@shriramk@mastodon.social
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shriramk

@shriramk@mastodon.social

Brown Computer Science / Brown University || BootstrapWorld || Pyret || Racket

I'm unreasonably fascinated by, delighted by, and excited about #compsci #education #cycling #cricket and the general human experience.

See https://mastodon.social/@shriramk/109302532598801863 for longer #intro.

I wish to be searchable by tootfinder

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

shriramk, to random
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Nothing much, just responding to my cognitive scientist buddy Rob Goldstone who was trolling me about the frisson he gets from dynamic scope.

shriramk,
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@cigitalgem At least the man knows his maps and filters, thank goodness for having learned Scheme at some point.

Anyway, didn't prevent you from hanging with him for the eclipse!

shriramk, to random
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1/ Over the weekend there was a block party a short distance from my place for a lady who turned 90. That's notable enough, but in her case it's special because she's a Holocaust survivor. I chatted with her today and looked up some things. Remarkable story! Buckle in: ↵

shriramk,
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2/ She grew up in Poland. They escaped in late 1939, fleeing mainly the Russians. Wait, Russians?!? That's right, today I met with a living witness to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. (Link if you don't know what that is.) ↵
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

shriramk,
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3.1/ How did they get out? A Japanese diplomat in Lithuania saw what was happening. He put humanity ahead of the fact that he worked for an Axis power, handing out as many visas as he could. Thousands of Lithuanians, Poles and *Slavs owed their lives to him. ↵

shriramk,
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3.2/ His bravery was of course not rewarded, and he paid for it in many ways. He didn't ask for credit, either. He was only recognized near the very end of his life. He is apparently the only Japanese person recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations. ↵
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara

shriramk,
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4/ Anyway, the family got a visa in Lithuania. They made the dangerous passage across Siberia by train. From Vladivostok they took a boat to Japan. After a year there, Japan shipped them to Shanghai (remember, they occupied chunks of China). ↵
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War

shriramk,
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5/ In Shanghai, they were herded into a ghetto. Yes, there was a Jewish ghetto in Shanghai (read here). The Germans tried to get the Jews deported, but the Japanese wouldn't. She still speaks with great admiration for the Japanese. ↵
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Ghetto

shriramk,
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6/ Eventually she made her way to the Bronx, and now lives in Providence. She's strong of body and mind. The "1000 Year" Reich lasted ~13 years; that 7yo escapee has now lived ~13 times as long. The best possible response to pure evil. •

shriramk,
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@dpp Wow. Would love to hear that story sometime… Did you know Peter Wegner did the same?
https://blog.cs.brown.edu/2016/05/31/peter-wegner-life-remarkable/

dpp, to random
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Watching logistics happen brings me joy. My Supernote finally shipped from China on Thursday… it’s in the US now and should be delivered by Tuesday. Wow!!

shriramk,
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@dpp One of these things?

https://supernote.com/

shriramk, to random
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You can't be the financial capital of the world if you can't monetize everything in the news. (Hidden Grounds cafe, NYC.)

shriramk, to random
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This is an amazing article, because it manages to contain something to offend just about everyone. It also contains the kind of less-than-half truths that are symptomatic of bad programming languages courses (and blogs and Wikipedia pages) everywhere. Wow!
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-cult-of-the-haskell-programmer/

shriramk, to random
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New blog post: "How to Teach Writing Research Papers"
https://parentheticallyspeaking.org/articles/how-to-teach-writing/

shriramk, to random
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Because because is part of the testing syntax in @PyretLang, you can write 🧑‍🍳's 😘 tests like this:

shriramk,
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@pervognsen You're probably overthinking this; @greghendershott's replies should help. Feel free to ask more there if not!

shriramk, to random
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Students actually buy into new-age concepts of "energy", and this messes with their understanding of science. From Finland, no less![https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235630742_Healing_Mental_Energy_in_the_Physics_ClassroomEnergy_Conceptions_and_Trust_in_Complementaryand_Alternative_Medicine_in_Grade_10-12_Students]

shriramk, to random
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Every time I visit a new university campus, I really wish it had an architecture guide to explain why, e.g., most of the campus is Mediterranean, some bits are Northern Italianate, and one is proudly NeoGothic, longbow slits and all—is CU Boulder secretly terrified of ColoState?

shriramk, to random
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1/ For several years we've been building Forge, a pedagogically-focused tool to teach formal methods. Here's our first write-up! As the name suggests it's a tribute to Alloy, but we're innovating on several fronts:
https://blog.brownplt.org/2024/04/21/forge.html ↵

shriramk,
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2/ Language levels (à la DrRacket). Formal modeling languages are sophisticated and would benefit from a gradual introduction. The languages in Forge follow the learning progression: functional ⭢ relational ⭢ temporal. ↵

shriramk,
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3/ Domain-specific visualizations. A pair of pictures should say it all. What do you think the left picture is about? How about the right one? (Hint: they're the "same picture", yet obviously they're not. A lot more to say here!) ↵

image/png

shriramk,
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4/ New testing forms. What does "testing" mean in a formal methods setting? Forge extends the Alloy language with new constructs for students to be able to express their intent. ↵

shriramk,
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5/ You can download and use Forge right now! (Forge is built atop DrRacket and Java, so install is easy.) You can use materials from the Brown course site, but over time we're going to be producing a bunch more. We'd love your feedback!
https://forge-fm.org/

shriramk, to random
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I was yesterday years old when I first noticed that NIST (Nat'l Inst of Standards and Technology) uses the same "Worm" typeface in their logotype as NASA did (now retired, 14 CFR 1221).

image/png

shriramk, to random
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California/Colorado people: I'll be visiting/speaking about "The Human Factors of Formal Methods" at

HP Labs: April 16
UCSC: April 17
Stanford: April 18/19
CU Boulder: April 23

If you're around, say hi!

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