Nick has moved to Mathstodon @internic@qoto.org

I like India, visit regularly, & am impressed by their space ambitions.

But these stories about how amazingly cheap & cost effective their missions are misleading.

For example, the Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission cost 6.2 billion rupees which translates to a nominally low €68 million.

But the bulk of the cost of a space mission is in personnel & the average aerospace engineer salary in India is ~10% of the European or US equivalent.

Now make the comparison again 🤷‍♂️

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9xlgnnpzvo

A portion of an email received from U.S. Navy SEAL veteran Dan Barkhuff of Veterans For Responsible Leadership.

“We have no idea how close this election will be, and every ballot is critical. We will win if we vote and in so doing, show coming generations that when America was offered the choice between sloth, venality, and cruelty, we chose to continue trusting American citizens to choose their own leaders.
Vote Harris. It matters more than we can possibly imagine.
Together, we can do this.”

Unfortunately, our university is discontinuing personal web pages for academics for incomprehensible reasons.

Fortunately, our department was allowed to set redirects to external web pages, so that the existing links still work.

My web page is now at gihub, accessible from the original links.

Astronomers urge FCC to halt satellite megaconstellation launches
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/astronomers-urge-fcc-to-halt-satellite-megaconstellation-launches?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

I asked where people who encounter problems voting (e.g. right wing intimidation) can get help. Commenters responded with great suggestions:

https://mastodon.social/deck/@dangillmor/113422864462475308

Many thanks to you all!

For the love of all that is holy, can you all please start using `<a>` for navigation and `<button>` for actions, not the other way around?

Please don't make me turn this into a blog post.

Signed, someone who couldn't right-click to "open in a new tab" when it mattered.

#HTML #accessibility

I feel like half of programming is remembering how weird stuff works and the other half is setting things up so that you do not have to remember the weird stuff

one day I want to write a blog post with tips for writing explanations that respect the reader, like

- if something is weird, explain whether there's a good reason it’s weird or not
- spend a lot of time on making examples feel relevant
- if there's something that seems theoretically important but that you've never actually needed, leave it out
- if something is only useful in a very limited set of situations, tell them (or leave it out!)

(none of this is easy obviously)

> OpenAI’s Joanne Jang, who is responsible for how ChatGPT interacts with users, said model behavior was still an “ongoing science.”

Dismayed by the way that AI company reps use the idea of "science" and "experiments" to mean things that don't work. That's the *opposite* of science and — I'm coming to believe, a genuine risk to public trust in science.

Reading @kashhill's excellent story about living a week guided by AI: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/01/technology/generative-ai-decisions-experiment.html?smtyp=cur&smid=fb-nytimes

listen, I've had my moments, but at least I've never mansplained Margaret Atwood's book to Margaret Atwood

PLEASE RT THIS SO AMERICANS RESIDENT OVERSEAS LEARN OF A LITTLE-KNOWN WAY TO VOTE ABSENTEE AS LATE AS ELECTION DAY!!

I’ve mentioned here before how my Texas absentee ballot was, erm, never received by the Tarrant County Clerk. I gave a call to the always helpful AARO - Association of Americans Resident Overseas - and the always helpful staff there told me of something that, in 17 total years of living abroad, I never knew:

The US Federal Government provides what AARO refers to as an “emergency absentee ballot”. It is available online at https://www.fvap.gov/.

It is good for Service members, their families and overseas American citizens. You download the ballot, enter your personal information and your state, then the candidates for federal elections like President/Vice President, Senator, Representative; and even state offices you wish to vote for.

Print it out, follow the instructions. Go to your local post office and depending on your state, when you have it postmarked by Election Day it will (purportedly) be counted. Spell everything correctly. Be clear. Type if possible (the ballot may be filled in on your computer. Sign with a wet signature. Use the page provided to construct a security envelope. Put that in an envelope addressed to your district clerk (find it online).

Vote.

I'm a queer woman who was raised in a hard right community like most people here couldn't imagine and was threatened with physical violence about how I voted -- the people around me literally bought out the ammunition from gun stores around elections, I want you to take a moment to truly imagine being a teenager in the closet and seeing guns in the hands of people who regularly threaten you -- and I'm reading that ad about Republican women voting very differently than 99% of the posts on here

It Could Definitely Happen Here
 
Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.

Some thoughts from my new piece:

🧵1/
 
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/it-could-definitely-happen-here

pipes & redirects cheat sheet

Prior to a couple months ago, I had no idea how to write alt text for a scientific data visualization. So I did a little digging and want to share what I found with you all: http://dataabinitio.com/?p=1161

TLDR: To get started, use Amy Cesal's quick formula: [alt text = *Chart type* of *type of data* where *reason for including chart*. *Link to data.*] https://medium.com/nightingale/writing-alt-text-for-data-visualization-2a218ef43f81

For writing more complete data visualization alt text, check out chapter 4 of the Do No Harm Guide. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/do-no-harm-guide-centering-accessibility-data-visualization

Universal masking and social distancing at the start of the pandemic were so effective that they eliminated a strain of flu, and now annual flu vaccines have been redesigned because that strain no longer needs to be included in the shot. Amazing.

Story: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/17/nx-s1-5155104/flu-shot-vaccine-b-yamagata-extinct

The fact that fascism is knocking on America's door should energize us, not demoralize us.

Now: Vote, help get others to vote, and fight like hell when the fascists try to overturn their loss.

Future: Get organized, starting at the local level, just as the fascists have been doing for decades while the center and too much of left snoozed and Democrats ceded so much.

But focus on the now: Vote. Help others to vote. Work in every way you can to stop fascism in its tracks.