John BS @johnabs@qoto.org

@freemo Edit, if you're referring to gun metal blueing, we may be talking past each other. The black layer you're referring to is made chemically with etchants rather than via heat accelerated oxidation, which would likely take the process straight to black (or may be a different form of iron oxide than what is created during heat blueing, though I suspect the gun process is named after the heating process).

@freemo No, it's called "blueing" for a reason. The metal passed through multiple colors before eventually reaching one as shown here (I think, I know he showcases it in at least one of his videos) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uST7iJgC_gs

It's the same basic principle as titanium anodizing, but the layering is done with iron oxide rather than some alternative, but fine control over metal oxidation through heat or electricity are both possible 😁

@freemo And the color is caused by the thin-film interference effect! A form of structural color that appears not due to pigments or dyes, but due to (Bragg, iirc) refraction! This is the same mechanism that butterflies, tarantulas, and certain birds use, by constructing protein crystals, to color themselves with those particularly striking iridescent colors. Great examples include the blue Morpho, the Ephrbopus cyanognathus, and ruby throated hummingbirds (and opals, but they're just compacted silica spheres, so cool, but not nearly as cool as animals that do this sort of stuff). 😁

So I had a strange dream last night which finally concluded with the main character, a celestial rabbit, who consumed the body of a deceased tortoise monster, "collecting the power of 3000 garden snails" to win a race. I am currently accepting licensing requests, and looking forward to publishing agents contacting me about the heartwarming reimagination of the classic fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare".

Along with the other stories my wife has told me about things I've said in my sleep (such as thanking her for "being the workhorse that delivers all the radars") I am convinced that remembering my dreams and publishing them would be enough to make me wealthy and/or institutionalized 😂

@sambook@mastodon.online @neotoy I don't want to be rude, but why is it unrealistic? Clearly (assuming the photo hasn't been altered or she hasn't had plastic surgery), the body type is real, thus realistic. I understand it's not an achievable body type for many women, but those are two different things. Same basic idea with body builders and normal dudes. It seems like this woman worked quite hard to achieve and maintain this physique (again, assuming it's real), and I (as someone trying to lose weight and build a better body) think that is/can be a very difficult and laudable thing.

So I got a sodastream, and my dog does NOT like the fizzy water. She tried to hit it with her paws after a few sips 😂

@trinsec @freemo I would like to purchase some of this "influence", you two speak of. Does it come with extra perks such as a breakfast buffet, or, perhaps, complementary access to a live audio feed of the servers where qoto is hosted? I think listening to the clicks, boops, and fan whirs would be nice.

From the original toot, it seemed the main objection was that those seeking to gain "influence" have money. Well guess what, I'm poor as dirt cause I'm a grad student, so there gimme some of that influenza 😎 😂

So, really cool new tool I've learning as I'm working with lisp for my startup: [symex.el](https://github.com/countvajhula/symex.el) for structural navigation and editing is VERY efficient, somewhat vim-based, and I really like it a lot. As an added bonus, some of its dependencies (e.g. lispy) are very useful for multi-lining s-exps (aka symexs) and formatting them, and it plays nicely with sly, which is even better!

Additionally, for all you #rstats people out there (who are asking why I included the tag on a post about Lisp), maybe take a quick look at [this](https://lisp-stat.dev/about/). I'm currently using it myself, and I've found it's pretty good for most basic things, and you may like it if you give it a try (or maybe not, it's not yet as full featured as R and its various packages yet, but it does benefit from some things I don't think you can get easily from R). Also, here's a super quick demo [thingy(?)](https://lisp-stat.dev/docs/examples/plotting/).

I know other tools leveraging tree-sitter try to achieve similar functionality, but when the code is already in an AST format, it really eliminates the guesswork and makes the experience seamless!

@trinsec Awesome, I'm looking forward to it!

And no, they are literally the dumbest creatures on earth, and they're blind: they just sit in their holes and wait for movement and often attack leaves or grass 😂.

They just get cranky when people open the box because imagine if you were blind and a giant ripped the roof of your house off and started chucking cheeseburgers at you. I'm sure you'd be angry too, even if you appreciated the food 😂😂😂

@trinsec a) Very cool, I'm hoping you post update pictures if they take root!

b) Also, just because you need to know this, you could probably keep a tarantula in there if you wanted (which is true of literally any container...but still, technically a potentially useful fact 😂)

@olives Its about PoW cryptocurrencies and how pooled mining inherently causes malicious attacks due to the structure of the algorithm/incentives of the reward contracts, and we have a lot of proofs and simulation results to back us up, but I'm still nervous, lol.

I'm giving my very first academic conference talk tomorrow, and I'm pretty nervous, even though I'm pretty confident in my slides, and my talk.

Regardless, anybody out there who sees this, I'd appreciate it if you could wish me luck.

@usernameswift @getimiskon

Y'all think this is a half-assed attempt to prevent more sophisticated SQL injection?

No idea, honestly, but my guess is that someone wasn't 100% sure how to sanitize their inputs and decided to limit input length and special character sets to cover themselves, just in case.

I personally think I should be able to use full unicode for my passwords, who's with me? 😂

@tiago It's certainly not like most Americans are in favor of the various wars our country has engaged in for ~93% of our its existence. I suspect the musical is a way to bring the bad behavior to light in a way that is more approachable for most audiences than watching straight up gore and snuff.

Similar to the Shen Yun performances made by the Falung Gong victims of the CCP, I suspect this is a group of people unhappy with the status quo and trying to spread the word.

Of course, since the playwrights can be viewed as "on the side of" America it can certainly come across as satirical or dismissive of the awful things that have perpetrated, but due to the highly polarized political climate, and the fact that most artistic people are very left leaning, I suspect it is moreso the case I originally described.

@zleap @ScienceMagazine Oh, my bad, I must have missed the intention of your original comment 😅

@zleap @ScienceMagazine And if so, so what? What an accusation to level at someone.

Excellent writing and rigor are not conflicting forces, and I'm frankly sick of people (not you in particular) trying to convince me that the status quo of most academic communication is acceptable. It is abysmal, and you need only a cursory web search to see how many researchers acknowledge the rotten "style" of modern academese, while vastly too few actually are willing to take a risk to write well in the face of the deluge of drivel they have to wade through.

Most researchers actually appreciate well written, compelling and evocative research articles (see Helen Sword's Academic Style guide for reference). And frankly, I would argue it should be a requirement for publication. The fact that we use convoluted language as the proverbial lispstick for the poorly-executed-research pig is indicative of what we value as researchers: more than truth or doing good, solid, hypothesis-driven research, we value the veneer of erudition as a shibboleth that obscures the meaning of the work to everyone but those who are in our tiny, siloed off, fiefdoms.

The fact that some researchers want their work to be readable by the masses rather being filtered through the "Science Communicators" who often bastardize the message is an amazing thing. Anti-intellectual sentiment is rising in many areas, and a disdain for "basic" research is following it. What better way to correct for this than to write and publish your papers in an accessible way such that the people actually funding your research can know what is being done with those tax dollars? It doesn't take much extra effort, and the payoff is amazing for everyone.

Open Access is not just about the paywall, it's about making our work accessible on as many levels as possible. If that means writing a companion article, annotating your equations, or deviating from the 3rd person passive laden academese, then do it. Everyone will be better off for it, our societies will thank us, and we can do it while maintaining rigor.

I maintained my streak of all As, and my final project may end up being published if I can convince a collaborator to chat about it, and I'm finally going on a trip with my wife (though, it's to a conference lol).

Overall, it was a pretty good semester, and all it cost me was my sanity 😂