Mastodon Feed: Posts

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

This capture made extensive use of view camera tilt movements. The depth of field is quite shallow here, so the lens was tilted forward to keep the stems and leaves in focus from the front to the back.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Captured with a Sinar P camera. a 240mm/5.6 APO Symmar lens, and a BetterLight scanning digital back.

This is a minimalist studio still life, so it's all about lighting and geometry.

Illuminated by a single hard light placed at the left of the frame, yielding well defined shadows. The background was a white sweep table, creating the illusion of an infinite background. The fruit looks evenly spaced, but actually the rear one had to be much farther back than the center one to create that effect.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Three Persimmons, 2008.

Too many pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2207576183

#photography

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@Heinzenstein I would injure my spine if I bent over that far backwards to give them that much benefit of the doubt. From the article I linked to:

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Common mistake: my flavor isn't bitter, it's my personality.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/24/what-do-you-think-i-am-vernonia-amygdalina/

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Ihre Papiere, bitte.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/24/that-isnt-ominous-at-all/

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
broadwaybabyto@zeroes.ca ("Broadwaybabyto") wrote:

Disability is not a moral failing. It’s not a punishment. It’s not karma.

It’s part of the human experience. Our bodies are frail, and given enough time most people will experience disability.

The idea that we’re lazy, choosing not to “try hard” or want to be sick is a fallacy born out of ableism.

#ableism #eugenics #disability #chronicillness #disabilityrights

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

who needs these agencies like FEMA anyway?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/sarah-sanders-arkansas-storms-b2738058.html

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
lapcatsoftware ("Jeff Johnson") wrote:

Employers: Everyone must return to the office, because we work best when people collaborate face-to-face.

Also: We're going to replace everyone with A.I.

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
stephaniewalter@front-end.social ("Stef Walter") wrote:

Do people starting an email with "Hey Stéphanie Walter" really expect me to reply?
2025 and you still can't encode my name properly? Why should I even bother?
So, here we go again: hello my name is St�phanie – a talk on “special characters”, inclusive design and user experience
https://stephaniewalter.design/blog/hello-my-name-is-stephanie-talk-encoding-special-characters-issues-poor-user-experience/
https://stephaniewalter.design/blog/hello-my-name-is-stephanie-talk-encoding-special-characters-issues-poor-user-experience/

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

So this year you can watch the #snooker world championship on wst.tv (from US). Very happy to catch the opportunity this time after having to use some shady services before.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@tankdigital @whybird @BlueDot

I don't know. I've never thought about any of this stuff before.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

If you (somehow) need more evidence that the anti-DEI stuff is just plain naked racism, look no further this latest set of executive orders, in which schools NOT punishing minority students more severely than white kids is now considered a form of "discrimination".

https://apnews.com/article/trump-executive-orders-education-9fb7e1f707f0df93e3b28d4eff984d04

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@petergleick I am proud that every university with which I've been affiliated, as either a student or as faculty, has signed this.

At this point, one must wonder about the priorities of those that haven't.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
petergleick@fediscience.org ("Peter Gleick") wrote:

Now up to 363 university/academic signers -- more than 60 added in the last few hours.
Still silence from Dartmouth, Stanford, and the entire state of Texas.

"We must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses."

https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-call-for-constructive-engagement

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
Teri_Kanefield ("Teri Kanefield") wrote:

I just realized that it's April 23.

That means it's the anniversary of the Farmville, Virginia Motion High School student strike.

What? You don't know about that?

Well, in 1951, Barbara Johns was fed up with the deplorable conditions in her segregated school, so she organized a strike. She was inspired by labor strikes.

After she and her classmates turned the rural town of Farmville upside down, she called in the NAACP.

1/

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@whybird @BlueDot So, you want to tell the people of the United States that they should switch their system of government so that they can have simpler ballots when they vote once a year.

Have fun with that.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@whybird @BlueDot You might be tempted to say, "Well, just have fewer things on the ballot" Which is basically saying, "Just completely change how federal, state, and local government is organized".

Maybe it's not so simple after all.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@whybird @BlueDot Here's a sample ballot and voter information pamphlet from San Francisco from 2020. It's 233 pages long, and lists all the ballot questions. There are 38 questions (making this a small ballot for California), using four different voting methods (vote for one, vote for k out of n, ranked choice, and yes/no).

Good luck tallying that without a machine.

https://sfelections.sfgov.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Voting/N20%5FVIP%5FEN.pdf

Boosted by mbrubeck@mefi.social:
ArchusByte@hachyderm.io ("Archus Byte") wrote:

OMG there is a rabbit nest next to our compost bin. I guess we won't be moving that bin to the curb anytime soon 🙂

#seattle #ballard #rabbit #bunnies

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz ("John Carlos Baez") wrote:

Hurrah! I''ve gotten funding to meet with

• computer scientists who do epidemiology: Nathaniel Osgood, Xiaoyan Li, and William Waites
• software engineers who know category theory: Evan Patterson and Kris Brown
• a mathematician: Sophie Libkind
• an economist: Owen Haaga

for 6 weeks this summer, in Edinburgh! We'll be using category theory to develop new modeling software.

Here's a short description of our project:

Many of the most urgent social, economic and public health problems facing humanity require dynamic simulation modeling for a well-informed response. Sadly, most current models are labor intensive to build, difficult to reuse or adapt, and reliant on proprietary software. Our team has used modern mathematics to develop flexible open-source frameworks for "stock and flow models", which treat populations en masse, and also "agent-based models" or "ABMs" which simulate each individual separately. In our meeting we will develop new mathematics and create new software to design and work with "hybrid" models which combine stock and flow models and ABMs. To illustrate the power of this new software, we will create demonstration models of

1. gestational and type II diabetes,
2. labour shocks as the economy decarbonizes.

I've been working on applied category theory for a while, so it's great to see it getting ever more practical.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
SuffolkLITLab@esq.social wrote:

TL;DR: Bluesky faced government censorship as it restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey, responding to local authorities. However, third-party apps remain unaffected for now, highlighting a loophole in the platform's structure. https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/23/government-censorship-comes-to-bluesky-but-not-its-third-party-apps-yet/ #law #tech #legaltech ⚖️ 🤖 #autosum

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

I'm reading a book that made reference to this short story from Arthur Porges. It was written 40 or so years before Wiles completed a proof of Fermat's Last "Theorem", but it's still a fun twist on the usual deal-with-the-devil story. "The Devil and Simon Flagg":

https://archive.org/details/annette-peltz-mc-comas-the-eureka-years/page/254/mode/2up

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiles's%5Fproof%5Fof%5FFermat's%5FLast%5FTheorem

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
mathowie@xoxo.zone ("Matthew Haughey") wrote:

omfg the font used in this famous anti-piracy campaign used a pirated commercial font.

source: https://fedi.rib.gay/notes/a6xqityngfubsz0f

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Yes, I've read that blog post.

There may well be interesting things to learn about security protocols in papal elections, but they have little to do with the very specific problems in civil general elections in democracies.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

"Warfighter" is a term only a jingoistic propagandist would use.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/04/23/an-ugly-word-warfighter/

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@BlueDot This is just stupid.

There are fewer than 200 people voting, they all know each other, and they're locked in a room together

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

When I get elected pope, I assure you the procedure will have been entirely legit.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

I've had at least two journalists (from reputable places) ask me about hacking papal elections and/or how we can apply the security for electing popes to US elections.

Just no.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Apple plays the same games everywhere, assuming that regulators will either not understand that they are acting disingenuously, or that Apple's bleating about how objective and rational criteria are somehow "unfair" will undermine their own credibility in front of those enforcers.

Case in point, remember how Safari is actually 3+ different browsers? Pepperidge Farm -- and regulators around the world -- remembers:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/apple%5Fipados%5Fdma%5Fgatekeeper/