@ergative@wandering.shop cover
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

ergative

@ergative@wandering.shop

SFF booknerd; calligrapher; Islamic geometric art doer; figure skating appreciater; coffee-drinking, granola-baking, tofu-eating wokeratum; psycholinguist by vocation, fretful porpentine by aspiration.

Header image: 2 repeats of an Islamic geometric tile pattern from the Alhambra Palace

Avatar: single repeat of a pattern from the Royal Alcazar of Seville

Contributer at Nerds of A Feather (http://www.nerds-feather.com/)

#nobot #nosearch

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

redheadtrickster , to random
@redheadtrickster@mastodon.art avatar

I am slowly expanding my Copic collection (for more traditional art! Do you know that commissions are done ONLY with premium materials? ;)) and, unfortunately, 72 markers set had 4 dry markers. Not the store's fault, since the case was sealed and everything is in perfect condition, but still... :c

ergative ,
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

@redheadtrickster Ah, that sucks--but whether or not it's the store's fault, you were sold a faulty product. The store should make it right for you, and claim it back from the manufacturer. In no world should you be responsible for re-buying the four colours that you already paid for when you bought the full set!

Please listen to this internet stranger telling you to go into the store and notify them that they sold you a faulty product.

cstross , to random
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I guess we're not in Kansas any more ...

ergative ,
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

@SaveTheOkapi @cstross I see varte, yes

ergative , to random
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I finally gave up on the very dull historical murder mystery I was listening too on my commute, and replaced it with Jack Campbell's 'Dauntless' (1st book of the Lost FLeet series).

Excellent choice! Within five minutes we have a space battle, a desperate mission, and a ruthless massacre leaving the unlikeliest person in charge! I was literally cheering as I biked along the river path, punching the air and shouting, 'Yes! A MacGuffin! We have a MacGuffin!'

#amReading #sff #sf #scienceFiction

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

Old Person Reflection alert!

I changed my bathtub cleaning product, and it works much better! My tub is very clean now--clean enough to be a slip hazard. Darn. I guess I'll have to relax with long soaks with my ginger-lemongrass bubble bath, combined with a glass of wine and Netgalley's newest, rather than take a quick shower. It's a safety issue, you see.

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

@birb
https://bsky.app/profile/redpenblackpen.bsky.social

ergative , to bookstodon group
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

PULSATING!!

(I must say, I didn't think Brandon Sanderson wrote that kind of thing. )

@bookstodon #fantasy #sff

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

LEAPING LEECHES!

No, seriously, you want to click through to watch the videos.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/science/jumping-leeches.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1U0.t9Mx.Cp8R3lEUm36Y&smid=url-share

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

Are you folks aware of the Pepys Diary project? Every day it posts one entry from the Diary of Samuel Pepys, so you can watch his life unfold in real time. I don't read it every day, but I check in from time to time, and this week he's been getting his stairs repainted at home. The workmen just finished, and he's happy with the job! it's nice to know that sometimes it's possible to find good contractors for home renovations.

https://www.pepysdiary.com/

LLS , to random
@LLS@wandering.shop avatar

Between 2010 and 2019, how many times did you get sick?

Now, how many times have you been sick from the start of 2020 until today?

#CovidIsNotOver

ergative ,
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

@LLS NGL, my health has been dramatically better since the start of 2020. This is, of course, because I have been staying at home, masking up when I go out, and avoiding social gatherings.

In fact, the only major illnesses I've had since 2020 have been after social gatherings.

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

There was a farewell party for a colleague going on a temporary secondment, and there had BETTER BE LEFTOVER CUPCAKES in the department kitchen tomorrow, or I will be SAD.

ergative , to random
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The complications of dual-citizen tax filings finally defeated us, and Mr Absolutive and I are paying some accountants to handle them for us this year.

I got a terrifying email from the accountant yesterday: 'please send last year's UK tax returns'.

I wrote back very nervously, 'Um, we thought we didn't have to? Because UK takes it out of paycheck like a reasonable country?'

Imagine my relief when accountaing promptly replied, 'Yes, that's correct, ok, thanks for clarifying.'

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

Our local Labour candidate just dropped off ANOTHER leaflet.

I swear, I'm honestly considering emailing his team and inviting him (plus any Scottish-accented team members) to do my experiment as a way of learning about the valuable research happening at his city's universities, and demonstrating his commitment to supporting higher education.

(And maybe he could encourage his supporters to do it too!)

Like, what's the downside?

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

I was going back over a book review I wrote, which concluded, "It was just another bog-standard over-testicled excessively enswordened doorstopper fantasy tome".

Sometimes, my writing is indeed brilliant.

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

New 3500 year old shipwreck just dropped!

(Link should be free/unpaywalled)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/science/shipwreck-bronze-age-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1E0.2rEM.BQLBvBsly5rm&smid=url-share

errantscience Bot , to random
@errantscience@mas.to avatar

Nothing worse than the sinking feeling you get when you realise your long experiment hasn't been saving data

ergative ,
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

@errantscience I discovered this the DAY BEFORE conference submission deadline. We'd failed to log the specific variable that coded the output of the experiment. All the other data was there EXCEPT for the one thing we wanted to track.

Fortunately I was able to work around it with a clever bit of python scripting that re-calculated the dependent variable from some redundant data, BUT IT WAS A VERY ANXIOUS LATE NIGHT.

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

Today I was facing a massive 'I don't WANT to go into work!' and then I checked my schedule and realized that everything I need to do today can be perfectly well accomplished with my WFH setup. Nothing too computationally intensive that requires my office computer, and one three-hour zoom meeting that I can use as an excuse to practice my calligraphy while being present on-camera.

yay!

ergative OP ,
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

Oh, naturally, today is the day my students start sending me frantic emails: 'help! I'm trying to record in the lab and [equipment] won't work! What's wrong?' And then ten minutes later, 'oh, nvm, it wasn't plugged in.'

CHILDREN! Try some troubleshooting!

ergative , to bookstodon group
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

After being blown away by The Saint of Bright Doors, I'm very very eager to read Vajra Chandrasekera's next book, Rakesfall--and not least because of @chloroform_tea 's very favourable review on Nerds of a Feather!

http://www.nerds-feather.com/2024/06/book-review-rakesfall-by-vajra.html

@bookstodon

kimu , to random
@kimu@wandering.shop avatar

Really fun book club meeting tonight. I really disliked this month’s book and it’s nice to have a group where it’s ok to just say that and have a good conversation about different perspectives. (The book was Monsters by Claire Dederer.)

ergative ,
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

@kimu One of the best book group meetings I ever had was when the book was so terrible that no one finished it except one of us, and so he explained what happened in the rest of the book while we made snarky comments about the author's misuse of SAT vocabulary words.

ergative , to random
@ergative@wandering.shop avatar

I quite enjoy Jenny Nicholson's video essays about niche popular culture (for example, Canada's Church of the Rock easter play series, which is WILD*), but I must say I resent her telling me that 'doggo' is out. Maybe in her cool hip Gen Z world, but I wear my geriatric millennial pin with pride, and I see no use to dispense with a perfectly serviceable term of endearment.

Sarah C Andersen's vision of the future seems perfectly accurate, as far as I"m concerned.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4gM7RC1M0

4-panel cartoon. Panel 1: Elderly woman in a wheelchair sees a dog, and says 'A doggo!" Panel 2: Elderly woman continues 'A heccin good pupper' Panel 3: Elderly woman asserts, '13/10 good boi', as the dog's owner says, 'huh'. A medical orderly with acne (indicating youth) comes to fetch her wheelchair. Panel 4: Medical orderly says 'Don't worry, no one understands her.' Elderly woman continues, 'could be a fren.'
ALT
  • Reply
    • cstross , to random
    @cstross@wandering.shop avatar

    I suspect the editors at Jacobin expected Chomsky to die imminently (not a terrible bet: he was 95) so had an obituary ready and waiting to go at the first hint.

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @michelv @cstross Yes, they do. I once saw an obituary which included a quote from the subject from an interview that he gave the writer in preparation for that same obituary.

    'Dear Mr Famous, I'm drafting your obituary for when you're dead. Would you like to give an interview?'

    'Dear Ms. Journalist, yes, that sounds fine. How's Wednesday?'

    Ten years later:

    'As Mr Famous told me in an interview for this obituary . . .'

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    Because sometimes, what medical science genuinely needs is actually a very complex stochastic prediction machine! Again, more of THIS please. Use AI for GOOD, please.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/18/ai-enhanced-blood-test-may-detect-parkinsons-years-before-onset

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    In the past I've used pixabay for royalty free image stimuli, and I'm sorry to report that they've enshittified their search function by making it AI-based.

    How do I know?

    Because when I do subsequent searches, results from the previous search keep showing up in the new search. If I look for fruit or butterflies, then I get fucking fruit and butterflies among the search results for horseshoe crabs.

    This never happened before, back when all that search was doing was matching keyword tags.

    ergative OP ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    Also, the search modifier 'isolated' used to work beautifully to get me images on a white background, but not anymore!

    You know what DOES still work? The search function that provides related sponsored-for-money images! The shutterstock adverts that show up in response to my searches are perfect!

    ergative OP ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    But I didn't budget for buying stimuli from shutterstock in my grant, so I'm stuck combing through shitty pixabay, and wondering what series of statistical associations thought that cinnamon sticks matched anything I put in the search bar.

    ergative OP ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @NicoleJLeBoeuf Yup. They've made it actively worse. I'm not going to be using them anymore.

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    My very first baby PhD student just got her first job! It's an excellent postdoc, and I'm so proud!

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    Can't focus. Must coffee.

    ergative OP ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @BayesForDays the ieal must coffee interval between where I was and where I will end up is distressingly slender, yes.

    xgranade , to random
    @xgranade@wandering.shop avatar

    One of these days I should write a quick thread about the difference between dB, dBI, and dBm. It's way more simple than it sounds, but I've not often seen good and accessible explanations.

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @xgranade Thank you so much for that thread!

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    YES! More of THIS, please! AI CAN make the world a better place, just not with those bullshit LLMs.

    "Because A.I. for drug development is powered by precise scientific data, toxic “hallucinations” are far less likely than with more broadly trained chatbots. And any potential drug must undergo extensive testing in labs and in clinical trials before it is approved for patients."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/business/ai-drugs-development-terray.html

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    Hey, friends, Oxford University Press is sending around a survey about the use of AI in teaching and learning. If you haven't already received an email from them, here's the link! Tell them what you think!

    (Boosts welcome)

    https://survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90716681/HEteachingAI

    afeinman , to random
    @afeinman@wandering.shop avatar

    Pro tip for writers: if they lose consciousness, it wasn't "a mild concussion".

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @afeinman YES !! THANK YOU!!

    ergative , to bookstodon group
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    I'm reading through the Clarke Award nominees, and I'm getting very tired of all the wallowing in dystopian futures that have been constructed solely to indict the trajectory of the present.

    Like, I get it, SF is and has always been political. And that's fine! But can we please have a STORY as well? And fewer footnotes referencing Supreme Court case outrages?

    @bookstodon

    DrPen , to random
    @DrPen@mastodon.social avatar

    "Bias Automation"

    Source unverified
    via FB group against AI

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @DrPen What's funny is that the bookshelf lowered neuroticism. I would imagine that people who read a lot are tons more neurotic than people who don't.

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @DrPen Yes, of course it's all about perception. I'm just surprised that a model which makes decisions about personality traits, presumably trained on perception data and hence presumably outputting predicted perceptions, thinks that bookcases don't predict perceived neuroticism. Like, the neurotic booksmart people-dumb nerd is such a trope! Why is that not reflected in this model?

    BayesForDays , to random
    @BayesForDays@lingo.lol avatar

    https://bsky.app/profile/ens0.me/post/3kuz3c5jzas2f

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @BayesForDays The micro-bubble virality of Ea-Nasir on social media is something that gives me joy.

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    Mr Absolutive, in a burst of enthusiasm for our first election since we became UK citizens, has been eagerly scheduling chats with his colleagues to discuss politics, get their ideas, their philosophies of governance and political parties. We attentively pored through a flyer dropped off by a labour canvasser at our door, and Mr. A enthusiastically reads through party manifestoes and researches candidates.

    But no one else has come canvassing! He feels neglected and sad.

    jwisser , to random
    @jwisser@wandering.shop avatar

    Me, downstairs: "Siri, at 6pm remind me to repot the plants."

    Upstairs Homepod: "Okay, what do you want to be reminded of?"

    Me, wearily: "Shut the fuck up."

    Upstairs Homepod: "Okay! I've set your reminder."

    And so:

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @jwisser Honestly, this sort of passive-aggressive behaviour is much more persuasive to me of the growing sentience of our machines than any LLM slop.

    Violinknitter , to random
    @Violinknitter@wandering.shop avatar

    Here’s your periodic reminder that THE VERY FIRST Sherlock Holmes story ever starts out in London, and then the entire second part of the novel is “How about those Mormons in Utah? They’re sure weird, aren’t they?”

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @Violinknitter Mostly when people say something like, 'you couldn't publish something like that today,' they mean it as a bad thing, but I'm very struck by how many bonkers-ass structural decisions you find in old books, which reminds me repeatedly how much I appreciate modern editing.

    Whenever I reread A Study in Scarlet, I always skip the Mormon stuff.

    DonP , to random
    @DonP@wandering.shop avatar

    Work around researchers long enough and sooner or later you're going to be yanked out of a hallway into an office and asked to participate in a study.

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @DonP I am holding myself back with my fingernails from barging into the professional services office down the hall and begging them to do my experiment.

    When I was in Moscow as a grad student collecting dissertation data, I managed to get the cleaning staff at my hotel to take part.

    ZenobiaVayne , to random
    @ZenobiaVayne@wandering.shop avatar

    I wish the Sanctuary Moon show from @marthawells ‘ Murderbot series actually existed cause I would binge watch the shit out of it

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @aquila1nz @ZenobiaVayne @HeatherInNZ If Murderbot takes off, they might actually do Sanctuary Moon as a spinoff!

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    A propos of @bitterkarella 's latest, and especially the screencapped installment below, I offer Brandon Lambert's entirely innocent and NOT AT ALL sexual love song to trees.

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eAy_TDhAG0s

    (full thread starts here: https://sfba.social/@bitterkarella/112599483711352479)

    Replied to Lesbian Death Bed 48m bitterkarella@sfba.social Lesbian Death Bed @bitterkarella@sfba.social 6 da Silva: have you ever been in love with a tree tho? Barker: well, i think everyone's fucked a tree at some point da Silva: no da Silva: have you been IN LOVE with a tree? Barker: Sofia Ajram: YEAH CLIVE Ajram: IN LOVE WITH da Silva: but also yeah fucking the tree
    ALT
  • Reply
    • ergative , (edited ) to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    Help me prove a thing to my colleague, who says free food will not encourage students to attend an induction event.

    If you were a new Master's student and on the fence about attending an event would free food make you more likely to go?

    ergative , to random
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    I'm doing an online course right now and during the introductions section it turns out that just about everyone in the class (except me) is a returning student who subscribes to a bit of a cult of personality surrounding the instructor.

    Let's see if I am about to join the cult.

    ergative OP ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    The instructor is simultaneously arguing that if you don't master the 500 types of patterns from 1 to 500 you won't ever understand them, while also claiming that Western colonizers love to over-categorize things as an attempt to control everything.

    And, like, I'm perfectly happy to shit on western colonizers as much as the next well-meaning white liberal, but I'm also aware that there is some degree self-contradiction in his philosophy.

    ergative OP ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @Eyelit Oh, it's no secret--just a bit obscure.

    It's a course by Hamza El-Fasiki on using the Hasba method to construct Moroccan geometric designs in the Nos Qasma style.

    Hamza does not care for the western style of constructing these designs, which are based less on oral tradition of the artisans, and more on uncovering the geometric principles underlying the designs. As he says, 'it uses 10,000 unnecessary circles', which is, to be fair, not wrong.

    https://craftdraft.org/live#f342639b-5a05-4dda-a6ef-5f428d8dc71a

    ergative OP ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @Eyelit But I also think there's nothing wrong with applying Euclidean geometric principles of construction to these patterns. The fact that the method works--however many circles it employs--reveals something very deep about the mathematical universality of the craft, and objecting to it because it's the work of colonizers seems to me not to protect a tradition, but to deny that tradition its deeper mathematical truth. The principles still apply, whether or not they're traditionally used.

    Edent , to random
    @Edent@mastodon.social avatar

    🆕 blog! “Forget Subtext - People Don't Even Get Surtext”

    Once in a while, you'll see some blowhard railing about the modern world. I recently saw someone decrying the fact that Star Trek had "gone woke". This Star Trek? OK, you can argue about whether Kirk and Uhura were forced to kiss in that episode. But how does anyone look at Star Trek - with […]

    👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/05/forget-subtext-people-dont-even-get-surtext/
    ⸻

    ergative ,
    @ergative@wandering.shop avatar

    @krinkle @Edent

    I've been interpreting that use of 'literally' as 'emphatically'. Like, 'Regardless of his bike-maintenance skills, I want to emphasize his helplessness'.

    The early position in the sentence allows the adverb to take scope over the entire proposition, hence its value in emphasizing a broader point.

    The second example, with the later position, gives the adverb scope only over the verb phrase, and the only meaning compatible with the lower scope is the original one.

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