@leftsidestory@mstdn.social2025-09-20 00:30:01
On The Road - To Xi’An/ Quiescence ➰
在路上 - 去西安/ 静止 ➰
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️Kodak Double-X 5222
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
@netzschleuder@social.skewed.de2025-09-20 01:00:05
sp_high_school_new: High school dynamic contacts (2011-2012)
These datasets contain the temporal network of contacts between students in a high school in Marseilles, France. The first dataset gives the contacts of the students of three classes during 4 days in Dec. 2011, and the second corresponds to the contacts of the students of 5 classes during 7 days (from a Monday to the Tuesday of the following week) in Nov. 2012.
This network has 126 nodes and 28561 edges.
Tags: Soc…
@arXiv_quantph_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-08-20 09:33:40
Beyond Copenhagen: Following the Trail of Decoherence in Feynman's Light Microscope
Brian C. Odom
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13385 https://arxiv.org/pd…
@grifferz@social.bitfolk.com2025-11-19 13:05:44
Plumber just sent me an invoice using "invoicesimple" and the plain text part is all in French (only).
He is an extremely British plumber who started flying a union jack on his van many years before the shagging of flags became fashionable. He is a pioneer in the shagging of flags, you could say.
I don't think I'll mention it.
"Cliquez ci-dessous pour télécharger la facture PDF."
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-10-13 06:16:23
Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading
@castarco@hachyderm.io2025-11-16 12:05:17
I have the distinct impression that we could use most American "sci-fi" TV series (which seem to have a kink for post-apocalyptical scenographies) as a diagnostic tool for the autism spectrum.
For a moment, let's leave aside the tons of right-wing propaganda "hidden" in plain sight, and their excessive reliance on boring & worn out tropes (religious & cultish bullshit, irrational lack of communication & excess of anti-social behaviour, all vs all, ultra-low-iq characters*, psychotic & irrationally treacherous characters*, ultra-inconsistent character development used to justify "unexpected" plot twists, rampant anti-intellectualism...).
What could be used as a diagnosis tool is the incredible amount of strong inconsistencies that we can find in them**. It throws me out of the story every single time; and I suspect that it takes a certain kind of "uncommon personality" to feel that way about it, because otherwise these series wouldn't be so popular without real widespread criticism beyond cliches like "too slow", "it loses steam towards the end of the season", etc.
Many of those plots start in a gold mine of potentially powerful ideas... yet they consistently provide us with dirt & clay instead, while side-lining the "good stuff" as if it was too complicated for the populace.
Do you feel strongly about it? Do you feel like you can't verbalize it without being criticised as "too negative", or "too picky", or an "unbearable snob"? Do you wonder why it seems like nobody around shares your discomfort with these stories?
* : I feel this is a bit like the chicken & egg problem. Has the media conditioned part of American society to behave like dumb psychopaths as if it was something "natural", or is the media reflecting what was already there? Also, could we use other societies as models for these stories... just for a change? Please?
** : Just a tiny example: a "brilliant" engineer who builds a bridge out of fence parts and who doesn't bother to perform the most basic tests before trying it in a real setting and suffer the consequences: the bridge failing and her falling into the void. Bonus points for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.
@egallager@social.treehouse.systems2025-09-15 19:39:17
Just to make sure my followers here are aware as well: I am not planning on filing any bills this term, due to a combination of chamber composition, increased complexity in the LSR submission forms, the move of committees to Granite Place while the LOB is being renovated, and general depression/despair/futility. Colleagues are encouraged to steal my ideas from me for their own bills. The filing period closes this Friday, September 19th, at the close of business hours.
#NHPolitics
@relcfp@mastodon.social2025-11-18 16:10:27
Seminar> Reading the Works of Śāntideva (Online/In-person with Professor Vesna A. Wallace)
https://ift.tt/ESdQ6xs
Online Workshop: Technology & Society in Japan and Beyond (Fri: Nov 07, 2025) Susanne Brucksch…
via Input 4 RELCFP
@aral@mastodon.ar.al2025-09-03 10:53:54
I haven’t added an example of how you implement migrations with Kitten’s¹ built-in JSDB database² yet but here’s one that I just used when renaming a field (property) in a table (JavaScript object) from “account” to “data” that illustrates the general granular approach you should take within persisted instances of JavaScript classes.
This is, of course, an advanced use case of the built-in JavaScript database that all Kitten apps have.
Kitten is simple for simple use cases. So ch…
@relcfp@mastodon.social2025-11-18 18:15:45
Seminar> Reading the Works of Śāntideva (Online/In-person with Professor Vesna A. Wallace) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20132778/seminar-reading-works-santideva-onlinein-person-professor-vesna