@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

wordshaper

@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network

Guy who bakes, snarks, writes, and codes.

Currently at Google (my second search engine employer!), previously at Bloomberg.

One time Perl 6 pumpking, lo these many years ago, as well as core perl contributor and part-time VMS perl port maintainer. I have written the occasional article, mostly on perl. (but once upon a time long ago on the Amiga. Those were the days...)

Currently not in France. Dammit.

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

edbott, (edited ) to random

I must say I really appreciate this feature in Mastodon (on the web) for those times when someone insists on carrying on an argument way too long.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@edbott Neat! I had no idea this feature existed, and I suspect I shall make some use of it in the future.

rb, to random

Question: Where do people get their eBooks from?

Since deGoogling myself and exiting the Amazon, I've struggled to find legit sources.

I've no issue with paying for what I read, but I'd prefer DRM-free.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@rb I use Kobo. They still have a desktop app (at least for Win and OSX) so you can download them locally and the books are all in standard ePub format. DRM is still at the whims of publishers, but if you choose you can read all your Kobo library in Calibre if you don't like the Kobo reading software.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@rb Calibre's support for reading their ebooks is also handy if you're inclined to, say, save the books in a backup somewhere in case the kobo reader app goes away some day. (Like the Nook app did years ago, though thanks to Calibre I can still read those books elsewhere)

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Forbes, or The Onion? Can we even tell the difference these days? https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/05/06/elon-musk-threatens-to-implement-gifted-twitter-blue-subscriptions/

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@cstross We can tell the difference between Forbes and The Onion! One of these sites has pieces which are well written, well edited, cogently argued, and correct. The other is Forbes.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Shrinkflation is a hell of a thing. We got a box of Strawberry Honey Bunches of Oats last week and the box held 11 ounces of cereal. The maple variant had 12, and the box of raisin bran we got had 16.6. All the same size box which, if I remember right, at one point held 20 ounces.

At least each box had 8 full servings in it so that was... something.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@jepyang We got out the scale and checked the strawberry. It's maybe five reasonably sized bowls of cereal.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Interestingly this is even kinda recent -- the strawberry box is part of the header image on their website, except that box is 13 ounces so it's shrunk since that was made.

manu, to random

Long time no "Goomics" 😀 (This is episode https://goomics.net/377 )

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@manu ...it hurts because it's so true.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Huh, looks like Elon is still trying to reinvent subways only really badly.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/4/23711032/elon-musk-boring-company-vegas-loop-expansion-tunnel

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@jepyang Pretty much everything Elon pushes is a "that's neat!" thing you run across in SF stories when you're 12. Sadly for the world, it turns out that most of the things that sounded really neat to a 12 year old kid are technically impossible or really really stupid when you actually try them.

aLPHA, to random

For me, what's interesting about federation and instance self-hosting is sort of a return to the original spirit/ideas of BBS networks in the late 80's and 90's, pre/early internet: a focus on building communities around shared interests, not monetization and scale. I had lots of accounts, different types of conversations across lots of BBSs. Love it.

Can we add door games to the fediverse? ha

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@aLPHA This... is surprisingly tempting.

gizmomathboy, to random
@gizmomathboy@mastodon.xyz avatar

My feet are tired and aching and it's time to get some sleep.

Nominally I've decided to make waffles tomorrow.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@gizmomathboy waffles are always in order. The only downside is good waffles need an overnight rise, but the upside is frozen homemade waffles toast excellently well.

jwildeboer, to random
@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net avatar

I really, really hope this gets verified ASAP. A simple test for specific gut bacteria (Desulfovibrio) could help to diagnose risk of Parkinson’s disease. https://yle.fi/a/74-20030498

“Helsinki University makes Parkinson's disease breakthrough

Researchers say certain strains of gut bacteria are the likely cause of Parkinson's disease.”

Paper at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2023.1181315/full

“These results suggest that Desulfovibrio bacteria contribute to PD development by inducing alpha-syn aggregation.”

Desulfovibrio bacteria enhance alpha-synuclein aggregation in a Caenorhabditis elegans model of Parkinson’s disease

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@jwildeboer can you imagine? Brew up a batch of bacteriophages specifically targeted for this strain as a treatment if you show signs of having the law in your gut?

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

"The CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery Says 'Love of Working' Will End the Writers' Strike"

Uh, sure. yeah. In concert with CEOs love of paying people fair wages for work no doubt.

https://gizmodo.com/david-zaslav-warner-bros-discovery-streaming-wga-strike-1850408939

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@lauren "no, no, sir, this isn't a real guillotine. The special effects department built it specially for you, I'm sure it's fine. Now if you could just get ready for your photo-op..."

atax1a, to random

learning today from ex-twitter people that we "alienated a bunch of people who just don't like internet fights" at twitter by not being nice while trying to get them to ban the terfs and nazis, and, well, i feel like that pretty much encapsulates the problem

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@atax1a I can understand not liking internet fights, and I can understand working at twitter in trust and safety, but what I can't understand is someone doing both simultaneously.

ianbetteridge, to random

Come on Tories, you can do it, the magic 1000

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@ianbetteridge Seems a lot fewer voters were pro-con this time around.

stacylwhitman, to random

Is there a list somewhere of the people on here in the SFF or children's/YA publishing community? I have no idea how to find people on here. So far I've just gone through the lists that other people follow, but I'm not sure if that's the best way.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@stacylwhitman The https://wandering.shop instance seems to have quite a few writers and artists on it, so you can probably run through the member directory and find a lot of folks you want to follow.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Like the coronavirus, a royal coronation can cause headaches, fever, an unpleasant malaise, and lingering neurological problems. In extreme cases (eg. WW1) coronations have been known to lead to a 1% fatality rate among affected populations, much like COVID19 among the unvaccinated.

But unlike the coronavirus, there's no vaccine against monarchism.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@cstross There's no vaccine we're willing to administer. You can develop immunity via exposure but, as we've seen with all the other diseases, acquired immunity often wanes with time.

maxkennerly, to random
@maxkennerly@mstdn.social avatar

Cartoonish levels of corruption. One nice thing is that, while Justice Thomas continues to obliterate the Supreme Court's legitimacy, he's also dragging down an entire generation of conservative law professors who are obliged to defend all this.
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-school-tuition-scotus

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@maxkennerly I'm not sure how dragging down a cadre of law professors supporting Thomas' particular brand of delusional constitutional law interpretation is bad.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@peterbutler @maxkennerly Ah, fair, I misunderstood.

Maybe between Deeply Corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Deeply Corrupt Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Deeply Corrupt Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Deeply Corrupt Chief Justice John Roberts we'll... probably do nothing, but at least we can wishcast about supreme court ethics standards that are actually ethical.

Also wonder how Barret and Alito are corrupt, since it seems odd they'd not be indulging when the other four are.

purple, to random
@purple@nya.social avatar

i wish librarians would write our search engines

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@purple Northern Light, way back in the day, did this. We had a whole group of library science folks who wrote the classification rules that the crawler and classifier engines used. It didn't exactly toss LoC classification numbers on every page in the index, but if you were looking specifically for, say, 19th century poets you could do that. (Or look for "bread" but in pages classified economics rather than in ones classified as baking)

The unfortunate thing was it just didn't scale -- you had to do this for a lot of languages if you wanted it to work internationally. Also a large fraction of the pages on the web (oddly not porn, porn is generally extremely easy to detect, but that's a separate story) couldn't get a good automatic classification. 16% classifiable is what I remember, but it's been 20 years so that may be wrong.

Anyway, tried it, had the scaling issues from hell, and wasn't as broadly useful as you'd like.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@purple We actually tried that once. Sadly, like many other groups that tried doing search engines, it failed.

rascalking, to random

the good dunks near our house is shutting down for renovations later this month, and i'm now facing the horror of going to the mediocre dunks, which will now be overwhelmed with extra customers, or switching to honey dew in the meantime.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@rascalking ...wait, what backwater part of MA do you live in that there are only two dunks within easy visiting distance? That seems kinda weird.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

I suspect the world would be significantly more just and more advanced in good ways if we reported on the things said by people who are correct rather than by people who are confident.

wordshaper,
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

@bbak While a universally applicable definition of "correct" is probably impossible, there are many, many areas where a definition of "correct" is clear.

You only need to watch any of the business news, do a brief survey of the pundits, or reading of various editorial pages to find dozens (or hundreds, if you have the stomach for it) cases of people who are confidently saying verifiably bullshit things but keep getting brought back to say more bullshit later.

People very often and reliably mistake confidence for correctness, and as a result we have a whole large class of people who's job it is to be confident, but not correct, in public. Actually doing something about that would be helpful.

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Still spring, still pretty

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Yay, spring!

wordshaper, to random
@wordshaper@weatherishappening.network avatar

Kinda lovely today.

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