Imagine a jogging path which is 99% clear and 1% vertical climb through thorn bushes. You're not gonna think about how 99% of your route was so easy.
People don't notice the 99% of software that's quietly doing incredible things, just the 1% that eats all their time and energy.
It's worth 12 victory points.
I appreciate your changing from "cummerband" to "cummerbund". The former always seemed nonstandard.
A while ago I started accepting the call and then just putting down the telephone. Robots take silence as a bad connection, and humans realize they're wasting their time and hang up. I think I'm getting fewer spam calls now. At the least, no voice mails to deal with later.
Registration is now open for Professional Development Day: 🔗 dcswa.wildapricot.org/event-6642704
This year’s conference will begin early Saturday, May 9, 2026, at George Washington University, and will end with a happy hour at the Admiral.
Scrobble stats since September for the first track from Dark Side of the Moon, with a clear uptick on yesterday when Artemis II passed behind the Moon.
The data is in, and yes, more people were playing Dark Side of the Moon as Artemis II passed behind the Moon.
Wikipedia reminds us that the Gini coefficient for an Exponential Distribution is 0.5, so with G=0.52 I'm failing to reject exponentially-distributed underlying data here.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_co...
Great news: the biggest problems on Artemis II are the toilet fan fritzing out and a glitch with the email client.
The Congressional Research Service has really upped its visuals. Here are maps of oil and methane production/distribution through the Middle East and environs:
www.everycrsreport.com/files/2026-0...
www.everycrsreport.com/files/2026-0...
I dunno about this data set. Who came up with the target capacities? Why does Census have one bldg with a capacity of 290 and avg occupancy of 1,550? What do we make of sites with avg occupancy of zero? What does capacity (total USF)== NULL mean when there are occupants?
Update from my January 2022 article on working from VR: I'm still working from VR (even now as I write this). I spent $30 on a far more comfortable headband, but otherwise not much has changed. I still often don't know when the sun sets.
www.wired.com/story/hours-working-vr-tips/
Screenshot from The Post. Hed: Why the iconic drum circles at D.C.'s Malcom X Park are going silent. Dek: A $15m project is underway to repair the park, aka Meridian Hill Park, and restore grass on the upper level... Pic is of a host of people with drums under the trees.
Despite its flaws and eminently skippable opinion section, a shout-out to The Post for using the right name for Malcom X Park. Accept no substitutions!
People once envisioned a future where DC wouldn't have a ~10 storey height limit.
You ever read Edwin Black's _IBM and the Holocaust_? It's a good read, gathering all the receipts linking what was at the time a census-taking and punched card machine manufacturer to the bureaucratization and facilitation of genocide.
ibmandtheholocaust.com
Yes, any invention is collaborative and every story ambiguous ("Cantor, before he’d received Dedekind’s letter, sent him a similar idea for how to streamline the proof"). I think the real lesson here is that we should fight the habit of giving sole credit and inventing lone geniuses.
Hey if you don't care for ssrn but want an explainer on the #CABillionaireTax (now officially Bernie-endorsed!), you can read up here:
www.sfexaminer.com/news/politic...
(except sorry, you first have to scroll past me, cosplaying as vest-wearing billionaire)
The IC2S2 deadline is right around the corner!
We really need more reviewers to make this conference work. I know (I KNOW) you all get a lot of requests but please consider signing up, especially if you submit. It’s just a few abstracts, we’ll keep the review load light. Promise!
A tip for the casual market watchers: The Market doesn't rise or fall on good or bad jobs or inflation reports, it moves on whether the news beat expectations. To understand what The Market is thinking, check, e.g., the Bloomberg consensus forecast ( www.bloomberg.com/markets/econ... ).
We used to call them "puns" and now we call them "dad jokes" and I don't get what happened. Do moms not pun?
It all comes in cycles: in the 1980s there was Depeche Mode—
a French name often translated as "fast fashion"—and now we have Taylor Swift.
Strong recommend if you are interested in cosmology. The videos are succinct – most around 6 minutes long – and the explanations are satisfying. Same goes for the "Quantum 101" videos.
People always want practical benefits to theory, so here's one: shorter meetings. Meetings where everybody is going in circles feeling around to express a complex thought are much longer and more diffuse than those where everybody shares a theoretical framework as a reference.
I'm so sick of the little boxes on my laptop
The President of the USA, whom most US voters oppose, is joining with the Prime Minister of Israel, whom most Israeli voters oppose, in attempting to topple the regime of Iran, which most Iranians oppose.
It's 2026, and we're still working out the kinks in representative Democracy.
I said what I said.
Scroll the comments for more cartoon characters.
Donald Trump canceled Direct File after giant tax prep companies spent millions lobbying.
Why? Because Direct File let you file your taxes for free.
So today, I’m introducing a bill to make Direct File the law of the land. And 160 members of Congress are joining me.
Table 1: Deviant author assignment strategies (selection), listed chronologically. It contains year, authorship assignment strategy and reference.
Reviewing some old links before deleting my Twitter account I was reminded of "Civil disobedience in scientific authorship: Resistance and insubordination in science" (doi.org/10.1080/0898...) which contains a great table on deciding authorship order:
I think part of how the more nonsensical and draconian rules persist is that all the decision makers in our gov't have a way to opt out of dealing with them. Who knows, maybe this will be educational for those people and we'll see some reforms in the future.
