Sundar @digital_carver@social.cleverlibre.org

Does anyone know of any culture that has a unique unambiguous gesture to say "thank you" ? We generally manage to convey it by nods and smiles and other context-dependent signals, but does some culture have a context-independent clear non-verbal way to convey thanks?

#nonverbal #communication #anthropology #anthro

I wanted to say "thank you" to someone using an emoji, and realized there's no clear single emoji for that. In fact no clear real world non-verbal way to say it either. How weird that we created nods and shrugs and namastes and many others, but none for this very common thing humans want to express.

#nonverbal #communication #anthropology

I was away from Fediverse for a few months, and coming back the Federated timeline looks a lot more fun now. Looks there's much less bots, many more interesting and funny people on it, and the US election things settling down and the politics talk being minimal helps too. Whatever the reasons, I like it!

#fediverse #mastodon

The dichotomy of Big Tech bans:

I look at all the prepositions and idioms that make no sense and think "how the frick does anybody learn all that". And then I look at English through those eyes and realize it's even more weird and difficult over here, I was just lucky enough to imbibe it when I still had the "language super-absorption" ability of childhood.

Trying to learn German makes me empathise with English-as-Second-Language learners.

Just finished the Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson. There's a lack of depth to the books that make them feel like short stories or novellas (probably bcos they're young adult fiction), but I still found myself missing the characters at the end of the last book and wishing for more.
4.4/5 stars.

#bookreview #reckoners #brandonsanderson #fantasy

In general, getting less caught up American local drama - political or cultural

One nice consequence from leaving reddit: didn't constantly get reminded yesterday that it's the "4TH OF JULY!!!"

"You ruined it for me! YOu ruined it for all of us!!!"

nothing more annoying than thinking of a joke reply to a post and then seeing someone else made a bad version of the joke already...

Still not a big fan, but if I can work with bash and vimscript, I can manage LaTeX as well.

#latex #unpopularopinions

Trying to learn LaTeX commands via an Anki deck now. LaTeX never made sense to me, seeming like a hodgepodge collection of commands, with bad names and ugly syntax. Learning multiple commands together using Anki, I can sort of get an overall picture and make better sense of LaTeX.

#anki #srs #latex #unpopularopinions

A good, well-researched timeline surrounding the Wuhan lab, its research on SARS-like coronaviruses, and more.

https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2021/07/01/what-exactly-happened-in-wuhan.html

#COVID #lableak

"All to say: scientists create dangerous synthetic viruses to achieve “high-impact” scientific output. I’m not saying this is the only reason, but it is a significant reason. In my mind, likely the main reason. Ethical and technical arguments are the ego of science, but the id is always funding and prestige."
#academia #publishorperish

https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/publish-and-perish

@vim

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/intermediate-vim/

Vim articles often fall into two traps: too beginner-focused (not a bad thing, but makes them less useful for a regular user), or too focused obscure, niche features with limited usefulness. This one avoids both of those IMHO. Pragmatic tips from an experienced VIm user.

@theamazingweb

https://getawesomeness.herokuapp.com/

Use getAwesomeness() to retrieve all amazing awesomeness from Github

Helpful "best of" links about programming languages, developer tools, and more. Nicely organized, well curated.

Spent hours last night trying to get Nextcloud on Android do automatic syncing. Nope, only manual sync works, and in general the github issue conversations have left me with a bad impression of the Nextcloud Android app. I want to move away from Dropbox, but looks like it has to be to another proprietary service if I want reliabiliity. 🙁