@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

vlk

@vlk@mastodon.social

ಕಲ್ಲಹಳ್ಳಿ / ಕೇಂಸೇತುವೆ, ಬೆಂದಕಾಳೂರು, Massachusetts

Formerly @atvlkashyap

Astronomer, operating incognito. Erdos number 3.

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

universalhub, to boston
@universalhub@mastodon.online avatar

The train hit the curve at Dudley Street at 60 or 65 m.p.h.; the driver had no chance
https://www.universalhub.com/2023/train-hit-curve-dudley-60-or-65-mph-driver-had-no

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@universalhub Was this why Rte 1 buses have had their destination boards all set to "66 Nubian Square" recently?

j_bertolotti, to physics
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

A little classical mechanics problem you can solve without doing any calculation:
Consider the hyper-simplified problem of a bell-shaped hill, and a point rock that can slide without friction up and down the hill. If you start with the rock at the bottom, and give it exactly the kinetic energy needed to arrive to the top and stop there without sliding on the other side, how long will it take to arrive there?
#Physics #ITeachPhysics

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@j_bertolotti Holy Flashbacks of Zeno!

The initial velocity is finite (because the height of the Gaussian is finite), but the length of the curve the particle has to traverse is ∞, so it has to keep getting closer and closer but never get to the top.

daringfireball, to random
@daringfireball@mastodon.social avatar

Arc 1.0
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/08/02/arc

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@daringfireball A browser that won't work unless you register. Sure, Jan.

rahmstorf, to random

I posted an epic thread on the tipping point risk of the Atlantic ocean circulation AMOC on the X-rated site. It has over 650k views there already. Can't repeat it here so I dare posting the link: https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1684903347118051328?s=20

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@rahmstorf oh shiiiiit

nrennie, to python
@nrennie@fosstodon.org avatar

The data visualisation guidance for the Royal Statistical Society that I've been working on over the past few months with Brian Tarran and Andreas Krause has now been published and is freely available online 🎉

If you're someone who makes charts, please have a look through the website (built with ) and let us know your thoughts. There are lots of examples of plots built with (and a few ones as well)!

RSS press release link: https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2023/general-news/rss-publishes-new-data-visualisation-guide/

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@nrennie One of my pet peeves with plots made by statisticians in general is that none of the labels or axis values are legible. Accessibility is not just about color. As I keep telling all the young 'uns with still-sharp eyes, they've got to make the labels and line thicknesses so large that your eyes hurt!

marcoarment, to random
@marcoarment@mastodon.social avatar

Can we please pronounce it “ten”

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@marcoarment Finally, I can confess. That is how I have always pronounced Space10.

johncarlosbaez, (edited ) to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

A clear analysis of how Republican unwillingness to accept the US becoming a multiracial democracy led to their embrace of authoritarianism:

https://www.californialawreview.org/print/the-third-founding-the-rise-of-multiracial-democracy-and-the-authoritarian-reaction-against-it

The basic idea is simple:

"The Republicans are a party of White Christians, but White Christians are a fairly rapidly declining share of the electorate. Just thirty years ago, 1992, White Christians were more than 70 percent of the American electorate. They were an overwhelming majority. Today, they’re about 50 percent and declining. And that decline has triggered a fear among some Republicans that they’re about to lose electoral viability.

[...]

But the problem is not just that Republicans potentially face a bleak electoral future; it’s that their base has come to view defeat as catastrophic. White Christians are not just any group. A few decades ago, they occupied the top rung in our country’s social, economic, political, and cultural hierarchy. They filled the presidency, Congress, Supreme Court, and governorships. They were the CEOs, the newscasters, the TV stars, the college professors. Those days, obviously, are long gone. But losing one’s dominant social status can be deeply threatening. Many Republican voters fear that they’re on the brink not just of losing elections, but of losing their country. They feel like the country they grew up in is being taken away from them. The very idea of a White, Christian America seems to be slipping away.

That sense of loss has pushed many rank-and-file Republicans towards extremism. A poll from early 2021 found that 56 percent of Republicans agree with the statement that the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it."

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@johncarlosbaez And yet they don’t care about climate change, which is in fact doing all the things they are deathly afraid of.

Neverfadingwood, to random
@Neverfadingwood@lingo.lol avatar

TIL that there are a lot of English words that have been borrowed into German. Especially in advertising and product names, it seems. The transition is not always a smooth one, however.

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@Neverfadingwood This seems rather unfair what the language that has given us bremsstrahlung, gesundheit, gedankenexperiment, kaffeeklatsch, schadenfreude, wanderlust, and zeitgeist, not to mention noodles, gummy bears, and hamburgers, gets in return.

There must be a word to express this disparity.

johncarlosbaez, (edited ) to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Sometimes things move really fast. On 21 July 1820 Oersted announced an amazing discovery: a magnetic needle hanging in the air is deflected when an electric current flows along a nearby wire. This was the first evidence that electricity and magnetism are related!

Within weeks, experimenters everywhere - especially in France - began studying this effect and figuring out the laws that governed it. By the fall of 1820, Biot and Savart announced that the torque that a current-carrying long straight wire exerts on a magnet falls off inversely with the magnet's distance from the wire.

By 1824 Biot had worked out more details, based on Laplace's calculations for a straight wire, and his own experiment with a V-shaped wire.

Biot thought of a current-carrying wire as made of many small segments, and a magnet as a pair of poles. He said the force exerted by a small segment of wire on a magnetic pole is proportional to the product of:

• the pole strength,
• the current,
• the length of the segment,
• the inverse square of the distance between the segment and the pole,
• the sine of the angle between the direction of the segment and the line joining the segment to the pole.

Notice: Biot was able to get the original inverse distance law for the magnetic force produced by a long straight wire from an inverse square law for the force produced by a tiny segment of wire!

So: magnetism, like gravity and the electrostatic force, is described by an inverse square force law! 🎉 🎉 🎉

(1/2)

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@johncarlosbaez I thought you were exaggerating when you said disastrously typeset. It's in arXiv, how bad could it be, eh.

Is that really the J.D. Jackson?

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

Switching parties while in office is a big FUCK YOU to everyone that voted for you. It's a very scummy move.

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@StillIRise1963 I don't get it. Why not? They are supposed to have voted for you, not your party affiliation.

Taken to the other extreme, if you did get voted in for party affiliation, why even have floor votes? All bills to be deemed passed on party strength.

In fact I wish there were more party switching. At the minimum the few decent Republicans that are left need a way to escape.

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@StillIRise1963 Disagree. Why would you want a Republican who is feeling the pangs of conscience to be locked in to what is effectively an abusive relationship with the party of the Former Guy? What should they do? I would encourage them to switch parties.

gruber, to random
@gruber@mastodon.social avatar

Threads is the most fun, most interesting new product of the year, and no one in the E.U. can use it, or will be able to use it anytime soon, because their own elected officials passed a law that effectively bans it.

Nice job. Have fun over here in the library.

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@gruber Well, you know, it did take Stalin to fight Hitler to a standstill in a cage match.

daringfireball, to random
@daringfireball@mastodon.social avatar

Astra Carta Seal
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/07/03/astra-carta-seal

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@daringfireball Mesmerizing.

It's geocentric, with a focus on the inner planets and directional constellations. Mars is just a speck and there is no asteroid belt. A curious and interesting choice.

gbhnews, (edited ) to fediverse
@gbhnews@mastodon.social avatar

Hey ! Now that we're receiving a new wave of folks via a ...

...what do you want folks new to to know?

(I'm sure @feditips has lots of useful stuff for you!)

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@mikey @gbhnews There is no algorithm, but there is @lisamelton

below, to apple
@below@mastodon.social avatar

A week ago, released iOS 15.7.7, providing a security update for devices almost eight years old now.

Eight years is an eternity for consumer electronics. The claim that Apple plans the obsolesce of devices is ludicrous

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213811

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@below I have this argument semi-regularly annually. Invariably with Android people who are projecting their experiences.

gutenberg_org, to books
@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social avatar

Hermann Minkowski was born in 1864.

He is best known for his foundational work describing space and time as a four-dimensional space, now known as "Minkowski spacetime", which facilitated geometric interpretations of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905). via @Wikipedia

The Principle of Relativity by Albert Einstein and H. Minkowski is available at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66944

Title page of The Principle of Relativity by Albert Einstein and H. Minkowski https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66944. via @gutenberg_org

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@gutenberg_org @Wikipedia
Translated by Saha and Bose, with a boost by Mahalanobis!

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

I spare you the Space Karen screenshot but he wants to remove the “block” feature from Twitter.

He’s like an AI model trained to ruin nice things.

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@thomasfuchs Ah so, my campaign to block every, but every, promoted ad tweet is working then.

gruber, to random
@gruber@mastodon.social avatar

I spent about 30 minutes using/touring Vision Pro yesterday. Ask me anything.

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@gruber Does it really set us on the path to ubiquitous AR/VR? How far is the future of Rainbows End?

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

BREAKING: GOP rejects major White House concessions on debt limit, talks suspended. If there is no agreement with enough time left to stop default, Biden should invoke the 14th Amendment and tell the fascist GOP to suck vacuum.

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@lauren

What happened to "we don't negotiate with terrorists"?

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

France is fighting to save your iPhone from an early death

French prosecutors have launched an investigation into the scourge of planned obsolescence.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/france-is-fighting-to-save-your-iphone-from-an-early-death/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

vlk,
@vlk@mastodon.social avatar

@arstechnica This has not been a concern with any iPhone I have ever owned. I used the first gen 4GB iPhone as my primary phone for five years. Even the 4S I got for my mother a decade ago is still in service as a TV and lights remote controller for guests.

vicgrinberg, to random
@vicgrinberg@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    vlk,
    @vlk@mastodon.social avatar

    @vicgrinberg Perhaps a bit outdated now, but there is a nice paper book based on Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

    vicgrinberg, to random
    @vicgrinberg@mastodon.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    vlk,
    @vlk@mastodon.social avatar

    @vicgrinberg As someone contemplating a trip to Germany in the not too distant future, I am getting a bit worried .. is German Rail that unreliable? I mean, I don't expect Swiss efficiency, but all these delays make it sound worse than Amtrak!

    vlk,
    @vlk@mastodon.social avatar

    @vicgrinberg Just to follow up on this (sorry, took this long to find the right search term to find this post again!) -- thanks for the advice, which was very helpful. I made sure none of my train trips (especially on RE) had to be on time (and they weren't), and only really did long distance ICE with no connections. It went great!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • osvaldo12
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • InstantRegret
  • ngwrru68w68
  • magazineikmin
  • everett
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • cisconetworking
  • kavyap
  • ethstaker
  • JUstTest
  • modclub
  • GTA5RPClips
  • khanakhh
  • tacticalgear
  • Durango
  • rosin
  • normalnudes
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • tester
  • cubers
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •