Paul Sutton @zleap@social.cleverlibre.org

@augieray @zleap

I experienced a likely EBV infection as a young teen, with chronic fatigue and other setbacks. In the end I was able to resume ‘ordinary’ function in high school, and have been doing fine since… except when I’m not, and sometimes I wonder who I would be and what my life would have been like without that?

Ted 'tytso' on #lkml:

```
What people seem to forget is that free software does not mean that people will fix your software for your use case for free. It means that *you* are free to fix the software, or to pay someone to fix the software in question.
```

https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230622173913.GA34229@mit.edu/ #Linux #kernel #LinuxKernel

@zleap @augieray

Thanks!
They are all learning and growing with all the support I and their parents can give them. Children are resilient and most of them will be fine.
I think it will turn out that this kind of setback has been rather common through history but is easier to see here because a novel virus provides clear timelines and comparisons. It will stop when we figure out basic sanitation for air, the way we did for water.
…

@augieray

My students did very well through 3 months of online learning and through another year and a half with distancing and masks. Learning continued with barely a hiccup. Their progress slipped and fell in 2022 when nearly all of them contracted Covid. The ones that are Covid damaged are still struggling and everyone who had it took a hit. The students that avoided Covid are quite notably in a different place.

S. Wolff: Fomalhaut's exo-asteroid belt as seen by JWST!! (I wrote more about this here: https://www.astronomybynight.ca/the-curious-case-of-fomalhaut-b/)

Debris disks are detected as radiating dust, mostly in IR. Fomalhaut has "eye of Sauron structure". Dust they observed is way more complex than predicted, especially the "intermediate belt" that wasn't previously seen. Fom b not detected - "great dust cloud" is just a stupid background galaxy.

The fact that inner part isn't cleared tells us about properties of planets

#ACM2023

I have met with Google, Facebook, Apple, and other big tech orgs multiple times in the past.

One of the things I started doing when dealing with these orgs is state "Sorry, but for legal reasons, I'm not allowed to sign any NDAs." (I work for an openly public company.)

I like to use that as a gauge for how important the discussion will actually be. I've only had one meeting delayed for a bit which is perfectly fine.

https://soc.jrconlin.com/@kev@fosstodon.org/110592625735716714

QL User Guide #zxspectrum #retrogaming

READ: https://archive.org/stream/NH2021_qluserguide.pdf/page/n331/mode/2up

"Billionaires now hold so much of the world’s wealth, their apologists argue, there’s no choice but to rely on them for philanthropy. But we can’t take our eyes off the ball: We need to tax the ultrarich out of existence."

In an age of massive global inequality & billionaires supporting authoritarian politicians & doing precious little about climate disruption, it's time for global wealth tax

https://jacobin.com/2021/11/elon-musk-wealth-tax-inequality-poverty-philanthropy

@zleap @humanisttrek You're right, it doesn't matter. I agree with @humanisttrek: scientifically arbitrary notions of "correct" and "incorrect" are used even today to include or exclude groups of people.

Modern linguistics has moved away from prescriptivism (telling people what is "correct" English) and toward descriptivism (figuring out how people actually use English -in its many variants).

In the end, the only objective measure of "correctness" of language is how well it conveys meaning.

Russian Mercenary Boss Says Kremlin’s Grounds for Ukraine War Were Lies

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/18609 #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #Russia #UkraineWarNews

When you end up having to buy a five year old version of hardware to run open source firmware that's under constant improvement with features you need, because the more recent versions of that hardware are crippled in ways that make running that open source firmware impossible, and so the older versions of the hardware are increasingly expensive and difficult to find.

One downside of working remotely is that when you have a day full of meetings, you still end up doing your job *while attending the meeting* because most meetings are 80% fluff you can ignore. But if you're in-person you have no choice but pay attention.

I say this is a downside because if you're not paying attention then you can miss that important 20%. And it's *extremely* stressful. 😅