George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

Sometimes there is no why, only do

@catsalad

I think today's going to be a FOOF day.

FOOF is notoriously, explosively unstable, so much so that the "Things I won't work with" blog has referred to FOOF as "Satan's kimchi".

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride

I don't normally like seeing animals dressed up, but this Halloween costume stood out 🤣🤣

I'm in tears you guys. MY FARKING VET had this made after I let them know that the oncology vet had to put Rhys to sleep.

My regular vet called and I told her the news, then she asked me for photos of him. I had no idea why, just thought she wanted to see him being a happy dog! While we were in Michigan I got a phone call, telling me they have a gift for us.

They had this waiting at the desk for me. I cannot believe this.

#dogs #dogsofmastodon #pets #mastodogs

Is this a firewall?

#Fariña #catsofmastodon #allcatsarebeautiful

Wayyyy beyond FUBAR.

“Tom Bowman has held his Pentagon press pass for 28 years. He says the Pentagon's new media policy makes it impossible to be a journalist, which means finding out what's really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what any government or administration says.” - NPR
https://apple.news/A5bNAbND7TCeEua25o_o6Qg

This is one of the most impressive tech videos I've ever seen on #YouTube. Just a walking tour of the "engine room" on one of the largest container ships in the world. And yeah, those are pretty big pieces of equipment, and ... what? Those are only for pumping water and sewage and stuff like that? The big engines are further along? You mean ... Oh my God! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0NrqCBOwgY

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do as a builder is stop chasing “10x productivity” and start chasing clarity.
Most breakthroughs don’t happen during sprints — they happen in silence, when you finally see the pattern behind the noise.

Slow is not the opposite of progress.
It’s the foundation of it.
#BuildInPublic #Mindset #Productivity #Tech

Plimpton 322, the 3800 year old clay tablet with shockingly large, distinct Pythagorean* triples in cuneiform has become my touchstone for what is "old" in terms of human history.

Every time I hear about some ancient event, or artifact I place it in my mind relative to Plimpton 322.

If it was before Plimpton 322 it's "old! long long ago!" if it is after? Then it's just "somewhat old, but not THAT long ago."

*integers that satisfy a**2 + b**2 = c**2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322

Mr Rogers was a republican.
He was a white christian cis het man.

He prayed and read the Bible every day.

He created a children's TV show with taxpayer money in which he promoted his "christian views" to a secular audience through secular media.

He studied other religions and other cultures to improve on his reach and connection. He never preached or quoted scripture--yet, we all got the message he intended for us.

He appealed to President Nixon and Congress to continue to fund the creation of PBS with a persuasive speech that is one of the most studied for public speaking and PR. A gentle but powerful speaker.

While white people were pouring concrete into public pools rather than share with black neighrbors, Fred Rogers broadcast himself sharing a quiet conversation in a pool with African-American music and co-worker, Francios Clemmons. The softest act of defiance against White Supremacy.

He was the most demanded speaker on college campuses--he did not have to con his way onto campus to speak and nazis and counter-protesters did not follow his appearances---You know, despite the fact that he was a white christian man promoting christian values to the general public.

Every generation since the 1968 has been positively impacted by Mr Rogers.

Even children in the past 20 years are benefiting from his legacy at PBS --his methods and messages are STILL used in children's programming around the world.

No one had to mandate mourning his death because we all actually felt a genuine loss when he passed away. Even grown adults, who had not watched his show for 10 years by the time he passed, felt a piece of genuine goodness leave the planet.

We did not have to be Christian with Mr Rogers for him to do so much for us.

He never asked us to be Christian with him.

He only asked us to be his neighbor.

So...

If you find that the general public is rejecting your brand of Christianity, it might because you are a horrible fucking person with a 2000 yr old book of shitty excuses that no one is buying into.

It might be because you are a filthy grifter looking to capitalize off end-times hysteria and seniors with end-of-life anxieties.

It might be cause you are a disgusting bigot trying to reap superiority while evading moral accountability.

It probably has nothing to do at all with you actually "being a christian".

Cause we all fucking loved Mr Rogers.

-- Patchie Dee

@cstross as long as they don't make me touch the metal plate, I'm 100% down for working for a Blofeld.
as a fan of the podcast Kill James Bond, I'd love to try and Kill James Bond

HISTORY OF PHYSICS

Ernst Ising's PhD advisor Wilhelm Lenz asked him to study the following question:

Can the formalism of statistical mechanics, following Boltzmann and Gibbs, explain a phenomenon like ferromagnetism?

Ising came with a model of spins with nearest-neighbors interactions.

The Ising model has a history of surprising both physicists and mathematicians.

In the 1950s, some physicists dismissed the model as little more than an interesting mathematical puzzle. But the 1960s brought a dramatic shift when the Ising model was found to be crucial not just for understanding ferromagnetism, but for many other types of phase transitions. By the 1970s, its relevance grew even further as its connection to field theory became clear.

1/

This approach led to the successful concept of unitary symmetry, now known as flavor-SU(3) theory, introduced by Gell-Mann, Yuval Ne'eman, and Yoshio Yamaguchi.

In the Nuclear Democracy approach, based on S-matrix theory, all hadrons are considered as equally elementary and as bound states of one another. While influential, it didn't provide enough progress for hadron spectroscopy.

People working on the Reductionist Approach proposed that hadrons were bound states of simpler, fundamental objects. Shoichi Sakata's model, for instance, proposed that all hadrons were bound states of three elementary particles: the proton (p), neutron (n), and Lambda (Λ).

3/

Today in Labor History August 26, 1913: The Dublin lock-out began, a 5- month strike over terrible living and working conditions, and for union recognition. At the time, some Irish workers were living with 55 people per house. The Infant mortality rate among the poor was 142 per 1,000 births. TB-related deaths were 50% higher than in England or Scotland. The main organizers of the strike were 2 syndicalists, James Larkin and IWW cofounder, James Connolly. Several workers were killed by police and by strikebreakers. Hundreds were injured. WB Yeats’ poem, September 1913, is often viewed as a commentary on the brutality of the strike. Connolly was later executed as a leader of the Easter Rising, in 1916.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #dublin #lockout #union #strike #ireland #socialism #jameslarkin #jamesconnolly #IWW #police #policebrutality