Tootfinder

At the hospital ER today some angry dude walked out of the waiting room and up to the nurse at the triage desk:
“I've been here for 25 minutes! How long is this going to take? ____ is not feeling any better!!”.
The nurse, who was very nicely helping us check in, and had helped the dozen or so others there, turned off the smile and just looked at him... dead pan stare… and said.
"Yes?”
Angry-dude said some other stuff, then turned around and went back to the w…

I haven't used stackoverflow much, just had two answers I'd posted there. I deleted them both, and got the same email others have got.. Probably the most passive-aggressive email I've ever received.
By the way if you delete your account, they anonymise your posts. AFAICT, that's against the creative commons attribution share-alike license of the posts.

Politics (in general)
If you ever needed a short answer on how right-wing politics differs from the left-wing politics:
The essence of right-wing politics is the conviction that it is the most important to help the rich (and other privileged people), because if they became even more sickly rich, it is bound that some of that will finally start trickling down on everyone. And if it doesn't, then it's all fault of the people who aren't white cis hetero males — of given nationality, faith and right-wing views.
On the other hand, the left-wing views are based on weird ideas such as that all people are equal, nobody should be privileged and that everyone deserves to live.
#politics

qa_user: User interactions on Q&A websites (2016)
Networks of interactions among users from four online Q&A sites: Stack Overflow, Math Overflow, Super User, and Ask Ubuntu. A directed edge (i,j) indicates a user i responded to user j's post. Edges are timestamped. For each Q&A site, four differently defined networks are provided, based on the definition of an edge: (i) a user answered a question, (ii) a user commented on a question, (iii) a user commented on an answer…

At one terrifying moment in this Hard Fork podcast, Perplexity's CEO envisions a future in which ads covertly change the results of search queries rather than sitting alongside them. Matthew Kirschenbaum's Textpocalypse scenario hinted at the dangers of AI-powered textual quicksand.
https://www.n…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12092 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mat…

Interpolation of fat points on K3 and abelian surfaces
We prove that any number of general fat points of any multiplicities impose the expected number of conditions on a linear system on a smooth projective surface, in several cases including primitive linear systems on very general K3 and abelian surfaces, `Du Val' linear systems on blowups of ${\mathbb P}^2$ at $9$ very general points, and certain linear systems on some ruled surfaces over elliptic curves. This is done by answering a question of the author about the case of only one fat point on …

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.19705 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCL_…

When to Retrieve: Teaching LLMs to Utilize Information Retrieval Effectively
In this paper, we demonstrate how Large Language Models (LLMs) can effectively learn to use an off-the-shelf information retrieval (IR) system specifically when additional context is required to answer a given question. Given the performance of IR systems, the optimal strategy for question answering does not always entail external information retrieval; rather, it often involves leveraging the parametric memory of the LLM itself. Prior research has identified this phenomenon in the PopQA datase…

Signatures of Open Magnetic Flux in #Jupiter's Dawnside Magnetotail: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023AV001111 -> UAF scientist’s research answers big question about our system’s largest planet: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/news/uaf-scientists-research-answers-big-question-about-our-systems-largest-planet

Google's Education VP wants us to believe AI is the classroom's new calculator, but this is a terrible analogy:
1. We know how calculators produce their results.
2. You can check a calculator's answer using pretty much the same algorithm it uses.
3. Rare floating point errors aside, calculators do not invent false answers.
4. Calculators are based on math principles; LLMs are based on no principles.

Personal, dreams, sad
I don't know if I am capable of dreaming anymore. What are dreams, anyway? How are they different from desires, aspirations and efforts?
But I can consider what I could dream of.
I could dream of not being angry all the time. Of not being filled with hatred.
I could dream of feeling secure. Of not worrying all the time about food and shelter. Of losing health insurance and access to medicine.
I could dream of having someone to rely on, of someone who'd take care of me and the things I can't handle. Of not feeling guilty of not meeting the expectations of others and my own, all the time.
I could dream of being able to experience all that stuff that I read about in books and see in movies. Of it not being too late for me anymore.
#ActuallyAutistic