@meltedcheese@c.im
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

meltedcheese

@meltedcheese@c.im

Melted Cheese Hath No Master

The Edge: There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

  • Hunter S. Thompson

#Retired #Science #ComputerScientist #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Robots #Space #NewsJunkie #politics #Progressive #ClimateEmergency #SocialJustice, #democracy, #humanism #humor #Culture #Jazz #Tornado #SecondLife #ChilePepper #PS5 #Gamer #Sword #HomeAutomation #SciFi

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juergen_hubert, (edited ) to Battlemaps German
@juergen_hubert@thefolklore.cafe avatar

A bit of an odd request, but I am looking for good books or other sources which describe pre-20th century settlements and societies which are both

(a) located in desert climates, and
(b) exist within fairly high mountain ranges.

I am less interested in the history but more how they worked as a society - including their technology, their lifestyles, and so forth.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_climate

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@juergen_hubert The Mandara Mountains are defensible terrain and so provide some protection from slavers. This is an isolated region with significant iron ore deposits. Mandara became a center of weapon and tool manufacture that further attracted other tribes and as a result of this intertribal contact it served as a locus for the spread of weapon designs.

2/2

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@juergen_hubert You might consider the Guduf (Gudupe), a small tribe of the Fali people residing along the border of northeastern Nigeria and Chad. Many tribes objected to domination by the Bornu and Hausa emirates, and later the Fulani (Fulbe), the dominant ethnic group in North Central Africa. During conflict in the 1800’s tribes including the Guduf fled to the Mandara Mountains, hills and valleys.

https://www.mandaras.info/Guduf.html

1/2

Jaden3, to random
@Jaden3@mastodon.social avatar

The thing I am most interested in is time travel. I would be real interested in connecting with people on mastodon that have same interests 👌🏾
I tried writing a book last year but lost interest. Need more inspiration 🙏🏿
#TimeTravelAuthors

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@Jaden3 I love and stories, Andria often think about the science that might be involved. Here are some illustrations I’ve collected to help me understand what is going on in these stories

An illustration of types of timelines. Three columns, each one describing the types of events and causality that are possible in each of the timelines. The three types of timelines are: Fixed Timeline, Dynamic Timeline, and Multiverse.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@Jaden3 Here is another diagram that I find helpful in understanding re the speed of light in. It depicts intervals. A cone is positioned on 3D axes. The vertical axis is time, two (for simplicity) horizontal axes are space. The narrowest point of the cone is at the origin; the here and now. inside the cone are called time-like. Outside the cone world lines are space-like. Time travel involves going from time-like to space-like world-lines.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@Jaden3 is related to faster-than-light travel from inside to outside the spacetime interval light cone. It makes be dizzy trying to interpret multiple world lines using this chart 👆🏼, but it can be done. Have fun!

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@Jaden3 I enjoyed the “Time Patrol” stories by Poul Anderson, including the novel, “Shield of Time.” I’m not sure if this is where I first heard the idea of time-like vs. light-like vs. space-like trajectories, but if you are going to go then you need to understand the causal implications of messing with world lines!

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@Jaden3 Here is a great list of stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_travel_works_of_fiction

Jaden3, to sciencefiction
@Jaden3@mastodon.social avatar

I am 💯 obsessed with Sci fi ain gon lie. The biggest wish I would have in the whole world is if aliens from other planets would connect with us . Surely this is a possibility at some time in the future?
Just want to connect with other Sci fi folks to discuss? Tho hope not just fiction 😬

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@Jaden3 If you confine speculation to our current understanding of physics, then the opportunities for extraterrestrial contact are slim to none unless we (or they) can manage to create technology to manipulate local spacetime. This is not theoretically prohibited. The proposed Alcubierre Drive is one such:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

ai6yr, to climate

The Guardian: "‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe... An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem " https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/06/simply-mind-boggling-world-record-temperature-jump-in-antarctic-raises-fears-of-catastrophe
#climate #disaster #antarctica #wx #whathappensinantarcticadoesntstayinantarctica #uhohh

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@ai6yr Sorry for the yelling. I should really stop reading the news and just putter about with my retirement hobbies and watch the daffodils come up. My family says I make them all anxious when I talk about the climate.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@ai6yr This is not the only recent bad news #climatechange article. There are many. In fact, I can’t remember reading anything positive for a long time. Sure, lots of talking and pledges and schoolchildren planting trees and people giving up meat. Get real! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! 🔥 That is where we stand today. All of us. There is no fire department! Our house is going to become increasingly uninhabitable if there is not immediate action and massive change on a global scale.

Viss, to random
@Viss@mastodon.social avatar

::[ open comms relay to past viss
::[

message begins :::

You think that chunk of brisket
you put in the smoker at 3pm will
be done in time for dinner.

you are wrong

::: message ends
]::
++ath0
comms relay socket closed

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@Viss When the stall happens, your faith in smoking meat is sorely tested. After several ignominious failures, I successfully navigated through the stall to delicious brisket. The meat will be ready for you…when it is ready. Not a minute earlier and if try to hurry it, well, you are in uncharted territory and risk it all.

P.S. start your smoker before noon and give yourself at least six hours. I use the beer method. Six hours equals two six packs. Grill and chill.

dan, to random
@dan@discuss.systems avatar

Yesterday I found myself sitting at 40,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific, miles from any civilization, when my phone popped up a notification that one of my cats had used the litter box.

This is a level of technology I could never have dreamed of. Or necessarily wanted to.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@dan It is the great transparency of life. Think of the planetary wealth required to get that urgent message to you. I wonder if your cat would be self conscious about bouncing signals off satellites in orbit to get this information to you within a few seconds of it happening, or would it be overwhelmed and hide in a cardboard box until your return? I suspect cats, if they knew, would hack their litter box and spam you for ransom treats.

JamesGleick, to random
@JamesGleick@zirk.us avatar

Sounds logical, but is it?

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@JamesGleick It is all about probability and frequency distributions of letters in the English language and whether you find them useful for anything. Consider word games that have you guess letters. It makes great sense to pick the highest frequency letters first, then once you get one or two you can significantly constrain further choices. There are several ways to compute frequency distributions, but tables for letters and letter combinations are readily available at search engines.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@JamesGleick P.S. This doesn’t guarantee in any way that the results have any semantic meaning.

AdaraAstin, to random
@AdaraAstin@smutlandia.com avatar

I wonder sometimes if men's suits genuinely look good, or if they just seem good due to the combination of status marker and social conditioning.

It's hard to separate social constructs from perception and taste.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@AdaraAstin Yes they do. I went to a mens’ store for some suits. I apologized, saying I didn’t know my size. The tailor says, “There are no sizes, only fits and doesn’t fit.” Which is profound in itself, but the point is, those suits I bought, handmade to my body, were the best ever, for me to wear and others to see (so I’ve been told). I have no doubt that perception biases towards our preconceptions, and value judgements more so. But some suits are genuinely good!

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

I am quite confident that someone is designing an LLM right now that will be able to help patients boil down all the web advice into usable chunks. Right now it’s just maddening trying to do that manually. Opinions vary so widely, often because there’s just a lot of obsolete data out there.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@grumpasaurus @shoq @argv_minus_one yes, and they cannot conceive why this is wrong. Their trust is misplaced. Making good decisions requires knowledge and the ability to reason about how to use that knowledge to solve real-world problems (borne of experience). These attributes are fundamental to expertise. All the LLMs, search engines, aggregators and data mining will not get there without the conceptual skills possessed by true experts.

the_etrain, to Bloomscrolling
@the_etrain@beige.party avatar

So it begins...

Low angle close up of a single miniature daffodil. Almost fully bloomed.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@the_etrain I love crocus (crocuses, croci?). When I was 10, my family lived in Amsterdam for a year. The first sign of spring were millions of crocus in the lawns that surround the Rijksmuseum. So many colors!

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Still thinking about the concept of studying ant communication by getting down to ant level. Make a tiny robot (we don't know how to make walking robots that small, so wheels it is) the robot would have a camera, little pads to collect pheromones (which could be dropped off to be analyzed) antennae IR sensors and maybe a way to stridulate?

Then one could really find out what's going on in there.

Worst case you have made an immersive ant VR experience!

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@futurebird Smallest walking robot is 0.5mm.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/05/tiny-robotic-crab-is-smallest-ever-remote-controlled-walking-robot/

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

I seem to have shocked that person by telling them that in the early 20th century, the term “Palestinian” in British policy mostly referred to the Jews being emigrated to Palestine, not the “Palestinian Arabs” in Palestine. (They didn’t really solidify that term for their aspirational nationalist identity until the PLO used it extensively in the early 1960s.) He flatly rejected this and accused me of being a Zionist shill. Oh well.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@shoq Truth.The term was originally appropriated by the PLO and this has continued with other terrorist organizations since then.

To me, using “Palestinian” alone to refer only to the Arab inhabitants of that region is unreasonable and shows bias (conscious or not).

For a short time, I used the terms Palestinian Arabs (or Palestinian Muslims) and Palestinian Jews to separate the geopolitical and ethnic considerations. As you indicate, some people were very hostile to the idea.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Yesterday, Xavier Worthy ran a 40 in 4.21 seconds, setting a new NFL combine record. That is really fast!

Xavier:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M1xhUAMEA2E

But then NFL commentators said that he's faster than Usain Bolt, because Bolt ran a 4.22, and just... No.🤡

Usain Bolt ran the 40 in 4.22 in his late 30s, after he retired, without training, in sweatpants and street shoes!🤯

Bolt:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ADoySgg-njI

A top track athlete running a 40 properly, gets a time closer to 4.12

Coleman:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_yoRayOIA

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@mekkaokereke I’ve always wondered how an NFL lineman would fare at sumo, and vice versa. Sumo wrestlers are big, extremely strong and can direct that strength fast, but they have so-so endurance. NFL lineman, even the biggest, are lighter, but have equal or better strength and better endurance.

18+ NaturaArtisMagistra, to random
@NaturaArtisMagistra@mastodon.world avatar

I have to believe that good will come from all this. I believe in the concept of yin yang. All this horrible evil is an imbalance. The ship of Fate needs to right herself and she will find the ballast.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@NaturaArtisMagistra Agreed. It is the timeline that worries me. It took hundreds of years for Europe to crawl out of the darkness imposed by the Church during the Middle Ages.

april, to random
@april@macaw.social avatar

Interviewer: what happens when you type google.com enter your address bar and hit enter?

Candidate: talks for 18 hours

Interviewer: didn't mention that the host USB controller polled the keyboard, powered by 5V on pin 1, to get the keycodes stored in its internal memory. fail.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@april This is why my family rarely asks me such questions anymore.

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

Think about what numerically controlled tooling and flexible automation did to manufacturing. That’s long past due for software. I am willing to bet that within 3 -5years, AI code generation will get so good that developing a full-featured mastodon or bluesky client would take about a week. If that. I have no doubt that AI itself will be used write those tool kits. I believe it’s not a matter of if, only when.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@shoq I notice you didn’t say, “error-free” so I must agree. 😁 Automatic programming is a foundation for computer science and the basis for software itself! The obstacles are minimal to the automatic creation of ever-more complex code at higher levels of abstraction. Software engineers could bootstrap this today without AI, but most are still in love with scripting languages. That must change. I don’t think AI can invent this next step on its own.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

So, does the FBI not know the difference between an informant and a spy.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@StillIRise1963 There is a {vast} amount of counterintelligence smarts that the FBI will never reveal unless/until there is a compelling reason.

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

Here's a thing you really can't do as a mixed methods researcher in an applied field with strong beliefs: confuse a commitment to community-based methods and participant co-design with personality cultish practices of echo chambers and "loudest voice in the room" amplification. Qualitative methods that are used to cement existing echo chambers via emotional insistence are just as bad as statistical methods that are used to cement poor theoretical frameworks via mathematical insistence.

meltedcheese,
@meltedcheese@c.im avatar

@grimalkina @mrcompletely Nailed it. Add to this, cultural resistance such as ‘but we’ve always done it this way.” Also, once the Certified Smart Guys say something it becomes near impossible to challenge no matter what the facts and expertise you can muster.

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