Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

Imagine having the complete scripts (game code) of all Sierra On-Line games that use the SCI engine published between 1988 and 1996 fully decompiled, human-readable and annotated.

Yes. 100% of the scripts. 100% of the games. 100% made public.

Our SCI mastermind sluicebox did it again!

If you want to learn about the full story, ranging from a deep-dive into the code and tales about the history of Sierra's script language and previous reverse engineering efforts, check out

https://www.benshoof.org/blog/sci-scripts

For CosmoQuestX Hangout-a-thon 2023, we're doing something new. Instead of 36-hr of interviews, musical guests, & failures to remember to actually, ah, fundraise, we're just going to build.

For 36 hours we're building.

Join us?

Learn More: cosmoquest.org
Donate: bit.ly/CQXHAT23

If you have notes in Evernote it might be a good time to make sure they are safely backed up! Evernote looks to have fired almost all its employees.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36609641

As many if not most of you know, I have been writing about the ethical, epistemological, and social implications of of GPT-type tools since shortly after they hit the scene, and I've been writing about those same implications in "A.I." for a lot longer than that.

Now I am proud to present my article "Bias Optimizers," wherein American Scientist Magazine gave me the space and time to talk about those all of those things, to a very wide audience. I hope you enjoy it:
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/bias-optimizers

No federal law requires employers to accommodate menopausal symptoms.

Unlike pregnancy, this stage of life that impacts tens of millions of women is not protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, as U.S. courts have consistently held that menopause is not a disability, even when the symptoms are seriously affecting someone’s ability to do their job.

#menopause #womenshealth #genderequality #health

https://theconversation.com/millions-of-women-are-working-during-menopause-but-us-law-isnt-clear-on-employees-rights-or-employers-obligations-206354

I remember hearing about pulsar timing arrays and very low frequency gravitational waves nearly 20 years ago. To see it "probably" done for real is awesome.

"What?!", my non-astro followers ask?

This is a near perfect intro.
https://youtu.be/BUmJxZ7PQzw

It gets more absurd every day for Big Journalism to keep pouring its work into Saudi-government-funded Twitter, which is controlled by a right-winger who hates real journalism and boosts extremists.

It gets even more absurd for journalism orgs to keep embedding tweets in their stories, given Musk's unfathomable destruction of the platform's usefulness.

I keep wondering when journalists that big tech is not their daddy.

"Piracy can't be stealing if paying for it isn't owning"

This is increasingly how it feels, when streaming shows disappear for tax reasons and things you "own" digitally become inaccessible.

Thank you @Illuminatus for this quote.

The International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling (IMPRS-ESM) opens a call for doctoral candidates in climate research:

https://mpimet.mpg.de/en/career/imprs-esm

Within this year’s call, I am looking to fill two PhD positions in my group at Uni. Hamburg / Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon / Max Planck Institute for Meteorology focusing on the ocean carbon cycle modeling in the Earth system.

Application deadline is 15 Sep.

He was an interpreter alongside US Army Special Forces in Afghanistan and survived the Taliban. The father of four was shot dead in #DC this week while driving for #Lyft. https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/virginia/lyft-driver-killed-dc-afghanistan-interpreter-us-army-special-forces-escaped-taliban-father-of-four/

Hey billionaires, I found your satellites. They're right here, fucking up my telescope data.

Human beings were never meant to be on a single social media platform for life. Archaeological evidence tells us our earliest ancestors hopped from platform to platform, following the migrations of the influencer herds, moving on when the soil was too depleted to grow new discourse

Since there's apparently something like 300,000 more users on here, here's some articles I've written about getting started with #Mastodon and the #fediverse.

How to Get Started on Mastodon
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-get-started-on-mastodon-and-leave-twitter-behind

Alternative Social Platforms
https://www.pcmag.com/picks/quitting-twitter-try-these-alternative-social-media-networks

How to Find Your Friends on Mastodon
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-find-your-friends-on-mastodon

How to Follow People on Mastodon
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-follow-people-on-mastodon

How to Pick a Mastodon Server
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-pick-a-mastodon-server

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He was like „funny that“ and I said „well actually…“ and told him the reason: that we lost 90% of the generation that would be 50+ by now to the aids pandemic and many of the surviving 10% never came out.

You should have seen his face.
He just gave a soft „oh“ and there was SO MUCH compassion in his face.

So I fully expect a septuagenarian ally among my very queer bass group in the next weeks. 🥰

Also: today I saw this post on Instagram and that is what I‘m talking about:

Colleague: "I have seen this new, interesting paper!"
Colleague proceed to explain me the core idea of the paper in 2 minutes while we are walking.
Me: "It looks interesting, I will look at it."
Me has to read 3-4 pages into the paper before the authors give any explanation on what the core idea is. Before that is just grandiose claims and incomprehensible acronyms.

People, we have a problem with how we write our papers 😑
@academicchatter

TIL:
The Greek word amethystos may be translated as "not drunken", from Greek a-, "not" + methustos, "intoxicated". Amethyst was considered to be a strong antidote against drunkenness, which is why wine goblets were often carved from it.
— Wikipedia

But this makes me wonder if the Greeks had a different name for it *prior* to coming up with this (easily refuted) belief.

When you first see a gemstone in the ground, don’t you call it something related to its appearance or location, rather than jumping straight to “Oh, that will ward off drunkeness!”

I was surprised to learn that not only does Mastodon have a #TweetDeck like application but it's built into the web app!

To enable, use your browser and log in to Mastodon, go to Edit profile> Preferences, enable Advanced Web Interface and save, to get what looks like (to me) a TweetDeck-like interface. I'm sure there are feature gaps; I'm sure folks who relied on TD can submit feature requests.