Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

For as long as I’ve been writing about vaccines, I’ve told the story of Mississippi. It was a good story until April, when the national anti-vaccine industry realized a dream for a group of white wealthy activists. I went out to Mississippi earlier this month to find out what happened and how doctors were bracing for the return of vaccine preventable diseases. It pubbed last week but the quotes from the anti-vaxxer I spoke to are still ringing in my head.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mississippi-anti-vaccine-religious-exemptions-school-public-health-rcna130004

Podcaster A: (paraphrase) billion dollar nasa probe almost lost due to ambiguously named signals getting misswired

Podcaster B: who do you fire in this situation?

Me: (shouting at car speakers) NO YOU FUCKING AMERICAN PSYCHOPATHS. You don’t fire people for mistakes. Go to fucking therapy. And anyway you WANT an engineer who cannot forget the time they nearly pulverized one point two billion dollars.

Happy #Solstice 🌞

This animation shows how the sun’s light shines on Earth at the same time of day throughout the year, as seen by NOAA’s GOES-East geostationary satellite. Image processing by @simon_sat / NCEO.

When someone says Merry Christmas, I say Merry Christmas back, otherwise I say Happy Holidays.

Why?

There are 29 holidays between November 1st and January 15th celebrated by the 7 major world religions and I am not so arrogant that I think only the ones I celebrate matter.

There is no such thing as a "war on Christmas", there is only kind people being considerate of other people.

#NFDI and many consortia are stepping away from #Twitter / #X in favour of platforms that are currently more aligned with our values.
That's why we happy to happy our own Mastodon instance.

👋 We welcome all who have followed us from Twitter/X to Mastodon!

ℹ More about our reasons: https://www.nfdi.de/the-nfdi-association-and-many-nfdi-consortia-are-leaving-twitter-x/?lang=en

ℹ Do you already know our LinkedIn account? https://www.linkedin.com/company/nfdi-de/

ℹ Here are the consortia that are currently represented on Mastodon: https://nfdi.social/@NFDI/111092417530239023

Everything is fine.

Google makes technical changes to moot #geofence requests from law enforcement, basically deleting the data that allows for dragnet #location searches so they don't have it anymore. https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-just-killed-geofence-warrants-police-location-data/?sh=4d60a8392c86&s=03

Harvard University graduate student Yue Sun won an award from the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics for her video on the hydrodynamics of marbled paper. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/12/marbled-paper-frosty-fireworks-among-2023-gallery-of-fluid-motion-winners/ via @Researchbuzz

LAWSUIT UPDATE: Earlier today, we filed our opening appellate brief in Hachette v. Internet Archive, reaffirming our commitment to preserving knowledge and defending the digital rights of all libraries. Join the fight: https://blog.archive.org/2023/12/15/internet-archive-defends-digital-rights-for-libraries/

This is cool: we kicked off a new Network Stats blog series today with a post explaining how #Backblaze is connected to the Internet, and how we joined the #Equinix Silicon Valley (SV1) Internet Exchange, bringing us closer to thousands of our customers. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-network-stats/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/14/climate/california-water-crisis-drought.html?unlocked_article_code=1.F00.yTX-.mcgbVjemAraS&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Contrary to the lede, it wasn’t who got there first who got the water rights, it was who murdered and enslaved and terrorized First Nations Californians off their land, denied them standing in courts, and hunted them down for bounties paid by State and Federal funds, who claimed the water rights. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/14/climate/california-water-crisis-drought.html?unlocked_article_code=1.F00.yTX-.mcgbVjemAraS&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Tell the actual history, every time. #Water #California

I would like to see a law which makes companies responsible for any errors their AI makes. Since their key appeal is for passing accountability to a black hole, I think it ought to transfer to them instead.

If they had to manage that risk I think we would see more responsible use.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/12/humana-also-using-ai-tool-with-90-error-rate-to-deny-care-lawsuit-claims/

The first library I looked at gave, as its first argument for why you should use it, "because it is 2017" and I did not find this argument convincing

Graph the parabola \(y = x^{2}\) on a floor with an infinite square grid. If we stand on the \(y\)-axis below the origin where we can see the entire parabola, it looks like an ellipse tangent to the horizon or -- from just the right vantage point -- a perfect circle.

This is likely either surprising or obvious, or perhaps one followed by the other.

https://diffgeom.com/products/parabolic-ascent-wall-art-poster

#mathematics #mathart