Notices by Dave Neary (dneary@mathstodon.xyz)

@evan I'm not sure I know what "quiet public" is! Public and PM for me.

@evan I hate to boast, but since the Habs last won the Stanley Cup, the Bruins have three Stanley Cup final appearances and one win, the Celtics have four finals appearances and two wins, the Red Sox have four World series wins out of four appearances, and the Patriots haven't done too bad either. Boston's all right!

@evan The main reason I hate to boast is because my contribution to all the success has been watching the TV!

@evan I hate to do petty sports rivalry stuff, but... They know from having visited Boston! 🤪

@evan Tough to answer "should" questions when the answer is different depending on the project's size and maturity. Early projects the answer is 100%, large mature projects, less than 25%. I made some assumptions and answered 25-50%.

@aeva @evan Given the number of acquaintances and professional contacts I have had with MIT folks who were involved by necessity with people who worked directly with folks like Joi Ito or Nicholas Negroponte, I think a lot of people I know might have checked if their projects were funded by Epstein.

@aeva @evan Man, that was a convoluted sentence... All that to say that I have had conversations with my kids that sometimes bad people project a positive image by associating with people who do good things, and when the badness is revealed, it can take the people who do good things down with them.

The conversation was prompted by Dean Kamen resigning from FIRST - my son has been part of a robotics team for a few years, and has met Kamen several times. I believe that he was one of Epstein's collection of people doing good things not looking too closely at how those things get funded.

@aeva @evan Nicholas Negroponte was the instigator and leader of One Laptop Per Child - several Red Hat and GNOME friends worked on that initiative. As you say, Joi Ito was one of the initiators of Creative Commons, and was also a Friend Of O'Reilly. Dean Kamen invented the Segway, made money from medical device innovations, and a founder of FIRST, the largest robotics organization for high school kids in the USA, covering three competitions - the FIRST Lego League (targeting elementary andmiddle school), FIRST Tech Challenge (middle and high school) and FIRST Robotics Competition (high school) - which my son is involved in.

@aeva @evan My point is mainly that open source and tech startup folks are, in this era, the equivalent of composers, painters, and sculptors in Renaissance Italy, and folks like Epstein fancy themselves as this era's Medicis - "collecting" the future innovators and building the future by proxy.

@evan I keep a list... I would have nothing to write in my list 😜

@evan You learn something new every day!

@evan I'm not sure I know how to view "Fediverse/All servers".

@evan I thought this would be your first 100% poll! I'd love to know what "Yes, but..." means to the people who chose that.

@evan I am interested in seeing your definition of a spiritual experience after the poll is over. I was thinking of a sense of wonder and contentment - and unfortunately it's been too long.

@evan I'm really not sure how I feel about this - where do you draw a line between colonial extraction, cultural appropriation, and a post-colonial diaspora? Is an Indonesian rijstafel a colonial extraction, or is it part of an Indonesian post-colonial diaspora?

@evan 🤣😂 I try to disarm people with self-deprecating humor too, but I'm not very good at it.

@evan I think it's always OK, even desirable, to use the tools at our disposal to evaluate, and maybe even course correct, what we put out into the world. I would have concerns about using AI tools to analyze private, personal data.

@evan I just saw this now and had a thought. If you want a list of politicians most in favor of gun control, the best place to ask is the NRA. AIPAC may have the lost you're looking for.

@evan That is the expected answer. 1.0m plus 2mm equals 1.0 m. I expected 1.002m

@OscarCunningham @evan Yes, 1 and 1.0 were accepted (unit was set to m already)