Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

Funny how every time an email goes out about class-action lawsuits against Google, GMail automatically flags it as spam

Fun fact: there are actually not very many occurrences of the golden ratio or the Fibonacci spiral in nature. I thought it was a legit thing until I had to write an essay about it and found out that most of the alleged appearances are statistical anomalies or straight up hoaxes.

what did the rock say to the floating log?

sedimentary my dear flotsam

SPACE MYTHS:
The Fisher Space Pen did NOT cost NASA millions of dollars to develop.

It cost them $0. FISHER put in the R&D money on that.

NASA only bought the pens as off-the-shelf products. They are nice pens.

And while the Russians DID "use pencils", they didn't really like them, and adopted the pens.

See, inhaling graphite dust and wood shavings in freefall is not that healthy.

There are a LOT of stories about "government waste" that are basically just bullshit, like this one. Be aware.

I updated my bio. I am still interested in machine learning, and I am continuing my own projects in this area, but this terminology has become synonymous with an ideology and culture to which I am diametrically opposed.

There is great value in tools like optical character recognition, speech recognition, and machine translation (when ethically applied). However, the current regime selling machine learning tools as products is completely disconnected from what I would view as a healthy and productive contribution to society.

I would still like to contribute to practical applications of mathematics in the world, and I hope that academia will continue to support my efforts to contribute in a way that supports everyone, not just a small cadre of plutocrats.

#MachineLearning #AI #math #ethics #research

it's always nice when a mandatory phone number field that doesn't need to be mandatory, also doesn't check the format of what we type into it

so that we can write "like hell" instead of just all zeroes or whatever

Canada Post doesn't "lose money". It's a service, it *costs* money. No one ever says the military "loses" billions of dollar a year. No one says the RCMP loses money. No one ever says the police "lose" money.

But when it's something that benefits people - suddenly it's not a cost, it's a loss.

✨ Fijne 13/12! ✨ Wanneer anders dan vandaag is het goede moment onze visie op repressie en handhaving eens extra uit te lichten 😉

Menselijkheid is voor #BIJ1 de sleutel tot de preventie en aanpak van misdaad. Daarnaast willen we ook #geweld en #misdaad aanpakken waarvoor op dit moment te weinig verantwoording wordt afgelegd. Zoals het vernietigen van de #natuur, het uitbuiten van #werknemers, etnisch profileren en #politiegeweld.

➡️ #Racisme en #discriminatie bij de #politie: aan de hand van de verschillende bevindingen van o.a. Controle Alt Delete stellen wij door de jaren heen kritische vragen over de Utrechtse politie, waaronder over racisme, #privacy schending, etnische profilering en politiegeweld.

➡️ #Pride is #verzet: Pride begon juist als een strijd tegen politiegeweld. Wat ons betreft heeft de politie op Pride dan ook niks te zoeken. Ook hier stelden wij meermaals vragen over.

➡️ #Demonstratierecht: #Demonstreren is een fundamenteel recht. BIJ1 strijdt tegen politiegeweld en #repressie, en voor een veilige ruimte waarin #activisten gehoord worden.

In de raad blijven we ons onvermoeibaar inzetten om deze thema’s aan de orde te stellen, helaas nog niet altijd met direct resultaat. Maar zoals altijd zullen we het systeem blijven uitdagen en strijden voor een rechtvaardiger #Utrecht! 🍎 🍋 🍓 🍌

I see people are unhappy with bluesky's owning corporation doing corpo shit

It's Friday the 13th and it's also 13/12

ayo, i figured out what those criminally undersized top shelves in some bombardier double-deckers are for!

All the recent stuff over on Bluesky about them refusing to ban Jesse Singal from the platform, in spite of all the protestations from the trans users that made Bluesky what it is, makes me feel that I was right first time back in 2022: that profit-driven social media is always going to turn out this way, and maybe the Fediverse really is the way ahead for us, despite its many flaws

Some real weird following shit going on over at Bluesky. Because of how feeds are integrated centrally into the app, a lot of folks really only scroll through a specific feed rather than their entire following list.

As a result, tons of folks are mass following folks (I'm talking 25k, 60k, 90k people) just to get their own follower numbers up due to some people following back just because.

But in my experience, engagement is much less there than here. I've even seen people with thousands of followers more than me who get little engagement with their posts, have to repost em a few times, etc.

Real weird behavior. Bluesky tires me out sometimes due to this. I've posted before about how it almost feels charged and the energy is so frenetic. Or maybe I just got used to the fediverse and having no company trying to force me to spend as much time as possible on their platform. Idk

you know, for all my flammability, i am not much of an enjoyer of fights. oh no, gee, of course not. it would be so nice if everything was solved over an honest, vulnerable conversation and a cup of green tea. love, peace, candy cones and all that fluff.

but that's for those who actually listen.

you think we hadn't tried?

people did, and then you ignored them, or slandered them, stomped on their throats even harder for even daring to talk.

you know, i find some kind of sinister joy in the way those news anchors are reacting to how we cheer on that leech's death.

"people are really angry and hopeless with the state of things, but violence has never solved anything. nonviolent protest is always better than a violent protest"

ow-ow-ow, не әңгіме? what's the matter, what happened? did our champagne sippers and suit wearers defecate in their silk trousers after realising they're made of meat too? heh. such pity.

You know that thing where you expect that something is true or will happen, and then it doesn't and that really trips you up? Like maybe you were looking forward to getting a treat from your favourite bakery, and when you get there you find that they closed early for some reason, and you're just not sure how to handle that for a moment? Is there a word for that?