@UP8@mastodon.social
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UP8

@UP8@mastodon.social

Software developer at a major research university. I live on a farm near Ithaca, NY.

Experienced in e-commerce, e-publishing, search, A.I. and other data-rich systems. Current side projects involve modelling financial messages in OWL, a smart RSS reader with a transformer-based classifier and workflow engine, and a system of three-sided cards.

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UP8, to space
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

💧 Mars Express finds evidence of large water deposit at the Medusae Fossae Formation

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL105490

UP8, to Health
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

🦠 Humans can get their pets sick: Reverse zoonoses more common than once thought

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-humans-pets-sick-reverse-zoonoses.html

UP8, to Aviation
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😳 A flashlight caused $4 million in damages left inside an F-35 engine

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/flashlight-f35-damage/

UP8, to Futurology
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🔋 The Cactus 6502 homebrew computer

https://www.commodorez.com/cactus.html

UP8, to space
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🤖 NASA’s robotic, self-assembling structures could be the next phase of space construction

https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/17/nasas-robotic-self-assembling-structures-could-be-the-next-phase-of-space-construction/

UP8, to books
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

recently read: “The Star Fox” by Poul Anderson; I read a huge amount of science fiction as a kid but I never got into Poul Anderson. I really appreciated this 1965 book for Poul’s ear for languages and a depiction of war which is still idealized but light years ahead of Smith and Heinlein.

kellylepo, to accessibility
@kellylepo@astrodon.social avatar

Question for people who regularly use alt text. How would you prefer someone to describe the relative size of something, like the core of a galaxy compared to the total galaxy, or an area of an abstract painting?

Should the description be something like: "one-ninth the size of the total frame", or "no larger than an enclosed fist held up to a large screen", or something else?

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@kellylepo I stick to describing the image in alt text; when I post sports photographs for instance, I will say in the body of the toot who the pictures athletes are, who won the game, etc. In the alt text I'll say "there is a woman in a red shirt with the white number 20" If she "takes up 30% of the frame" that's not her attribute but a matter of how I composed the photo and if I want someone to "see" what they can't see that's what I can do. (See my "media")

UP8, to ilaughed
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Six Mile Creek inside one of many parks named after media mogul Roy Park

https://www.fllt.org/preserves/roy-h-park-nature-preserve/

khalidabuhakmeh, to random
@khalidabuhakmeh@mastodon.social avatar

Oknomiyaki

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@khalidabuhakmeh where did you find that?

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@khalidabuhakmeh how? i tried making okonomiyaki in a pan after seeing it cooked in Cardcaptor Sakura and it didn’t come out so good. I know good okonomiyaki restaurants in San Francisco, NYC (close to where I met Gus Hall at the CPUSA headquarters) and Montreal and also a few places in LA that advertise having it but don’t really make it.

UP8, to internet
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⚔️ War in Gaza: An ethicist explains why you shouldn't turn to social media for information about the conflict or to do something about it

https://theconversation.com/war-in-gaza-an-ethicist-explains-why-you-shouldnt-turn-to-social-media-for-information-about-the-conflict-or-to-do-something-about-it-218912

#socialmedia #war #gaza #israel #palestine #activism #politics #media

UP8, to books
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

just read: Second-Stage Lensmen by Edward E. “Doc” Smith

(… escapist space opera that I find on the shelf and enjoy sometimes)

rasterweb, to random
@rasterweb@mastodon.social avatar

I saw this comment today in relation to marketing but as a former web developer it also holds true:

"All positioning is a nightmare."

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@rasterweb No, there are two kinds of companies you can work for: (1) ones that have a business plan that makes sense (no struggle w/ positioning) and (2) ones where the business plan doesn't make sense (may or may not have problem w/ positioning; I mean Uber spent $25B on "half-priced taxi rides" which is a popular position to have, it's just questionable that there is any business left when the music stops.)

zalasur, to random
@zalasur@mastodon.surazal.net avatar

About once a month or so, someone in my feed will come up with the idea to create a website that serves as a human-curated directory of the web and I'm like, ah we have reached full circle. We're now reinventing the Open Directory Project.

(Which I think is a good idea, but it's interesting to see people come back to this idea over and over again).

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@zalasur (1) where are the little ones aimed at particular domains? (2) what would it take for directories to succeed today? and (3) wasn't ODP killed by corruption? (e.g. SEO spammers got many of the editor slots, the others didn't stay active)

UP8, to nature
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Moss covered log on the side of a gorge in Shindagin Hollow State Forest.

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

Tomorrow I'm teaching this paper https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.0029 about how probably every civilization on every planet marches faster and faster toward burnout, UNLESS they realize that collapse is coming and radically restructure.

This is a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox: most civilizations don't last long, and the ones that do are undetectable: "A sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Nature."

Welp, my mind is totally blown for the day. Time to go snuggle some animals.

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@sundogplanets see "HPLD" in https://stanislaw-lem.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cyberiad

Mastodon, to mastodon
@Mastodon@mastodon.social avatar

Strangers offering unsolicited advice or derailing conversations should be familiar to all who use social media. In our new for Android update, we’re testing a new feature aimed to curb these behaviours:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/11/improving-the-quality-of-conversations-on-mastodon/

UP8, (edited )
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@Mastodon for every 1 "derailed conversation" I see 10 people who are offended that anybody defaces their masterpiece by replying to it.

People replying to themselves is what what I think started X's descent into hell (the endpoint of that is that you don't need to have a blog, link to the rest of the net, ...) and I think would be must better to "just say no" to that behavior by prohibiting it.

If you wanted to make things better, how about a reply browsing UI that works?

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@CapriciousGhost @Mastodon that’s what Twitter was like in 2010 but at some point some people got the idea they own the whole thread; the use of the word “derailed” points to the real problem which is that replies should be tree-structured and not linear so stupid comments can just be a leaf that gets “sidelined”. if they’re not going to ban self-replying a linear self-reply thread should be reified so it always displays as intended

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@schm43cky @CassandraZeroCovid @Fedilab @CapriciousGhost @Mastodon basically yeah, my understanding is that all the data to do that is there but most popular clients don't surface it very well.

UP8, to Plants
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🌿 New plant hardiness map, used by gardeners nationwide, is unveiled

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-hardiness-gardeners-nationwide-unveiled.html

UP8, to physics
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🔈 Crumpled sheets reveal a mechanism for glassy relaxations

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-crumpled-sheets-reveal-mechanism-glassy.html

UP8, to Vintage
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Anybody need 40,000 antique telephones?

https://madison.com/news/local/phoneco-wisconsin-telephones-knappen-business/article_90116a8a-734c-11ee-a555-f74104c683cf.html

taylorlorenz, to random
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social avatar

“What the Biden administration doesn’t get is that we’re now firmly in a TikTok-first and, by extension, video-first internet. And TikTok’s algorithm is almost the inverse of something like Facebook’s.” https://open.substack.com/pub/garbageday/p/is-the-web-actually-evaporating

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@taylorlorenz doesn't he say people on Tik Tok are less engaged on the Southern Levant than they are with (say) ?

Is that really different from the average media universe? ratings for news on cable TV are low compared to entertainment channels and you can't say cable news is good for your mental health

rasterweb, to random
@rasterweb@mastodon.social avatar

Doctor: Start taking the medication right away.

Me: Oh, Walgreens is my pharmacy, so they won't have it ready for at least a day or two.

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@rasterweb when my local Walgreens was out of stock they faxed all my info including insurance to Wal*Mart and I got my fill in less than an hour; the people there seem surprised that I always start refills before I need them because delays are pretty predictable at any pharmacy in 2023

UP8,
@UP8@mastodon.social avatar

@rasterweb @Andrew I think other pharmacies have the same problems, but the front-of-store is where Walgreens has been a disaster story in the business press for the last month: the shareholder lawsuit over the Rite-Aid merger, the failed strategy to enlarge the front end (sorry people don't have money to buy stuff after paying for health insurance) and the put-a-TV-on-a-cooler-door fiasco https://thetakeout.com/walgreens-digital-cooler-screens-show-ads-to-customers-1848657804

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