John BS @johnabs@qoto.org

So light roast, cold-brewed, filtered coffee tastes more like "coffee tea" and dark chocolate than the typical drek my family drinks. If you can't tell, I've never been a fan of coffee until now.

I have an extraction method, amber storage glassware, and an incredible cup of joe... Now all I need is a vacuum flask, a Buchner funnel and lab grade filter papers and this process will take a lot less time (2 hours to filter a half gallon today).

I guess 8 years of training in chemistry and chromatography is finally paying off

The new tarantula babies came in today!

I'm worried two of them are psychos but the others behaved nicely during their transfer into their new homes.

My H Pulchripes bolted for like 30 continuous seconds, which is some **serious** stamina for a tarantula. The M Balfouri decided to do a Cirque du Soleil and jumped off the inside of the catch cup, which could have been fatal for the poor girl. Fortunately, it seems fine nearly 14 hours later, so I'm hoping all is good. My P. metallica, known to be "teleporters", was a sweetheart and super easy to get into its enclosure.

Here are some pictures, one of them is absolutely tiny.

I’ve got some striking blue tarantulas coming in the mail this week, and I’m quite excited to get them set up in their new enclosures. All their names are derived from Quenya from LOTR. Links to pictures of full grown specimens are below for anyone interested.

(Also, I picked up a sweetheart that’s very gentle and handle-able! She’s not blue, but she gets extra points for her personality 😍 I caught her drinking today, and she’s such a cutie!)

I’ll post pictures of my spiderlings when they come in if anyone is interested.

M. balfouri
H. pulchripes
P. metallica
P. sazimai
Bonus A. chalcodes

Pro tip: Julia is an amazing language, use it.

Reasoning: I got a 25x performance increase for multiple functions by converting from R code to Julia, even with the same or very similar syntax.

They have great implementation of higher order functions like map,reduce, zip, etc. with loads of LLVM optimizations to make declarative syntax as performant as imperative. Multiple dispatch lets you write overloaded code easier, and the type system is really nice imo.

Package management is great like R, it’s a pleasure to install new stuff and it doesn’t screw up your system or write in the wrong places (COUGH PIP COUGH).

They also have a CAS system, which integrates beautifully with a simulation framework, which is known in the industry as HECKIN’ SICK.

(See this [article] (https://notamonadtutorial.com/modeling-complexity-with-symbolics-jl-and-modelingtoolkit-jl-df923129996b) )

Their YT channel is full of awesome innovation by people in loads of different fields from Quant Finance to ML/AI and more.

Finally, it integrates well with python and R, so if there’s some library you REALLY want, without needing to re-write the code into Julia, you can still use it (though your performance may not be as good).

Let me know what y’all think. I’m trying to get people onboard; it seriously deserves way more love than it’s currently getting, even though MIT is developing it, and doing an amazing job with it.

I finally installed Graphene OS on a new phone. It is absolutely amazing, and I love it. It ships with 6 apps, and I can verify anything I install from FDroid is free of trackers/malware, and same thing with anonymous APKs from the Aurora Store (anonymized Play Store).

100% recommend if you have a Pixel phone with an unlockable boot-loader.

John's spicy take of the day:

The words "educate yourself" do not constitute an argument, and claiming that "it's not your responsibility" to teach someone only further perpetuates their ignorance from your perspective.

If it's nobody's responsibility to teach this person what you think they should know, they will never learn it, especially if they disagree with the arguments being made for reasons beyond the surface. Addressing axioms is key for finding common ground, and this tactic shuts down the conversation well before this can occur.

It seems like it is only used by people who are incapable of adequately articulating their own views; specifically with the intention of rejecting other viewpoints with the presupposition that they are correct and the other person is ignorant. This precludes actual discussion and the possibility that you hear new perspectives and potentially consider your opposition as rational actors, rather than fools.

(Haven't seen this on qoto, but my sister started using this rhetoric so I thought I'd talk about it)

I know I'm probably weird, but does anybody else love the look of "retro" PCBs? I know things have gotten more efficient and modular and just better over time, but the aesthetic of late 80s/early 90s (particularly Nintendo) PCBs just seems so *comfy*.

For context, I've fallen down the rabbit hole of console modding, and it just hits different compared to the more modern stuff IMO.

Hi everyone @Science !

I'm in the process of writing (and hopefully aggregating contributions for) short scripts to help academics/researchers do various things more effectively. This is still very much in its infancy, but considering how often I tend to automate things, I expect it to grow at a pretty steady pace.

Current examples include short API wrappers to query different journals for given search terms and date ranges to pull pdfs directly, and a modular RSS helper to redirect to papers directly from your feeds. I'm currently working on scripts for remote cluster execution, traversing and executing code on git experimental branches and more!

I've started a repo here https://github.com/johnabs/ASR, and if anybody has ideas for scripts that researchers could use to help with their workflow, that would be awesome, and it would be great if people are willing to contribute.
#Science #research #coding #automation

@freemo (because I saw your boost of @nyvoter 's post)

I know this is a bit off-topic for this particular instance, but I've been thinking a lot about politics lately, and I would seriously love to hear anyone's feedback/opinions. Please let me know what you think below, and I'd be happy to discuss with you.

I am becoming increasingly concerned with the erosion of rights by the various appellate and supreme courts in the United States. I also find it concerning, that many people are increasingly unaware of this information, and are pushing for new rights, while their current rights are already under siege from, at the worst malevolent, and at the best incompetent/impotent, judiciaries/legislature. For any who want to know more, check out the most recent YT video from the Institute for Justice. They regularly attempt to fight clear instances of governmental over-reach, but with limited success due to decades of immoral precedents.

This, along with laws which are clearly not designed to be equally efficacious across the various income strata, makes me increasingly concerned about the necessity of governmental re-structuring, preferably by people who are results oriented, rather than "media" or "re-election" oriented.

AOC is an excellent example of someone who, despite wanting to align with *some* of her policies, I find it nearly impossible to due so with her consistent alarmism. Trump is yet another one of these individuals, both elected due to their ability to "clap-back" and their "anti-establishment" views. However, this clear disdain for the establishment on both sides of the aisle, somehow continues to produce state/local election results of the same incumbents with the same mentality, and accompanying impotency. They create laws based on special interests, and serve platitudes on a silver platter to the rest of their constituents that they're screwing over, all while maintaining the razors edge of getting as many corporate lobbying dollars as possible, yet maintaining re-election potential for the next year.

I realize I've placed myself in the precarious position of "it's easy to smell a rotten egg, but difficult to lay a better one". Thus, I'm hoping to provide some interesting perspectives that may improve the legislative process/precedents. Unfortunately, the judicial system at the moment is much too far gone for me to even comment on.

1. Results based laws. All (non eminently moral) laws must have a specified goal, a way to measure that goal, and must be repealed if satisfactory progress is not made toward this goal within a predetermined amount of time. If it fails and is repealed, it cannot be re-enacted until a sufficient number of election cycles have transpired. Hopefully this will force legislators to be more considerate and careful, and this allows people to see how poor a job these legislators are doing at actually governing the country. E.g. Gun control. Reduce homicides/improve citizen safety by 50% within 3-5 years (10% per year benchmark). If the implementation fails, too bad, you've had your shot until 2 more re-election cycles, do better next time.

Corollary: this same category of laws with no measurable effect, should be removed (no whale fishing on Sunday in Ohio, for example).

2. Laws passed must be of sufficient length to convey the context, and any and all statues passed within a law must be co-related. I.e. no more massive "pork" bills where random legislators shove random crap into the bill, or change a small piece of preexisting law, to scratch the back of their lobby buddies, or divert tax payer dollars to a bailout while saying it's actually for "Covid relief". All issues within the bill MUST be evaluated on merit, individually if necessary, to achieve the necessary result.

3. Principle: Violating the rights of individuals cannot and will not be tolerated, and any and all state, local and federal officers must be able to be held accountable for their actions. There is a massive difference between perpetrators not being held accountable, and victims having zero recourse to begin with. It is incredibly unfortunate that prosecutors are often unable or unwilling to press charges against other governmental officials due to the supreme court sleight of hand that is used to give various agents nigh complete immunity.

Finally, I would like to make a philosophical point here. I think the current philosophy of modern culture lies precariously at the edge of belief in absolute truth. Without this fundamental axiom that truth exists and we can (at least try to) know it, we reach a world-view where interpretation is everything. E.g. the constitution being a living document.To some, this means that it was designed to be changed over time if necessary, but to others means it is up to the will of the interpreter what, if any, of the constitution needs to be considered for a law to remain on the books.

If the latter is the case, then any supreme court majority has the right to usurp power from the legislative branch at any given time, and rule any law unconstitutional just because they don't like it, and can "cite" their own subjective interpretation of the document. Interpretation of any meaning that exists, must be done with the author's intent in mind, or you're simply projecting yourself onto the canvas. It goes from an instruction manual of how to run the country, to modern "art".

To conclude, I think we are losing rights, being fleeced by the government to divert tax-payer dollars to special interests which rarely, if ever, impact the common person, and are having our liberties restricted by people who "know what's best" when, in fact, they barely know anything, other than how to con people into keeping them in power. I understand this is not the case for many individual politicians; however, the composition of the political network seems hell-bent toward this (possibly emergent) reality. I hope that conversations like this one will help to get people thinking about ways we can impact the political climate for the better, and get people in office who actually care about the freedoms of their constituents, even if it makes them somewhat unpopular.