Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

An important part of the plot in the latest season of The Righteous Gemstones is Y2K. It’s amusing, but also points to the way Y2K gets misremembered today.

I’ve been researching Y2K for years (and wrote a dissertation on it), so…here are some comments! (1)

Apropos of nothing, let me tell you about PO₄* as a water mass tracer.

By measuring phosphate (PO₄) and O₂ in the ocean, we can construct a quasi-conservative tracer, PO₄*.

We can then determine that e.g., the deep Pacific consists of 45% water from the North Atlantic. 🤓

"All in" it now costs about $2300/mo to run Newsie.social.

That includes servers, moderation staff cost, insurance, etc. (most of the staff including myself work free on Newsie)

That's a big jump in costs over the past 3-4 months (largely because of Twitter's meltdown)

However we've reached the point of unsustainability because we take in only $1000/mo and we're running out of runway.

Contribute now:

Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/newsiesocial

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=BCV5VZ5HRMB3U

Frackers can use dangerous chemicals without disclosure due to “Haliburton loophole”

Facking industry exempt from disclosure of 28 chemicals regulated by federal law.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/frackers-can-use-dangerous-chemicals-without-disclosure-due-to-haliburton-loophole/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Tired: "the classical Greek myth of Leda And The Swan".

Wired :"Duck Duck Zeus".

(This was my daughter's idea but I love it.)

What’s going on with the reports of a room-temperature superconductor?

Rumors are flying of confirmation, but the situation is still frustratingly vague.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/whats-going-on-with-the-reports-of-a-room-temperature-superconductor/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

I don’t understand how COVID is spiking again after we’ve tried everything from pretending it’s over to pretending it never happened

It was the wettest July on record for both the Republic of Ireland & Northern Ireland.

The difference?

For Northern Ireland, the records start in 1836. For the Republic of Ireland, they only start in 1940.

Why?

It’s thanks to 16,000 volunteers who transcribed 5 million lost rainfall observations in the #RainfallRescue project!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60860397

I have just been requested to commute three days a week 135 miles away each way from my home (I have not moved) to an office I was never required to attend before the pandemic starting end of September.

If anyone needs remote product/infrastructure/platform engineering or backend developer who has 15 years cloud deployment experience and data center to cloud migration experience, email me on spotter@referentiallabs.com.

#haskell #PureScript #Deno #typescript

THIS JUST IN: Man who willfully deadnames his own child angry about users deadnaming website that still has the old URL

Study (N=2,000 STEM faculty) finds women were 1.5x more likely than men to disclose hidden identities (like mental health or LGBTQ+) to students, even though women associated associated greater levels of stigma w/ the identities than the men.
https://www.science.org/content/article/women-faculty-members-share-more-about-themselves-when-teaching-new-study-reveals

Accreditation bodies needs to take a good look at Texas A&M now that the extent of ruling party political manipulation is being revealed. Political appointees on the board literally wrote to each other they wished to “control” the political leanings of the faculty, and someone inside was forging faculty signatures in an attempt to blunt the hiring of a black woman.

#Texas #TAMU

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/03/texas-am-regents-kathleen-mcelroy/

Florida bans AP psychology over gender identity, sexual orientation lessons, College Board says

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/08/03/florida-bans-ap-psychology-over-gender-identity-sexual-orientation-lessons/

#FloridaBansAPPsychology #GenderIdentityLessons #SexualOrientationLessons #CollegeBoard #PsychologyEducation #FloridaEducation #Politics #News

I swear, this rebrand never fails to make me laugh.

Tackling researcher burnout feelings in the time honored tradition: by thinking what if the solution is a new project I haven't done yet. The Ultimate Project though. This is the one. This one will have all the answers and prove everything.

@scheidegger @johncarlosbaez If you just want the derivatives of roots wrt coefficients to multiple orders, my formal power series library has been able to do this for a long time...

https://github.com/dpiponi/Wattage

(Not very polished code.)