Notices by Dan Drake 🦆 (ddrake@mathstodon.xyz)

@inthehands I think you could describe me as "-1 times Paul".

I am a super morning person, am fine with the morning slot, and...well, I guess I don't have an opinion (yet?) on the scheduling.

That said, if this is a class I'm also teaching, I'm happy to do the first / earliest time slot.

@inthehands @quephird @jrose I too share a love of esoteria programming languages. I recall learning Haskell (arguably not so esoteric...) and I didn't really understand functional programming, or things like "you cannot change the values of a variable"...and figuring that out broke my brain, in the best way.

Put another way, it's good to learn such languages because, as they say: a mind, once stretched, never returns to its original dimensions!

Today is my last day working at Epic, the health care software company. I'm sad to be leaving.

But, it's a fitting last day -- π day -- because starting in August I'll be teaching data science and computer science at Macalester College (with @inthehands !).

Epic was founded by Judy Faulkner, who was a math major and generally nerdy person -- and so, every year on this day, the entire company has pie at 1:59 pm.

They also did a "pi-ku" contest this year -- like haiku, but of course with 3, 1, and 4 syllables. Some entries:

One Seventh / of / Twenty-two. Close!

Bring your fork / And / Calculator.

#piday

@inthehands @qurlyjoe gratuitous magnolia blossoms from my antejentacular circumgyration

I'm absurdly excited to learn that 2024 = 2³+3³+4³+5³+6³+7³+8³+9³.

...and it's because:

2025 = 45², and

45=1+2+⋯+9, and

(1+⋯+𝑛)²=1³+⋯+𝑛³ !

Via https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/18tr14a/2024_2³3³4³5³6³7³8³9³/.

#math #newyear #newyear2024

@inthehands oh man, thank you for reminding me of that album.

Your comment about Joni Mitchell and Radiohead is spot-on. I love Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink, but I also like Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus and Back. Oh, and Strange Little Girls. I admit after that, it just doesn't do it for me.

@inthehands I'll add that Tori's cover of Eminem's "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" is one of the most terrifying and stunning covers I've ever heard. It's hair-raising when you listen to that and realize she's re-done the song *from the perspective of the murdered woman*. I think the cover version is so amazing that she effectively wrests ownership of the song from Eminem.

(A similar wresting of ownership: Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails "Hurt".)

@jekely @elduvelle @feditips a CLI client for Mastodon! OMG that reminds me of the golden age of LiveJournal and such in the early 2000s. Those were great times, I think, before the rise of modern-day social networking and apps and such.

@inthehands "“No one wants to be policed. Everyone wants to feel safe.”

Huh, that sounds like a restatement of this definition of conservatism: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html

Doctors are Luddites -- and that's a good thing!

The Luddites of 19th century Britain weren't anti-technology, which is the common perception nowadays -- they destroyed machines not because they didn't like them, but as a form of protest; what they *really* were after was better working conditions, and a more fair share in the gains from those machines. See the wikipedia entry, or, say, https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/.

We have the exact same dynamic today. But it's not about weaving machines -- it's about health care.

From "The Moral Crisis of America's Doctors", https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/magazine/doctors-moral-crises.html?unlocked_article_code=3YpybyefNeIJ9DwcyMHlxJ0p0_fSriTR7mc6FjnMb_YTHEGoRgF8JDa8l1lxizqy3iEYhuzAkLggKmgaxgwrb1l7O8us6kRYhT2j79zgQSgBN-I-5c33iEYj0JDLzxY5ANa84idHjTOvxpcLgm-X_1225G22mWR8QdtiVaZBLsNo42OTFpiZh_lrZkWDPxqZxOmeyxkmgtg27j7RhhDemEDXuLY9JJUzcU-0ZAozB-mKRZ6qx6h7oLCuLcF3d748p6J10cceFZZjcv27WtYPEOIWHquFRU2tFYHbPaNPP6WA_hJO9EFtbH_wcZ-a89Tas5or8mDvFmIQ7b57F7umGQ&smid=url-share

"In the past, one privilege conferred on physicians who made these sacrifices was the freedom to control their working conditions in independent practices. But today, 70 percent of doctors work as salaried employees of large hospital systems or corporate entities, taking orders from administrators and executives who do not always share their values or priorities."

It's the exact same dynamic. Doctors are no more opposed to fancy health care tech than the weavers were opposed to fancy weaving tech; they just want to have a fair say in their working conditions, and want the power to put their patients' interests first.

(Consider the story from the article of the doctor who had dying patient whose family could not be there. She stayed with him and held his hand as he died. Do you want a health care system where doctors can't do that?)

...and, holy coincidence, Batman: as I write this, at this very moment, I'm listening to @radiofreefedi and the song is "Trapped in a Patient Portal" by @jasondidner...!!

@inthehands yes yes yes a thousand times yes.

My take: lectures are a TECHNOLOGY. There was a time and place when that was a great technology! Namely, when books were very rare and expensive -- like, medieval universities, where getting a new book was a big deal. In that context -- think the University of Paris about 800 years ago -- a lecture is a great technology and efficient use of time!

But perhaps just maybe you (the general "you", not you specifically, @inthehands) have noticed that this is not Paris circa 1200! We have better technology. Let's use it!

</preaching to choir>

@inthehands indeed! I do want to get back to teaching, and in any educational setting I find myself thinking "I know of a better way to do this..."

I took a compilers course recently, and it was all bog-standard lectures and teaching out of the textbook: each lecture was roughly just "section X of the text, converted from printed textbook form into slides, which the instructor narrates through".) Nice enough, but it could have been so much better...

@inthehands , as a former math professor who worked at big research universities, tiny liberal arts places, and now as a professional, in-the-trenches programmer, I have so many thoughts about...the higher educational enterprise, both from a more research-oriented and liberal arts oriented angle...vocational/techincal/practical education...and the everyday practice of just shipping some code and working with others.

So I have a good, broad perspective, I think.

I'll summarize my reaction to your thread very simply as: YES!