Tootfinder

Reminder: public protest is about visibility, not hiding. The power comes from people being willing to be visible, put their time on the line, and if needed, their bodies.
If you're going to start shit, maybe just ... don't. Direct action of the illegal sort requires careful planning and a tactical and strategic plan for why it will win. It happens sometimes, but it's not the mode, it's not the mode of the No Kings protests. This is a popular, public demonstration of outrage. It's legal (for now, and I hope, ever).
Yes, the police may try to kettle protesters and then trap them into curfew violations in places that have curfews. Masks won't save us from that where it happens. Just running the system with competent representation (and enough bodies to make it A Problem for the system) will.
We don't all need to be masked vigilantes at protests, and in a lot of cases, we need to be worried about the people masking up and starting shit. Remember that this is our opponents current tactic: masked, violent attacks. Don't look like them.

Roberto Vodanović Čopor – What Happens When We Become Silent
https://www.clongclongmoo.org/2025/06/10/roberto-vodanovic-copor-what-happens-when-we-become-silent/

I like to use this quote for when a client doesn't like what I've done:
“A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.”
― John Cage

And, with all airborne balls in a relatively stable state, I'm calling it: beer o'clock.

Okay, so I'd already seen the first half of this video where he's pushed out of the room by thugs and.. I mean that's bad, but also that kind of thing happens all the time.
I was unprepared for the second half of the video, where they place a US Senator on the ground and CUFF HIS HANDS BEHIND HIS BACK for _verbally_ interrupting a press briefing. 👀

Browned & tattered, I found my old, fave #scifi graphic novel from the 1970s.
Being one of my only #comics, I read this thing 10x over. Missing the last page, I actually have no idea how the last story ends. 🤷
I should see if it's on the Internet so I can find out what happens... 40…

Dreaming is more than what happens while you sleep
#dreams #inspiration
https://…

Dreaming is more than what happens while you sleep
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

I was never one for noting the pagecounts of books. My measurements were usually "about one third done". Doing ebooks means that I think of a progress as percentages and length in hours.
For most of this year I read books that were over 25 hours long and am now in the three hour range.
Of course this is distorted. Reading during the day is usually quicker and if I fall asleep before turning off the e-reader (which happens a lot) the estimates get thrown off by the idle …

Dynamical Horizon Segments and Spacetime Isometries
Abhay Ashtekar, Badri Krishnan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10190 https://arxiv.org…

Dynamical Horizon Segments and Spacetime Isometries
Given a space-time $(\mathscr{M}, g_{ab})$ admitting a dynamical horizon segment (DHS) $\mathscr{H}$, we show that there are stringent constraints on the Killing fields $ξ^a$ that $g_{ab}$ can admit in a neighborhood of $\mathscr{H}$: Generically, $ξ^a$ can only be a rotational Killing field which, furthermore, leaves each marginally trapped 2-sphere cross-section $\mathcal{S}$ of $\mathscr{H}$ invariant. Finally, if $ξ^a$ happens to be hypersurface orthogonal near $\mathscr{H}$, then, not o…

Hummm. My #pineTime has stopped charging 😦
Seems like there's voltage across the charger pins, but the watch shows no sign of being attached to it when it's attached.
Damn. That's annoying. Seems like it happens to some people now and then but nobody on Reddit has proposed a solution.

The text I have conveys the •meaning• of the diagram, and it’s better than nothing:
❝Three different trees showing possible interpretations of 1000 - 100 - 10 - 1. In the first tree, subtraction happens from left to right. In the second tree, it happens from right to left. In the third tree, we first compute 1000 minus 100, then 10 minus 1, then subtract those two results.❞
That’s probably the best I can do in the current format. But if there were a way to make convey more of the spatial sense, I’d do it!

Cursed Equilibria and Knightian Uncertainty in a Trading Game
Jurek Preker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10663 https://arxiv.org/pdf/250…

Cursed Equilibria and Knightian Uncertainty in a Trading Game
We introduce a novel equilibrium concept that incorporates Knightian uncertainty into the cursed equilibrium (Eyster and Rabin, 2005). This concept is then applied to a two-player game in which agents can engage in trade or refuse to do so. While the Bayesian Nash equilibrium predicts that trade never happens, players do trade in a cursed equilibrium. The inclusion of uncertainty enhances this effect for cursed and uncertainty averse players. This contrasts general findings that uncertainty red…

'What happens in a dictatorship': Outrage as leaked Kristi Noem letter shows 'grave escalation' - Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org/kristi-noem-leaked-letter/

The Freedom Flotilla „Madleen” is projected to arrive in just a few hours at a coast in Gaza. If anything happens to @… or the other activists, the international community will never forgive the current Israeli government for it.
I wish and pray for your best, keep being the voice of our generation…

Freiheit für Greta Thunberg, Yasemin Acar und alle Aktivist*innen der Freedom Flotilla - Online-Petition
Humanitäre Hilfe ist kein Verbrechen! Am 1. Juni 2025 wurde das zivile Hilfsschiff Madleen der Freedom Flotilla Coalition auf dem Weg nach Gaza in internationalen Gewässern gewaltsam von der israelischen Armee gestoppt, geentert und seine Besatzung verschleppt. An Bord befanden sich ausschließlich unbewaffnete Freiwillige und dringend für den Gazastreifen benötigte humanitäre Hilfsgüter wie Babynahrung, Medizin und Prothesen für verletzte Kinder. Unter den Festgehaltenen ist neben Greta…

Empirical and computer-aided robustness analysis of long-step and accelerated methods in smooth convex optimization
Pierre Vernimmen, Fran\c{c}ois Glineur
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09730

Empirical and computer-aided robustness analysis of long-step and accelerated methods in smooth convex optimization
This work assesses both empirically and theoretically, using the performance estimation methodology, how robust different first-order optimization methods are when subject to relative inexactness in their gradient computations. Relative inexactness occurs, for example, when compressing the gradient using fewer bits of information, which happens when dealing with large-scale problems on GPUs. Three major families of methods are analyzed: constant step gradient descent, long-step methods, and acc…

I just love :vim: #vim for its macros 🤩
(vim macro in the #AltText)
#TexLaTeX

Customize what happens when you start R: #rstats #environment

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21677 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_…

What happens when generative AI models train recursively on each others' generated outputs?
The internet is full of AI-generated content while also serving as a common source of training data for generative AI (genAI) models. This duality raises the possibility that future genAI models may be trained on other models' generated outputs. Prior work has studied consequences of models training on their own generated outputs, but limited work has considered what happens if models ingest content produced by other models. Given society's increasing dependence on genAI tools, understanding do…

I actually quite like the new iOS design - sure maybe a little dialed down but that always happens

Musk happens to be right:
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act
— its actual name!
— is indeed a disgusting abomination.
But this is one of those cases where it takes one to know one.
Few men have done as much damage out of sheer arrogance, ignorance and pettiness as Elon Musk.
He has thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of deaths on his hands.
And even his parting blast is destructive,
demonstrating that he has learned nothing from his abject f…

Elon Musk is a Disgusting Abomination
So is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But still

Death Literacy is essential for a good quality of life for every stage of life, including our end of life and dying. *
Got questions? I'm an end of life doula and I'm here to help.
#GDEPAU
#AskAnnetta
#EOLD

Watch Github for what happens for companies that go all-in on AI.
Notice all the details that are wrong now. Notice the docs. Notice the confusion between different interfaces. Notice the UI jank in new places. This is what happens when engineering decisions are made by default instead of discussion and planning. This is what happens when writing (already easier than editing) becomes even easier without improving editing.

"But Wall Street professionals, like so many other ostensibly smart people, refused to see Trump clearly, mistaking his skill as a demagogue for wisdom as a policymaker. “I don’t think this was foreseeable,” a mournful Ackman posted on X on Monday. “I assumed economic rationality would be paramount.” What an odd assumption to make about a man who bankrupted casinos.
Berezin thinks Wall Street still hasn’t come to terms with the cost of the nascent Trump presidency. “I do think that at this point we might have passed the event horizon, meaning that even if Trump backs off from the tariffs, there’s been enough damage done to the U.S. economy, to the global economy, to investor confidence, consumer confidence, that we’re probably going to see a recession regardless of what happens,” he said.""
#GiftArticle #USPolitics
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/opinion/trump-stock-market-wall-street.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-E4.q7Gk.5YS3EpoLnh8C&smid=url-share

"I wrote in October that billionaires should resist cozying up to authoritarians: while it can feel as if they are reducing risks to themselves and their businesses, surrendering to a corrupt system is just as likely to endanger them. Musk is the first to learn this lesson, but I suspect he will not be the last."
Let's see.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William Faulkner

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson
=
"Everything happens so much."(horse_ebooks)

Politically driven "focus on special features over ensuring affordable housing money is stretched as far as possible" is one part of this, and same thing happens in transit:
* Electric buses don't work as well as electric cars, yet we make bus riders pay for electrification with less service, and don't require drivers to use electric cars.
* Fancy stops for "BRT" buses that offer infrequent service.
Etc Etc

These publicly funded homes for the poor cost $1.2 million each to build
Costs to house the poor are approaching, and sometimes exceeding, $1 million per unit in cities across the country, including D.C., L.A., and Chicago.

Summing large Pomeron loops in the saturation region: nucleus-nucleus collision
Eugene Levin (Tel Aviv University.)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07569 https:…

Summing large Pomeron loops in the saturation region: nucleus-nucleus collision
In this paper we found the nucleus-nucleus scattering amplitude at high energies by summing large Pomeron loops. It turns out that the energy dependence of this amplitude is the same for dipole-dipole scattering.This happens since the evolution of one dipole cascade contributes to this scattering

What Comes After Harm? Mapping Reparative Actions in AI through Justice Frameworks
Sijia Xiao, Haodi Zou, Alice Qian Zhang, Deepak Kumar, Hong Shen, Jason Hong, Motahhare Eslami
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05687

What Comes After Harm? Mapping Reparative Actions in AI through Justice Frameworks
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are integrated into more aspects of society, they offer new capabilities but also cause a range of harms that are drawing increasing scrutiny. A large body of work in the Responsible AI community has focused on identifying and auditing these harms. However, much less is understood about what happens after harm occurs: what constitutes reparation, who initiates it, and how effective these reparations are. In this paper, we develop a taxonomy of AI harm rep…

Differential Spectrum and Boomerang Spectrum of Some Power Mapping
Yuehui Cui, Jinquan Luo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05738 https://a…

Differential Spectrum and Boomerang Spectrum of Some Power Mapping
Let $f(x)=x^{s(p^m-1)}$ be a power mapping over $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}$, where $n=2m$ and $\gcd(s,p^m+1)=t$. In \cite{kpm-1}, Hu et al. determined the differential spectrum and boomerang spectrum of the power function $f$, where $t=1$. So what happens if $t\geq1$? In this paper, we extend the result of \cite{kpm-1} from $t=1$ to general case. We use a different method than in \cite{kpm-1} to determine the differential spectrum and boomerang spectrum of $f$ by studying the number of rational points o…

#WordWeavers 27 May
Do you specifically design your characters, or do they develop as you write?
I begin with a core, things happens that change that core. Like rolling a snowball in the snow. It grows, gets layered. I apply some pressure, see what happens.
It's a growing process mostly. I almost never begin writing at the beginning, but at a point earlier, so that i can hit…

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
👀😲👏👏👏👏👏

Mid-practice fight ends Giants' OTA session early: 'Heat got to us' https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6406146/2025/06/05/giants-fight-practice-brian-burns/

Finished "Far from the Tree" by Robin Benway last night. For me, it was a gripping and absolutely delightful read. I can recognize that I'm absolutely unequipped to judge whether it authentically reflects the experiences of many or few of the people whose situations are similar to the protagonists', but I find myself fervently hopeful for the former, even as I recognize such hopes in the part of people like me can be part of ultimately harmful publishing selection feedback loops. (If anyone reading this happens to have read the book and found it distasteful, I'd love to hear that.) Notwithstanding my probably overcautious uncertainty, I'll definitely be seeking out more books by Benway. At the very least, I really enjoyed her little joining and framing metaphors, and the pacing and plot construction were good, with lots of nicely interwoven implications arising through the buildup, and an ending that left me satisfied (albeit, I'm an inveterate optimist, YMMV).
#AmReading

Ctrl-ZINE is an independent smol web project, and its Issue 17 Vol. 2 happens to contain pieces by two of my favorite people on the fediverse. @… has a great piece here about his time on and thoughts about the fediverse, and @… wrote…

So some Democratic politicians actually got the memo, but clearly others are flailing. To help them out, I’d like to offer my sage political wisdom. Try the following message:
1. Kick Trump out.
2. Tax the living shit out of billionaires.
3. Use the money to get folks back on their feet and clean up this mess.
Just that. Simple and direct, no fussing around. Give that a try and see how it lands. Float a trial balloon in some minor swing district election and see what happens.

2025 Packers game-by-game predictions: Can Green Bay improve vs. division rivals? https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/predicting-packers-2025-season-game-by-game

I am looking at switching away from Spotify and currently looking at Apple Music.
I can understand artists/labels not publishing to Apple Music, no problem with that.
The problem I have is that 1 track on the album (which just happens to be my favourite of the album) is just not there on Apple Music.
It's not geo-locked (I'll get onto that in a min) but my god, it is so stupid.
Thankfully this particular artist, I support on Bandcamp, so no major loss there.

It’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Since this is a grassroots campaign, I want to be transparent with you. 
Our fundraising hit an unexpected dip these last few days
– it happens sometimes,
and I don’t want to alarm you!
But I do want to share why this is important.
Unlike most other House campaigns, we operate differently and invest in community organizing year-round and full-time permanent staff. 
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗼 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲…

Donate to AOC.
Alexandria is fighting for progressive policies that can help create social, racial, and economic justice for all. That's why she's taking $0 from corporations and lobbyists and is relying on the grassroots to power her campaign.

Close points on a modular hyperbola
Tsz Ho Chan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04087 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.04087

Close points on a modular hyperbola
In this paper, we continue the study of small squares containing at least two points on a modular hyperbola $x y \equiv c \pmod{p}$. We deduce a lower bound for its side length. We also investigate what happens if the ``distances" between two such points are special type of numbers like prime numbers, squarefree numbers or smooth numbers as well as more general multiplicatively closed sets or almost dense sets.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.01491 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepp…

Gravitational Waves of GUT Phase Transition during Inflation
Grand unified theory (GUT) phase transition is generally considered unobservable due to its ultrahigh energy scale, and the monopole problem associated with GUT phase transition is one motivation of inflation. We propose that if a first-order GUT phase transition happens during inflation, the induced gravitational waves (GWs) are redshifted and deformed, and might be observed today in GW observatories. We review the formalism of inflated GWs and derive the general deformation function between i…

Elon Musk Claimed the Art This Man Painstakingly Created Was Generated by Grok https://www.404media.co/elon-musk-claimed-the-art-this-man-painstakingly-created-was-generated-by-grok/

Getting almost all the bits from a quantum random access code
Han-Hsuan Lin (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan), Ronald de Wolf (QuSoft, CWI,University of Amsterdam)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01903

Getting almost all the bits from a quantum random access code
A quantum random access code (QRAC) is a map $x\mapstoρ_x$ that encodes $n$-bit strings $x$ into $m$-qubit quantum states $ρ_x$, in a way that allows us to recover any one bit of $x$ with success probability $\geq p$. The measurement on $ρ_x$ that is used to recover, say, $x_1$ may destroy all the information about the other bits; this is in fact what happens in the well-known QRAC that encodes $n=2$ bits into $m=1$ qubits. Does this generalize to large $n$, i.e., could there exist QRACs tha…

Ukraine did the thing that people have been warning about since the introduction of consumer drones. What happens next?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/01/ukraine-launches-major-drone-attack-on-russian-bom…

For RSS (because I really like only getting content I chose - just like happens here on Mastodon), I use @…. It's open source and theoretically self-hostable but I'm really happy with their hosted service.

> The night was cold but gentle like an X-rated metaphor.
Meddling Kids (2017) by Edgar Cantero is what happens when not-the-Scooby-Doo Gang revisit their last case, 13 years ago in a town in Oregon, because it might have had more going on than just a villain in a lake monster costume. For one, why did the attic have a copy of the Necronomicon?
The dog (Tim) is a Weimeraner, doesn't talk, but does do heroic doggy things with his squeaky toy.

#WordWeavers 27 May
Do you specifically design your characters, or do they develop as you write?
I begin with a core, things happens that change that core. Like rolling a snowball in the snow. It grows, gets layered. I apply some pressure, see what happens.
It's a growing process mostly. I almost never begin writing at the beginning, but at a point earlier, so that i can hit…

I'm broke and summer's coming up, so now is a great time to remind you all, I am STILL available #forhire for #pixelart, #textmode,

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23664 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hept…

Measurements $\mathit{with}$ probabilities in the final state proposal
Bousso and Stanford (BS) argued that the black hole final state proposal leads to acausal effects and ill-defined probabilities for the AMPS experiment. We identify a loophole in their analysis using insights from entanglement wedge reconstruction and replica wormholes. We trace the cause of the BS problems to the misidentification of the physical interior where the second AMPS measurement happens from among the multiple interiors introduced by the first measurement.

And I thought it was radical little me and my trouble maker lefty friends that thought Trump mighy turn out very very badly.
What happens to Canada when the US President is completely unbound by the constitution?
😬 🔫 🇺🇸
#uspoli #canpoli #cdnpoli #never51 #americanfascism #TheAmericanFascist
https://journa.host/@w7voa/114662211197379834

remembering my parents advice that "nothing good happens after midnight" as I binge a 13-ounce bag of granola out of boredom instead of going to bed

This is just yet another example of what happens when #ClimateChange is ignored. A ramp-up of extreme #weather is causing #insurance companies to stop offering coverage in areas around the globe where…

Animal lovers: This was really tough to watch & you will have tears in your eyes but I PROMISE you it's worth watching to the end.
▶️ Dramatic Rescue: A Miracle Happens to a Dying Mother Cat and Her Three A...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qefBwoSH7GY&si=Sv5HEm…

Many people have this sense that the price of books is primarily linked to the cost of materials, manufacture, & distribution. But the majority of the cost of publishing books are in the labor leading up to the 1st copy: editorial & editorial production work, before any reproduction in whatever format. Addition labor happens later, for marketing. When you buy a book, you’re mainly paying for these kinds of labor.
From: @…

Its good to have many tests in your R package, but it can be a pain to debug some failing tests when it happens. {lazytest} for the rescue: only rerun the failing tests, until they pass: #RStats

"Rufo, Vance, and Co. are, however, right that right-wing ideological hegemony is harder to maintain when sites of education and knowledge production allow young people to learn, find each other, and challenge received wisdoms."
On the current goals of the destruction of the US education system. (Also provides background and lists some issues with the current system; but, obviously, none of that is fixed by what happens now.)

The weather was too good to not run outside, and skip the treadmill last Thursday! First time running outside at my work running route this year after returning to the work FT this month, and it was spectacular!
Not expecting to hit a sub 8 minute mile, especially with my health issues, but if it happens, I'll be elated!
#running

Let this be a lesson: my point about editing above goes deep. It's not just about writing words and editing words.
It's about decisions of any kind.
While deliberative paralysis is a thing, when you make "do" easier than "deliberate" (and increasingly tip the balance toward "do"), what happens is what's easy, not what's good. It is an accelerator for all kinds of things, a great many of them bad, and even more suboptimal.

I have more than occasionally wondered if I REALLY needed a phone case. I still use one, for now, but we'll see what happens on my next upgrade. What say you? Cased or naked? #Android #iphone

Is it finally safe to ditch your phone case? I put it to the test
With smartphones tougher than ever, a new wave of phone minimalists say cases are for cowards. I joined the case-free cult, called the experts and braced for the sound of broken glass.

June in-person meetup of Queer Crafters Ireland happens this Sunday 1-3 pm! To get the details, DM them on Insta or email at queercraftersireland@gmail.com
#dublin #queer #queerart

Hoarding syndrome is considered a psychiatric condition, not a crisis for democracy itself
-- with one giant exception:
When people with hoarding syndrome are born with or come into massive wealth
-- suddenly what was once a personal, psychiatric issue can become a crisis for all of society.
It happens every few generations.
It’s what drove the fascist oligarchs of the Confederacy to reach out and try to conquer the entire United States in the 1860s.
It …

The Billionaire Hoarders: How the Wealthy Became Our Biggest Threat
How a sick obsession is killing workers, democracy, and our planet.

Live from Saigon, 6:13am. Raining, which rarely happens early morning. But a good thing my coffee shop is open for a hai hai (2 shots with 2 cubes of ice). That'll kickstart the day!
#photography day 7 of #30daysIRL

Sometimes you work on a case where the suspect is so incredible unsympathetic to you - who represents everything you can imagine in terms of despicable character traits - you just keep digging and digging and digging in the suspects devices data to find the evidence you already know is not there.
It happens once or maybe twice a year but ...gosh... this guy...
#DigitalForensics

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.00493 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mat…

Uniform attachment with freezing
In the classical model of random recursive trees, trees are recursively built by attaching new vertices to old ones. What happens if vertices are allowed to freeze, in the sense that new vertices cannot be attached to already frozen ones? We are interested in the impact of freezing on the height of such trees.

I am nearly 2/3rds done reading Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary.
And if anything happens to Rocky, I swear I'll scream. :O

The Python library "YFinance" decided to force an upgrade. They did this by making the old version report a rate-limit error on every request.
Confusing.
Would have been better if they reported a "old version not supported" error or something instead. So that wasted some time.
That upgrade had dependencies which have dependencies upon a newer version of Python, so needed a whole OS upgrade really.
Which failed. Bricking the Rasp PI it was running on.
Oh well, complete rebuild of the whole machine and software it runs from scratch then.
That took all day yesterday. At the end I notice that the touch-screen doesn't touch. Needs drivers.
The drivers haven't been upgraded in six years. They brick the machine again when trying to install them on Debian Trixie.
Luckily, I kept good notes and could rebuild it all again much faster with no mistakes and knowing what to do and all the required custom software changes already made and saved.
So now I spent a whole day on annoying upgrade work because a single Python library decided to break the old version, and my Rasp Pi has no touch-screen. Which isn't ideal for a machine mostly operating as a fancy light switch for all the LED strips in the house.
This happens all the time in software. Millions of man hours wasted, so much hardware dumped because the drivers get abandoned.

In other news: Microsoft abandons Windows 10 any day now. Good luck to everyone faced with doing that lap on the upgrade treadmill.
I still have more work to do to bring up this RaspPi's software to where it was, but it'll have to wait, other things to do. At least it's back to sending me the nightly finance report and controlling the LED strips. If without a touch screen now.
#software #upgradeTredmil #python #microsoft

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.01076 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_qbi…

Duration of Transients in Outbreaks: When can Infectiousness be Estimated?
We investigate sub-leading orders of the classic SEIR-model using contact matrices from modeling of the Omicron and Delta variants of COVID-19 in Denmark. The goal of this is to illustrate when the growth rate, and by extension the infection transmission potential (basic or initial reproduction number), can be estimated in a new outbreak, e.g. after introduction of a new variant of a virus. In particular, we look at the time scale on which this happens in a realistic outbreak to guide future da…

I've never written a novel or any other intensely-plotted work of fiction, but anyone who has read or watched it played a lot of stories can probably also recognize that some authors just aren't good at endings. They're great at setting things in motion, at keeping the twists and turns coming, at the soap opera style of drama. But they just don't have the craft necessary to tie things together into a satisfying conclusion. I imagine it's much harder than the process of getting things going out keeping them moving, since you both have to wind down all the various threads you've spun up and balance satisfaction with believability.
I just finished Girl Gone Viral by Arvin Ahmadi, and it has a bad ending. The beginning is fine, the middle has plenty of drama to keep you wanting to see what happens, but the ending is murky, unsatisfying, and manages neither veracity nor satisfaction (even discounting the biggest next step that might reasonably have been left there to make room for a sequel).
Given the other issues with the book, from poor politics, to inauthentic characters, to a techno-optimism that feels as bitter in this moment as it is far from the mark in its predictions, I can't recommended it, despite having read through to the end.
#AmReading

Another #ukulele gem: Without You, by Dev Lin. Whatever happens at 0:34 has my heart 💚
You’ve got to listen to this one on a good speaker with solid bass.
https://open.spoti…

I just lost a days worth of work because I had the audacity to include an equation in MS Word. Somehow that corrupted the docx file. I guess it happens when word tried to translate latex style markup to whatever jank it uses under the hood to format equations.
Unbelievably frustrating but also sort of fascinating. In my lifetime I’ve watched word descend from the obvious best choice for writing on a computer to a pile of laggy jank that just isn’t as useful as other options. Or maybe …

I have a relatively new #ASUS ProArt13 laptop where I still have a #Microsoft #Windows installation so I can keep upgrading its firmware (I planned removing it once I have a stable #Linux distro with kernel >= 6.14).
I'm surprised by how unstable it is. Just leaving it doing nothing for more than 10 minutes is enough to trigger a #BlueScreenOfDeath (I can reproduce the issue). If I keep doing stuff, it does not crash.
At this point I'm not sure if it's Microsoft's fault or ASUS'... but I suspect the blame falls on Windows side (nothing like that happens on my Linux installation).
#Windows11

#TIL that, on #Linux systems, #Docker bypasses #ufw #firewall rules ( #iptables under the hood ) because of some incompatibility on how they interact with iptables.
Does anyone know if the same happens with #Podman ?