zack wol berg @zwol@mastodon.social

If you like to toot about science, if you make comics, if u make games, or if u think your commentary on those subjects is somewhat witty, comment here and I will follow u.

also RT so more ppl can see this

#science #stem #gaming #games #comics #mastoart #art

i think if there were an extremely boring AP implementation governed by an extremely reasonable group of four or five standards nerds, gargron would get a lot less shit

I sat on this one for a while. I don't think either side of this debate has /entirely/ the right idea (wow what a surprise!), but we've got to keep gradient-descenting our way to better society so 🤷‍♀️. we need to think harder about things like this than just banging out the next firey take in a long line of takes about fediverse software.

i feel like a lot of people people are (perhaps intentionally for discourse reasons?) massively missing the point about this "user discovery" feature.

there is a /huge/ user influx from the tumblr exodus, and they're looking for users to follow. yes, gargron doesn't always have the best priorities. but this feature? it actually _has a fucking reasonable explanation for why it's being implemented_. it's not just a random thing. yes, it might not be implemented in the best, most optimal way, but it's helping the network feel more accessible to new users. i'm not saying finer grained privacy and whatnot aren't extremely important! i've been doing CS-theory-level research into how to do that better in my own fediverse software! but right now, yelling about gargron not doing that is silly. there's an influx, and the issue is not so much what decisions gargron has made as the priorities of influx users not aligning with those of established users.

We sing the songs of distant Earth
In thousands diff'rent tongues
For all the lands that gave us birth
For them, their songs are sung

We tell the tales of distant Earth
Of heroes, gods, and fools
To teach us values, and our worth
And how to break the rules
#LossLit #SmallPoems

remember to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others

Cray-1B, serial number 1, rebuilt for the recent SC18 conference.
Timelapse video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY8sDF-sukY
The machine was on loan from the Chippewa Computer Museum. Originally installed at Los Alamos but returned to Cray: "When Serial 1 showed up in Los Alamos in 1976 it wouldn’t run for more than a few minutes yet it would run for hours in Minnesota. Turns out there was no memory protection and cosmic events at Los Alamos altitude were different enough from Minnesota."
#cray #retrocomputing

So there was a Tumblr post a while ago musing on the fact that Charlie Weasley was able to get together a group to smuggle a dragon across international borders on two days notice - https://packbat.tumblr.com/post/147254894127/blueelectricangels - and one of the responses was from a biologist who said: "speaking as a biologist, i can guarantee i would show up without question to smuggle an endangered species that would otherwise be destroyed across national borders to a sanctuary on two days’ notice."

...and I think that's something that a lot of writers who aren't scientists, archaeologists, zoologists, et cetera might not think about? Society writes an implicit list of Things You Are Allowed To Care A Whole Lot About, and while I suspect *everyone* has items they drop or add to that list, if you are writing a scholar with a particular field of study? Something irreplaceable in their field may well have a value to them on par with their own limbs.

And I think writers miss that sometimes. So it occurs to me to mention.

do you know how many monkeys have been seriously injured because of you??? every week you come into my clinic and you say "hey another one of my monkeys fell off the bed" and every time i tell you "no more monkeys jumping on the bed". this isn't JUST A FUCKING SUGGESTION!! STOP LETTING THE GODDAMN MONKEYS JUMP ON THE BED. I'M SO TIRED OF THIS BULLSHIT. A MONKEY IS GONNA DIE BECAUSE OF YOUR CARELESSNESS AND I WILL BE FIRST IN LINE TO TESTIFY AGAINST YOU

boost Communist Accordion Cat to bless a timeline

To the Tumblr refugees: welcome!

Having been on the Internet for over thirty years, I have one piece of advice for creative folks working online:

Control Your Platform.

Don't build a business around Facebook, Tumbler, G+, Geocities, MySpace, AltaVista, or any of these other third parties that claim to offer quick and easy results.

They all go away. Every one of them.

Build your own site. Use third parties to steer people to your site.

Third parties are the devil--useful devils, but devils.

"f(x,y); - the perfect syntax", "(f x y) - too many parentheses"

I rolled up a Scourge Aasimar paladin for a recent #DnD one-shot and made an executive decision: Aasimar based on 'pretty people with wings' angels are OUT, Aasimar based on 'flaming wheel with a thousand burning eye' angels are IN.

Hir name is Ezekiel Rosewood and ze's here to smile gently and smite with holy flame

The preferred presentation for #nipples in the fediverse is "covered in #slime".