George Budd @Gbudd@social.cleverlibre.org
Father, Boyfriend, Volunteer EMT, (conflicted) Veteran, Computer Geek, Perpetual Student. Command line kind of guy (he/him) Very amateur woodworker, crude sketcher, proud nerd, liberal, wished I knew more math and science.
I’m willing to be wrong, certainty often means that I don’t actually understand the problem
Joined Nov 2022
George Budd
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Here's a lovely thing.
"By and large", as in, "by and large, pizza is good", is a *nautical* expression, dating from the 18th shading back into the mists of the 17th century of English sailing ships.
"By" means "tending opposite the prevailing wind", and "large" means "tending with the prevailing wind".
So, "by and large" means "no matter which way your ship is headed relative to the wind".
I'm a poly-dork, and one of my dorkeries is language.
I cherish this fact.
Also, I cherish pizza.
@freemo The problem is that “better” has so many dimensions as to make it mean whatever someone wants.
On one hand, it’s a lot more expensive to get a house or college degree than it was 20 or 40 years ago, on the other hand we’ve got access to information and entertainment that would be unimaginable 40 years ago. Not to mention the safety improvements you mention.
George Budd
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6 years ago today.
My then-girlfriend’s medical school friend (a derm PA) rolled my pants leg up to ‘take a look’ at a mutating freckle I was mildly concerned about.
“Dude, you have cancer.”
We were in the middle of a party full of medical professionals. We were supposed to go snowboarding in 12 hours. Instead, my ex, her friend, my best friend, and I drove to her dermatology clinic in Denver the next morning for a rush excision. The head doctor met us there and approved the procedure.
Christine, the PA, did the excision. My ex (also a PA) did the prep work/helped stitch. My best friend made jokes while they cut a football out of my calf.
The doctor came in a couple times. At one point, she said “has Christine explained to you what the ramifications of this might be?”
I told her that I was starting to get the picture.
I wouldn’t be formally diagnosed until a week later. Stage 3c metastatic melanoma. Another wide excision and a lymph node biopsy confirmed these.
I’m still not entirely sure I understand the ramifications.
It’s been 6 years, with a stage 4 recurrence last year. I’m in remission again, and my prognosis remains good in spite of my diagnosis.
I can type that sentence and feel hope. I can point to my perseverance and optimism in the face of a shitty situation.
I’m also weeping while I’m typing this sentence. I was fine writing the first part. I’ve told this story 1000 times. There are no rules to this game. I’ll never fully understand it.
I don’t have to fully understand things to keep going; life rarely works that way. I thought this would be a fun anecdote to show how it started and I just walked myself down 6 years of “what the fuuuuck?”
But a superfluous, semi-formal anniversary and a long text post aren’t to blame, either. This is what it’s like in my mind all the time. I’m sure I’m not alone in that regard as it relates to my experience with cancer.
I had more points to make before my brain derailed this one. But it’s been a hell of a ride.
I’m hopeful to keep living through memorable times, even if they’re not always amazing.
George Budd
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My invention, the Pedestrian Crossing Flail-Mace, is an improvement over flag-based systems.
George Budd
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“For some reason our AWS bill spikes 4% in February once every four years. I don’t understand why.”
George Budd
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“You're comprised of 84 minerals, 23 Elements & 8galls of water spread over 38 trillion cells.
You're built from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you've consumed according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix, small enough to be carried by a sperm.
You're recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur & shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts & rebuilt into our planets most complex living thing.
You're not living on Earth, you are Earth.”
- Aubrey Marcus
“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon”
Joni Mitchell
George Budd
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the last of today's nerd dump: look at this incredible illustration of the complexity involved in sending photos via cable across the Atlantic in 1926! I believe this is an illustration of the Bartlane Cable Picture Transmission System which translated images into variations of five-hole punches onto Baudot telegraphic tape and then transmitted, reversing the process at the other end using a teletype machine. #othernetworks
George Budd
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Mars Helicopter Ingenuity was a 30-day technology demonstration mission to test powered, controlled flight on another world.
Ingenuity completed its tech demo phase after the 3rd flight on April 25, 2021. After another 2 flights, it transitioned to a new operations demonstration phase.
Almost 3 years later, Ingenuity has completed 72 flights and is still going strong in support of the overall mission.
Overachiever much?
👏
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Flight-Log
#Ingenuity #Mars
8/n
George Budd
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Swedish mathematician Niels Fabian Helge von Koch was born #OTD in 1870.
He established results in number theory, including one that relates the Riemann hypothesis to the asymptotic distribution of prime numbers. But he is probably best known for what we call the "Koch Curve" – one of the first examples of a fractal.
@freemo Practically there’s no difference who I vote for in NJ so I could always write someone in.
On the other hand, it’s arguable that that strategy in the aggregate gave us Bush 2 and Trump. Gore and Hillary Clinton should have just earned the majority outright but while it’s impossible to know what would have happened but I’d say that those two losses produced some pretty awful consequences.
@freemo It’s possible, but since the Bull Moose party in 1912 it doesn’t look like a third party has gotten a significant share of the vote and the Whigs appear to have disappeared in 1860 or so.
I’m seeing Kennedy, Stein, and West as third party candidates (with apologies to any I’m missing), I can’t say I’m affirmatively enthused about any of them. None of them are likely to crack 5% unless something dramatically changes.
In a normal year, where there were just two candidates that I didn’t like I’d be more inclined to vote third party (and I have in the past). For me (and speaking only for me) Biden / Trump is a choice between bad and catastrophic. My personal judgment is that I’d prefer bad over catastrophic but everyone gets to make that choice for themselves.
None of that is to tell anyone else what to do or how to vote, it’s just my thought process.
@freemo I agree that it’s a shared delusion (as are many things that make a society, like money for example). It’s definitely a system that keeps the two parties in power and that’s why they fight things like ranked choice voting.
@freemo That would be fine if we did ranked choice voting but today my meaningful choices are going to be between Biden and Trump. For me that’s not a close call, I’ll vote for Biden any day over Trump (with all respect to your first hand and well earned loathing of Biden).
I would really like ranked choice voting to take off so we could meaningfully vote for third-party candidates as our first choice but we’re not there yet
@freemo That’s not unreasonable in a vacuum. It’s certainly true that I wish I had somehow done something concrete to somehow meaningfully create a different alternative but at the moment what I’m capable of doing is voting for what I believe to be the less awful alternative. (I do spend a fair bit of time trying to improve my local world but it’s more about EMS than creating political change)
@freemo I totally understand the choice you’re trying to get people to make. I wish there were a candidate I’d like to win but there’s definitely a candidate I particularly want to lose (I think Obama was the only presidential candidate that I affirmatively wanted to win rather than voting for someone because I wanted the other candidate to lose )
George Budd
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@daveliepmann I don't think spreadsheets could be invented today. "It's too complicated. Users won't understand. Who would buy this?" Instead of lifting peopled up towards general computing, we have dumbed computers down to cater for 7 second attention spans. We have A/B tested our way into stupidity.
@cpoliticditto Accurate but painful (on the Bills side, glad to see desantis crushed)
George Budd
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After making my morning coffee I thought I’d experiment with a vacuum-insulated cup and some 100°C water… I’m betting it’ll go for a pretty long time!
George Budd
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So how do you make water at the South Pole?
It might seem simple since there are seven million cubic miles of frozen freshwater all around us, but the reality is a bit more interesting.
Father, Boyfriend, Volunteer EMT, (conflicted) Veteran, Computer Geek, Perpetual Student. Command line kind of guy (he/him) Very amateur woodworker, crude sketcher, proud nerd, liberal, wished I knew more math and science.
I’m willing to be wrong, certainty often means that I don’t actually understand the problem
Joined Nov 2022
