@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

bthalpin

@bthalpin@mastodon.social

Sociologist in Limerick

Mostly playing with unrealistic computer models of real world processes

Emacs, Stata, Shiny & Rstats, Julia, Python

Linux on the desktop since about 1997

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philipncohen, to random
@philipncohen@mastodon.social avatar

Today I realized "resilience" in psychology is inequality in sociology. Something is a "risk factor" if it has an average negative effect. If everyone overcame the risk equally there would be no negative effect and thus no resilience. Resilience means some people overcome it and others don't.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@philipncohen It's a good conceptual pair to highlight a key psych-socio contrast: one discipline looks for explanations (first, at any rate) in individual differences, the other in social structure.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@grimalkina @philipncohen That's why I said "first". Sociology doesn't ignore the individual either, but the centre of sociology is much more towards structure and that of psychology much more towards the individual.

DZGrizzle, to random
@DZGrizzle@mastodon.social avatar

From the Coaching Network

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@DZGrizzle I've said it before: "lots of US evangelicals are followers of the Jesus of the Old Testament, and not that dirty f***ing hippy of the Sermon on the Mount"

simon_brooke, to gamedev
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

I've spent some of today finding bottlenecks in my world-simulating cellular automaton, and I can now simulate 10,000 years of history from the middle of the Ice Age to the middle of the Iron Age over 40,000 square kilometres (at kilometre scale) in slightly under two minutes of wall-clock time. It's utterly caning my poor computer, but it doesn't crash.


The state of my poor computer in the middle of a simulation run. Memory is maxed out (garbage collection is clearly the major bottleneck) and eight of my twelve processor cores are also maxed out.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@simon_brooke All the more impressive that this is powered by a wind generator (+solar) that you had to repair yourself!

bthalpin, to random
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

People are talking about this as a terrible new use of AI. It's not. It's a classic use of AI, as we see in AI policing, AI in HR, AI refusal of insurance claims, etc: have the computer rubber-stamp what you wanted to do anyway.

Just faster, and with even less reflection.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

badastro, to random
@badastro@mastodon.social avatar

Last night I saw a gorgeous halo from high cirrus clouds around the Moon, so I had to get a shot. In this wide angle view you can see Procyon below the Moon, Castor and Pollux right next to it, and Capella way over on the right. Zoom in to see the stars better.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@badastro It's the alchemical male symbol

bthalpin, to random
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

It's the biggest thing to happen to Ballintemple since George Boole caught his death of cold walking home from Queen's College Cork in the rain in 1864.

bthalpin, to mastodon
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

I've had a little process running for the past year or so, totting up Mastodon "active monthly users". Occasional bumps up (one outstanding one last summer when Elon did something particularly idiotic) followed by long slow declines.

Was somewhat disappointed to see recent growth of about 250k turning out to be a phantom instance (telling lies via the API).

onezero, to random
@onezero@mastodon.social avatar

Work in progress: a Tele Deluxe with a neck made by Metatonal Music, fretted in a 24-to-the-2/1 just intonation tuning.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@onezero Wow! You can actually see the Just Intonation.

(Nice guitar too)

selzero, to random
@selzero@syzito.xyz avatar

For those that will bash a Bible while complaining about immigration.

Here is a "terrorist leading thousands of illegal invaders across borders claiming they want "refuge against an oppressive regime".

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@selzero @simon_brooke @lukevanin

Small boats, not Amazon packages.

Things haven't been the same since all the Angles and Saxons came across the Channel in small boats.

glynmoody, to random
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

Three million malware-infected smart #toothbrushes used in Swiss #DDoS attacks — #botnet causes millions of euros in damages - https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/three-million-malware-infected-smart-toothbrushes-used-in-swiss-ddos-attacks-botnet-causes-millions-of-euros-in-damages what a headline...

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@glynmoody It didn't actually happen

simon_brooke, to random
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

Second of February, 10:00 am, and the air temperature at 55°N 4°W is 10.2° Celsius. That's grass-growing weather; it does not feel normal.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@simon_brooke I'm planning to do all this year's heavy tree-pruning and cutting-back-crap this weekend, because I'm pretty sure we'll see birds nesting within about 10 days.

Luckily we have the new Imbolc bank holiday!

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@simon_brooke What I said: in the middle of it all I saw a grey crow fly by carrying an implausibly large twig.

geomannie, to random
@geomannie@mastodon.scot avatar

I can really get behind this
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/655171

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@geomannie I've been running simulations of what Single Transferable Voting in multi-seat constituencies would look like, using constituency-level data for the last four elections and this is the summary. In short, the Tories would practically never have a majority without FPTP.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@geomannie The Electoral Reform Society have looked at it too (rather more carefully than I, I imagine) and their estimates make mine look "too conservative", in both senses

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/what-if-post-war-elections-under-the-single-transferable-vote/

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@Wen @geomannie Coalitions are very common in more proportional systems. In 2-party systems coalition formation (and the related horse-trading) takes place much more within the two main parties ("broad churches").

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@passenger @geomannie I think you're misreading something. It would have changed many elections. Even under my analysis of the last four, STV would have killed all chance of a Tory majority in 2015, and they would have a 12% chance of a majority in 2019.

2017 stands out in that the difference between the simulated STV results and the May disaster was unusually small.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@passenger @geomannie

In 2015, actual seats
Cons 331, Lab 232
Under STV (ERS)
Cons 273, Lab 236

So STV would have left the Tories far short of a majority.

In my analysis: Cons 277, Lab 245.

bthalpin, to random
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

Oh FFS, half of them in Limerick.

https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2024/01/25/ireland-failed-to-keep-carincogens-out-of-water-supply-eu-court-rules/

masukomi, (edited ) to emacs
@masukomi@connectified.com avatar

[EDIT: help acquired. Details in replies]

geeks. A while ago i added something to my config that turned all characters after the 80th column red. I desperately want to turn this off in org-mode (or off entirely) but i can NOT figure out wtf is doing it.

I've looked for all the things SO answers have suggested, but I'm getting nowhere.

Help Please?

Config is here https://github.com/masukomi/masuconfigs/blob/master/.doom.d/config.el

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@masukomi
Binary search: comment out the 2nd half of your init, re-run emacs. If the problem goes away, it's in the second half, if not, in the first. Comment out half of the offending half and iterate: eventually you'll identify the problematic code.

It's very crude, but it's actually a quick way of identifying where a problem comes from.

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@masukomi I only use it when I'm out of ideas, but it works!

bthalpin,
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

@masukomi

Funny, but I just used binary search on my init file to solve a really puzzling problem with no obvious cause: on a new machine was locking files (as normal) but then claiming some other process had locked them.

I had a line where I was setting system-name based on an environment variable (used to be useful, I think). On the new machine the result was null, and it screwed up the lockfile names. I can diagnose it in retrospect, but I would never have thought to look for it.

bthalpin, to python
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

Playing with doing something "embarrassingly parallel", and very much missing the ease of multi-threading in

bthalpin, to random
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

I made a submission to Waterways Ireland a while back, when their proposals included a very low speed limit for cycling on greenways along the canals and Shannon navigation. I just received notification that the limit has been scrapped.

@ccferrie @irishcycle @ownohmanny

bthalpin, to emacs
@bthalpin@mastodon.social avatar

In 29 and before, and possibly earlier builds of 30, M-x buffer-menu RET opens a buffer menu with the (previously) current buffer at the top, with point on it.

Now in Emacs 30, if a buffer-menu already exists, it opens that, without refreshing it. I.e., the previously current buffer is not automatically at the head of the list. I keep killing the wrong buffer by mistake 😞 🤦

When did this happen? Where should I moan about it?

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