bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 @bonifartius@qoto.org

A very warm welcome to the hundred and sixty two new associate members who joined within the last four weeks and a big, big thank you to all members and donors! Your support helps secure the future.

Something big happened this weekend. Everyone is talking about it, wondering what the implications will be.

That's right: I finished writing my new book "What is Entropy?" It's just 120 pages long. It has lots of short sections, mostly one page each, each based on a tweet. This is just a draft, and I'm still fixing lots of typos and other mistakes. So grab a copy - and if you catch errors, please let me know, either here or on my blog!

It is not a pop book: it's an introduction that assumes you know calculus. But it's about a lot of big, bold concepts, and I try to really get to the bottom of them:

• information
• Shannon entropy and Gibbs entropy
• the principle of maximum entropy
• the Boltzmann distribution
• temperature and coolness
• the relation between entropy, expected energy and temperature
• the equipartition theorem
• the partition function
• the relation between entropy, free energy and expected energy
• the entropy of a classical harmonic oscillator
• the entropy of a classical particle in a box
• the entropy of a classical ideal gas

I learned a lot by trying to explain in words what people often say only in equations.

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2024/07/20/what-is-entropy/

who called it apple vision and not eyepods

@undead So uh

There are about 20 brown bears on live camera now, just stuffing themselves silly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1YoGAxmZtE

Here’s one that we were not at the store to buy, weren’t joining a team, but when your three-year-old picks it up and won’t let it go and that’s all that she wants. There was something that physically prevented me from saying no. Teaching and learning to catch with your kids at any age is awesome. 😎 👍 #ThreeYearOld #ParentingMoments #TeachingAndLearning #CatchWithKids #AwesomeMoments

The pandemic response kicked off the most incredible federal government spending binge since World War II. No one likes to talk about this either, though in the annals of fiscal policy, it goes down in history.
https://www.activistpost.com/2024/07/the-pandemic-response-was-the-turning-point.html

One thing that free thinkers on both the left and right agree on is that we don't want to be ruled over by corporate oligarchs, driven by greed and beholden only to their shareholders.

Statists, however, seem to think that we'd be better off being ruled over by government oligarchs who are, as history has repeatedly shown, beholden to no one.

Converting all my images to JPEG, call it Jay Pegging.

If you're following orders you are not following conscience."

Mark Passio

#MarkPassio #Passio

#DCRfoto