Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

Cool to watch the #Euclid lunch. I know many people are talking about it on #Twitter ...or trying, because apparently the bird site is having some sort of meltdown that's stopping it loading for many. Glad I no longer depend on it for anything.

@professorhank "Cratchit is not exactly the 'allegory for destitution' the post claims. He was a skilled worker that would have made much more than many workers in the Victorian era, they said."
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/03/facebook-posts/christmas-carol-characters-wages-not-best-comparis/

@suetanvil @grimalkina In STEM, even just taking a job in a similar field outside of academia can yield 2 or 3 times the salary, so the idea that academic reaearchers are in it for the money is beyond absurd.

For anyone else like me using a #Yubikey or other #webauthn #2FA in #Firefox who just had it recently start prompting for a PIN when it shouldn't be, apparently the is a bug, and the workaround here helped me:
https://support.nitrokey.com/t/fido2-firefox-asks-for-a-device-pin-that-i-never-set/4927

I'm not sure if this is an issue with the most recent Firefox version for #Linux or just the current #linuxMint package.

A cool result a long time in the making: using variations in the signal of distant pulsars to measure the ripples in spacetime and learn about the gravitational wave background.

@elizabethtasker I have to admit that I'm curious about the Twitter account ban story, but that may be one you can't tell.

@filipw If they really want to renounce all restrictions, something like the #CreativeCommons CC0 license would seem to be the thing to use.
https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/

@Wolven The Manchurian release candidate.

@Wolven True, but on the upside, I think you've just coined the name for the next big online crafting platform, "sweatr".

In case you needed a reminder of Musk's hypocrisy on free speech. #Twitter #birdSite

https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-users-1850570720

@Renshaw01 As a theoretical physicist, I'd also encourage people to look up Emmy Noether, whose work revolutionized our understanding of symmetry and conservation laws and is essential to the contemporary understanding of quantum field theory. A more detailed overview of her life and work can be found in this thread:

https://mastodon.social/@mcnees/110072925812796303

There's been some discussion recently of the idea that Betelgeuse could go supernova in a matter of decades (not certain at all, see the link below). Since it's hundreds of lightyears away, that would raise the possibility that it could already have gone supernova in the past and the light just hasn't reached us yet.

When situations like this come up, people sometimes want to quibble about whether to talk about the event as being in the past or the future. But an interesting facet of relativity is that in a situation like that the event has a "spacelike separation" from our current moment, and whether it is in the past or the future is a matter of perspective; observers at our current position and instant in time will disagree about whether the hypothetical supernova event is in the past or the future if they have sufficiently different velocities.

By contrast, events in our past light cone (whose light could already have reached us) lie unambiguously in the past; all observers agree they happened at an earlier time regardless of their velocity. All events in our future light cone (events to which we could still send light signals) lie unambiguously in our future. These two classes of events have "timelike separation" from the here and now. But the timing of spacelike separated events is a matter of perspective, and in some sense they can be thought of as lying neither in the past nor the future.

In any case, I always find it silly to quibble about the wording for these cases in casual conversation. Everyday English doesn't really contain the words you need to capture the situation without turning to physics jargon.

https://www.universetoday.com/161751/betelgeuse-is-almost-50-brighter-than-normal-whats-going-on/

@sarae I guess where I'm going is that I think in general the people actually overseeing the work who understand its value don't have more money to spend, while roughly half of the people in Congress who can allocate money are openly hostile to both scholarship and the government in general (aside from law enforcement and national defense). So, while in another context you might expect withholding volunteer work to result in payed work, in this case I would simply expect it will result in the work not being done.

Not that anyone should feel obligated to give away their time, but I don't think that those who can and choose to are actually displacing a paying position as a result of this situation.

@ZachWeinersmith Sort of the opposite of what you're asking for, but I had to link this old (but epic) Jon Stewart rant against deep dish pizza for anyone who hasn't seen it. I actually like deep dish pizza and don't think any respectable pizza should be foldable, but this bit still gets me every time.
https://youtu.be/jCgYMFtxUUw

@Chelleville An oldie but a goody. "The Moon: A Ridiculous Liberal Myth"
(this looks like the original text to me, though the original predated Reddit)
https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/jgwpml/the_moon_a_ridiculous_liberal_myth/

@sarae You say "the federal government ABSOLUTELY has the cash to pay for the work they want done," and perhaps that happens to be true of the National Archives, but as a general statement that is false in my experience. Many if not most government agencies outside the defense (DoD) and intelligence communities are often tasked to do more than they're actually budgeted to do and are perpetually short on cash.

Now, if you said that the *country* can totally afford these things then I agree, but collecting and allocating those funds is generally in the hands of Congress, not the the executive branch agencies themselves.

@gmusser Take *that* Hamilton!

@MichaelPorter If you decide you want something less DIY, we've really liked the Blueair Blue PURE 211+ (what a mouthful). Be aware the make several distinct but similarly named products. Of course, with the wildfire smoke it may be impossible to find such things in stock.

@z3r0fox Becoming more of a salted hash I guess.

@ditsch42 I was curious whether one use case may be some scheme for precision tests of the equivalence principle. @MichaelPorter