@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

pteranodo

@pteranodo@mastodon.social

Failure analysis engineer by day; fan of science, sci-fi, church history, theology, and how Reformed Christian traditions have reflected on social concern. Interests in #climate #humanrights #dinosaurs #reformedtheology #churchhistory #birds #startrek #antislavery

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siracusa, (edited ) to random
@siracusa@mastodon.social avatar

First, it’s great that @MichaelWhelan is on Mastodon. What an amazing artist.

Second, his recent post featured a spherical alien that I instantly recognized from my childhood. https://mastodon.art/@MichaelWhelan/112428886103083708

It’s from this book, published in 1980, which had a cover image that is also burned into my brain.

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@siracusa @MichaelWhelan Is that the one where it took a ton of unrelated sci-fi paintings, and put them all together as if the history of one big space war? The book caught my imagination.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

@gruber I don't know the WaPo reporters on the AI/self-driving car story, but it's pretty clear expertise in technology reporting and editing has crashed with all the buyouts of experienced tech folks (think of a single one left you considered top of their field 5 to 10 years ago), people having left mainstream mags/newspapers for inside work at companies (Apple, Google, Alphabet, etc.), research, or…laid off from the places they went to. I don't think this story would have passed 20 years ago.

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@gruber @glennf and tech reporting is stick numbers for the day

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

The EU is abandoning its Mastodon project.

I had thought the main way Mastodon could develop into a major social media was by attracting bodies who want to respect EU law and similar regulation. If even the EU institutions themselves don't prioritise it, then that's another nail in the coffin.
https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2024/edps-decentralised-social-media-pilot-end-successful-story_en

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@Loukas is it this Whole thing of, “Whoa, that’s an entirely different SERVER( /INSTANCE) , why the heck would you want to communicate with them, or even be allowed to see those folllowing them??”

fraser, to random
@fraser@m.universetoday.com avatar

One feature of modern galaxies like the Milky Way is the central galactic bar, with spiral arms radiating off its ends. It was believed these features only show up within the last few billion years of the Universe's history, but astronomers using Hubble have found bars forming in galaxies eight or nine billion years ago. New research with JWST finds these features are still commonplace even earlier, 11 billion years ago.

https://www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/2024/04/star-bars-galaxy-evolution-research/

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@fraser hi. Thinking about galactic civilizations. What’s the closest that two rocky planets each orbiting different stars could exist near each other, or at least in this bar here?

hotdogsladies, to random
@hotdogsladies@mastodon.social avatar

Christopher Nolan often uses the opening title to whisper something useful about the twisty story you're about to unravel.

Which makes subsequent rewatches so rewarding because you're all "Ooooo…it was all right there from the beginning!"

Related: "The Prestige" (2006) is still very good.

image/png
image/jpeg
image/jpeg

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@hotdogsladies isn’t it a spoiler to say something in opening credits is a spoiler?

pteranodo, to random
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

John Flavel, English Puritan, comments on Matthew 25. He says he knows another famous preacher who says no one understands or believes Jesus’ commands to help, or we wouldn’t see so many poor Christians. (Many take “my brethren” literally).

Do we today take evidence of suffering as evidence of our sin, or the sinfulness of the suffering?

What from Matthew 25 today can you do for a saint?

jdmccafferty, to random
@jdmccafferty@mastodon.online avatar

2 Apr 1421: Catherine of Valois & Henry V are at (NPG)

image/jpeg

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@jdmccafferty Interesting. Is this a painting of an aged mannequin? Those spots seem to go along with the 3D nature of the shape.

nixCraft, to random
@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

A Windows user, a Mac user, and a Linux user walk into a bar.

➡️ The user orders a beer and gets into a fight over how bloated the selection is.

➡️ The user orders the most expensive single-origin craft cocktail and smugly admires its minimalist design.

➡️ The user installs a whole brewery in the corner and declares free drinks for everyone, but then spends the rest of the night explaining why their homemade brew is objectively superior.

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@nixCraft Only problem is you gotta get your binary bits (let’s say, water) from the well down the road, pump it by hand, and then it doesn’t work.

deborahh, (edited ) to random
@deborahh@mstdn.ca avatar

\o/ Marie Kondo "is open with followers… I realised always maintaining the perfect state of tidiness was not my goal, but spending time with my kids is. That’s what really sparks joy. …It’s just that the idea may no longer always be attainable”.

“In the past, I didn’t have the idea of a temporary location for items.”

How Marie Kondo changed her mind about mess | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/30/how-marie-kondo-changed-her-mind-about-mess?CMP=insidesaturday_email

As in your closet, so in your head:
you set the & timing

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@deborahh no I need her for one day

dangillmor, (edited ) to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

Well, this is a transcendent level of evil: Facebook bought a VPN company and deployed it, in part, to spy on its competitor's users.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/

It's a reminder that VPNs have their own risks, beyond technical ones if operated incompetently -- namely, that you have to trust the VPN company itself.

UPDATED to reflect which users were being spied on.

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@dangillmor I have often got Facebook ads about something I’d searched for on YT or other sites

dansup, to fediverse
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

Pixelfed's 6th birthday is approaching next month.

To celebrate this milestone, I have an ambitious idea: 6 Years, 6 Apps.

I'm working on 6 separate apps that will launch this year that will extend your @pixelfed account in many new and exciting ways.

@loops and @supapp are the first 2, and will be launching in beta within the next month.

You have to be crazy to be this ambitious, and luckily, I am 😎

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@ern @dansup is there such a thing publicly available?

taylorlorenz, to random
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social avatar

Oop! https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/fewer-people-using-elon-musks-x-struggles-keep-users-rcna144115

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@taylorlorenz anyone we else feel increasingly less admiration for each new crop of quitters? Like I’d be ever less likely to want to buy your book or attend your seminar.

pteranodo, to random
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

Meet someone and you reach out in warmth, only to find them very standoffish and cold. Often find out later they have a boat, beach house, or pool, and cannot afford another user of those facilities.

pteranodo, to random
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

Charles Spurgeon, particular Baptist, Micah chapter 6. He affirms that there is such a thing as “class sins”, and these are the most grievous. These sins are prevalent, occurring in “many a place”, and include paying workers far less than the “value to masters”. He says many “great” men only look upon fellows as stepping-stones to wealth.

Is this rhetoric allowed for preachers?

How do you use others as stepping stones?

jdmccafferty, to random
@jdmccafferty@mastodon.online avatar

Martin Luther died 18 Feb 1546. Here he is, his wife Katharina Von Bora and daughter Magdalena.

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pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@jdmccafferty Great finds, these paintings. May I ask what are generally your sources? I find many portraits which ought to be in the public domain are (effectively, wholly immorally) locked up under a copyright of a museum. I don’t make commerical re-use but like to keep to collections offered as PD, not as eternal revenue stream for board of dying museum.

AkaSci, (edited ) to random
@AkaSci@fosstodon.org avatar

NASA acknowledges a problem with the Mars rover Perseverance’s SHERLOC instrument – that a dust cover is stuck in a half-open position.

Many here have been writing about this based on the many images taken of the dust cover and images from SHERLOC’s Context Imager camera whose view is now obstructed.

The blog post says that the dust cover has been stuck since Jan 6. An engg. team has been investigating and tweaking the power input of the drive motor.
🤞
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9549/team-assessing-sherloc-instrument-on-nasas-perseverance-rover/
1/n

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@AkaSci We don’t have another craft nearby that we can drive over and bang into that lens cap?

Gargron, to random
@Gargron@mastodon.social avatar

Excellent video by @Techaltar about the . You can basically send this to anyone who wants to learn what makes Mastodon unique compared to other social media platforms and what it is that we're doing here 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ptZ1W-FRA

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@Gargron @Techaltar Only thing wrong is that it updates, and jumps the text back (or is it forward) three to ten posts while I’m reading and didn’t ask for it. Other than that, great site. Important to have alternatives.

pteranodo, to random
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

Walther Henry Medhurst, Congregational missionary to China, talks of getting around China. He says it would “contaminate” “the cause of God” to use friendly smugglers from the opium cartel to do so.

Do we operate from an opposite perspective, that the cause of God sanctifies any unethical or illegal thing? And posit those who complain as opposing the cause of God?

What social media platforms are your favorite Christian authors using?

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@Loukas What totally gets me is the human rights activists and Christian writers who wave the flag of being in the know as to rising fascism can’t stay away from something that platforms them. Just thinking about journalists kicked off that site for reporting on a human rights thing (forget exact case). But no, their publishers need a follower count to justify next book deal.

pteranodo, to random
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

A third of US persons of Chinese descent are Christian. I’m sure those who are restaurant owners don’t exactly mind the business. But the tradition of viewing them as an “othered community” that is uniformly non-Christian is itself an “Other-ing”.

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@ekknappenberger Yes. But I’m actually talking about those who don’t celebrate Christmas presuming that a race of people must be non-Christian and therefore their natural, “co-othered” allies.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

Substack continues to conflate their existence with a government entity. By definition, a company is always engaged in choices, cannot censor (unless it's the sole platform available), and has financial, regulatory, legal, and social responsibilities that differ from government censorship.

It’s such mealymouthed greedmongering that normalizes hateful speech no company is required to carry…just like no one is required to pay for Substack subscriptions. https://substack.com/@hamish/note/c-45811343

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@glennf While we are on these two recent topics, do you know of any international charity that isn’t posting on the other place?

TheWarOnCars, to random
@TheWarOnCars@mastodon.social avatar

"This year, the average weight of a new car in the US was more than 4,300lb (2,000kg) – a full 1,000lb (450kg) more than in 1980."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/16/paris-us-size-cars-europe-emissions-suvs-france

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@TheWarOnCars Please don’t do this at the expense of headroom.

pixelfed, to fediverse
@pixelfed@mastodon.social avatar

We need more support to help sustain our services:

https://fedidb.org
https://fediverse.info
https://activitypub.network

Support Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.org/support-our-project

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@pixelfed what would be the average cost per user?

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

I just got a private message that I was being Trumpian for using mocking nicknames, that liberals shouldn't resort to demeaning names like I've used.

Should I stop? Is it Trumpian? Because honestly, I'm offended. My stuff is so tame. I'm hardly in his insulting league, but if I am, tell me.

pteranodo,
@pteranodo@mastodon.social avatar

@GottaLaff I am sorry that it appeared as an attack. You’re doing good work and I didn’t even notice the name you used. You did ask in principle.

But to others, yes, I have seen a group’s deliberattion on leaving bird site be completely derailed when conservatives noted the source detailing problems with site was using potty mouth descriptors for EM. Our friend here is nowhere near this. But yes you gotta go high when they go low.

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