Aut @aut@qoto.org

#cats are liquid

Meet Vim the cat

Otis just celebrated his first birthday. They grow up so fast 🐽😭

Here's a painting I did shortly after watching the Obiwan Kenobi series from this year.
#myart #StarWars #DigitalArt #painting

There seems to be some confusion about our NFT rule so let me once again clarify:

NFT content is not allowed on .art

Selling your NFTs is not allowed on .art

Advertising your NFTs is not allowed on .art

Posting pictures connected to your NFTs is not allowed on .art

If you do any of these things your account will be suspended

It's one of the rules you agreed to on joining

No I'm not changing the rules for you

This post is not an invitation for you to try to change my mind

Tiny Clover ☘️

#MastoArt #watercolor #TraditionalArt

I also like dad (bad) jokes.

Dad joke of the day:

What happened to the man who stole the punctuation keys from the judge's keyboard?

He got a long sentence.
Happy Thursday!

Just rocks in a late Martian afternoon.

Processed MCZ_LEFT
RMC: 30.1096, Sol: 606
LMST: 16:09:22
UTC: 2022-11-03T12:50:16
Credit: #NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

#Perseverance #Mars2020 #Solarocks #Space

Well butter my a$$ and call me a crumpet because MY NATURE ASTRONOMY PAPER THAT I SUBMITTED IN JANUARY JUST GOT ACCEPTED!

It was a long journey of major revisions. First I had NO IDEA how the nature process works and I didn't provide supplementary info in the first submission (BAD BAD don't do that). Second: referee 3 just HATES our code.

But that's it. Just Editorial revisions to make but that's it. 🫠🫠🫠 I did it.

#Astrodon

While my #astrophotography is mostly at night, sometimes I dabble with the Sun too. Last winter I took this pic of two storks contemplating the sunset in my hometown, Don Benito (Spain). It took quite a lot of planning with Photopills to get the alignment right, and several failed attempts due to uncooperative weather and storks 😂 But when I finally got the shot it was very rewarding!

Taken with a Canon 6D + Tamron 100-400 at 400 mm.

Something that has bothered me in this whole social media meta switch up, and this time it goes for both mastodon and cohost, is the idea of "no algorithms" getting applied too broadly

We would be better off not diluting the word "algorithm" to mean "manipulative tactics via computers" which is what it is being used as a lot these days

And not every attempt to use computers to recommend you things is a tool of evil. For instance I really like that Tidal will generate me playlists of songs I haven't heard based on songs I like. That's a helpful algorithm I enjoy that and it isn't pushing me to be a worse person. Search engines also shouldn't just give you results in a random order, you need an algorithm that will give you relevant results (not that search engines right now do this well, they're basically all in a state of Bad Algorithms at the moment, but you wouldn't want a search engine that doesn't do SOME kind of prioritization)

I just want to see more conversations about the way these platforms can be manipulative without just yelling ALGORITHM BAD

Another note for people ...

Yes, there will be accounts here in which you have no personal interest, and which never post anything interesting *to you*.

You can block them, or mute them, and then you won't be troubled by them.

If they are abusing, or otherwise don't abide by our code of conduct, then report them and we will investigate.

But if it's simply something you'd rather not see, just mute it.

a weird vibe to some of the people being all snobby about Fediverse Etiquette

Despite being on my own tiny little instance, I feel very connected.

please for the love of god stop putting a support chat pop-up on every single page of your sites

so I have a placemat-style cutting board in the kitchen, just one of those plastic sheets, basically. it's red.

it used to be for my sister before we both moved out, and she's celiac so it was labelled "GF" for "gluten free"

after that I used it for cat food, so it got labelled "cat food"

now I don't have cats, but I do have a cutting board labelled "GF CAT FOOD"

Who wants to play nimble, a two-player nim-like Wordle variant?

Here's how it works:

Instead of trying to guess a computer-generated target word, the players take turns writing down different five-letter words that fit all the previous clues; the first player unable to do so loses.

How are the clues chosen? Well, since the rule is that all words must fit the previous clues, once you've chosen a word, it determines the clues associated with your opponent's most recent word.

The clues relate to each letter in the word before the clue, and are one of these (using the same notation as this accessible text-based Wordle implementation https://eklhad.net/wordle.html — why aren't all Wordle implementations accessible, given that it's an essentially text-based game?):
= means that letter must be in that position from now on;
+ means that letter must be in the words from now on, but *not* in that position; and
- means that letter must *not* be in the words from now on.

Where a letter appears more than once in a word, the = and + symbols tell you how *many* times that letter must appear in subsequent words, the = symbols tell you where it *must* appear, and the + and - symbols tell you where it *must not* appear.

So, for example, if the first word is "geese" and the second word is "trees" the clue after "geese" must be:

g e e s e
- + = + -

The = under the middle e says that there must be an e in that position; the + under the first e says that there must be a second e in the word, but *not* in that position, and the - under the last e says that there *must not* be a third e in the word, and the second e *must not* be in that position. (Actually, the clue could have been - - = + +, which would have led to the same conclusions.)

So the next word couldn't be "sweat", because it has only one e, but it could be "sweet", in which case the game would look like this:

g e e s e
- + = + -

t r e e s
+ - = = +

s w e e t

(Exercise for the reader: Is another move possible after "sweet" in this example? If so, can the next player guarantee winning with their next move?)

Before starting a game, you need to agree on:
1. What determines what a valid word is.
2. To what extent you're allowed to search for words before making your move. (Can you search the word list for words that match the clues? Can you automate such a search? Can you automate a search of what subsequent moves would be possible? Do you have to reveal your source code?)
3. Who makes the first move.

My suggestions (at least for people playing in their first language) are:
1. Wiktionary (as at the time the first move is made).
2. If you think of a word, you can look it up to check it's valid, but you can't hunt the dictionary looking for words that might fit the clues. (A coding challenge for bot vs bot competitions might also be fun, but would be a very different game, from the humans' points of view.)
3. Choose randomly, or play two games, each getting to start one.

So... who wants to play?