Greg Spradlin @spradlig@social.cleverlibre.org

Congress should ban assault weapons. American lives depend on it.

There it is: #ARD, the biggest public broadcaster in the world, opened its own instance for #Mastodon today – https://ard.social
Its flagship news programme gets the first account: @tagesschau@ard.social.

On #Twitter the #Tagesschau has 4 million Followers, I am curious, how much it gets here and how fast. Could give us a hint on how active the german community on #Mastodon still is. The inoffical @tagesschau@squeet.me had amassed 53k Followers, the other public broadcaster @ZDF 13k in three weeks.

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"Officer-involved shooting" is a euphemism for "officer shot someone" -- and it's used, by police and journalist, to make reality fuzzy.

If all journalism organizations agreed to, as this commentary advises, abolish the "Exonerative Tense” in headlines (and I'd add, articles as well), journalism would be much improved.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/emersonmalone/police-traffic-safety-headline-language-exoneration

Made this “hat” tile puzzle as a special request for a customer. Surprisingly challenging to put together! Pieces are 2x2” double sided wood

In case anyone missed it, my quantum entanglement posts are 6 parts so far! Here's part 2. https://skullsinthestars.com/2017/04/20/what-is-quantum-entanglement-part-2-randomness-and-measurement/

This is big. No #embargoes. No #APCs.

"The #EU is ready to agree that immediate #OpenAccess to papers reporting publicly funded research should become the norm, w/o authors having to pay fees & that the bloc should support #nonprofit scholarly publishing models.

In a move that could send shockwaves through commercial scholarly #publishing, the positions are due to be adopted by the Council of the EU member state governments later this month."
https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-infrastructure-2023-5-eu-ready-to-back-immediate-open-access-without-author-fees/

#Europe #RightsRetention

I have stumbled upon a surprising conjecture: The sequence defined by a(n) = n^2 - (n^2 XOR n) is injective, where XOR is bitwise exclusive OR. Can anyone prove or disprove this?

This is an outstanding reply to, and analysis of that Pamela Paul column in the New York Times that began this way:

"A paper that says science should be impartial was rejected by major journals. You can’t make this up."

Dave Karpf, an academic, takes it apart. He also testifies as a particiant in the peer review system. Worth your time.

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/pamela-paul-cancel-culture-grifters?utm_medium=ios

#nytimes #journalism #peerreview #science

Today, #Berlioz's 'La Damnation de Faust' with Spyres, Leonard, Relyea and @slso from St. Louis https://www.worldconcerthall.com/en/schedule/berliozs_la_damnation_de_faust_with_spyres_leonard_and_relyea_from_st_louis/75530/ #wch

jerry springer’s only been in heaven a few days and he already told jesus i’m not the father

Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered stock manipulation. It was Reagan's SEC that opened the floodgates to their abuse.

Stock buybacks don’t create more jobs. They don't increase wages. They don’t grow the economy.

They make corporate execs richer. Hello?

The Clarence Thomas bribery scandal widens:

—Leonard Leo and his organization had business before the Supreme Court.
—They sent large sums of money to Clarence Thomas’s wife.
—They deliberately removed her name from the paperwork.

It’s time for the US Attorney to open a bribery investigation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/05/04/leonard-leo-clarence-ginni-thomas-conway/

Peter Woit exposed the problems with string theory. Then Sabine Hossenfelder brought the news to a bigger audience. Now, in this hilarious video, Angela Collier is bringing it to the Gen Z gamer crowd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kya_LXa_y1E

Yes, she shreds the repeated grandiose claims of string theorists while gaming!

I agree with her main points. Some pedants (like me) will notice mistakes. I think they arose because she has a PhD in astrophysics, not particle physics. Also, she said she didn't want to talk about the physics, just the sociology. None of these mistakes affect her actual point, but just to keep up my nerd cred:

1. The pion was not one of the particles whose existence was predicted by the Standard Model. Yukawa predicted it way back in 1935, and it was found in 1947.

2. The cost of the never-finished Superconducting Supercollider would have been $11 billion, not $200 billion. I think she was just being flip here. By the way, the US spent $2 billion building it before giving up.

3. There are 5 superstring theories, not 10.

4. Bosonic superstring works best in 26 dimensions, not the numbers she haphazardly guessed.

A bit more importantly, I think she said the Superconducting Supercollider was cancelled much later than it actually was: October 1993. So this gums up her chronology a bit.

Still, I enjoyed this a lot!