Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

The fact that pretty much every 90's MTV show has the original music removed, except for— as of last year— Beavis and Butthead, honestly just pisses me entirely the hell off.

Logistically, I understand it, but paramount is rich as fuck, and can afford the fucking licensing for DARIA and THE STATE.

Niche toot perhaps, but why oh why are there no good artist impressions of a low-mass x-ray binary system available?

They’re either ridiculously low-resolution, look like they’ve been drawn with an Etch-a-Sketch, or have zero regard for physics. Often all three.

Am I really going to have to ask AI to make me one?!

(Not helped by trying to search the web while on a train moving at 300kmh, admittedly.)

George Santos threatened to resign from his seat in Congress if there is a deal with the Democrats to elect a Speaker.

In political terms, that’s called a win-win!

The most energetic single particle ever detected, a cosmic ray dubbed the "Oh-My-God" particle, was observed by the Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector #OTD in 1991.

Its energy was about 3.2 x 10²⁰ eV ~ 51 J, equivalent to a baseball moving at almost 60 mph.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-particle-that-broke-a-cosmic-speed-limit-20150514/

Image: Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine, using images of the Earth from NASA.

These days I'm primarily using #Firefox on my #Linux desktop (specifically Mint), and I'm curious if #passkey might be a reasonable option for me to use on sites that support it. I have an #Yubikey that I already use for #FIDO #2FA on sites that support it. I also have an Pixel phone with a titan chip, but I'm running #grapheneOS on there, and I'm not sure if that will complicate matters. Any relevant experience on either the phone or desktop front or pointers to relevant information would be appreciated.

Near as I can tell, it sort of sounds like passkey can work on Linux but maybe isn't supported in Firefox yet?

Just noticed a great Mastodon (web) feature: mouse-over emoticons and you get a popup saying what they are. If you are as emoticon-illiterate as me, you'll find this super-useful.

#eclipse #astronomy #math

I transcribed in LaTeX a portion of Dupuis's 1910 "Elements of
Astronomy: Principally on the Mechanical Side" for those, like myself, wondering about the basic science of astronomy.

http://gron.ca/math/dupuis_1910/dupuis.pdf

Y'ALL!

CHECK OUT #NASA's INTERACTIVE EARTH MAP
https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/story/annular_solar_eclipse?rate=0&time=2023-10-14T16:42:49.076+00:00

was not feeling the annular #eclipse map that only includes USA. in the link i posted above, under the embedded eclipse simulation, there is a link that says "View Full Screen"

look at how beautifully the artists rendered the paths of the eclipse:

1) they calculated their widths
2) colored them with a violet-black
3) then changed the opacity by the degree of visibility. so 30% visibility = 30% opacity

more at the ALT!

Though we live in an age where literal cartoon and comic book supervillains abound, we are absolutely lacking in equivalent superheroes, so I guess it's up to us everyday people to fill that gap.

Sometimes in physics you get an integral equation that looks something like

F(t) = 1 + ∫ᵗ G(s)P(F(s))ds

where P is some function - maybe a polynomial.

A simple example might be

F(t) = 1 + ∫ᵗ F(s)²/s ds

(This kind of thing pops up as the "Dyson-Schwinger equation" in Quantum Field Theory.)

An approach to understanding this might be to start with F₀(t) = 1 and keep iterating by plugging in the last thing you got.

So Fᵢ₊₁(t) = 1 + ∫ᵗ Fᵢ(s)²/s ds

Write the integration step as an operator (TF)(t) = ∫ᵗF(s)/s and our original equation is

F=1+T(F²)

and the iteration is essentially finding terms

F₀ = 1
F₁ = 1+TF₀² = 1+T1
F₂ = 1+T((1+T1)²)
= 1+T(1+2T1+(T1)²)+…

which you can keep expanding out.

The equation F = 1+TF² looks like some Haskell:

data F = One | Tree F F

And now we have that when you expand out the Fᵢ the terms correspond to (weighted) trees and the numerical value of each tree is given by a fold (in the sense of F-algebras) over the tree.

And that helps to explain why this paper I came across by Joachim Kock exists:

Combinatorial Dyson–Schwinger equations and inductive data types
https://mat.uab.cat/~kock/papers/DSE-types.pdf

I think you can see this as a baby version of where Feynman diagrams come from. Really you want constructors, not for trees, but for graphs. You can sort of read off what the constructors look like from the Lagrangian but I haven't yet fully connected the dots to the physics courses I took years ago...

Roughly 1/3 of all sites on the Internet eat just entered the fediverse. You can’t stop an idea whose time has come. https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/11/wordpress-com-blogs-can-now-be-followed-on-mastodon-and-other-federated-platforms/

Apple’s position simply makes no sense. If there was no other valid alternative, they’d *have to* use Google for free, not be able to twist their arm to get $21B out of them. They’d have no leverage if Google were the only game in town. You pay someone to do things they don’t have to do, not to do the only option available to them. Certainly not to the tune of $21B. For some context, this is equal to their entire Services *revenue*. /cc @gruber

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23891037/apple-eddy-cue-testimony-us-google

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/10/12/cue-apple-google

For the #Spacetober prompt ‘historic launch vehicles’ it’s my portrait of #mathematician and NASA scientist Katherine Johnson (1918 – 2020). One of the first Black women employed as a NASA scientist (& its predecessor NACA), she was known for her mastery of complex manual calculations of orbital mechanics & played a pivotal role in the success of the US crewed spaceflights from the beginning.
🧵1/n
#mathematics #sciart #linocut #printmaking #womenInSTEM #spaceArt #histsci #BlackInSTEM #MastoArt

Seriously though this is rad. 8yo said the shadows look like “dragon scales” and he’s not wrong. #eclipse

Huh, I wonder why phishing works so well.

One of our core developers who primarily works on device support has had their Amazon account locked after purchasing a Pixel 8 with Amazon gift cards. Can an Amazon employee please contact us and help escalate their case? Amazon support isn't helping and it's time sensitive.

Happy #Caturday! I hope your day is restful.

#CatsofMastodon

Born in 1896, Ida Noddack was the first scientist to suggest the principle behind nuclear fission. But Otto Hahn demonstrated this (with Lise Meitner! & Fritz Strassmann) & he won the Nobel prize.

Noddack also discovered rhenium (atomic #75) & predicted #43, but couldn’t confirm it experimentally, so Segrè & Perrier were later credited.

She tried to speak up that the ideas for fission & #43 began with her, but it lost her credibility. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2014.0009 #HistoryRemix #history #science