Notices by DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄) (dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz), page 3

@screwtape @kentpitman
Substituting "humor" for "irony" in the Steve Martin quote from Roxanne (1987):

"Oh, ho, ho, humor! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so humor's not really a, a high priority. We haven't had any humor here since about, uh, '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Also about statistics, you may have missed my final comment on Lambda Moo:

When my research mathematician friend Arunas Rudvalis (discoverer of the Rudvalis group) switched from group theory to statistics, I asked, isn't that a much more narrow field?

He said "no, you don't get it. Take *all* of mathematics, and make all of the variables random variables. That's statistics."

(No doubt I still don't get it, but that expanded my horizons anyway.)

@kentpitman @screwtape
Huh! I did not know that.

@screwtape @shizamura @kentpitman @nosrednayduj @mdhughes @ratxue
Today I explored for the first time, just figuring I should find out how to walk to the sushi place.

First I tried to walk from the closet to the sushi place. Later I tried to find my way back to the closet from the sushi place.

I failed miserably; it was pitiable.

Teleporting solves that, though, thanks.

@screwtape @shizamura @kentpitman @nosrednayduj @mdhughes
Note that @ratxue did not turn into a link; it was missing @ mastodon.social

@ratxue

@screwtape
Not to overburden you, but they also just reposted this classic Henry Baker paper (I believe everything he wrote was a classic, actually) on the thermodynamics of garbage collection:

https://plover.com/~mjd/misc/hbaker-archive/ReverseGC.html

@screwtape @kon @prahou @ozzelot @reidrac
"Surrealistic Pillow", Jefferson Airplane, 1967.
Contains the rock classics "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7knZICgLko&list=OLAK5uy_l-I-_0YyLBUa6VOhtQ-2VbROAACQx6GPo&index=2

@screwtape
Link the compiled Fortran to the compiled Lisp. 🤨

@AmenZwa @fl @Jose_A_Alonso
"there was no type system, originally"

It is a pet peeve of mine for people to call dynamic typing "no typing".

The very first Lisp of course had cons pairs, symbolic atoms, and integers -- dynamically typed.

@screwtape @kentpitman @rwxrwxrwx
> I ran out of characters to tag you but I was waiting for this <3

It's *almost* like you're saying I'm some kind of smart ass.

> only/especially interesting for small primes

That's quitter talk!

@screwtape @kentpitman @rwxrwxrwx
More seriously, I always found it intensely annoying that fftw claimed copyright/license on generated code.

Less seriously again:

"name idea is A Worse Is Better Way Of Computing A Fourier Transform"

Not "Better is Worse"?

> PROGN...PROGN...PROGN...SETQ...SETQ...SETQ...GO #....GO #...GO #...

My mistake, worse it is. ;)

Anyway leveraging name recognition on "Worse is Better" really is a good naming idea.

@screwtape @kentpitman @rwxrwxrwx
Winograd had a separate FFT per prime length, composing for composite lengths. So we can expect you to also have one per prime p, right? How many primes could there be, after all.

@screwtape @AmenZwa
I just noticed I've had a 1977 Multics MACLISP "hackery" window open since last year, I don't remember why.

If you're interested in this bit of history:

The Multics MACLISP Compiler
The Basic Hackery -- a Tutorial
By Bernard S. Greenberg, December, 1977 [updated to HTML 1996]
"...this paper still presents one of very few accounts of powerful compilation techniques for Lisp on so-called "stock architectures,"...

"To those LISPmen who have achieved proficiency in this our chosen language, and who have wondered about the strategies of the MACLISP compilers, I offer this tutorial, wherein I divulge the basic hacks of the Multics Compiler (lcp). Many of these hacks, including the entire first pass, were derived from the ITS Compiler (COMPLR, now NCOMPLR (or NCOMPL)), a much, much, hairier beast of which I have not yet achieved mastery. By learning that which I offer herein, the ambitious LISPman might not only acquire sufficient knowledge to modify or debug the Multics Compiler, but undertake the serious study of NCOMPLR. In fact, the state management hacks presented herein are of great interest in comparison to those of other modern compilers, e.g., Multics PL/I. He who comprehends this will also glean generally powerful knowledge of compiler-writing techniques in general, and will have interesting and useful knowledge under his belt.

"If you are not already familiar with LISP, in some detail, including the traditional implementations and value/object issues, you probably should not be reading this."

https://www.multicians.org/lcp.html

@screwtape @aartaka
*You're* writing C? You swore that you abandoned old languages and moved on forever.

@jackwilliambell
Now tell the truth, didn't you draw cartoons on meeting whiteboards before retiring, too? 🙂

@Aphelion
[funny retort with a twist and a raised eyebrow]

@jimmyhmiller
> Is the podcast archived anywhere? Or do I need to get it live?

I don't know, you'd have to ask the organizer, Screwlisp ( @screwtape ) -- I'm just a clueless attendee who discovered them a month or two ago. I find it a fun get together.

> What The Dormouse Said is on my reading listing, but I will have to bump it up.

Reflecting a bit, it adds info that I have not seen anywhere else, which is why I excitedly recommend it. But a hypothetical naif might not see what the big deal is, I suppose, in e.g. accentuating some historical counter-culture aspects of computer history.

However I assume anyone reading it *has* in fact read some other computing histories, whether or not they lived through any part of such.

The author, Markoff, of course has an impressive journalistic pedigree.

@Aphelion
Woot! Let's go also Here we go!
🤡 👍

Interesting: Tree calculus, which is Turing complete/equivalent since it can emulate both S and K combinators.

Post by @maonu: https://mathstodon.xyz/@maonu/113625786880840164

Which links to a Tree Calculus web site, which has both an OCaml and a JavaScript implementation of the reduction rules:

https://treecalcul.us/specification/

Which mentions a book:
"Reflective Programs in Tree Calculus", by Barry Jay and Jose Vergara, 2021
"Tree calculus is seeded by a single operator, whose self-application gives rise to pow- erful reflective programs including a size program that can compute its own size, an equality program that can decide its own equality, and a self-evaluator that can evaluate itself. This is achieved without any of the usual outside machinery, such as the Gödel numbering of Turing machines, the quotation of lambda-abstractions or serialisation of programs. The resulting theory of computation is both simple and powerful: simple because it is based on three equations only; powerful because one program can query the internal structure of another, using a mix of extensional and intensional techniques"

https://www.amazon.com/Reflective-Programs-Tree-Calculus-Barry-ebook/dp/B095BPM2MF

@screwtape @northernlights @kentpitman @sacha @shizamura @amszmidt @prahou

I do not see anything in the above that explictly says "Hey, I'll be on lambdaMOO at 11:59pm UTC Tue, please join us!" -- but you did mean that, yes?

@prahou @screwtape @sigrid @shizamura
> I don't even use computers.

I happen to know that you programmed your telepathic gopher-to-mastodon gateway in C ON A COMPUTER. Checkmate!