New #nixos users¹ will spend 3 hours figuring out how to change their wallpaper, then think "wow, that was so smooth! I can't believe I can just *change my wallpaper*"! ¹ I'm half including myself in that category

I'm composing a song that modulates relatively often. Sometimes I'll play parts of what I have from memory, misremember some transition between part X and Y, and end up at the beginning of a Y in a different key than was originally written. So now I have two paths to the same part in two keys […]

PSA: When writing documentation for a terminal command or anything with a rigid syntax, always include fully spelt-out examples (i.e. examples that you could directly copypaste and they would run, if the context were right). Say you're writing a multi-user CLI todo list application and […]

#nixos has allowed humanity to synthesize the purest known form of yak-shaving

Fascinating visualizations of the double pendulum's chaotic dynamics from 15:21 on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jVogdTJESw&t=921s

[(Critical) Post about GenAI] RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@temptoetiam/115820489450904120 retooting with content warning:

This almost-but-not-quite-periodic image is inspired by a recent blog post by @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social about musical scales: let me explain what I drew here, and what it has to do with music, but also with diophantine approximations of log(2), log(3) and log(5). 🧵⤵️ •1/19

A nice, concise definition of the trace, which makes it look a little less arbitrary-looking (if a little more technical) than the standard definition "the sum of elements on the diagonal", and also makes it more evident that it doesn't depend on the choice of coordinates: The trace is the only […]

"Einstein showed us that quantum mechanics allowed influences that seem to travel faster than light. But with <VPN brand>, today's video sponsor, you can have your own spooky action at a distance" 💀

I'm not comfortable with the whole "Brian Wilson is a genius" thing (honestly I'm not comfortable with calling anyone a genius), but he was definitely someone exceptional. The childlike spontaneous vibe he exudes during his interviews is wonderful. Listen to this 63-year-old man start singing […]

Warning: I've been in a #beachboys rabbit hole for the past couple weeks and I am now ready to regurgitate this information in the form of countless ramblings and trivia toots

I have a hard time understanding what made the #beatles so groundbreaking. I grew up listening to a compilation album of their music, which I guess kind of set the baseline of what "standard pop music" should sound like. So when I hear I Wanna Hold Your Hand, all I hear is... a normal old-school […]

Qu'est-ce que vous recommandez comme service décentralisé pour héberger un site perso statique ? Je pensais passer à Zaclys mais il semble que ça ne soit pas proposé dans l'offre pour les particulier·es. J'ai regardé sur le site des @ChatonsOrg , mais sur leur page de recherche par service […]

Au cours de mon expérience de la recherche et sur le fédivers, j'ai entendu parler du « mandarinat », mais je ne suis pas sûr d'avoir complètement compris ce que ça voulait dire. Est-ce qu'un·e mandarin·🍊 c'est « juste » un·e chercheur·se avec beaucoup d'expérience et d'influence, au point que […]

I wrote a new #haskell blog post! This one is about a neat trick I found to conditionally exclude some branches from your data types at compile-time, in a totally standard and portable way (no compiler extensions, no Template Haskell, nothing fishy :) ) https://glocq.github.io/en/blog/20251214/

I can't believe how fluid the basic mastodon web interface is. I'm so used to social media websites being annoying (sometimes on purpose, with stuff like popups, sometimes they're just laggy or janky). The mastodon web interface just does what it's supposed to do, and does it well. I've seen a […]

Regarding the Kepler "conjecture", wikipedia says "there are irregular arrangements that are denser than the cubic close packing arrangement over a small enough volume, but any attempt to extend these arrangements to fill a larger volume is now known to always reduce their density." Sadly, it […]

Jerome K Jerome, complaining about phones, in 1899

Discovered a new artist who makes stunning embroidery aerial-view (!) pieces. Sadly she's not on the fediverse 😢 though I discovered her work on here Victoria Rose Richards https://victoriaroserichards.co.uk/work/

[The gory-ish details of tattoo removal] #todayilearned that the frequency of tattoo removal lasers is chosen in such a way that your skin/flesh is transparent to them, but not the ink particles. So the ink gets heated up into destruction, while the flesh doesn't actually get direct damage […]

How do I tell Cabal to use #MicroHS instead of GHC in my project? This feels dumb, but the MicroHS documentation only gives examples for single #haskell#microhsfiles...

À partir de maintenant, à Paris, le Soleil se couche de plus en plus tard. www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.p...

There are just so many things in physics that seem "elementary" because they never get explained, but I don't feel like "I could have invented them", so my brain refuses to see past them and understand stuff that relies on them. I still don't have satisfying answers to questions such as: * […]

Pop science videos about the principle of least action be like "isn't it mysterious that this completely made-up quantity is minimized? 🤔✨ oh, by the way, this is assuming you already know what state your system is going to end up in, and when"

… also: why are so many videos and essays and popular science stuff dedicated to trying to explain the philosophy and intuitive ideas of the FIRST quantization, and absolutely NONE about this completely mind-boggling fact that FOR SOME REASON WE NEED TO DO IT A SECOND TIME? •15/16

[GenAI rant] What's up with media showing limitations of GenAI openly admitting relying on unreliable GenAI tools? * In this BBC article about a GenAI-based fake news: "A BBC journalist ran the [fake news-inducing] image through an AI chatbot which identified key spots that may have been […]

… (WHICH WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE PUBLICATION PROCESS IN THE FIRST PLACE) resort to various social media, including, apparently, comments on YouTube videos. 😭

To caricature slightly (but only slightly): because the formal scientific publication process is used to evaluate researchers, it needs to be tightly guarded, and because of this, researchers who actually need to communicate between themselves …

Ah oui merci #wikipedia

RE: https://mastodon.online/@RAP_Grenoble/115667190931229143 Dans la catégorie « ordres de grandeur où je m'étais jamais posé la question mais maintenant je suis content de le savoir » : le coût de la pub par citoyen·ne (français·e) sur une année (2023) : 500€

#ArtAdventCalendar 2025 day 5 Wet Feet, Deepdale. More information on this work, including detail, inspiration and a work in progress animation, can be found here https://cognissart.co.uk/wet-feet-deepdale/ @textileart @fiberarts #waterfall #Art […] [Original post on mastoart.social]

Extraordinary close-up of spider thread wins Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025 | Discover Wildlife #photography https://www.discoverwildlife.com/photography/royal-society-publishing-photography-competition-2025-winners

@tristanC In case you're interested, following our exchange: Koka seems to be a functional language that only allocates when necessary https://koka-lang.github.io/koka/doc/book.html#sec-fbip

(I'm not sure what I write in this toot is exact, please feel free to correct me) When doing real-time #audioprogramming you usually need to implement a function/procedure that will run once for every block of audio samples. Since that function needs to be very responsive, it must contain no […]

#ArtAdventCalendar 2025 day 1 For a dull December day here is Light at the End. A view through Gregory Tunnel on the Cromford Canal, Derbyshire. More information on this work, including detail, inspiration and a work in progress animation, can be found here […] [Original post on mastoart.social]

— What's a passion of yours? — Math! — No, no, I mean, I get it, you need math for your job, and you get some enjoyment out of it — but, like, do you have a *real* passion?

@johncarlosbaez I saw you write on Bluesky (because you were talking with someone whose bridged account I follow on here) that @bsky.brid.gy doesn't delete bridged posts, but their FAQ says otherwise: """ How do I delete a post? Just delete it normally! Bridgy Fed will detect that and delete […]

My cartoon for this week’s New Scientist. p.s. I have a new book of science cartoons: www.tomgauld.com/comic-books-v2

#meme #memes #queer #gender #transgender #nonbinary

Pro-tip: to monitor your computer's CPU usage during computationally heavy tasks, have it play some music! The more stutter, the higher CPU usage (unless what you hear is mostly silence, in which case stutter decreases (by which I mean, gets replaced with silence) with CPU usage) #sonification

There are many excellent educational math and science channels on youtube, but I don't know that any pays as much attention to sound design, or has such a clear art direction without compromising on the pedagogical dimension, as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HIy5dJE-zQ

An excellent 1964 pop sci video from the USSR, explaining special relativity in a very accessible way, newly subtitled in English: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P_1DJhLEHEQ

[Lame joke as a reaction to a GenAI-related news article] Next up: New bus service takes you from point A to point B for more than 24 hours straight ISP launches new offer, with a connection that lets you download a file for more than 24 hours straight […]

Trying to get into #nix once again. Spent an hour banging my head against the wall with `mkDerivation`, didn't understand why it wouldn't detect my files. I thought I was specifying the `src`directory wrong. I ended up understanding that it just refuses to see files that were not git-added. I […]

I recently learnt that crocodiles are closer to birds (i.e. they have a more recent common ancestor) that they are to lizards. Do you have any other examples of surprising "species x is closer to species y than they are to species z"? Surely this must be hard to beat […]

A great writeup about the combined role of formalism and intuition in math: https://davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-broken-theorems

Dans le prologue de Condition de l'homme moderne, Hannah Arendt écrit : Lorsque ces « vérités » peuvent s’exprimer en concepts cohérents, l’on obtient des énoncés « moins absurdes peut-être que cercle triangulaire, mais beaucoup plus que lion ailé » (Erwin Schrödinger) Quelqu'un·e connaît le […]

RE: https://piaille.fr/@benjamingeer/115547666230525645 Une perspective intéressante sur la pratique du français par des non-natifves. Pour être clair, je ne milite pas pour l'effacement des marques de genre en français (ça serait peine perdue), je pense juste que c'est bien de garder ces […]

Tiens, je viens d'apprendre qu'un des intervenants que j'ai vu parler au Programmable Audio Workshop de 2023, Benoît Carré, est la moitié du groupe Lilicub, qui a sorti dans les années 90 le tube Voyage en Italie : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bse02AUNP_o Cette info change strictement rien […]

Managed to solve #celtix today with 102 walls, which is 2 less than the maximum possible number of walls (and maximal solutions always have an even number of walls). @OscarCunningham wonder if @OptimalCeltixBot could be modified to also show a solution with as many walls as possible?