George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

No, academics do not "forget" to answer emails. They remember and feel bad about them, the guilt slowly building up, until the only way out is to fake their own death and move far, far away under a different identity to build a new life, a better one, with inbox zero and no shame

Anyways, I owe you an email.

When I tell you that your favorite VCs sit around in chat rooms with nazis, you think I'm joking. 🤷🏿‍♂️

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-hanania-white-supremacist-pseudonym-richard-hoste_n_64c93928e4b021e2f295e817

Woke means Black. It's a Black saying.

Passing a law called "Stop woke" or saying "I'm anti-woke!" is equivalent to passing a law called "anti-Shabat Shalom" or "anti-Ni-Hao," but then trying to claim that you are not anti-semitic or sinophobic. It makes no sense.

Most of these VCs, writers, and politicians are irredeemably racist, and hate you on a visceral level.

There are many posts about Bram today. I'm "favoriting" every one I see. If you wouldn't mind indulging me while I add yet another, here's a piece by Bram that I found very interesting.

https://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html

#vim #bram

One of the most difficult aspects of Software Defined Radios for most people to wrap their heads around is the concept of "IQ sampling". This permits, for example, the entire AM broadcast band to be received at once and saved in an ordinary file. Later, you can read back that file and freely tune the entire AM band from that file -- including every station within it --- just as if you were tuning and listening live. Some non-trivial math (including complex numbers) is involved in this process, and it's really quite fascinating.

Bram Moolenaar has passed way. Sad news. I use his tool Vim almost daily along with probably millions of other people. Bram was exemplary open source proponent. Will be missed. https://groups.google.com/g/vim_announce/c/tWahca9zkt4?pli=1

Who thinks they should be fed, RIGHT NOW?
#caturday #catsofmastodon #cats

Vocabulary Quiz

#vocabulary #quiz

The word ____________ means “tending to promote survival of or reproduction by less well-adapted individuals (such as the weak or diseased) especially at the expense of well-adapted individuals (such as the strong or healthy).”

If you don’t know take your best guess.

Please boost to get more responses.

Check back tomorrow for the correct answer.

I'm not an immunologist, just a data guy. But my reading of the data reaches same conclusion: there is no actual "paxlovid rebound", just COVID rebound, which happens with or without paxlovid. Infection is often biphasic, with 2 distinct symptom periods.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/01/11/paxlovid-rebound-isnt-real-it-never-was-16796

One of the creepier tech-related incidents I remember was many years ago when I wanted the Sam's Photofacts (a third-party creator of device specs and schematics, etc.) for a very old portable TV. Way out of date, but I was trying to help someone with it.

I mentioned to a friend that I was looking for old Photofacts, but I did not say anything about the TV. He scribbled an address on a scrap of paper, an address locally here in L.A. "Try him," he muttered.

I drive over. It's a small unmarked storefront. I go in, the bell on the door rings. Sitting inside, like the caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland", is this little guy perched on a stool, with immense stacks of paper surrounding him everywhere. Total mayhem.

I walk up to him -- knowing that this was a waste of time and really wanting to get out of there -- and asked if he had the Sam's Photofacts for that specific very old TV model.

Without saying a word, he reached over to the pile of papers right next to him, took the TOP item off the pile, and silently handed it to me. It was the ancient one I needed. Stunned, I paid him the amount marked on the item, and left with it, not completely sure what had just happened.

When I drove by there a month later that storefront was something else entirely. He was gone.

Someone put a stick on all the dogs graves…❤️

Why it’s crucial to keep the humanity of our enemies firmly in our minds. (Hint: it’s not primarily for their sakes.)

Fantastic accomplishment!♥️👍🏿

https://19thnews.org/2023/07/chanda-prescod-weinstein-physicist-tenure-rare-feat/

And when she tried to join the Fediverse, she was greeted with a barrage of hate, sexism, racism, and anti-semitism that should have never been allowed to happen.

So now no one on Fediverse gets to interact with her directly about her work on here. Our loss. 😢

Which is why we'll make it so that this type of terrible welcome is unlikely to happen again. Allowing it to happen to her was a choice. We will make better ones.

#BlackMastodon

TIL: Under the UK Animals Act 1971 cats are legally classed as 'free spirits' meaning no claim of trespass or causing damage can be brought against the owner. I kinda love that cats are SO uncontrollable a whole new category had to be created for them under law.

For the third time this year a story about a cis girl seeing a trans woman naked in a YMCA locker room has fallen apart as more details became known.

Abbigail Wheeler saw two trans women sitting on a bench talking in their bathing suits, but never saw them change. She posted hateful signs targeting them and her family canceled their YMCA membership and pulled her from the swim team rather than allow her to face consequences for her behavior. #trans #news #journalism

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/illinois-ymca-wheeler-protest-transgender

In 1992, Sinead O'Connor tore a picture of Pope John Paul II in half during a performance on SNL in protest against generations of abuse toward children within the Catholic church.

Bless you, Sinead.

Welcome to Heaven.