Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

@qurlyjoe Trump is in essence the Republican incumbent. It would be most useful to compare to Reagan in '84, Bush in '92, Bush in 2004, and Trump in the last primary.

@abesamma it's the "environmentally friendly" part. Substances which kill plants are, almost by definition, not environmentally friendly. The alternatives like DDT and ethyl bromide are all far more hazardous to animals and humans.

@Hey_Beth @w7voa both parties agree on exactly one thing, There must be no alternative to the two party system no matter how bad the outcome.

@waterbear

That might help, but I don't think it is a full solution.

My observation is that the most important property of good networking events is the casual mingle. The ability to join, expand, break off and most importantly leave interactions without offense. This low social barrier is, in my observation, critical in having the right set of people find each other.

There is also the casual introduction that a formal small group setting doesn't allow. "I don't really know very much about [topic], but I was at at talk with [person on the other side of room] who seemed really into it. Let me introduce you."

I think it would be an interesting exercise to video a social mixer at one of these professional conferences and determine just how random causal encounters actually are. I suspect that they are actually quite structured on a macro level.
@Ulrich_the_Elder@mastodon.social @ktemkin

@Ulrich_the_Elder@mastodon.social @ktemkin I don't feel like anyone has really cracked the networking aspect of remote interactions. Online presentations are functional as good or better than in person, but casual meetups that are a significant function of in person gathering just don't happen the same way.

Perhaps a person wanting to address the resistance to remote gatherings should study how casual interactions happen before and after presentations and suggest how a remote gathering might supply a functional equivalent.

@John interesting. I would consider voting for her over Biden if the GOP primary voters can pull it off.

@JessTheUnstill @carnage4life I think you are both correct. I wonder however if there is a better way to do layoffs? My dad's union contract specified strict last-in-first-out rules which kept talented people out of the field because time was the only way to advance. My current gig is extremely cyclical and there are attempts to keep "good employees" through downturns, but as you say that is hard to measure and fought with bias.

What would you suggest to a plant that will need to go from <100 to >500 and back a few times each decade?

13 years ago a friend posted something profound which i present with slight modification:

"A thought springs to mind, May your [social media posts] be more dangerous to the builders of violence than violence is to the builders of #peace."

@schrotie @seachanger

The Social Media tl'dr version has 4 points:

* [Animal Reservoirs](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2795140)
* [Lack of a sterilizing vaccine](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1074761322005581)
* [High mutation rate](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-023-00878-2)
* [Asymptomatic spread](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8654597/)

@schrotie @seachanger

As a counterpoint, here is Dr. Monica Gandhi an infectious disease specialist at UCSF explaining why Covid-19 is not the type of disease that could be eradicated regardless of what measures were taken:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/21/covid-pandemic-end/

@arialdo

error:: String -> a

by giving error a string it can make any type at all. It does so by stopping the execution of the program the very moment that value is actually needed.

Your function f on the other hand throws out its input without considering its value and so goes on its merry way without ever finding out what its input was.

Interestingly, there is no f you could write that actually not work the way f does because it is not possible to write a function that inspects the value of type of Void. Void is uninhabited so no function can ever force its evaluation.

@freemo We can say with certainty that concert pitch (actually set by A4 being standardized at 440hz today) was higher in the past - as high as A = 401hz. Not every instrument is tunable. Bells and some double reed instruments will never change pitch over their life times. By looking at bells from the 15th and 16th c we can tell that music was in general pitched somewhat higher then today.

The big innovation in modern tuning is equal temperament. All modern digital tuning has an precisely equal ratio between each half step. (about 1.059 to 1) This makes music work like you describe. Start on any pitch and the music will sound the same if the relative intervals are followed.

However much more than absolute pitch, relative pitch is hard without modern measurement methods, Prior to the 1700s the most common tuning was to tune in pure 5ths where every 5th was tuned by ear to a 2/3 ratio. It works pretty well until you get to the point where you go from the end of the circle of fifths back to what should be the note you started on. You find you are off by a scotch less than a quarter tone. This terrible sounding interval is a "wolf fifth" because it howls.

In pure fifths each key had its own flavor and so it was important to play a piece in the key it was written in. The major thirds that define the modern major chords are the most effected by these variations which explains why many pieced before JS Back and company are dominated by 4ths and 5ths that are safer in a pure-fifths tuning.

Bach's innovation which caught on across western music was to "fudge the thirds" to make them all sound similar - giving us the last common tuning the so called well-tempered tuning.

@davidtoddmccarty The Spring field State Journal Register which started publication in Lincoln's home town in 1831 might disagree that there was no news media back then. Regardless of how many people there are, believing that a system cannot be changed is what leads to tyranny, and entrenches ever greater oppression.

@tersenurse Thump is convicted in multiple courts but appeals are still ongoing on election night. Biden's health has deteriorated as the campaign has gone on and he was briefly hospitalized the month before the election. A third party candidate takes 28% of the popular vote nationally but fails to win any electoral college votes. Biden wins the election night count, with Trumps name not appearing on 4 blue state ballots. GOP controlled house uses that as a pretext to to refuse to certify the votes from those states and elect Trump as president with only 36% of the national popular vote.

@MisuseCase @davidtoddmccarty Of course at the time Lincoln was elected he was the part of a new #ThirdParty. The Republican Party was formed as a northern party dedicated to antislavery, drawing from the antislavery wing of the Whig Party and combining Free Soil, Liberty, and antislavery Democratic Party members. Perhaps we should be like the political abolitionists and not choose between parties who no longer represent our values -- if they ever did.