Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

@jayarava
And a 🙏 back atcha!

@jayarava
How could anyone NOT be enthusiastic, provided that they're of that smallish population that might be interested in the subject matter to begin with? I mean, just look at it! If I'd written just, say, the three-parter on emptiness and the other writings on just that topic, I'd be satisfied with that as a magnum opus and toddle off to do something else. 😃 But that was (I'm not going to do the actual math, just making an informed guess) a fewn thousandths of your output, and all of it well-researched with citations for every claim or assertion. This latter has been useful to me too, as I've been introduced to other writers in the field that I hadn't known existed.

I can sense the effort that's been put into every page. It's not like it can all just effortlessly pour out of you like a Stevie Ray Vaughan solo. That you do it for the love of it, for its own sake, is a source of astonishment for me, especially considering that it's done in the face of being ignored by the "big names" in the field, you know, the people who actually get paid to do that kind of work half as well as you do. 😆

And I know I'm not alone in appreciating your work, though it might look like it in this particular venue. I've seen lengthy discussions of you and your work elsewhere, so it's not like I'm just a fan club of one like Mel on The Conchords. 😉 Not that it would matter if I were, the importance of your work is self-evident.

@nosat
Shame on you. Stop it. You're killing people. Blocked.

As in the realization that all we have to go on is whatever our interface tells us. And sometimes that interface flat-out lies, like how it smooths out visual input by filling in missing parts on its own. I'd already known about that, but hadn't thought about it from the angle of having nothing fully reliable to rest on.

@AlgoCompSynth
Hahahaha of COURSE I misread that. 😆 It's scary to think that not everything was covered in what already exists, because it seems pretty thorough as is!

Earlier today, I was reading an essay by Jayarava Attwood on a Buddhist concept and came across this line:

"Real and unreal are not qualities that can be imputed to experience."

I've been turning that over in my head ever since. I think there's something very important in that observation.

@AlgoCompSynth
I didn't know he hadn't totally worked through it himself. 😆

I was a sysadmin for about twenty years, but never thoroughly learned any programming language. I kept bumping into situations that required a tine little utility of some kind-- for example, I once needed something that would check to see if a cell data connection was live, and if not, restart its process to get back online-- and would pop in and out of Knuth to see if my problem had already been solved more efficiently than whatever my first idea was.

Got a tiny amount of familiarity with Python (mostly for Excel macros), C (did some little automation stuff for Linux server maintenance) and, just because it had a different approach to logic than I would naturally have, Ruby. Knuth was always there to help me find a way to think about whatever the issue was.

I'd always planned to go through the whole thing as a keep-the-brain-working challenge when I retired. But then when I actually did retire, I found that I had more fun things to do than that, so I gave the set to a friend who actually works as a programmer. 😉

@AnEnglishHuman@mstdn.party
That was marvelous. You have outdone yourself.

@AlgoCompSynth
That's so weird, I was just talking about Knuth with a friend here a couple of days ago. It must be a sign.

His "The Art of Computer Programming" was a sacred text for me at one time, though I'm ashamed to say I never worked my way through it completely.

In the statuary hall in my head, he's in the same room as Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, and Charles Babbage.

@mattblaze @malwaretech
I think I've been doing the "interesting times" thing since the days of Walter Cronkite talking about Vietnam. No, that's not when it started, it started with JFK's appointment with an assassin. It's just never really gotten better since then, and in many ways inexorably worse.

@SandyO@urbanists.social @tchambers
It's nearly magical how new connections have just happened here for me. In six months on whatever that old place was called, I made two friendly acquaintances. In one month here, it's more like twenty.

@JaneGray
Oh dang, looks like I have to subscribe. Too bad, it looked interesting.

Her book on how the South won the Civil War was briliant, though.

@waitnwallflower
Is there a way you could slip Perry in there too?

@SrRochardBunson
I wish there really was such a thing as Antifa. I'd have signed up years ago.

@juddlegum
Oh no! How will they know what else they can sell you, then? That's really irresponsible of you, not to mention antisocial. Please report to your nearest police station immediately for enhanced education.

@marksteadman @siracusa @hotdogsladies
I wonder what would happen if one tried to describe looking nonplussed.

@kevinrothrock
Must be the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Hey, let me write that down-- would make a great song title.