If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?
Justin Brown
Twitter was special. But it's time to leave
https://www.pwnallthethings.com/p/twitter-was-special-but-its-time
"Each dot is an entire galaxy containing billions of stars... The galaxies seen in this image are all in the distant Universe and appear as they did 10-12 billion years ago. They are colour coded in blue, green, and red to represent the three wavebands used for Herschels observation. Those appearing in white have equal intensity in all three bands and are the ones forming the most stars. The galaxies shown in red are likely to be the most distant, appearing as they did around 12 billion years ago." ([Source](https://www.herschel.caltech.edu/image/nhsc2010-008a ))
And, yes, the image does look like a picture of a 1970's brown carpet.
There is far too little recognition of the fact that the US Intelligence Community’s ability to discover Russian invasion plans and share them with Ukraine is one of the greatest intelligence successes of the last 50 years and has had a critical impact on thwarting Putin’s imperialist ambitions.
They knew the Russian war plans better than most of the Russian military executing the invasion (who mostly had no idea they were going to war) and even members of Putin’s Security Council! Remarkable!
So, mathstodon. Something a little lighter since it's Sunday and all that. What's your favourite maths fact?
Bonus points if it's incredibly trivial! 😊
Eilidh Stimpson discovered a 135-year-old message rolled up inside an empty whisky bottle beneath her floorboards at her home in Edinburgh.
Signed and dated by two male workers, the message read: “James Ritchie and John Grieve laid this floor, but they did not drink the whisky. October 6th 1887. Who ever finds this bottle may think our dust is blowing along the road.” https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/history/edinburgh-mum-finds-incredible-135-25537021?fbclid=IwAR0xCycSiQ7p9Gn3ppJPZ7jxab1EslEti4QXhSiuqSxCUDVD7afwzqTk-6g
If you need a break from everything here is an #audiobook recommendation:
P.G. Wodehouse Volume 1 narrated by Stephen Fry (who is on mastodon btw at @stephenfry)
I **absolutely love** Jeeves stories and this is my favorite narration.
Understanding #Mastodon gets easier once you get the basic idea that federation between servers can be understood as homeomorphisms across hyperplanes between the Riemannian manifolds of toots, whereas the servers represent countable finite sets of discrete entities.
Goodmorning Mastonauts!
Before we get acquainted today, just one small ask.
Ontario is in crisis right now. Our healthcare system is crumbling, and our pediatric hospitals are overflowing. This link is an impassioned speech by Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden. Please consider listening to this, sharing it, and getting just as angry about what's going on.
https://twitter.com/JoelHardenONDP/status/1593255865095553026?s=20&t=h5GNMJPUY94Y46ouin0j5g
Gonna explain my profile picture in a few toots...
As mentioned on Twitter recently, in the Feynman formulation illumination is a sum over all possible paths light could take. Use parameter x to specify path with endpoint y. (y typically a 3-vector, x usually high dimensional.) We’re interested in L(x,y), the length of path x ending at y. The illumination at y is ∫exp(ihL(x,y))dx where h is some physical constant.
For what I’m going to say just think of L as some random complicated function...
A key thing I've learned about Mastodon: When you find people you know and want to keep up with, don't just follow them — add them to a list!
Merely following is not enough, b/c their posts may not show up in your feed at a time you're logged on. Unlike FB or Twitter, Mastodon has no algorithm to resurface your friends' posts from hours or days ago.
So create a list called "Friends" and check it when you're on. This will ensure that you see what they posted while you were away.
"CBS News Suspends Twitter Posting ‘In Light of the Uncertainty’ About Musk-Owned Social Platform."
https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/cbs-news-pauses-twitter-posting-1235437572/
"In light of the uncertainty around Twitter and out of an abundance of caution, CBS News is pausing its activity on the social media site as it continues to monitor the platform,” Jonathan Vigliotti, CBS News national correspondent, said in a report about the latest chaos at the company on the “CBS Evening News” Friday.
This literature clock is the most wonderful thing I’ve seen in a long time. Checking the time becomes a moment of pure joy 😍
Death threats, racial slurs
this is one of the things that worries me about mastodon.
Death threats, racial slurs
I don't know much about mastodon yet. So I don't know what is technically feasible.
Automatically allowing any new instance to begin unblocked seems like a problem, because the nanoinstances devoted to harassment can set up and then once blocked respawn with new names at will.
I could post some ill-informed suggestions of how to solve that, but I'll leave it to people who actually know things. What can we do?
Refugee from twitter. I am into math, tech, clean energy, EVs, COVID info, books, movies, music.
Based in Toronto. Support Ukraine.
Boosts=endorsements twitter:https://twitter.com/heridfan