Tootfinder

As I'm learning Dutch, I'm reminded that the idea that there are people who believe that the bible is to be taken literally. The idea that a several hundred year old translation of a collection of texts in multiple languages, that were themselves translated multiple times between languages, before the whole thing was translated to Latin, then being translated to English, could somehow perfectly reflect the original text... Yeah, it's only possible to believe that if you have no idea how languages work and have never learned another language.
Like, just from linguistic drift alone if the bible were written in King James English you're losing *so* much context. But Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek translated to Latin, then to English, then to English again?
There are so many things that erg can't be translated, even as a beginner. Dutch and English are two of the closest languages that exist, they're both Germanic languages and they're the closest to each other (other than Friesian). You can't really be much closer, and yet, there are so many things you can't mutually represent. Hebrew and Latin, Aramaic and Latin, Latin and English, Greek and English, these aren't even the same families at all... They're extremely distant. There's absolutely no way to represent concepts from one to another without another book's worth of explanation.
And that ignores all the cultural context, which is mostly lost and a library and decade of education to get the stuff that we *do* know.
Only monolingual Americans could come up with an idea so incredibly asinine.

Long; central Massachusetts colonial history
Today on a whim I visited a site in Massachusetts marked as "Huguenot Fort Ruins" on OpenStreetMaps. I drove out with my 4-year-old through increasingly rural central Massachusetts forests & fields to end up on a narrow street near the top of a hill beside a small field. The neighboring houses had huge lawns, some with tractors.
Appropriately for this day and this moment in history, the history of the site turns out to be a microcosm of America. Across the field beyond a cross-shaped stone memorial stood an info board with a few diagrams and some text. The text of the main sign (including typos/misspellings) read:
"""
Town Is Formed
Early in the 1680's, interest began to generate to develop a town in the area west of Natick in the south central part of the Commonwealth that would be suitable for a settlement. A Mr. Hugh Campbell, a Scotch merchant of Boston petitioned the court for land for a colony. At about the same time, Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton also were desirous of obtaining land for a settlement. A claim was made for all lands west of the Blackstone River to the southern land of Massachusetts to a point northerly of the Springfield Road then running southwesterly until it joined the southern line of Massachusetts.
Associated with Dudley and Stoughton was Robert Thompson of London, England, Dr. Daniel Cox and John Blackwell, both of London and Thomas Freak of Hannington, Wiltshire, as proprietors. A stipulation in the acquisition of this land being that within four years thirty families and an orthodox minister settle in the area. An extension of this stipulation was granted at the end of the four years when no group large enough seemed to be willing to take up the opportunity.
In 1686, Robert Thompson met Gabriel Bernor and learned that he was seeking an area where his countrymen, who had fled their native France because of the Edict of Nantes, were desirous of a place to live. Their main concern was to settle in a place that would allow them freedom of worship. New Oxford, as it was the so-named, at that time included the larger part of Charlton, one-fourth of Auburn, one-fifth of Dudley and several square miles of the northeast portion of Southbridge as well as the easterly ares now known as Webster.
Joseph Dudley's assessment that the area was capable of a good settlement probably was based on the idea of the meadows already established along with the plains, ponds, brooks and rivers. Meadows were a necessity as they provided hay for animal feed and other uses by the settlers. The French River tributary books and streams provided a good source for fishing and hunting. There were open areas on the plains as customarily in November of each year, the Indians burnt over areas to keep them free of underwood and brush. It appeared then that this area was ready for settling.
The first seventy-five years of the settling of the Town of Oxford originally known as Manchaug, embraced three different cultures. The Indians were known to be here about 1656 when the Missionary, John Eliott and his partner Daniel Gookin visited in the praying towns. Thirty years later, in 1686, the Huguenots walked here from Boston under the guidance of their leader Isaac Bertrand DuTuffeau. The Huguenot's that arrived were not peasants, but were acknowledged to be the best Agriculturist, Wine Growers, Merchant's, and Manufacter's in France. There were 30 families consisting of 52 people. At the time of their first departure (10 years), due to Indian insurrection, there were 80 people in the group, and near their Meetinghouse/Church was a Cemetery that held 20 bodies. In 1699, 8 to 10 familie's made a second attempt to re-settle, failing after only four years, with the village being completely abandoned in 1704.
The English colonist made their way here in 1713 and established what has become a permanent settlement.
"""
All that was left of the fort was a crumbling stone wall that would have been the base of a higher wooden wall according to a picture of a model (I didn't think to get a shot of that myself). Only trees and brush remain where the multi-story main wooden building was.
This story has so many echoes in the present:
- The rich colonialists from Boston & London agree to settle the land, buying/taking land "rights" from the colonial British court that claimed jurisdiction without actually having control of the land. Whether the sponsors ever actually visited the land themselves I don't know. They surely profited somehow, whether from selling on the land rights later or collecting taxes/rent or whatever, by they needed poor laborers to actually do the work of developing the land (& driving out the original inhabitants, who had no say in the machinations of the Boston court).
- The land deal was on condition that there capital-holders who stood to profit would find settlers to actually do the work of colonizing. The British crown wanted more territory to be controlled in practice not just in theory, but they weren't going to be the ones to do the hard work.
- The capital-holders actually failed to find enough poor suckers to do their dirty work for 4 years, until the Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution in France, were desperate enough to accept their terms.
- Of course, the land was only so ripe for settlement because of careful tending over centuries by the natives who were eventually driven off, and whose land management practices are abandoned today. Given the mention of praying towns (& dates), this was after King Phillip's war, which resulted in at least some forced resettlement of native tribes around the area, but the descendants of those "Indians" mentioned in this sign are still around. For example, this is the site of one local band of Nipmuck, whose namesake lake is about 5 miles south of the fort site: #LandBack.

From Translink
The Pattullo Bridge will be closed to northbound vehicle traffic for four nights due to ongoing construction work for the Pattullo Bridge Replacement Project. The closures will take place overnight on these dates:
Thursday, June 26 (9pm to 5am)
Friday, June 27 (9pm to 5am)
Wednesday, July 2 (9pm to 5am)
Thursday, July 3 (9pm to 5am)
Southbound travel into Surrey will not be affected. The bridge will also remain open northbound for pedestrians, cy…

Module structure of the Lie algebra $W_n(K)$ over $sl_n(K)$
Y. Chapovskyi, A. Petravchuk
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21709 https://arx…

Module structure of the Lie algebra $W_n(K)$ over $sl_n(K)$
Let $\mathbb K$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, $A = \mathbb K[x_1,\dots,x_n]$ the polynomial ring, and let $W_n(\mathbb K)$ denote the Lie algebra of all $\mathbb K$-derivations on $A$. The Lie algebra $W_n := W_n(\mathbb K)$ admits a natural grading $W_n = \bigoplus_{i \ge -1} W^{[i]}_n$, where $W^{[i]}_n$ consists of all homogeneous derivations whose coefficients are homogeneous polynomials of degree $i+1$ or zero. The component $W^{[0]}_n$ is a subalgebra of $W_n$ a…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.10529 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mat…

Closed Form for Half-Area Overlap Offset of 2 Unit Disks
The separation between the centers of two unit circles such that their overlapping area is exactly half of each's area is known to be around $0.8079455\dots$ (OEIS A133741). However, no closed form of this number is known. Here, we determine its closed form representation in terms of the inverse regularized beta function.

Various thi.ng updates, bug fixes, additions and new version of https://github.com/thi-ng/zig-thing/ — now fully compatible with current Zig v0.14.1
On a more diary/devlog note: I also updated several of my Zig based work-in-progress art pieces to the latest version (some of them not touc…

Evaluating Artificial Intelligence Algorithms for the Standardization of Transtibial Prosthetic Socket Shape Design
C. H. E. Jordaan, M. van der Stelt, T. J. J. Maal, V. M. A. Stirler, R. Leijendekkers, T. Kachman, G. A. de Jong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16818

Evaluating Artificial Intelligence Algorithms for the Standardization of Transtibial Prosthetic Socket Shape Design
The quality of a transtibial prosthetic socket depends on the prosthetist's skills and expertise, as the fitting is performed manually. This study investigates multiple artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to help standardize transtibial prosthetic socket design. Data from 118 patients were collected by prosthetists working in the Dutch healthcare system. This data consists of a three-dimensional (3D) scan of the residual limb and a corresponding 3D model of the prosthetist-designed socket. …

The US Environmental Protection Agency's retreat from science endangers the health of people and the planet https://phys.org/news/2025-07-environmental-agency-retreat-science-endangers.html

The US Environmental Protection Agency's retreat from science endangers the health of people and the planet
Pollution causes more illness and early death than any other environmental threat, accounting for one in six deaths worldwide. For decades, the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) has driven many of the biggest advances for safeguarding human health and ecosystems from chemicals. Now, this scientific research office is being closed down by the US government

On gap sets in arbitrary Kummer extensions of $K(x)$
Ethan Cotterill, Erik A. R. Mendoza, Pietro Speziali
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19169 https://

On gap sets in arbitrary Kummer extensions of $K(x)$
Let $K$ be an algebraically closed field, and let $F/K(x)$ be a Kummer extension of function fields of genus $g$. We provide a compact and explicit description of the gap set $G(Q)$ at any totally ramified place $Q$ of the extension $F/K(x)$. As a consequence, we deduce structural properties of the Weierstrass semigroup $H(Q)$; in particular, we determine a generating set for $H(Q)$, and we characterize its symmetry in certain cases. We also generalize a formula due to Towse that describes the …

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.10529 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mat…

Closed Form for Half-Area Overlap Offset of 2 Unit Disks
The separation between the centers of two unit circles such that their overlapping area is exactly half of each's area is known to be around $0.8079455\dots$ (OEIS A133741). However, no closed form of this number is known. Here, we determine its closed form representation in terms of the inverse regularized beta function.