Notices by Bob Wyman (bobwyman@mastodon.social)

Did you know that 23 Economics Nobel Prize winners recently signed a letter saying Kamala Harris’ economic plan is ‘vastly superior’ to Trump’s?

Signers included: Acemoglu, Akerlof, Banerjee, Deaton, Peter Diamond, Douglas Diamond, Duflo, Engle, Goldin, Hart, Imbens, Johnson, Maskin, McFadden, Merton, Myerson, Nordhaus, Phelps, Romer, Roth, Shiller, Stiglitz, & Thaler…

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25247867-23-nobel-economists-sign-letter-saying-harris-agenda-vastly-better-for-us-economy

A gas explosion destroyed two homes in Haymarket, VA yesterday. No human lives were lost but three pets are "missing."

"Honestly just to see everything go away in an instant, you realize you have nothing," said Jarret Struniak.

Please note: **No homes have ever been destroyed by exploding heat pumps.**

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/virginia/fire-crews-scene-gas-related-house-explosion-haymarket-virginia/65-c69a0796-089f-4cc5-9011-4294fcb4f6c0

Trump and his anti-American supporters are complaining because the DOJ has sued Virginia to enforce a Federal voter law that prohibits voter roll cleanups less than 90 days before an election.

For some bizarre reason, the press is covering this "issue" as though it were something other than the simple enforcement of crystal-clear federal law. It is not.

DOJ Press Release: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-virginia-violating-federal-laws-prohibition-systematic-efforts
Read 52 U.S. Code § 20507(c)(2)(A) here : https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/20507

J.D. Vance has only about 18 months experience in government. What qualifies such a novice to be President if Trump dies in office or becomes otherwise incapable of serving?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Vance

In July 2021, JD Vance praised Hungary's illiberal leader, Viktor Orbán, for encouraging married couples to have children and he proposed that the USA should reward couples who have multiple babies.
Vance also proposed giving the vote to all children, but letting their parents control those votes. (i.e. families with children would have more power.)

Note: I attended Vance's 2021 speech, in an effort to better understand the right. The Guardian's reporting is accurate.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/26/ohio-senate-candidate-jd-vance

@evan A retrospective search compares a query to one or more documents that have been previously indexed. Such a query tells you what has been indexed in the past. Because the query looks to the past, it is "retrospective." You can process that query in "real-time," like Google, etc. do, or you can queue the query for processing once or more times in the future, but the query will always be looking to the past. Most "real-time" searches are implemented as repeated retrospective searches.
2/

@evan I've found that "real-time search" isn't really as useful a term as people would expect... But, if you insist on using it, then the opposite of real-time is going to be either "periodic," "repeated," or "queued," depending on what you're trying to say.

There are two kinds of search: Retrospective and Prospective.
1/ (see following notes)

@evan A prospective search compares each member of a sequence of one or more documents to a previously indexed set of one or more queries. In such a system a query asks: "Tell me whenever!" Because each query looks to the future, the queries are "prospective." Many notification systems rely on prospective search. Similarly, much of the internal operation of SocialWeb systems can be modeled as prospective searches. (i.e. copy post to my feed "whenever" I am mentioned in it.)
3/

@evan Someday, I'll write this stuff up in a form which is useful for general consumption. It's really not that hard if you recognize that prospective search requires approaches different from retrospective. I've always found it odd that proper prospective search technology isn't more widely used outside large platforms like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Bloomberg, etc. Many applications could much better serve their users' needs if they did this properly.

@evan When the semantics of a prospective system are very simple, it is possible to use simple implementations. For instance, if the queries are limited to specifying a single string term (i.e. a user name) then one can build a simple, high-performing prospective system that extracts usernames from incoming posts and compares them to a hash-table of "queries" which are just usernames.

A proper system would allow Booleans, ranges, etc., but that requires a dramatic increase in complexity.

@evan Because most people don't understand how to index queries, and because this problem is typically not discussed in schools or in books on search, most systems that should use prospective search are actually implemented by doing repeated prospective searches on incrementally built document indexes. While this is inefficient, it is easily hacked together and, given the power of machines today, most folk don't have enough queries to really notice the limitations of repeated retrospective.
5/

@evan The key to understanding the difference is to consider what is indexed. A retrospective system indexes "documents" which are usually just collections of static data. On the other hand, a query can contain ranges, boolean expressions, etc. which can't be indexed using the "inverted trees" and other methods typically used when indexing documents. Thus, true prospective systems, which index queries, require very different indexing structures than do retrospective systems.
4/

@aral There is nothing "progressive" about either Hamas or the Palestinian National Authority. It is entirely rational and consistent for "progressives" to oppose Israel's actions in Gaza or Palestine while not also supporting the ruling parties of either.

@evan @Edent An extension for Lunar Place objects would be unnecessarily specific and would leave unaddressed the need for extensions allowing Place objects to describe locations on Mars, Io, Neptune, etc.

Given that Latitude/Longitude/Altitude is relevant to most celestial bodies, it would be more effective to add to Place objects a field for specifying the Coordinate System that should be used in interpreting the Latitude/Longitude, etc.

@evan @Edent Unfortunately, the Place object is under-specified. While this doesn't impact most AS/AP users today, humans will soon return to the Moon and when they do, they won't be able to use AS Place objects to check-in or state their current location.

The problem is that AS Place doesn't allow specifying a coordinate system for Lat/Long. Thus, one can't use locations using the Lunar Coordinate System or any non-Earth Planetary Coordinate System.

We should fix this.
https://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/library/451-SCI-000958.pdf

@jeffjarvis
It is much more than merely a "right-wing attack on education." It is part of a much broader attack on all of our society's institutions and traditions. The goal is not to improve institutions but rather to weaken them and thus leave the people without resort to any trusted sources of information or truth.

The strategy is what Lincoln would have called "Ruin to Rule:" Ruining the current system in order to make it easier to take over and rule.

@aral
If markets were competitive and taxes were fair, we'd still have a few people with extraordinary wealth, but we would have no billionaires.

@mekkaokereke
People "Remember the Alamo!" but don't remember that the reason Texans wanted independence from Mexico was because Mexico had prohibited slavery.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/10/myth-alamo-gets-history-all-wrong/

@aral Why is "instance-of-one" different from instances-for-many?

- If you are hosting Kitten instances, will you host avowed Nazis?
- How will you respond if you find that you're hosting a Kitten instance that publishes child porn?
- How would a Kitten hosting service with 100 million instance-of-one's be better than a single instance serving 100 million accounts?
- An instance-for-many can efficiently share storage, operations, etc. in ways that an instance-for-one cannot. Does that matter?

@Gargron Success can be much harder than failure. When you are successful, a million people will want you to do more or to do what you do differently. When you fail, folk just walk away and let you rest.

Mastodon has grown tremendously. It has been successful. You should be proud of what you've built. But, the price of success can be very high.

Take a day off. Relax. We'll all still be here when you get back.