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• Post #4451608

  Don't get me wrong, machine learning is an incredibly useful tool in many fields, but I don't think it can mitigate the LLM based "no, seriously, intelligent" economic crash that's coming.

• Post #4207814

  Today I learned.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYdXa_yp0fc

• Post #4017543

  Just play it cool, nobody's noticed so far, blending right in, you've got this...

• Post #3964455

  Realised complete scans of Dr Samuel Johnson's original 1755 dictionary are available free on Wikimedia Commons. So, of course, the first thing to check is whether he included "Sausage". And he didn't, although "Saucisse" sounds like it's closely related. Messrs. Curtis and Elton (Blackadder The Third, 1987) nailed it.

• Post #3705359

  Reminded of this, because of one of J's projects: Mark Everett, of the rock band Eels, looks into the work of his dad, Hugh Everett III, the proposer of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Quite bittersweet in places, goes into his father's early death. https://vimeo.com/58603054

• Post #3479087

  Higher Physics students (so ~16yo) arguing over quantum gravity today. That's way, way beyond what we teach. Nice. The main thread was whether theories that we have no idea how to test count as real science. Also nice. (My take is that it never hurts to have a self-consistent theory with no testable predictions in your back pocket, but you still need to go outside and catapult water balloons at technicians from time to time.)

• Post #3402866

  Northern Highland #Scotland folk: if you live near a beach it could be worth looking for fulgerite tomorrow, patches of sand that have been hit by lightning. If you (very gently, they're fragile!) dig down you may find a branch-like structure where the lightning fused the sand into a kind of glass. Rare, special thing to find.

• Post #2485942

  The mission patch for the lunar rover computations I'm funding* has arrived! This is going straight on my lab coat. Thanks @standupmaths, love it! *To the tune of £10 plus some more for the patch. As part of £150k to vet the code that will run on a small rover as part of a hundreds-of-millions mission. https://youtu.be/IY0pf0-Daew

• Post #2428520

  Muppet skeletons are canonical, and not a human arm.

• Post #2428519

  Cassie had a bit of a rough week recently, trip to the V.E.T. as she wasn't eating. Constipation turns out to be *expensive* when the NHS doesn't cover cats. But she's much happier now, and wolfing food again. #NotActuallyAWolf

• Post #2181622

  Voted today. Three enterprising primary school kids had set up a little shop next to the polling station doing sweets, soft drinks and homemade bracelets. Genius. Bought several things I didn't want.

• Post #2119505

  "So let me get this straight, you found our DNA, all 13 of us, on an old clay cup?" "The Grail, yes. You all shared it that one time." "And you made..." "Grew." "...grew copies of us? And now we all have to have dinner together every day because..?" "It's the biggest attraction at Jesusland." "What happens when we look too old?" "We start a new gen...

• Post #1786710

  @gahlord@post.lurk.org Is "anti-resonance" or similar a thing? Noticing if I'm playing an open E and the A near the 12th fret it kind of deadens the A, bit like the sponge-under-the-bridge trick.

• Post #1782260

  Any of my folks up for a knitting commission? How much would a Jayne Cobb hat cost me? (Yeah, yeah, can buy them cheap online, not the point!) [EDIT: Someone's offered, thank you :)]

• Post #1769254

  RE: https://mastodon.com.br/@xkcd/116480390342730879 There's honestly a certain element of truth in this. A mathematician specialising in topology once got chatting to a lady who was knitting, fascinated by the parallels, of which there are many. He approached her, very excited, a week later, with a whole new way of doing it. "Yes, dear, that's called a purl stitch."

• Post #1694639

  Going through *very* old stores at work as we prepare to move to a new school. Partly looking for interesting stuff for local museum etc. So I bring out the tawse I found buried in a desk drawer when I started. A leather belt, split into three, specifically for hitting children. Utterly, rightly, illegal to use these days. I think I missed its legality by a year or so as a schoolkid. We showed it to a class of ~14yr olds. Several wanted to be hit to see what it felt like 🤣

• Post #1653887

  This one's going in my "But sir, physics is boring" playlist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eRHfnLKdbA

• Post #1552581

  Another bit of old kit I'd like to display, but can't for reasons: Janitor: "Geoff, we found this in a store, your kind of thing?" I open a burlap case, maybe 1950s, device inside with a dial on top reading in Roentgens. That's for measuring exposure to gamma rays. That kind of thing often has a calibration source. "We're leaving now, locking this door all washing our hands A LOT and I'm going to get a Geiger counter.&quot...

• Post #1132733

  If you're in to tech, or computer science, or music (🤘), comedy or nice quirks of reality, @dylanbeattie has been posting a lot of fun short(ish) videos the last few months. https://youtube.com/@dylanbeattie

• Post #1093442

  Still need to drill the ventilation and power supply holes, but pretty much there on the #AllSkyCamera refurb after 6 years of constant abuse by Scottish weather, which is, shall we say, "non-trivial". Needs a new dome, simple purchase from https://allskyoptics.com , who sponsored the project via discounts and support. But a tough bit of amateur kit.

• Post #1071058

  Remember the early days of Twittr when you'd repeat somebody's post by, through pure etiquette, posting "RT @sam Funny thing", and then they made it an official function because the community started it and liked it and it was good?

• Post #1071056

  Finally got around to sorting J's "Engine Warning" light, which is for an open circuit on glowplug 2. No big deal, it'll start and run without it, but it'd be nice to turn the light off so if it comes on we know there's another problem. Got connector off, bunch of crap around plug that I really don't want dropping into the cylinder when I remove it. Half an hour clearing it with vacuum and squirty air. Then I go to plug a socket in to rem...

• Post #1071053

  With all the toilet issues, I bet you somebody has insisted that any pee-bags etc have been stored in a very particular place to make sure the centre of mass of the spaceship remains the same as planned, #Artemis

• Post #1071052

  Thing I learned from Kerbal Space Program: you have to jettison the stuff below the heat shield well before the atmosphere, cos otherwise the air pressure clamps it on. Also do it well before that so there's no chance it hits you on the way down.

• Post #1071051

  Hate to say it, but KSP does a better simulation of a re-entering capsule than NASA is right now.

• Post #1071050

  Nice.

• Post #1065078

  GARGH! NASA [edit: commentary] making the same mistake as the Scottish qualifications people, spacecraft don't generally heat up on re-entry due to "friction", it's down to adiabatic compression mostly, squeeze a gas and it gets hot. Squeeze it more and it turns to a plasma. Squeeze that even more and it starts giving off high energy photons. That's not friction.

• Post #1037532

  Oh my, If I had the space for this I'd so be working on one. Full 1970s style controllers for Kerbal Space Program, homemade, and glorious. https://www.instructables.com/Kerbal-Controller-the-Basics/

• Post #1019749

  Anyone else getting the feeling this is just a huge pump-and-dump scam on oil prices, with nuclear threats for added value? People need to be on trial.

• Post #954889

  If I was on Artemis I'd spend the 40 minute radio blackout rigging all the clocks, logs, instrumentts etc to show that 6 hours had passed, then refuse to comment on what I'd seen on the far side. This is probably why I'm not allowed on the Artemis.