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Colin Rowat

@rowat_c@mastodon.social

mastodon 4.7.0-beta.1

a man wearing sunglasses and a red and white checkered shirt, by Stefan Lochner, pexels contest winner, sails and masts and rigging, wearing adventuring gear, greta thunberg smiling, tear gas and smoke, vw microbus driving, unkempt beard, belaying, sarong, with nerdy glasses and goatee

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34 Posts

Joined October 27, 2022

Posts

Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Jun 30, 2026

Replying to @emf@social.emfcamp.org

@emf@social.emfcamp.org FWIW, here's the statement by co-CEO/founder/owner, Strömberg, disavowing any connection between Berntsson's private activities and Mullvad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Jun 29, 2026

Replying to @mttaggart@infosec.exchange

@mttaggart@infosec.exchange maybe obvious, but role confusion happens with humans too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2026

Replying to @db_geek@norden.social

@db_geek@norden.social @Wuzzy@cyberplace.social @_elena@mastodon.social thanks! The linked article still seems very critical (and rightly so, from what I can tell). I'd like to hope that there's some perspective from which this seems to make sense, so would be interested in hearing that articulated.

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Jun 18, 2026

Replying to @Wuzzy@cyberplace.social

@Wuzzy@cyberplace.social I've not followed this W Social story closely, so don't know the "case for the defence". What's the best article for me to read that makes the case for it?

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · May 07, 2026

Replying to @mjd@mathstodon.xyz

@mjd@mathstodon.xyz no privileged role for the third right arm/hectocotylus (à la https://phys.org/news/2026-04-lengths-male-octopuses-arm.html)

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · May 06, 2026

Replying to @mjd@mathstodon.xyz

@mjd fast forest transform!

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · May 01, 2026

Replying to @dpiponi@mathstodon.xyz

@dpiponi@mathstodon.xyz is there a page maintaining the total length of US electoral district's boundaries over time (measured, for the avoidance of confusion, with a single stick of constant length)?

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 29, 2026

Just catching up on my mail, when I (belatedly) saw April's NBER digest:

China's Rise in Global Research

"Between 1980 and 2022, China's share of global research publications in **top journals** rose from a negligible level to 32 percent, while the US share declined from 60 to about 24 percent."

The Geography of Science (NBER Working Paper 34694), Abhishek Nagaraj and Randol Yao.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w34694

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @carnage4life@mas.to

@carnage4life@mas.to agreed: the Snopes post was a bit of mess, but did point - for me - to failure to confirm the topic.

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @carnage4life@mas.to

@carnage4life@mas.to Snopes doesn't buy the caption: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kid-rock-address-pentagon/

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @dpiponi@mathstodon.xyz

@dpiponi@mathstodon.xyz Came, Sawe, Conquered

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @rowat_c@mastodon.social

Once home, ... Mr. Kissinger scolded but did not punish them, and even said that they had done a “wonderful, heroic job,” Mr. Rosenblatt recalled in the oral history, adding that Mr. Kissinger also told them, “We left Vietnam without much honor, but you two guys acted honorably.” ... Mr. Rosenblatt’s father told The Washington Post..., “My son must be guided by the Talmudic teaching: ‘He who saves a human life is as if he saved the whole world.’” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/world/asia/lionel-rosenblatt-dead.html 5/n

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @rowat_c@mastodon.social

To prepare documents for Vietnamese colleagues to leave aboard U.S. military aircraft, Mr. Johnstone found a typewriter in a friend’s apartment. He and Mr. Rosenblatt also obtained departure forms, stamps and consular seals from sympathetic embassy colleagues. The two men set up in a bowling alley on the military side of the airport ... then shepherded their Vietnamese friends to planes... After five tense days with little food or sleep, the two Americans left Saigon. 4/n

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @rowat_c@mastodon.social

Mr. Rosenblatt shaved his bushy mustache and wore a hat to disguise himself. Also concerned with being detected by the South Vietnamese police, they used false IDs and drove a 30-year-old Citroën, and other cars that friends had abandoned upon leaving Saigon, to rendezvous with Vietnamese colleagues. Both spoke Vietnamese, and Mr. Rosenblatt was fluent in French. “Everybody thought we were Corsican gangsters,” he said in the oral history ... “So nobody messed with us.” 3/n

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @rowat_c@mastodon.social

The two Americans arrived on April 22 amid chaos at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Saigon, aboard one of the last scheduled Pan Am flights into the country. From a colleague at the American Embassy, they learned that their mission had been discovered by higher-ups, and that they were to be sent home. Fearing arrest, Mr. Rosenblatt said in a 2013 oral history, he and Mr. Johnstone “ran away as fast as we could” and went underground. 2/n

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 26, 2026

When Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, suggested that most Vietnamese refugees should head to coastal points, where American ships would attempt to pick them up, Mr. Rosenblatt and Mr. Johnstone, both of whom had served in diplomatic postings in Vietnam, grew alarmed at his seeming indifference toward the Vietnamese who were not high-ranking officials. So they secretly devised their own evacuation plan to assist former colleagues and their families.

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @tchambers@indieweb.social

@tchambers on social media harming children, has anyone seen studies that distinguish between 'social media' and 'algorithmic feed'?

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social

@MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social https://www.decayfilm.com/

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @delong@mastodon.social

@delong I think I need a UCB account to see the project? If it was possible to make public, I'd love to see it!

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 24, 2026

"I think an invisible Trump class battleship could have saved Phelan's job. Imagine a stealth battleship only the worthy could see and would be something Trump could post endless messages about. And, an invisible battleship could be built more quickly and, possibly, more cheaply even after a huge payback by the chosen vendor to one of Trump's personal companies. It could have been a win-win for the President."

dkaro

https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4fkg8r?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 22, 2026

The difference between "people at their best" and "personal best": https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0v632yddzo

Last year, I trained hard to go sub-3. I know the hours, the years, De Oliveira & Beggs would have put in to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience to run Boston faster than they'd ever run before - and the intensity of the focus on the finish line when it finally approached.

#bostonmarathon #marathon #boston #lawofthesea

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 22, 2026

"As it turns out, fish indeed get wired when on #cocaine. In a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology, Dr. Brand and his colleagues show that coked-up #salmon swim faster and travel farther than their sober counterparts. This study prompts additional questions about the effects that human #drug habits may be having on salmon and other freshwater #fish."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/science/cocaine-salmon-sweden.html

How many Ig Nobels can we give for Atlantic Salmon research?

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 20, 2026

<#AndrásShiff>
I can name some very important examples of artists who have spoken out in politics and it did make a difference.

So my examples are #Beethoven, who crossed out the dedication of the Third Symphony to #Napoleon. And my great countryman Béla Bartók, who left #fascist #Hungary in 1940 because he said he couldn’t live and work under such an atmosphere. Or #Toscanini, similar reasons, having left Fascist #Italy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/arts/music/andras-schiff-piano-viktor-orban-hungary.html?unlocked_article_code=1.cVA.YNPQ.T-ZZyHUejS3u&smid=url-share

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @carnage4life@mas.to

@carnage4life@mas.to bone spurs in the game

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @bruces@mastodon.social

@bruces we're both old enough to remember when people would kill for 3MB of RAM.

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Replying to @the_roamer@mastodonapp.uk

@the_roamer @HadasWeiss I thought the lady shared shalottly

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 02, 2026

Replying to @carnage4life@mas.to

@carnage4life@mas.to is it better or worse that I don't know if this is insider trading or a psyop?

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Mar 18, 2026

Replying to @EUCommission__dup_19160@ec.social-network.europa.eu

@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu a decade ago, I started a company one Sunday evening in the UK: about to go to bed, I thought I'd take a look at the documentation requirements, so I could start collecting them. Twenty minutes and £20 later, I was a CEO. No capital requirements.

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Mar 12, 2026

Replying to @yetzt@social.yetzt.me

@yetzt@social.yetzt.me @rysiek@mstdn.social I don't think that the criteria ("to make you laugh, then make you think") are met.

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Feb 16, 2026

Replying to @cstross__dup_483@wandering.shop

@cstross "Model collapse", Shumailov, Shumaylov & Papernot (2024), Nature : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Jan 28, 2026

Replying to @APBBlue@thepit.social

@APBBlue@thepit.social https://jdmacleod.com/news/dishman

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Apr 09, 2025

Replying to @CCC@social.bau-ha.us

@CCC@social.bau-ha.us never stop being awesome, #CCC! As a Canadian, I didn't realise at first how different the CCC's roots were to those of North American hackers - smart kids playing with tech. Being rooted in _Das Leben der Anderen_ provides a deep, powerful grounding in humanity.

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Dec 27, 2024

Replying to @tao@mathstodon.xyz

@tao my favourite initiative is Jan Magnus' Philip Swallow Prize (after the character in David Lodge's _Changing Places_), to be awarded to the member of his research group with a paper rejected by the lowest ranked journal that year. He was proud to have won it in its inaugural year: https://janmagnus.nl/papers/aa-70.pdf

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Colin Rowat @rowat_c@mastodon.social · Oct 13, 2024

Replying to @Riedl@sigmoid.social

@Riedl Man! You're not using an LLM to make your plans?

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