myrmepropagandist

pro-ant propaganda, building electronics, writing sci-fi teaching mathematics & CS. I live in NYC.🎖️(<<Medal Awarded for the time when there were too many people.)
Proverbs 6:6

bug haters DNI

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Last Notes

2026-04-02 14:45:13 CEST

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But the other point, (which I got side-tracked from thinking about the phrase "bomb them into the stone age" ... ) is that the cover story I just articulated is too complex for Trump to even attempt to communicate. That is his diabolical populist instinct. He never confuses his base. Never uses big words or ideas.
Never makes them learn anything since for some people the feeling of learning makes them feel ... stupid.

2026-04-02 04:34:22 CEST

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Yeah. You gotta get a new brush.

2026-03-29 14:15:47 CEST

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People talking about "shoulders too square" and "elbows too pointy"
Why enable this? It's so sexist.

2026-03-28 16:05:10 CET

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Was he doing his calculations in Roman numerals? I feel like I used to know this...

2026-03-08 13:19:06 CET

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My disgust for war, for the military, is not the result of being sheltered.
I hate your wars because I know exactly what they are and how when violence occurs it reverberates for generations.
Someone has lost a daughter and with her many of their reasons for living. What grim task will they devote themselves to?
What would you do, Pete, if they killed your family? Do you think you are the only person who loves their children?
I think you must.

2026-02-28 00:56:24 CET

I'm still trying to learn how to use this "mesh" stuff and have infested the bronx radio network with ants.
:/

2026-02-06 14:55:57 CET

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It would be much more efficient to have everyone cremated and pressed into uniform cubes to be stacked in pit. The AI could summarize their life and display it on a screen as each cube is stacked. Other AI mourners could then play sounds of crying. That way no one would need to miss work and these fools could make more money to... IDK why do they need more money? I've lost the plot here.

2026-02-03 12:53:08 CET

This guy named Ben Palmer made an "Immigration tip line" and people call it thinking he's ICE.
He records them and shares it with the world.
What do people sound like when reporting their neighbors, coworkers, students? Are they confident they are doing a righteous good thing?
Witness the banality of evil in these sheepish suburban voices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJnkikcrHA0

2026-01-28 12:32:43 CET

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What if we had a kind of mini-app where users could create their own algorithms and then share combine and trade them?
I might design a mix of hashtags, users, and hand picked posts and call it "Ant News" someone else might pick a group of users and hash tags and create "Italian Football Bloopers"
Then we could share and rate these feeds and new users could just click on the popular ones?

2026-01-08 23:10:01 CET

An old phone with a cracked screen is the new “new iPhone” the only way to one up some with this is to have either an eink screen OR pull out a blackberry or flip phone that somehow still does modern apps in some janky way. (this is elegance)
I expect in five years companies will catch on and manufacture such things to keep up. Bespoke and retro— pleasant to touch and use.
Unless they can really offer something that catches the imagination of the public. #trends #fashion

2025-12-30 12:24:02 CET

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This is so validating. I've never liked either of these ... but especially Alice (adapting Alice in Wonderland is dangerous, there are so many bad versions) but always felt shouted down. Or I thought "maybe this is for small children and I just need to chill"
The thing about good children's media is ... well it still normally good media. Adults should like it too.

2025-11-24 11:59:01 CET

No ads.
No* algorithm.
No tracking.
No influence campaigns.
No AI.
No face scanning.
No bots.
Just people on the internet talking to each other about all the little pointless things, (and big incredible things) in our lives.
*I realize that the demonization of the term "algorithm" in social media is unfortunate in many ways. The demonization of the words "social media" itself is also missing the point. But this is about a simple take on what I think a lot of people are looking for right now.

2025-10-26 12:51:28 CET

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This. There is a market for using AI as an unhealthy substitute for real human interaction.
But I think most people won't want to advertise they are doing it with a necklace that makes you look like an escaped patient from a black mirror readjustment clinic.

2025-10-23 01:25:03 CEST

As soon as you can verify that life has started more than one time in a single solar system (and we aren't near that really, but there is something worth looking into again) that means it's probably in many solar systems and BOOM you have to presume there are space ants since ants are the most logical and advanced creatures in Earth's ecosystem and the temporary dominance of vertebrates is an aberration.
They will arrive and study us I'm certain. "What a curious planet" they will say.

2025-09-28 15:39:01 CEST

I think we should treat people who get scammed and come out and talk about it like heroes. And this is important: no matter how "obvious" the scam might seem in retrospect or from the outside of the community it prey'd on.
The more I look at scams the more I think this is major factor in how they keep going and keep coming back.

2025-09-06 16:06:49 CEST

This is a question for the younger adults. Those in your 20s and 30s. There have been a few surveys and articles about how "young people are having less sex" and "young people aren't getting married"
And then some people will say there is a "loneliness epidemic"
How real is this? Are these things even connected?
There are fewer marriages but also far fewer divorces which, to me, kind of sounds like a good thing?
But I rarely hear about the low divorce rate in this context.

2025-08-28 17:41:11 CEST

There is a voice in my head that keeps saying "There is a concentration camp in the swamps of Florida." When I'm shopping for groceries. When I'm taking a shower. "There is a concentration camp in the swamps of Florida."
Here is a tiny victory in a much bigger battle. There was a tension I've been holding in me ever since this place opened that I didn't even know was there.
https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desantis-wasted-250-million-alligator-alcatraz-it-faces-closure-2120638

2025-08-17 17:24:19 CEST

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That only works if journalists fail to stick up for each other. If when one journo was kicked out for a question 20 more kept asking the same one it become unworkable. By, acceding that "no that question went to far" when you know it didn't you become part of the propaganda arm of the state. And you aren't even being paid as much as those who choose that as their profession.

2025-08-17 16:22:55 CEST

A week ago we heard that the tape of the mysterious and irregular meeting between the the Deputy Attorney General of the entire United States, Todd Blanche (who is also the former personal lawyer of the president) and Maxwell, Jeffery Epstein's accomplice might be released.
And now? Crickets. Where is that tape.
The one where she says "Trump did nothing wrong."
Just like with the Epstein files themselves. "we will release it" then they don't.

2025-08-12 13:42:21 CEST

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Momtana.
I kinda like that one.

2025-07-21 15:19:22 CEST

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I'd seen evidence and read about police lying. But, to have a police officer lie directly to your face with such ease changes something in you.
It's causes all of the romantic images from cop TV shows to wither away. It wasn't just the lie, (told with us both knowing it was a lie), but the anger, the contempt and the way the pair of them worked together.
The people of the neighborhood were just a problem to them. "bunch of dogooders"
That's right, Officer. That is what we are.

2025-07-14 17:19:29 CEST

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We sometimes say "Someone being gay or trans doesn't effect your life at all." Things along those lines.
Thing is, this isn't totally true. There *is* an impact.
A good impact. A healthy one. Trying to enforce ideas of gender and sexuality that don't align with the complex way that we really *are* has an impact on everyone.
If being non-binary is "wrong" then not being a perfect match for your gender is wrong.
Maybe some people are scared of who they would be without the fear.

2025-05-11 12:26:56 CEST

Today I completed my planning for my summer course for math teachers "Computer Science for Math Teachers"
But I'd love to know of any additional topics I ought to include. Main goal is to get the rest of the math faculty comfortable enough with code that they use it in a natural way as one of many problem solving techniques and teach this to our students.
When my lesson plans have a CS component other math teachers often skip it just because they don't feel comfortable.

2025-04-16 13:29:21 CEST

You might remember the opening line “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” William Gibson, Neuromancer
But did you know that Gibson is a serial offender when it comes to describing the sky weird? In ‘Idoru’ the sky is “like a sky-blue paint chip submitted by the contractor of the universe” …
I require an in-person apology from the author for this affrontery to the art of metaphor.
The sky was “sky-blue”?! Sir. How dare

2025-04-16 11:05:42 CEST

Against my better judgement I clicked on the CGP Grey video about "why nickels should be discontinued" they say something like:
"It costs the government more than 5 cents to make a nickel and once you incorporate the cost of minting and labor it's 13 cents..."
All this results in a "loss" of 100million.
This seems logical enough, but when a government is minting money does it make sense to count "manufacturing costs" as if the government were a business that sells.. uh ... money?

2025-04-14 22:08:03 CEST

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People think I'm just joking about this. But if I get pushed over the edge by life events? Well ya'll better beware of the strange ship with the ant head skull and cross bones lurking around Long Island Sound.

2025-04-14 20:53:03 CEST

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Honest if teaching doesn't work out... I could get a sailboat and become an ant smuggling pirate.
Doesn't sound so bad really...

2025-04-14 13:12:06 CEST

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I think the fact that it's tacky explains why it won't go away. Tacky stuff has always been around, there are always people who will tolerate, or even want tacky things.
(And for each of us there is something we like that someone who knows a bit more about that kind of object would find tacky. The concept is relative.)
I guess what's new with AI images is they can only ever be tacky. They can only ever be attempts to imitate something better.

2025-04-14 12:32:38 CEST

Everything made by AI looks like the lobby of the 3rd worst casino. So deeply tacky.
Imagine the guy who hangs up one of those fake AI "schematic" drawings of a fictional spaceship on his wall. From a distance you get a little excited to look at the diagram and see all of the compartments and machine systems.
But, when you look more closely none of it makes sense. It's a fake impression of curiosity, creativity, imagination.
Plastic gold-plated pastiche of "I'm creative & have ideas"

2025-04-11 02:16:04 CEST

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I confess I thought he was a dog and got him mixed up with Anubis.
I'm totally getting eaten by a crocodile when I die for this.

2025-03-22 09:32:18 CET

Flint napping does something to people. Everyone I know who has learned this skill (to understand prehistoric humans) becomes oddly obsessed with it. They do it waaay more than is strictly needed to understand the archeology. And they become ... evangelical about the whole thing. "You have to try this!" nappers can be very pushy.
I have no doubt they are correct, it must be a kind of time travel through synchronicity.
But, I also wonder if they have awoken something in themselves.

2025-03-13 23:49:52 CET

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I shouldn't assume people know: You see there were fast food shops in ancient Rome. They had a very similar layout to a NYC pizza place, although they mostly sold bread with olive oil, not pizza exactly.
But they had no seating, a little counter, oven in the back. Those florescent lights that make all times of day and night collapse into the same endless moment didn't exist back then. But they must have had some other method of bending time in those days of smoke and oracles.

2025-03-13 22:57:20 CET

The proper name of a place to buy a slice is “Pizza $1.50” no Italians, no other names required. It’s like a chain that’s not a chain. All the pizza shops are connected and oh! they are ancient: when I stop for lunch by the aqueduct eating fast food from a little street shop I do one better than all those boys who can’t stop thinking about The Fall of the Roman Empire: I am, I become for a moment a *roman*, urban, harried, sophisticated and hungry for street pizza.

2025-03-10 04:20:02 CET

To ants a golf course must seem like the #backrooms. An alien landscape that imitates a forest or glade, but strangely repetitive, devoid of other living things.
If we think about the alienation and confusion of the ant on a golf course we can understand what the backrooms might be. You see grass and trees. You think it's an environment you know. (You see rooms, you see electric lights) The backrooms are just a game-board for minds with aims beyond our own.

2025-03-07 15:25:10 CET

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If you target the people who had to overcome overwhelming skepticism in their ability to do the job just to be seen as equal you’ll remove your most competent and skilled people. They aren’t there because anyone liked them, no, they are there in spite of that; because they can do the work. They get it done. This will leave a a lot of coasting failsons suddenly in a position to find out how just difficult their jobs actually are.

2025-03-07 13:31:30 CET

1. Air will be taxed. Buy air or don’t breathe.
2. Everyone named Reginald to be sent to PRISON,
3. shut down DOE* replace w/ mobile gaming app w/ loot boxes.
4. 15-year-old sneaker magnate & candy crush streamer now in charge of the infectious disease. samples in dorm fridge
5. buy national park land, $4 an acre but website is down.
6. WAR with Maine for being Canadian sympathizers!!
* Department of Energy? Department of Education? no one knows.

2025-03-06 15:56:51 CET

I think about NYC grinding forward, inexorably, stubbornly, the sagging tired buildings, the trains heavy with people heavy with bags and with tasks, all of it contributing to the overall vector, the total inertia, the crushing of the idea of the city. A concept that has transcended individual lives, ideologies, organizations even nations. NYC is older than America. Hang on to that strap.

2025-02-17 12:27:27 CET

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Does your work use amazon?
(If your job isn't one where buying things from amazon would make sense for what you do choose the third or fourth option. Only choose the second option if you COULD use amazon at your job but do not for some reason. That reason could be cost, moral concerns, quality, anything. )

2025-02-16 13:10:35 CET

Listen. I wasn't born yesterday. I know that fungi aren't plants: they don't have chloroplasts to photosynthesize. They don't use cellulose for their cell walls like plants.
But what *do* they use then? Chitin! Like a bug! This is what the exoskeletons of insects (such as ants) are made of!
The implications of this are marvelous. Consider Prototaxites, the tree-size fungi of the Silurian. They stood tall using chitin. And to me? THAT says that giant ants may be more possible than we think!

2025-02-09 15:27:09 CET

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It's the same reason it's a good idea to insist that people treat each other with respect when working together. The same reason you wouldn't decide to only hire people from your own family if you really wanted the best person for the job.
Any organization for-profit or non-profit that is run by people who care about meeting their goals and being good at meeting those goals would get this.
But sometimes organizations are more like gangs. All of this talk of excellence is a joke to them.

2025-02-09 15:22:33 CET

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So, yes I support "DEI" it would be more correct to say that I don't think it's enough. DEI is an act of self-preservation and improvement for any organization where diversity is rare, equity violated and inclusion fails.
It's YOUR bottom line. Do you want to accomplish your goals efficiently? Do you want to attract the most talented people and get them to work towards those goals with creativity and sincere commitment? Then you need to at least attempt DEI.
That's why it exists at all.

2025-02-09 15:12:09 CET

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To benefit from diversity you need to actually listen and learn from those marked out as "diverse" by the social expectations of your time.
Though I'd think one would want to do this for more basic human reasons of treating people with respect and this whole "it's gonna make you better" carrot wouldn't be needed but here it is.

2025-02-09 15:10:20 CET

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It's interesting that the word used in these attempts at progressive policy was NOT "equality" -- equity isn't the same thing as equality. Equity about impartiality.
Equality can seem like an unrealistic goal. Equity is a bare minimum to strive to act without prejudice. Without *pre* justice, not without judgement.
Equity will not correct the harms of the past, but it asks merely that no new harms are done.

2025-02-09 15:05:51 CET

Diversity is an interesting concept. We don't call a collection of people with different types of fingernails "diverse." To value diversity is to value bridging social divisions that are often tools of domination, power.
A commitment to diversity doesn't just lead to better outcomes, more creative solutions and more resilience in the face of challenges.
Diversity also fades, as the divisions become less effective tools of exploitation.
I can see why it's threatening to some.

2025-02-09 14:21:20 CET

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Once you stop respecting self determination there isn't any real limit to how far it will go. And the philosophy of fear requires an enemy to make sense. They choose the easiest enemies first, those who some people are already suspicious of, those who are few in numbers. But, then they need to move on. It's a really obvious pattern with these kinds of movements there are poems and lists and this is well established.
And it's exactly where we are going if we are too passive.

2025-02-09 14:11:53 CET

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If you know someone who would be angered by these very obvious observations because they are transphobic or among those who would enable transphobia by "not being political" that's probably the person and the place where the "obvious thing everyone knows" needs to be said most.

2025-02-09 14:09:51 CET

Left-handed people have always existed and will always exist. We are happier, healthier, more capable when we just use our dominant hand (or hands) to write, and do complex tasks.
It's possible to try to force everyone to use the same hand this leads to frustration, can hinder education. It is pointless.
You don't need to worry about what hand other people use. It's none of your business.
If you have never thought about this be glad your dominant hand was the one everyone expected.

2025-02-07 17:02:43 CET

If you have been thinking "the fediverse is too ---" There are too many people posting about --- and not enough ----." Remember that pruning and planting your feed is your responsibility. Adjust who you follow. Add more hash tags about important topics such as #ants
There isn't any program spying on what you stare at longer trying to hack your brain keep you scrolling for as long as possible.
There have been a lot of new people. You could be missing fun posts and looking at boring ones.

2025-02-01 16:52:42 CET

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What hosting service do you use?

2025-01-25 12:05:33 CET

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For me the major topics of a CS education for the general public are:
* Computer Hardware
* Encoding and Decoding
* Logic and Control Structures
* Iterration
* Objects
* Databases
* Ethics and Applications
* User Interfaces and Design
* Computer Networks
* Computer History
This list keeps changing every time I revise my courses which is every year.

2025-01-25 12:02:47 CET

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Notice that "integrating functions" is an outcome, a specific skill. A nice one that implies you know a lot of math... maybe. But not all math curriculums end there. There is a robust debate in math education about if we obsesses about The Calculus too much, everyone understands that doing some integrals isn't "knowing math."
I think most CS educators understand something similar but there is much less consensus about what it is that we are teaching if not "how to code."

2025-01-25 12:00:01 CET

Many people have said "teach everyone to code!" or cheer-leaded for "learning to code!" but there hasn't been enough discussion about what a Computer Science component to a liberal arts education ought to look like.
In mathematics we have many lists and trees of what mathematicians think people ought to learn, what order it should be learned in.
Not so in computer science. We just say "learn to code" this would be like if math people said "learn to integrate functions!"

2025-01-24 00:56:06 CET

Trying hard not to be that pushy tech person, but also herding people towards the fedi.
Now is a great time to talk about your server. When I say "I help run a social media server" I worry it sounds like "I'm in charge of the CIA!" that *is* how it can sound.
No one has any idea what's going on out here in the free and open air.

2025-01-23 02:18:07 CET

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I may well check this out. I love UFO stuff...

2025-01-23 00:34:34 CET

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Mine:
Book: "The Lives of the Monster Dogs" by Kirsten Bakis. I don't know how to explain this book. Mad scientist makes dog people, they take NYC by storm? No one ever talks about it or knows what I'm talking about when I bring it up.
I think it's a sleeper, this book will find its people someday and they will love it.

2025-01-23 00:26:18 CET

What is the *least popular* media you enjoy that is NOT made by someone you know personally?

2025-01-22 11:03:35 CET

I try not to bad mouth tech without trying it sincerely. At last I've found two ways to use LLMs
1. This one is a little risky, since it means giving an LLM your writing. But, if you ask an LLM to scan your short story and summarize it this can be a good first stage of feedback to check if the plot you *thought* you wrote is really there.
2. Google's notebook LLM can be fed a stack of science papers in your "read later" folder and the summary it makes is useful for deciding what to read next.

2025-01-19 14:00:42 CET

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I am the coach of my school's robotics team. Robotics is very hard. Non-trivial. It's an exciting field and can fill me with hope at times.
But, is it really so bad to have two lads on a truck of asphalt with shovels?

2025-01-16 01:24:44 CET

Another technology that was supposed to change the world was speech to text. The idea was that everyone would be writing so much more because you just needed to talk, and isn't that easier than typing.
I've even tried this. It's not that great. It's really hard, as it turns out, to speak like the written word.
Even when I'd get most of full short story down the editing was a nightmare.
I wonder if anyone writes by dictation? Some people must. But I suspect it takes practice.

2025-01-01 03:12:01 CET

every time I see a lemon pig my first reaction is "that's not how you put the pennies to make a battery! You need a galvanized nail too!"
Will one of you please make a self-powered pig with light up eyes?

2025-01-01 02:36:44 CET

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I'm over here drinking ale because while I might be drunk at least I won't be full of nematodes.

2024-12-05 04:18:19 CET

Forget "habitable super earths" how about a nice "mini earth?
Core of iron, more dense than earth, so it's smaller but has the same gravity. Then a crust like earth and atmosphere. I guess the atmosphere would need to be deeper to have enough pressure?
I wonder how small you could go?

2024-12-02 11:41:32 CET

Is "human scale" closer to the very small than the very large? I think it is.
OR is that just a function of the limits on perception and measurement placed on us by our scale?

2024-12-01 13:19:26 CET

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I love this post. However I once said that all one needs to do is whisper the words... nay, think the words "is mathematics created or is it discovered?"
And you could do this while all alone... deep in the empty taiga... or on the moon after earth was laid to waste by nuclear winter. And then?
The moment those words are spoken, nay, contemplated: sixteen mathematicians will pop out to start debating. (and I will be one of them)
Anyway... you are NOT proving me wrong.

2024-12-01 12:14:17 CET

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As an amateur myrmecologist and ant fan it's hard to imagine even uttering the phrase "mainstream myrmecology" ... but ants, being far more distant from human politics, history and emotions just don't have big stinking controversies or wild theories about them like the pyramids.
In some ways that's why I like ants better. And Math!
There is less confusion as you study from people projecting their wider agendas on to the topic.
"Mainstream myrmecology is hiding the cave ants from us ALL!"

2024-12-01 12:02:37 CET

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He sometimes complains about "mainstream Egyptologists" however, which always makes me a little ... unsettled since the "Ancient Aliens" people do that too.
Although the nature of his complaints is mostly about two guys who he doesn't like.
And he's not selling much more than tee-shirts and "please watch my next videos"

2024-12-01 12:01:48 CET

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From my *very* amateur stance, as someone with a mild interest in early human history his stuff seems pretty good. He uses sources, doesn't seem to make wild claims. And I think he stands a better chance than most of talking people who believe obvious nonsense about pyramids off of the ledge.

2024-12-01 11:59:45 CET

How do we feel about the "History for GRANITE" youTube channel?
Basically, the guy seems to be an engineer who's also obsessed and well read on ancient Egypt. He has dozens of well-produced videos covering the architecture, building methods and theories about the pyramids.

2024-11-29 15:17:49 CET

Each year I ask my students what their favorite songs are and make a playlist... I'm always curious about what's popular-- and the music we listen too when we are young holds so much significance. I remember being a teen and having the music that I cared about so much dismissed by adults as "noise" Never want to be that person, who didn't even listen to it, you know?
That said, I talk with them more about ways to save music and applications than the music itself.

2024-11-29 14:59:42 CET

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I want nothing to do with Spotify.
My music remains mp3s saved on many mediums as files. The Old Ways live on.
I do use the apple music app to listen to them on my phone but I may ditch that too since it keeps asking me to subscribe to their whatever every two weeks.
This offends me and makes me want to delete the app, but they have calibrated it so that they do not do this often enough to push me over the edge.
But if they start asking more than once a week? I'll be out.

2024-11-28 12:39:06 CET

There are hard math concepts that I didn't totally "get' when I took the course decades ago, but coming back later I'd get it.
This is why, as a teacher, I don't buy the idea that some people just can't do proofs, or understand calculus, or see a point to category theory.
Time, increased experience with related math ideas, practice, vocabulary, becoming more a part of "math culture" made everything easier and easier.

2024-11-28 12:12:31 CET

If you use a major search engine to investigate the phrase "dump amazon" you will find:
1. Things called "dump" sold on amazon
2. People who have made videos of their "amazon dumps" which is a much worse name for "amazon hauls"
3. "Should you dump Amazon in 2023?" Don't get excited this is on NASDAQ and it's about dumping the stock.
If you go a bit deeper you will find the "5am blog" which is about getting rid of Amazon prime. It's one guy who explains how he saved money.

2024-11-24 15:36:16 CET

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"but faces are fine."
then why do I so often get nausea when looking into their eyes?
Maybe we need to do a blind study to see if faces drawn by people vs. AI faces have different impacts.
I swear there is something "off" about them but I admit I may be biased and projecting. But... I don't *feel* like that is what I'm doing.
I think something is WRONG.

2024-11-24 15:24:13 CET

I've always bought the tea for our home, and I've spoiled this man. He's only ever had the best teas and I taught him how to brew them correctly.
Well he decided to just buy some tea from the grocery store "why can't we just drink this?" and I have no problem with that. Go, on, husband. See what happens.
He just brewed the tea and came to me to say "this was not very good."
Well then.
He will take it to his office and leave it in the break room and pretend he knows not where it came from.

2024-11-24 13:12:33 CET

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But it still is very strange since when modern children start drawing one of the first things they will draw are faces.
Faces dominate our minds, the brain seems to process faces in special ways that other things are not.
I wish I could go back and just ask them... why not draw some portraits so we could see the emotions and faces of all of you people of the past?
This makes me think they saw the world in radically different way from how we see it now.
4/4

2024-11-24 13:10:29 CET

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I'm speaking very broadly, about tens of thousands of years of human history across multiple continents and contexts. And where you find the fine careful paintings of wildlife you DO NOT find human faces.
I think it says that people must not have felt motivated to make such drawings of the face, that they didn't like it or see it as useful.
They also didn't do drawings of IDK, insects very often. Insects were not as important as the large animals they hunted and that hunted them.
3/

2024-11-24 13:07:59 CET

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So, that makes it more remarkable that what you almost never ever find in this kind of painting are human faces. Possibly there will be human forms... humans hunting and running and swimming, having sex and giving birth... but the humans are like abstracted shadows. Sometimes with pinheads, hardly ever with eyes. And practically NEVER a face.
It's very tempting to make up a taboo about drawing faces. A cultural rule, but I think it has to go deeper than that.
2/

2024-11-24 13:05:46 CET

OK one more musing about human pre-history. We have many cave paintings from all around the world and they almost always show animals, the accuracy and beauty of these drawings of the fauna are such that we can tell the sex, age and exact species in many cases. There is a wall of animal footprints carved in stone and you can tell the age and sex of the animals *from the prints* our ancestors knew the natural world intimately and made careful records of this knowledge. 1/

2024-11-23 13:22:18 CET

I don't like saying "the problem is capitalism" even though I think I often agree with what I assume people mean when they say this.
Capitalism is this huge concept and to some people it means shopping and lemonade stands, to others it means human slavery and the indentured servitude of debt.
The problem is the imbalance of power, monopolies of control and the systems that enable control. Extreme wealth and the recognition of the legitimacy of that wealth can function in this way.

2024-11-21 13:36:03 CET

It’s been fashionable to dunk on “individual activism” in favor the f targeting the corporations and wealthy individuals responsible for the greatest impact.
And I am the last person who’d yell at a tired working mom for using a disposable plastic straw.
But there *is* something powerful about small individual actions: call it stigmergy
When an ant moves a bit of soil the action itself can serve as a cue for others to take the same action.

2024-11-21 00:33:32 CET

AI auto-translates "École des Beaux-Arts" to "School of Fine Arts"
OMG
"I'm Helping".jpeg
🙄

2024-11-18 00:54:23 CET

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Are there people who... like this? People who see this and think "gee whiz this is the future WOW."
Holy hell.

2024-11-18 00:52:34 CET

I generally have firefox and chrome open together because firefox is better for youTube (my extensions that block mid-roll ads and thumbnails work) But Chrome is needed "for work" except maybe not. Maybe I will just delete chrome and use only firefox. This little screen is motivating me.
https://cdn.masto.host/sauropodswin/media_attachments/files/113/500/979/015/170/308/original/a01165aab705c22a.png

2024-11-17 13:17:21 CET

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This is what it is supposed to be, but it's VERY easy to loose the plot.
And that produces people alienated from mathematics. "Why did I have to learn all of that???"

2024-11-17 12:49:23 CET

Streetsblog is a wonderful organization and I've volunteered and supported them for over a decade. Their presence here on the fediverse leaves something to be desired. They basically spam us daily with all of their blog posts and don't have anyone reading the replies or watching to see how those posts spread. Even though there are many people here who would love their content.
I'm going to reach out to them today about this. We've got to do better than this. @npub1t6q…0pmn
https://cdn.masto.host/sauropodswin/media_attachments/files/113/498/134/138/844/734/original/426bb2eb9b3411ca.png

2024-11-17 12:41:15 CET

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Because what mathematics really is are the *proofs* not the solutions, not the algorithms, but that unbroken chain from a minimal set of assumptions to the solution.
Over and over we work to demonstrate this unbroken chain, though in most undergrad statistics courses this is just something we give up on in favor of getting the students competent enough with the algorithms to mostly apply them correctly. And that's part of why such courses aren't seen as "real math." 2/2

2024-09-22 12:56:02 CEST

I have a kind of horrible teaching schedule this year because I didn't want to teach middle school math. So, instead of teaching two sections of a course with all the lesson plans ready I have THREE DIFFERENT middle school computer science and tech class where I have to make all new material.
A lot of work, but more fun and creative. And once I have the lessons it'll be easier. But, I'm questioning my distaste for middle school math.
I mean fractions are fun. But you can't get too complex.

2024-09-13 13:16:47 CEST

Contemporary car design is so ugly. Every car looks like an old man who got too much plastic surgery with angry anime eyes. The forms are neither geometric and pure, nor are the taken from nature— it’s just a pointless collision of swooshes like the Nike logo and swerves that gesture at aerodynamics without being functional or beautiful to behold. The colors are aggressively frumpy— the textures plastic so that even when brand new they do not shine.

2024-09-09 13:50:21 CEST

Throwing trash out of the window of your car when driving through an inner city neighborhood should result in a fine equal to the difference between the new price of your car & the average income of the neighborhood. Also, 40 hours of community service picking trash along the road where you littered. For each year since the crime without the service being met the fine will double. No exceptions on this clock for appeals, legal stuff. Trash pickup duty will be live-streamed to amuse the public .

2024-08-31 14:16:09 CEST

If you have a name that is less common in your area or maybe you had to correct the person so they could get it right, how do you feel when someone learning your name says "That's a beautiful name." ?

2024-08-30 16:01:43 CEST

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I want a walkman that has *all* of the best old features AND a modern rechargeable battery, Bluetooth for my earbuds... and give me a little VFD display ...
But especially auto-reverse... that was the most magical aspect of tape players.
And I have all these tapes that were designed so you could "flip" them at certain points so the songs lined up in fun ways... Let me recapture the magic...

2024-08-29 02:07:48 CEST

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In rice????

2024-08-29 02:03:14 CEST

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My only complaint about any rice cooker is none of them are small enough. Show me one that makes exactly a half cup of rice perfectly, no sticking, and I'd go nuts for that. I always need to rope people in to help me eat the rice.

2024-08-29 01:59:43 CEST

I was too scared to ask when I got it for a wedding gift like 18 years ago... but does this rice cooker *really* have "fuzzy logic"? What exactly does that mean? Is that why it is so magical and cooks the rice perfectly with no thinking?
Will looking into its secrets cause it to stop working?

2024-08-25 21:36:55 CEST

I don't really care enough to make a lot of noise about it but I kind of hate the talking point about "Trump told us to inject bleach" I remember watching the infamous press conference live and what was appalling was that he was clearly unprepared, asking questions that exposed how little attention he'd paid to the crisis. That was bad.
But when he asked that question it was the only time I can remember him seeming ... curious about how something worked. 1/

2024-08-24 22:19:49 CEST

You can't just give huge tax cuts to millionaires, they will just spend it on drugs, and overpriced social media companies that they won't even know how to run correctly.

2024-08-20 19:08:14 CEST

A wealth of real human knowledge lives on reddit, stack exchange, etc-- Given the sheer volume of AI slop and SEO fake pages with "articles" the better content is hard to find. This is most true if looking for help on a subject you know little about.
How could we motivate a collaborative not-for-profit catalog of the better content silo'd off from the commercial web? How to fund it and keep it current?
Basically a *staffed* online library for the world. And not just of books and publications.

2024-08-13 04:49:53 CEST

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Shouldn't be legal to rot so many minds at once.
Although I will be curious to see the worst of it. It sounds like it's been going very badly.

2024-07-31 16:40:40 CEST

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I think galling plants is the most powerful ability... though making silk is very tempting...

2024-07-31 16:40:03 CEST

Choose an insect superpower: