CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@jalefkowit TIL people in the 1800s had no idea what salamanders looked like.

@robpike As a young man I parroted my parents' political views if I was forced to comment on politics. I said I wasn't political. Since about age 25 it's been a slide farther and farther left, and now I, too, and quite an angry old man.

15: Me and the other altos [choir story]
Me: Are you an alto?
15: No, I'm a soprano, but the altos are less annoying so I told the choir director I was an alto

#TheKidsAreAlright #choir #music #teenagers

Listening to a podcast--very highly educated people--going on about one of their all-time favorite artists, Herb Albert.

They keep saying Herb Albert. One of the hosts is a superfan of Herb Albert.

Is Alpert pronounced like it had a b in it? I think it's Herb Alpert. I really do.

#jazz #music #language #grammarnazi

Contents of my bag after a heavy semester. This is archaeology going.on, here.

#professor #highered #teaching #clutter #butInAGoodWay

Dear People Who Know #AI and #ants
Look at this article, and look at the photo at the top of it. Under that it says "PC: Google Gemini." What. Thefuck. Does that. Mean.

Does this mean that isn't an actual photo of what the article describes? Is this some shitty AI slop where there should 100% be an actual photo?

I will investigate but I am prepared to be extremely pissed about this.

Hidden underground ‘city’ built by ants discovered in Brazil after shocking concrete test | World News - The Times of India

Rest of World News: In Brazil's vast Cerrado region, Professor Luiz Carlos Forti and his team made a scientific breakthrough. They poured ten tons of cement into an giant.

The Times of India (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

@geeknik Let's add this to the list of things people don't want to believe because it threatens their view of themselves and the world:

• Attentional focus
• Weight and weight los
• Poverty
• etc.

@JoscelynTransient this is weird but maybe understandable: labeled use usually (in the US) requires an FDA approval process, which requires a certain level of scientific evidence, which requires at least somewhat representative samples in treatment trials. This kind of research for HRT seems like it might be lacking, at least partly because of political shenanigans to restrict it, bit also probably because trans people willing to participate in drug trials might be a really small number... Which is almost certainly influenced by general and medical prejudice.

Not saying the pharmaceutical industry couldn't also be playing "appease the status quo sensibilities" for a few decades.

Learning what "non-positive definite matrix" means in my #sem output has been one of the sadder moments of my statistics journey.

#subtoot #rstats #statistics

@JamesWNeal Calling ICE on an aging widow because you want the inheritance is, I admit, not a consequence of this fascist period that I predicted.

@patrickleavy @madeindex @rl_dane @soaproot if infosec.pub is anything like infosec.exchange, it probably has a heavy focus on those things.

@patrickleavy @rl_dane @madeindex I asked a few people a couple of weeks ago and got some great recommendations. One was infosec.pub, run by the same person who runs infosec.exchange (my masto instance, and I very much like it). Other suggestions included

lemmy.world
retrolemmy.com (retro tech or gaming focused)
discuss.online
lemmy.ca (Canadian)

@rl_dane @madeindex @patrickleavy I was initially on lemmy.ml, and holy cow that is the vibe. Constant posting about this and related issues, and angry little mobs if anyone disagrees.

Note: Someone here on masto told me a few weeks ago that *.ml instances of lemmy tend to be tanky-heavy, while others might not be.