Daniel Lakeland

Applied Mathematician, Julia programmer, father of two amazing boys, official coonhound mix mutt-walker.

PhD in Civil Engineering. Debian Linux user since ca. 1994.

Bayesian data analysis iconoclast

Public Key

npub1pdwkvgp0z4da0nml778n8qce6vh0p374af7zvvmh6gtclzt647tshml9tc

NIP-05 Address

dlakelan@mastodon-sdf-org.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqkhtxyqh32k7heall0rensvvaxthscl275lpxxdmay9u039a2l9cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ekk7um5wgh8qatzqljph2

Publishing to

relay.ditto.pub

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub1pdwkvgp0z4da0nml778n8qce6vh0p374af7zvvmh6gtclzt647tshml9tc

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Last Notes

2026-10-28 19:38:47 UTC

Thanks to @nprofile…7yuj and the various people on the @nprofile…4wz6 office hours call. I learned that there is a beautiful rebel alliance of ragtag groups of old school computer hackers who are trying to make the world a better place.

2026-10-24 20:51:40 UTC

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-ai-is-devastating-higher-education-but-the-system-was-already-broken-292988
I don't think I've seen a more scathing review of the situation in higher education than this. Makes me cringe and say "surely it can't be that bad" even though I consider myself a horrible curmudgeon who sees universities as deeply flawed institutions equivalent to basically a hedge fund that teaches classes for tax reasons. Yet this is someone deep inside current universities, so they'd know more than I would I guess. Yikes!

2026-10-20 19:11:55 UTC

Dear mastodon leftists. Do you know of a one or two book recommendation which my kid could read to provide an overview of american government and its discontents which might conceivably qualify as an american government class for high school?
in other words he has to learn the usual govt class contents... how the branches work, what the process is to make a law, what the govt Depts are etc... while maybe not accepting the high school propaganda version of the story? and not a masters thesis

2026-10-13 13:53:30 UTC

My younger kid has realized that school is at least in part, a prison where kids are kept so parents can be farmed by capitalists, and that the grading, testing, major, and degree system serves to normalize and perpetuate hierarchies of importance among people. Also that many people have no interest in the knowledge and only care about the signifiers of status.
Send help.

2026-10-05 17:03:55 UTC

Anyone familiar with John M Blatt "Dynamic Economic Systems" (1983).
My German colleague is reading this while waiting for his child to be born any day now, and sending me tidbits. I skipped the intro and read chapter 2, it's very nice in a way that most Econ books I've skimmed or read are decidedly not.
#economics

2026-10-01 13:32:38 UTC

Fediverse, the social media system for 40+ year old people who built the world wide web and regret it.

2026-09-21 02:14:13 UTC

When I get older and my kids are living on their own, I want to buy an old ice cream truck, repaint it, and drive it around neighborhoods playing 80's hits... It's the music truck... *careless whisper intensifies*

2026-09-05 04:37:24 UTC

What I need is help from my anarchist vermont librarian @nprofile…zejv (and any of you other peeps)
My son has a friend at school who is interested in the questions about the industrial revolution, the Luddites, and unfortunately has spent some time reading The Unabomber manifesto. So my son wants to move his friend away from the Unabomber ideas towards more sane leftist critiques and histories of industrial revolution etc. What's good books about Luddites, and history of the Ind. Rev. ?

2026-08-25 20:40:59 UTC

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@nprofile…yzy8
I would have thought it was Americans, weird to know that they outsourced that sort of thing to Poland.

2026-08-01 04:13:59 UTC

You degenerates have got my younger son wanting a Mastodon account now. Hes 15 and a budding anarchist. what do I do?

2026-07-26 05:49:43 UTC

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@nprofile…wfat
Oh that's good to know. I assume I can also do
herd set-http-proxy guix-daemon <PROXY>
and then it'll be online properly with substitutes etc.
However now I can't figure out how to utilize my lvm root. should I just manually mount it and then
guix system init <DIR> ??
I'm kinda stuck at the partition step

2026-07-26 00:15:24 UTC

Tried to boot the #guix installer on my server. It hangs at establishing network connectivity. If I switch to a different vt and look at ip addresses it has both a valid v4 and v6 address... It's on a network where http requires a proxy, does it try to check internet access via http? It has no option to set a proxy in the installer? Any guix friends have suggestions?

2026-07-23 17:48:02 UTC

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@nprofile…3wkd @nprofile…gfcd
La beurre

2026-07-20 04:38:15 UTC

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@nprofile…cck4
Guix is the first distro that made me WANT to move away from Debian after 20+ years. I still use Debian, but for new installs I'll be running Guix from now on, and run Debian in a container as needed.
My advantage was I was already experienced in Scheme from having taken a college course in CS based on scheme back in the 1990's, and then being asked to TA that course the next year. Also I wrote Common Lisp code for several years too.
Definitely give it a try!

2026-06-22 20:03:44 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Similarly I look at data on fred.stlouisfed.org all the time to see if ideas I have about economics are at least generally consistent with historical actual facts. I often just do web searches in the image search for topics looking for graphs people have made...

2026-06-22 20:01:52 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
One of the things I do all the time is to just seek out some data and look at a graph or two. just to get back of the envelope checks.
Like, I think abolishing drug laws and militaristic drug enforcement would lead to lower violence, but is there any example I could test that against? Yes, actually, Portgual is an example of a whole country that did this successfully. Humboldt county CA is a location that was high rate of violence, but dropped after weed legalization
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/795/534/197/115/058/original/c9940ae30851a177.webp

2026-06-13 20:31:12 UTC

I got the data file my son took from our measurements yesterday. Rolling solid balls down an incline.
Rather than teaching him how physics works and then testing it with some experiments, we are trying to create a sequence of experiments where we can find out how basic mechanics works from the experiments. Here is the basic data we collected:
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/744/686/951/333/342/original/6f61b051b23afd2a.png

2026-06-13 13:39:01 UTC

https://blog.avas.space/llm-circus/
This blog about experiencing a workplace in the public sector going all in on LLM usage and having absolutely fuck all to show for it while any quantity of money for real work goes away to the LLM companies is worthwhile reading. It makes me think of David Graeber and Bullshit Jobs. There are people whose whole workplace experience is basically to be the one person (or group) in the organization who does the work, surrounded by bullshit jobs.

2026-06-08 18:52:12 UTC

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@nprofile…z6hp
in the end this is what most people who are enjoying or pro AI are missing. Like, sure, you're being given access to this compute resource that costs $8000/mo to run, and you're getting it for $40/mo and you think it's totally amazing. Sure... just be realistic about what's going on. But most people literally *do not know*

2026-06-07 16:29:54 UTC

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@nprofile…z6hp
You may be right. Memories fade and I was pretty young. I also subscribed to a number of more radical zine-like pubs so may mix them up a bit. But there was a time when you could call yourself a libertarian in the US and it didnt mean pot-smoking bootlicker. wish I had been exposed to the true meaning of the word Anarchist at that time. would have saved me a lot of grief.

2026-06-07 16:07:22 UTC

Thanks to @nprofile…z6hp for linking me to this article. Its a good article about what is Rent and how to recognize and deal with it. but it feels kinda gaslighty that such an article would be considered "new". like literally centuries of libertarian socialist / anarchist / even democratic socialist articles exist to support this position. This article would have been right at home in Reason magazine in 1993
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/rent-a-new-framework/

2026-06-04 20:26:01 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
I dont know that ive heard you speak about the lead up to the leaving event but if you ever decide to write up how that went tag me because I am here for it. very interesting to me as someone who was always religion free.

2026-05-19 17:37:28 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
I think it's always ok to just tell people you're not doing that well. Like "Hormones are making me particularly moody and grumpy right now". People understand that.

2026-05-08 00:08:53 UTC

Subtooting: people talking about how companies are making a ton of money because productivity gains in AI while firing workers would do well to understand the Capital as Power perspective on what measuring "productivity" in dollars means.
#capitalaspower @nprofile…puf9

2026-05-05 23:56:30 UTC

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@nprofile…d98r
meeeeih
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbDnxzrbxn4

2026-04-30 23:01:45 UTC

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@nprofile…69dv @nprofile…gfcd
Hmm. I have no doubt being a pilot could suck, but Median earnings are $198,100/yr so either that guy dropped a zero or he was like the absolutely lowest paid pilot in the fleet and by a lot.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Transportation-and-Material-Moving/Airline-and-commercial-pilots.htm

2026-04-28 20:16:22 UTC

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@nprofile…gfcd
This one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Puppet
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/484/164/941/022/223/original/dce1d1dd6ad46bd3.png

2026-04-24 02:24:27 UTC

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@nprofile…926n
I read that book in the early 90's in high school and I am afraid to say that I remember NOTHING. Really terrible.

2026-04-22 19:49:26 UTC

From my son who is doing the required AI based practice tests according to his teachers instructions (and to try to prep for what is likely to be similar to her test? I guess?)
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/450/080/033/504/906/original/246ece10a0939971.png

2026-04-21 19:23:59 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Autism and "giftedness" are two correlated neurotypes, but they aren't the same thing. This precision of language and strong interest in learning and teaching and yes-anding everything is I think more associated with the "giftedness". That is, non-autistic gifted people do it too.
God I wish they'd come up with a better multi-factor description of neurotypes.

2026-04-21 16:46:11 UTC

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@nprofile…kahw @nprofile…8t3t @nprofile…2c6z
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTJj4wbmAhk

2026-04-18 22:36:22 UTC

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@nprofile…gfcd
Such a blessing to just let go of the idea that governments are supposed to make sense and policies are supposed to help citizens and other utter lies, that keeps me going now.
We could just not play their murderous child raping game.

2026-04-16 02:47:48 UTC

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@nprofile…wfat
so relatively simple things like i2p or tor with snowflake or signal via TLS proxy overseas or whatever is blocked I assume

2026-04-15 15:44:33 UTC

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@nprofile…wfat
what do you think would be the most useful technologies to add to my router project that might enable broader access for people in countries like that? Your combination sounds rather extreme, but is there something simpler that could still help?

2026-04-15 15:25:00 UTC

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@nprofile…wfat
Ugh. Thanks for explaining. This "protecting the children" is always 100% horseshit excuses to control everyone.

2026-04-15 14:52:21 UTC

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@nprofile…wfat
Which country is this story about?

2026-04-13 15:05:02 UTC

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@nprofile…mj05
Becomes extremely problematic when you gain enough expertise in methodology to realize that wide swaths of everything in science is methodologically dead on arrival.
There have been some useful articles written to highlight this, standard methodology, and clearly (intentionally) broken studies.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC61047/
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
@nprofile…nmr0

2026-04-13 12:21:37 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Sooo tired.
Plenty of stuff was bad before 9/11 but since then, its been a complete shitshow. Literally worse and worse for 25 years. we could have just not done any of that harm. no Iraq invasion, no Afghanistan invasion, no PATRIOT act, no NSA funding Google to do spying, no tea party assholes, no Obama drone strikes, no Trump 1 or Trump 2 or COVID mismanagement... no financial shenanigans, no destruction of the housing market, no opioid crisis
these were all choices by politicians

2026-04-13 04:12:49 UTC

From Friday's movie night. This is at the house of Joe Rinaudo in La Cañada CA, who built a museum to the silent film era in his home. This month is comedy duo month. We watched Road To Utopia (1946) with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. Joe is famous for a bunch or videos on the internet of him playing his Photoplayer. He is working on installing a reconstructed organ so he can show silent films with live organ performances. LA is full of interesting people.
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/395/446/724/759/671/original/c55fdfd073a78efe.jpg

2026-04-12 03:17:33 UTC

My #guix friends, in Debian if I log in to a gnome session it runs the ssh-agent program and I only ever have to unlock my ssh key once...
in guix I have to enter the passphrase every time. How do I get ssh-agent working/running on my guix login?

2026-04-10 17:41:19 UTC

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@nprofile…8d0p
It would be useful rather than to always be on the defensive, to also publish articles explaining what graphene does for everyday people. Ive converted at least 4 people and they all love having a phone **they** control.
Being on the defensive at all times makes you seem weak, but you are a strong and much loved project. Stop giving the naysayers so much time! Promote your message!
I also say this as someone who wants you to succeed.
@nprofile…s4ce @nprofile…zswc

2026-04-10 15:56:50 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Of all the reasons to eliminate the state, the US healthcare system stands front and center. Fuck all these people.

2026-04-10 02:21:25 UTC

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@nprofile…h3es
Shoegaze duck

2026-04-08 21:04:28 UTC

Holy crap guys. I just looked back in my order history and that little Celeron laptop I just upgraded to current #guix with a little zram was actually ordered in april 2015. 2.16GHz 2 core Celeron with 4GB RAM that's 11 years old. I would totally feel comfortable giving this to a nontechnical person to surf the web. 100% functional for everyday computing.
@nprofile…sftd

2026-04-05 16:41:43 UTC

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@nprofile…l7em
you can hit tab and it'll list all the conforming units it knows
Liquid measure is equally confusing in both UK and US versions. I dont remember details, but the whole point of gnu units is its an expert system that knows the details for you. Its absolutely amazing for finding data in different units in papers and then combining them all into one dimensionless quantity and checking its dimensionless.

2026-04-05 14:55:34 UTC

There is a long thread here on fedi about how provincial the american system of units is and embarrassing that they dont use SI for NASA broadcasts. It then goes on to discuss all the various issues with conversions and whatever. First, let me be the first to say that as metrology goes, the SI system is brilliantly well done...
Second I'd like to point out that ackshually all mathematical models should be made dimensionless...
Finally, install gnu units on all your computers.

2026-04-02 14:27:53 UTC

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@nprofile…rhp2 @nprofile…7yuj
I'd set aside the formal verification requirement to get the rest of it. I really do think microkernels were the right way to go, it's just that in 1992 or whatever the consumer hardware wasn't up to the task. I think probably around 2005 or so the hardware started to be able to afford to do that. But that's approximately the time that VMs and containers took off. Now we have this giant mess.

2026-04-02 13:08:06 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
what if its a party held by librarians?

2026-04-01 21:19:08 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
I'm sorry that this happened to you. or to any kid. It wasn't my experience. And I made sure it wasn't my kids experience. I consciously constantly give my kids the agency that was appropriate to their developmental level. Interestingly I also got heavily into dog "training" methods that also are all about the dog's agency. You can kind of look at the two main dog "training" methods and see that raising kids mirrors those two ideas. I do scare quotes around "training"

2026-03-31 13:50:21 UTC

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@nprofile…44dh @nprofile…fns8
I think it's the other way around. Being a right winger is associated with caring more about money and business than other things, which means they're likely to be able to afford houses when other people can't.

2026-03-25 17:49:58 UTC

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@nprofile…zejv
"All guts no nuts" 😂

2026-03-23 04:12:15 UTC

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@nprofile…pkel
right but it needs to be exported into the environment of **the daemon** so, basically the only thing I can think of is to create another /etc/systemd/system/homeguix.service and depending on where I am stop guix-daemon and start homeguix or stop homeguix and start guix-daemon?

2026-03-23 04:03:15 UTC

I took the plunge and installed #guix on my Debian laptop, I can't guix install things because I need a proxy. On a guix system I would "herd set-http-proxy guix-daemon <myproxy>"
how do I do something similar on debian?

2026-03-21 15:41:25 UTC

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@nprofile…2c6z
was this tourist at a waffle house? Did they smell faintly of fire and brimstone from teleportation? Do they run the US FEMA agency? These are important questions.

2026-03-04 02:06:27 UTC

Speaking of PhysicsGirl y'all Dianna just posted her FIRST SCIENCE VIDEO IN 3 YEARS this morning, ever since she got Long COVID.
LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOO
https://youtu.be/B3m3AMRlYfc?si=lo9aqVSD8FijQWRD

2026-03-04 01:51:45 UTC

In my conception of an #anarchistuniversity one of the things we don't have to do is perpetuate siloed curriculum... like, Math dept teaches calculus 1,2,3 and Physics teaches physics 1a,1b,1c and engineering teaches statics and dynamics and electrical circuits and engineering thermo... and etc.
If the point is to learn things, then we can combine and discuss connections... One of the reasons these remain siloed is if they combine then there's an inter dept. fight over tuition money.

2026-03-03 15:02:00 UTC

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@nprofile…7cp4
Where we're going the roads are littered with handbaskets
@nprofile…9xhj

2026-03-01 02:20:15 UTC

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@nprofile…f95k
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/151/520/523/155/155/original/a7a31afb331ff301.png

2026-02-27 19:18:00 UTC

Hey #guix peeps. I sent a message to help-guix list but didn't get a reply, maybe someone here knows.
On my wife's new server I have two spinning disks and two SSDs. The spinning disks are partitioned into a 10MB partition for storing a key, and the rest for bcache...
Once the bcache is registered, /dev/mapper/bcache0 and bcache1 are each LUKS devices, and they are holding btrfs filesystems.
None of this comes up on boot, because guix doesn't have a mechanism for that.

2026-02-26 14:50:16 UTC

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@nprofile…vqu4
who is this guy? he seems to get it.

2026-02-22 21:02:36 UTC

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@nprofile…sftd
where are you getting these, donations or buying used lots?

2026-02-20 04:38:51 UTC

Are there more cookies?
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/101/108/932/502/869/original/b90a59938c9243c3.jpg

2026-02-12 19:51:08 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Artemis has published about how she grew up in a fundamentalist christian church that was kind of cult-like and had to outgrow it... I did the same with liberal politics. I believed in the constitution and the "great experiment" of our founders and all that horseshit. I studied how the law worked, and I followed important court cases on first, second, fourth, fifth amendment ideas etc.

2026-02-12 19:49:12 UTC

The thing you should know with respect to my threads on liberalism this morning, is that as a teen, I fully bought into the liberal mindset. I was like "classical liberal" I believed the stuff about "freedom" and "equality" and "the rule of law" and "justice as fairness" at least, I thought I did. I considered the failings of governments in the liberal tradition to be bugs to be fixed. I thought we needed to adjust election mechanisms and elect better smarter more honest politicians. @nprofile…nmr0

2026-02-11 15:58:54 UTC

S1ep2 of SNL has a funny joke advertisement for graffiti wallpaper, basically various kinds of vinyl wallpaper made to look like brick walls or concrete or whatever with 1960s and 70s slogans. There were several styles, you could go with militant, peace and love, "free" (free foo, free bar, etc).
At the end the huckster who is I believe a real Yippee political leader (but I'd have to look it up to confirm) says "Up against the wallpaper ***censored****"
I laughed out loud.

2026-02-08 18:50:38 UTC

Apparently when I subscribe to #SuperbOwl theres a bunch of people talking about some kind of rabbit and some kind of sporting event. Get your own hashtag people.

2026-02-06 20:46:10 UTC

#plumbing people. I've got a toilet where after replacing the flush valve, it's now a flapper, and so the weight of the mechanism is less, and the handle doesn't return up after pushing down. I remember to pull it up, but my wife often forgets. There's no reason she should have to remember, a simple weight would provide the torque to right the handle... surely such a weight is a thing already commonly available and you can just buy them right? What are they called so I can find it at the store?

2026-02-06 14:16:27 UTC

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@nprofile…pfuj
she deserves effective healthcare because shes a human. if a custom purposed computer does a better job of diagnosis and treatment than a human would, she'd deserve that too. Even if its MORE expensive.
@nprofile…8rky

2026-02-05 20:58:55 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
I know what my grandparents did to end fascism. I fully expect some of that gonna have to go down. I'm not happy about it.

2026-02-03 22:57:06 UTC

Mastodons ... I've been invited to do a short paper on why some Nobel Prize winning economists are full of it... so I wrote it in quarto, and then discovered they accept submissions in LaTeX or Word docx... So far I output to docx and literally copy and pasted things into their template... but does anyone know of a way to take a quarto document and output it as a LaTeX document I could add their template headers to? I want to spend like zero time on this whole thing.

2026-01-30 02:40:13 UTC

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@nprofile…pfuj
https://pyscript.net/
https://www.online-python.com/
Search python in browser and try some more... there are kinda too many options.
another option would be to set up jupyterlab on a server and let the kids work with jupyter notebooks.

2026-01-25 17:25:14 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
I hope you've seen this meme, there are many people who have noted this before.
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/956/902/420/243/635/original/36d7189e7f3ab0e5.jpg

2026-01-23 17:59:00 UTC

Bitlocker is a Microsoft product that encrypts your laptop hard drive etc. Apparently, Microsoft exfiltrates a recovery key for your Bitlocker encryption and stores it in their cloud, they give it out to law enforcement at request. And of course, they give it out to whoever compromises their system and steals that info. Bitlocker is completely worthless trash. Do not rely on it for information security.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/01/22/microsoft-gave-fbi-keys-to-unlock-bitlocker-encrypted-data/

2026-01-23 17:37:10 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
If you want to do research and things on a computer and you don't want it to leave any trace on your computer, get yourself a copy of TAILS OS for a USB stick. You put it on a USB stick, and then boot your windows/PC computer with it, you now route everything through Tor, have Tor browser, and nothing is saved on the USB stick. Everything you do disappears as soon as you reboot and remove the USB stick.

2026-01-23 17:34:50 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
On android you can use Orbot and tell it to route Signal through the tor network. So then people won't know who is sending messages by tracking IP addresses.
Finally, don't use biometric unlock on your phone. EVER. Use a pin, because cops can legally just force you to put your finger on your phone.

2026-01-23 17:31:44 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Get Tor Browser on your phone as well. It works just fine on Android. It isn't possible to use on iPhones because they only allow reskinned versions of safari on iPhones.
If you can afford it, get a Pixel phone, used is fine, and install GrapheneOS on it. If you want high security for location tracking don't put google stuff in your main profile, create a profile just for google apps.

2026-01-23 17:24:32 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Send documents via Signal not Email.
Set your chats to have a disappearing messages timer by default. I use 4wks default but sometimes set it as low as 5min for some convos.
Get a copy of Tor Browser, and use it for research related to resistance.
DuckDuckGo has an .onion URL search link, use that in tor browser (it's a built in option I think).

2026-01-23 17:21:24 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Here's my little tiny bit about op-sec I hope helps you.
If you aren't using Signal. Start using Signal. I mean for *everything* texting your family about picking up groceries? Signal. Texting your family about showing up to resistance training? Signal.
Figure out how to verify your Signal contacts. Basically in-person you scan some QR codes and then you know there's no man in the middle.
Recruit your new friends into Signal.
Do not settle for WhatsApp or Telegram.

2026-01-20 18:18:23 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
Its like the people saying they need the local police to step up and protect them from ICE or the people who glow over Bill and Melinda Gates foundation... fuckers you are completely missing the boat.

2026-01-20 17:41:47 UTC

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@nprofile…pfuj
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/928/655/940/389/796/original/7b47b4bec38afdc1.mp4

2026-01-20 17:33:22 UTC

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@nprofile…pfuj
Is this a sex thing? because you make it sound like a sex thing.

2026-01-17 18:51:17 UTC

You know how every time an anarchist who may have studied anarchist theory for say a few months to decades talks to a middle class Liberal/conservative institutionalist centrist person the first thing they say is that "if we didnt have cops who would protect you from roving gangs of thugs dragging you out of your car or snatching your kids?"
This is a post about ICE

2026-01-17 11:20:32 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0
PREACH SISTER
The real reason we have the fascism we have is the people who want the pre-fascist crap we had back. GWB wasn't sending ICE goons to LA or whatever but he sure was sending marines to Iraq and Afghanistan. His father probably masterminded the Iran Contra affair, state funding contra terrorism, and the cocaine wars of the 80s... Like, pick a decade and I can pick some horrific shit the US did in that decade...

2026-01-15 06:19:53 UTC

Everyone in the country whose paying attention understands that ICE is literal Gestapo, that they've been hired to ramp up terrorist tactics and smash any sense that anyone has any constitutional rights that mean anything, plus they are bait for eventually some citizens to protect their community with countervailing violence which will trigger a mobilization of the military at large scale to do all the shit the generals were told at that fucking Hegseth meeting.

2026-01-13 01:39:37 UTC

well if I gotta be sick in bed I might as well watch murder she wrote, plenty of episodes, they're free, and from an era when people respected writing instead of just action.

2025-12-24 21:30:00 UTC

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@nprofile…n7x3
power is there to cause harm to some in order to benefit others, that literally why it exists. if your idea was so good that everyone agreed with it you wouldn't need power, people would just do the thing.
So its not just that power attracts assholes, its also that if you aren't an asshole and are put in a position of power you will be asked to use that power to protect the powerful and harm the weak. thats what the structure is FOR

2025-12-24 19:34:44 UTC

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@nprofile…8eua
Interestingly, I'm aphantasic (I can't "picture things" in my head) so I don't "picture" notes on the keyboard when I play the way you say you do. On the chromatic keyboard intervals have particular shapes/geometry that's consistent everywhere. So I kind of play by "feel".

2025-12-24 16:05:13 UTC

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@nprofile…8eua
Professional musicians sometimes practice playing things "in all 12 keys" this just isn't a thing on the chromatic keyboard. In many ways its more similar to a fretted Bass (the other instrument I play) where by shifting the start location and keeping the geometric pattern the same, you get the same tune in a different key.
anyway Im looking forward to the rest of the thread because tuning systems are quite interesting.

2025-12-24 16:04:50 UTC

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@nprofile…8eua
As a guy who went out of his way to create a Chromatic keyboard, I can tell you definitively, its easier to play improvised music, and with landmarks provided by blue tape in my case, but could be colors or textures, I dont think it'd be harder to play written.
On the chromatic keyboard, a major key always looks the same, its 3 successive notes from one row followed by 4 from the opposite row. This symmetry makes everything incredibly easier.
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/775/392/251/796/833/original/55780904af183582.jpg

2025-12-16 18:17:54 UTC

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@nprofile…n7x3
My big weak spot has always been tools and equipment to make things or accomplish stuff... whether its pens and paper, radio tech, computers, hard drives, cameras, machine tools, sewing things whatever.
Now I need to give myself space/time to use them. So I'm not buying stuff anymore unless its maintenance and replacement of old things.

2025-12-13 22:50:04 UTC

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/average-american-net-worth-620-121500111.html
Median net worth in the US is $124k 15th in the world, behind for example Australia, Canada, NZ, and Italy.
By average though its $620k and second in the world... because of the billionaires and 100 millionaires skewing the avg.

2025-12-12 23:22:47 UTC

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@nprofile…e4ry
distressed tabletops marked with a hydraulic press

2025-12-11 17:50:23 UTC

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@nprofile…n7x3
As @nprofile…ry5p pointed out repeatedly, we know the answer to this already. If you can't dominate someone, then, you have to incentivize them. In other words, we get people to work by making it worth their while rather than threatening them with destruction if they don't.

2025-12-09 13:25:44 UTC

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@nprofile…exm7
Jesus fucking Christ that was a wild ride. I mean I knew this shit was crazy but I didnt know it was that crazy. I didnt follow the numbers exactly because hes a bit long winded but it appears NVIDIA shipped 6 Million GPUs and very definitively they must be in warehouses awaiting gigawatts of power generation while depreciating over a few years unused because it takes more time to make power plants than the useful lifetime of the device?

2025-12-08 16:07:26 UTC

I feel like a good explanation for much of the modern world is the concept from George Akerlof... The market for lemons.
When consumers know that sellers are cheating them through superior information, they become unwilling to pay for quality (because they assume they can't discern it). Then, the providers of quality can't compete, and remove themselves from the broad market. Finally, everything is just broken used cars and tech surveillance phones/TVs/internet services.

2025-12-03 17:34:09 UTC

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@nprofile…exm7
When it comes to public standards, like for example licensure of engineers or whatever, I have complicated feelings, but I mostly think they should represent minimal acceptable levels of demonstrated understanding, and specifically shouldn't be used to limit the supply of engineers/doctors/etc
When I say minimal acceptable I really mean minimal. We should see a strong down-slope in safety or efficacy at the threshold score or whatever.

2025-12-03 17:29:47 UTC

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@nprofile…exm7
The purpose of a grade should be to inform the student of how well they're progressing. That capitalists use grades to find workers is a BUG not a feature. An immediate improvement would be to make grades a sealed private record available ONLY to the student, and illegal to request or reveal otherwise.

2025-12-03 17:28:26 UTC

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@nprofile…exm7
Preach! It drives me crazy reading for example reddit groups for teachers when the teachers say things that suggest they believe their purpose is to grade people on some axis that orders them according to their "suitability for jobs" or similar. A key phrase is "in the real world". If you're using that phrase as a teacher you're failing at your job. Your job is to give kids knowledge of facts and skills.

2025-12-02 17:37:54 UTC

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@nprofile…exm7
I mean, dont get me wrong, theres some natural competition in lots of things. Sports is only entertaining if one team tries to win at the game vs the other. But its not a complete worldview. Its not even a complete worldview for games. There are very fun collaborative games where everyone tries to get the best outcome... Pandemic for example, or any TTRPG where the real goal is to write an entertaining story and meaningfully act out a character.

2025-12-02 17:33:10 UTC

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@nprofile…exm7
Or maybe... Just maybe... Competition and earning a place in a dominance hierarchy is entirely bullshit and we need to start learning to negotiate things to mutually benefit each other? Nah, gotta just teach boys to try to "beat" girls but to be OK with losing... 😑