-07-30 18:54:39 UTC

If you uploaded your neurons to the cloud, that would not be you.
I read philosophical arguments for that statement long ago, and now there are biological arguments too.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/30/alive-body-life-experience
#PhilosophyOfMind

2026-07-03 18:29:34 UTC

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Explaining to the boss why the project isn't done yet, "the trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected."

2026-06-22 00:23:31 UTC

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I don't know whether to make a ST:TNG joke or a Star Wars joke.

2026-06-13 16:48:19 UTC

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I got very lucky with lighting and a passing storm once, which produced this painting-like photo.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/743/806/604/439/815/original/205ff9dfa655237c.jpg

2026-04-06 03:40:31 UTC

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I want to watch the Christopher Guest movie about this little world.

2025-11-09 01:15:41 UTC

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Same here. Also, after clicking to embiggen, there seems to be no way to see the alt text. (In the older versions, such as on sfba.social, hovering over the big image shows the alt text.)

2025-09-22 23:16:08 UTC

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That's not enough. You also have to solve a "Raptcha" challenge, like picking all the loaves and fishes in a grid of photos.

2025-09-16 00:39:39 UTC

you go to youtube to listen to some music and it pushes cursed "charlie kirk brings black kid to tears" videos at you
google, man, i don't know

2025-08-05 23:28:54 UTC

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Looks like the file as transferred is small (a compressed string of a repeated letter) and so only detrimental when unpacked at the downloading host.

2025-07-17 03:23:48 UTC

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Charmed by the idea of a robot that needs to sit down.

2025-07-01 03:55:55 UTC

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He aspires to be the Harry Lime of our times:
"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

2025-06-23 16:59:58 UTC

"War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78n6p09pzno

2025-06-14 22:16:56 UTC

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And nobody can claim that protestors are being "bused in".
Who would bus 4000 people into Coupeville WA (per recent boost)?

2025-05-08 18:02:56 UTC

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A 'step in the right direction' sounds like faint praise.
Trump, by contrast, called it 'a maxed-out deal'.
Not knowing anything specific about the deal, this sounds like Farage is grumbling, but doesn't want to be seen as breaking with Trump.

2025-04-16 17:43:43 UTC

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Do not go viral into Mastodon,
Good toots should pique and charm at close of day;
Mute, mute against the searing blast, go on.

2025-04-13 01:00:08 UTC

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Why don't they just call it the Department of Wellness Inflluencers

2025-03-27 18:26:19 UTC

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s/contacts/contracts/

2025-03-17 18:20:05 UTC

"Starting to think about keeping all my data in the clod."
"You mean the cloud? isn't that risky these days?"
"No, I mean a micro SD card jammed into a clod of dirt."

2025-03-16 20:09:29 UTC

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What happens to the frequencies used by VoA around the world? Can countries reclaim them and offer them to an alternative operator? Wikiradio? Hams?

2024-12-30 23:57:41 UTC

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I'm itching to name this show:
Bucket Luck
Hash Hunter
Key Value Wars

2024-12-03 18:16:21 UTC

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Also, make sure to get your corvid booster. Always boost corvids.

2024-11-05 18:14:58 UTC

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I can set my terminal (xfce4) to use a blinking or non-blinking "I-beam" as they call it. Its movement is not related to the mouse.
Similarly, LibreOffice has a blinking I-beam text cursor.

2024-11-05 18:08:24 UTC

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Are the vertical bars that live in the spaces between letters so bad?
(I guess that's called an I-beam?)

2024-09-23 22:25:55 UTC

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I propose, in memory of "Ask Jeeves", an "Ask Bertie" search engine. Never knows anything important, just random cricket stats and minor nobility gossip, but willing to speculate charmingly about whatever you ask.

2024-09-16 17:55:56 UTC

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the dril-ification of elon

2024-09-14 20:41:15 UTC

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I read this aloud in the "How is babby formed" voice.

2024-08-01 23:16:38 UTC

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Now I am imagining a sort of low-
Earth orbit Wall-E puttering around in all the floating space junk, laser-cutting off chunks, and crushing them into bricks to build an orbiting tower.