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the growth of AI mostly makes me despondent. i like systems that are constructive, built from understandable parts, repairable, possibly provably having some property or other, freedom-enabling, using universally available hardware -- all things that "AI" isn't. but it appears to be an essential part of life in the next decades

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Well this is interesting. Compare the images below. Two years ago, Northwestern canceled an event with a gay musician at its campus in Qatar. Its partner the Qatar Foundation said it was canceled for offending Qatari values. Northwestern denied this. Now a former dean says the Qatar Foundation ordered the shut down. It sure looks like Northwestern isn't being honest about free speech on its Qatar campus.

Links: timeshighereducation.com/news/ + thefire.org/news/northwestern-

Need the area of a broken polygon?

Don't bother fixing it.

Just sum up the cross product of the two endpoints, and divide by two.

[Here u × v := u₁v₂ − u₂v₁. Works even if the polygon is nonconvex. Caveat: all segments must point counter-clockwise, since u × v = −v × u!]

At a meta level, something I find mildly interesting is how many people are writing stuff on Mastodon about how it's impossible for Mastodon to scale up without using an ad supported model (b/c server costs), it's better to have ranked feeds because most people want them, etc.

The thing I think is interesting is that the people writing this stuff, implicitly, seemingly cannot conceive of a model where the organization is not growth and profit maximizing.

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My favorite memory of Jason Calcanis was when PVRblog was happily chugging along, it made me several grand a month in revenue as my spot to talk about TV and streaming. Then Weblogs inc started PVRwire and after a couple months he reached out to inquire about acquiring PVRblog and when I asked for a number, the number was zero, but I’d get paid some percentage of ad revenue from my work.

So: hand over the domain, my content, and all control instead of keeping 100% of my own site’s revenue.

Can't get this shot of Gritty in a Philly airport mural out of my mind. He is feeling FINE.

hello all! i don't know how to use this site yet or if we're allowed to be funny on here!!!! this is the real me (apparently there is an impostor account with my old profile pic and my bio which is alarming). you can tell i'm the real me because i will now share a secret that only you and i know: possible worlds are real

Is this thing on?
I joined twitter 9 years ago, skeptical of what I would find. But it turned out to be incredibly valuable for me. I'm sad to see what has come of it, and not very hopeful. I'm glad there is an alternative. I like a lot of the ideas behind mastodon, but I'm also a bit skeptical in a different way. But I'll give it a shot. Hopefully, I'll be pleasantly surprised again.

RT @kyliebytes
What I’m hearing from Twitter employees; It looks like roughly 75% of the remaining 3,700ish Twitter employees have not opted to stay after the “hardcore” email.

Even though the deadline has passed, everyone still has access to their systems.

shitpost (birdsite corporate politics) 

Old Twitter: employees feel comfortable @-ing Jack on Twitter because they know Jack won't fire them.

New Twitter: employees feel comfortable @-ing Elon on Twitter because they don't care if Elon fires them.

Since a few of you asked for me to go into detail about why I am not a fan of Mastodon, the federation and decentralization, I wrote down my thoughts in longform. lucumr.pocoo.org/2022/11/14/sc

Alright folk - my service which allows you to create and share follow lists that can then be imported on #mastodon is now online. It's an early version so be kind, but I'd love you to try it and create your own lists that you can then share with people:

followlists.online/

FYI to all my Electronics people out there.

Did you know you can represent capacitance and inductance with a complex number and by doing so you would incorporate ESR (equivalent series resistance) into your equations. Essentially you dont have to model with idealized components and add in the parasitics manually, you can add the parasitics directly into the capacitance or inductance of your components!

See the following equation in my blog and the subsequent explanation if you want some further details and examples: jeffreyfreeman.me/an-indepth-l

on the one hand i live under this cloud. on the other hand, with a little drive (or a longer hike) one can climb above it

The spike from the recent innflux of twitter users is so enourmous it has completely distorted the users graph. You cant evenn read the numbers any more and the daily user graph spiked past the total user graph.

Wow.. ok then.

QOTO User Count  
23,376 accounts +299 in the last day +4,838 in the last week

Let me introduce myself! My name is Ilenna Jones, I am a computational neuroscientist with keen interest on how dendrites contribute to a singular neuron's ability to compute functions and learn tasks. I build biophysical models of neurons in and use principles to investigate how models can learn and compute given their biologically realistic constraints.

I'm looking for postdocs right now! Feel free to connect if you're looking for someone like me!

I'm very interested in helping other students find resources and guidance as they consider science and in general. Feel free to connect if you're looking for advice/perspectives!

ilenna.com

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Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.