Notices by Terri K O 🍁 (terri@social.afront.org)

Ugh, Python got over 500 #GSoC applications this year and so many of them are absolutely trash, didn't follow any of the instructions. Most years about half of our applications are like this. But usually we have a lot fewer applicants and the submissions were blank files not plausible AI nonsense.

So I'm stuck reading hundreds of incredibly low quality nonsensical submissions today in hopes to take some workload off my other unpaid volunteer mentors. This is not the volunteer gig I signed up for 15 years ago when it was mostly working with new contributors and not their AI chatbots and I'm grumpy.

#AI #Python #OpenSource

Decided this was a day for browned butter cookies and I'm not regretting it even though this recipe is a hassle. 🍪

#butter #baking

I can't remember who recommended this modern AU Zelda/Link fic but thank you:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/58009699/chapters/147682132

Although it was a little funny to be reading rated explicit zelda fanfic while helping my small child with the reading parts of Tears of the Kingdom 😅 (and playing Echoes of Wisdom myself in between chapters...)

#parenting #fanfic #zelda #VideoGames

@baconandcoconut have you ever had Tang on snow? We used to do that winter camping when I was a teenager.

Saw this quilt at the senior's home and decided I should take a picture after our choir gig was done. It's so pretty! I wonder if the artist lives at the centre?

#quilting

@jwz I really pissed off some dude once by saying, "it's not an echo chamber, it's called having friends. Maybe you should try that instead of whatever it is you're doing?"

Anyhow, blocking is great.

Working on this sweater ornament for #FinishOrFrogAlong today, at least until my kid wants to play with balloons and I need to put the sharp things away.

This is a kit from Knitted Bliss Stitching and I have to say it's the nicest kit I've ever bought in terms of what came with it and thoughtful design. It included the magnetic needle holder and I will absolutely be re-using the circular cardboard thread holders. There's even a really pretty threader! (Not pictured.) The project bag is mine, though, from a local artist.

You can see the whole kit in her product photos here: https://shop.knittedbliss.com/collections/embroidery-kits/products/mini-ornament-kit

#embroidery

Revisiting some #SocksOnVacay from years past! Poor "Time Flies Like An Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana" sock has a few more black spots now 🍌

My mom doomed herself to a lifetime of knitted socks by once telling me that she liked them. The first few I made for her have got holes, so I did some repairs while I was visiting this summer. It's the biggest compliment to me as a sock knitter that she loved these enough to wear them right out! 💙 Thankfully she's got a few more to rotate through now than she did in those early days, but I'm always glad to do some mending. Some of these holes were too big for my mending tool so I picked up the larger version for next summer!

Yarns all from Knitted Wit , patterns from Shannon Squire , nifty mending tool from Katrinkles

#knitting #SockKnitting #mending @knitting

Okay, so there's some old caselaw in Canada that says if satellite TV is available for sale you have to pay for it, but if it's some global station you couldn't buy in Canada they don't really care if you just watch it for free. I've been thinking about this in the context of companies selling our stuff to data brokers and AI companies.

Which is to say, a license for scraping my content for use in AI, marketing, machine learning, and other commercial activities is now available for $500 per word, where words are defined to include not only words within posts, but also those found in alt text and hashtags as well as profile data. Pictures, being worth one thousand words, are thus priced at $500k per image. If you continue to scrape any of my content or use previously scraped content after today, you are agreeing to these terms and conditions. Please contact me if you need special bulk rates.

#TermsOfService

Been low on knitting pictures because I was working on a present for my mom! But her present is ready for me to put it in the mail tomorrow so have a picture of my mildly neglected Crown Wools. I'm looking forwards to finishing it during #FinishOrFrogAlong next month!

Also, I kind of want to have a frog in progress so I could have a Fall Frog Finish. 😅

#knitting #FallFinishAlong

I really love this description of a retracted study: not only does it explain what was retracted (turns out men don't generally divorce their sick wives), but also it covers what the error was (a coding problem treated people who left the study as divorced) how it all went down (someone tried to replicate, asked for data and didn't get the same analysis. Contacted the authors and they were horrified and immediately worked to retract).

It's a really nice story of why replication matters and how to be good at science. This is how I was taught science should work, but I rarely come across such good retrospectives.

https://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21/to-our-horror-widely-reported-study-suggesting-divorce-is-more-likely-when-wives-fall-ill-gets-axed/

#science #PeerReview

The library has a bookworm that they hide in a new place every week and they've been making him costumes and props. ♥️

#library #PublicLibrary

Dad made linguini instead of kid's preferred spaghettini. Those of you with kids may know that this could be a disaster of epic proportions.

Kid: "oh, it looks like rainbow road!"

So linguini is now rainbow road noodles in this house and we didn't have to make a second dinner. Thank you Mario!

🌈

#parenting

@njeanneburns @WizardOfDocs

As someone moderating an instance: good moderation is only part of the reason a user might not getting spam. It looks the the waves of attacks hit more active/followed/boosted users on the server before everyone else. Presumably they function the same way as instagram spam campaigns and go off recent posts to target folk with tagging. So our two most popular users are doing basically all the reporting and suffering, and everyone else (who isn't a mod) has no idea anything is happening.

There's some stuff the mod team is doing with importing block lists and adding special rules that should help everyone, but a lot of it relies on us getting at least one report to trigger action because the Mastodon mod tools are not super powerful.