Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org

Someone needs to make a version of doom that works like those 1960s flight simulators that NASA used, where it's a physical model and the controls are just driving a video camera around it

Sometimes I think about how I am expected to be in dozens of different discord servers. This is just the normal use case for Discord.

See something interesting? You are supposed to join their discord. Need information about a project? Better join their discord. It's inhumane.

This project was such a success Ghibli Studio asked for the production of a new one based on My Neighbor Totoro, even bigger than the previous tapestries produced. This one is from Howl's Moving Castle.

#design #craftmanship #ghibli #miyazaki

Yesterday I went to The Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie d'Aubusson in France. Aubusson tapestry is a six centuries old luxury product, a craftsmanship of excellence and local tradition, permanently renewed through contemporary creation.
Since 2020, the museum has produced five tapestries from Hayao Miyazaki's movies, with his approval. You have to see it to understand the beauty of the achievement.

#design #ghibli #miyazaki #craftmanship

"it's hard to get excited about these new electric vehicles...." @tomgauld

One year ago, we converted a small piece of boring grass in front of our institute into a wildflower meadow. Now it's blooming for the second time, attracting many insects, and improving the biodiversity and the micro climate around our institute.

#Bloomscrolling #biodiversity

Same, Benny, same. 🤩 😆
Get your own 1" (25.4mm) Fibonacci128 here: https://www.tindie.com/products/31672/

@NanoRaptor
In some ways the only true offsite backups ever created are the golden discs on the Voyager probes

In Europe, flying is cheaper than taking the train.

It's an embarrassment, and a major problem: we have to stop flying for silly short distances. Realise that the overheads of flying (reaching the airport, awaiting 2 hours, the flight, the unloading, reaching the destination) largely cancel out any time gains of flying. And the carbon costs are utterly untenable. Not to speak of the modern, dire conditions of the whole flying "experience".

Another embarrassment is that train connections can't be guaranteed when across countries or companies. They aren't even coordinated. As if those who commission and set the schedules didn't travel by train themselves, at least not internationally. In considering how tiny most European countries are, it's frankly bizarre.

There are so many destinations one could travel by train to, yet in practice, it's not sensible. A disgrace.

The upside is that it can be fixed.

#trains #EuroRail

Imagine living 98 years.

Imagine seeing the bounty and diversity of this planet disappear catastrophically at the same time from a front row seat...

https://mastodonapp.uk/@RSPB/112404626877816493
@RSPB - To a man who has dedicated his life to conserving and understanding our natural world: Happy 98th Birthday! 🎉

Sir David Attenborough, thank you for your decades of devotion to our planet's wonders and wildlife.

Here's a brilliant neologism: "slop", for text generated entirely by LLMs and published, unwanted, on the Internet

> Watching in real time as "slop" becomes a term of art. the way that "spam" became the term for unwanted emails, "slop" is going in the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI generated content

Source: https://twitter.com/deepfates/status/1787472784106639418

Ah

Integrated public transport, don’t you just love it

I need to take a train at 06:03 from La Ciotat to Toulon tomorrow

First bus from town to the station: arrives 06:27, which also misses the train to Marseille as well *by 2 minutes* 👏

Look, when computer science departments have some of the worst learning outcomes of any department on campus maybe they SHOULDN'T be elevated as the experts on how students should "learn with AI" with the only reason being "computers"??? Just saying. I will gladly listen to the absolute heroes in CS who HAVE centered teaching and ARE incredible teachers but I guarantee their colleagues aren't.

Worsening Weather Is Igniting a $25 Billion Market

"Against a backdrop of rising climate volatility and social shifts, demand for #WeatherDerivatives is surging.

While a [catastrophe] bond may pay out if a 100-year storm tears through a community, a weather derivative can compensate a tourism business if there are too many rainy days, or a farmer if a hot summer stresses her crops."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-04/climate-change-costs-blunted-by-25-billion-weather-derivatives-market

Contrary to what I read on social media and in the mainstream press, when I think of the average software developer, I don't think of someone "moving fast and breaking things" in a cutting-edge tech start-up. I think of someone working in an established business on legacy systems that end users have come to rely on. Because that's what the vast majority of us actually do. Most software developers are in the distinctly not-cutting-edge business of keeping the proverbial lights on.

Chicago PD leaders say they’ve decided not to punish any officers whose names appeared on the leaked membership list of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government extremist group that played a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. https://chicago.suntimes.com/2024/05/02/chicago-police-no-discipline-officers-extremist-group