Notices by myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)

@josh0 @funkula @cstross

You see I think an isopod tongue is a good thing actually.

Im so mad. I was listening to House of Open Wounds (2023) Adrian Tchaikovsky and he has a character with an isopod tongue. (Not literally but that's the biological concept he references) who can communicate with bug aliens.

Now everyone will think I stole MY character with an isopod tongue from this-- But I swear to God I did not.

:(

Anyway. It just means it's obviously a very cool idea. And I will do more with it.

Still kind of mildly grumpy. LOL.

OK I can admit I have a deep aversion to suburban kitchen design. And I think I will find out where they make the appliances for kitchens on yachts. Might have more luck there. I've always wanted a kitchen that felt like it was on a boat.

But even if they can't manage to sell stoves that are more localized and popular they should just rip out the show kitchens it's a waste of floor space. They could put a stack of air conditioners there or something that people would want to see and buy.

But, the Home Depot formula says there must be a goofy show kitchen, and they just slavishly stick to that formula.

I also suspect they sell a lot of stoves. "landlord specials" which are the cheapest ugliest things you've ever seen.

But that's probably all they sell.

They should have commercial stoves for the local eateries and cute tiny ones for condo and coop owners. But whatever ... don't make money. I don't care.

Because I was involved in a local protest group in planning for the south bronx back when retailers didn't even want to put stores here I happen to know an interesting fact. This Home Depot and the Target have some of the highest sales of any stores in the country. Only other NYC stores beat them.

When I was there today the place was packed. People do need paint, and pipes, and drills and stuff. Even gardening stuff. But their whole kitchen showroom was wasted floor space.

This is the model kitchen at the Home Depot in the South Bronx. It’s huge—even by suburban standards—and about the size of a studio apartment. No one in two square miles has a kitchen like this. They don’t even sell two-burner stoves; all the ranges have four burners. It’s absurd. I may expect too much from a big box store, but they’d likely sell more if they considered the actual apartments nearby—small spaces that need compact, high-quality appliances.

I'm looking for some cool, positive, maybe electronic **instrumental** (no lyrics) music to add to my collection.

Music that's expansive, occasionally moody but also sometimes joyful. Bonus points if it's kind of "cyberpunk" and made in the past five years or so.

A youTube link is ideal, Spotify isn't something I can use. Other download options could be fine.

Feel free to share your own stuff! Or that girl you know's stuff *if* you like it a lot.

A few months back I closed my amazon account, logged out and blocked the website from my searches.

Shocking how well this has worked. Right up until I needed to order some more Advil. Which I always bought on amazon and very few other online sources sell. When I did the search: just two results on the first page. All the rest were amazon.

They have a very bad monopoly on certain home-goods. I'm delighted to pay a little more to avoid them.

You don't really see it until you leave.

I highly recommend blocking amazon from your searches. Even if you can't go full "zero amazon" for some annoying practical reason. It's really eyeopening how much of the commercial web they can seem to dominate. I also block pinterest. (pinterest makes it so hard to find the source of images, it's like a virus.) I consider excluding both essential.

Further, if you are going zero amazon it removes the temptation to go back. It just doesn't exist for me. I find another way.

First ya'll tell me to teach the fifth graders Dvorak... then to teach the math faculty Haskell...

What would a fedi- designed full school curriculum look like? I'm horrified but also fascinated to know.

Every child will build their own calculator and eventually computer from transistors. Soldering your keyboard would happen in 4th grade. The local intra-net would be student designed and run with custom protocols.

A wonderful horrible place!

I realize that "teach the fifth graders Dvorak... then teach the math faculty Haskell" is probably how *I* sound to my colleges most of the time. That is sobering and helpful to keep in mind as I try to elevate the expectations for understand computer science a little... a task that must be done if our students will be masters of the machines rather than the other way around.

IDK if any of you are into castles but this wikipedia article is terrible.

It's literally just all the goofy rumors and folktales about this place and not much else.

(I tried to make it a little better but I'm not a history person especially this history very much out of my depth... I looked this up because I thought the rumors about it were goofy and wanted to know how they started.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houska_Castle

To entice someone to improve this I will point out that this castle and the scary stories about it are becoming very popular in online horror so a lot of people curious about the castle and the real history will see your work.

It could be a chance to get them interested in the real history!

Perhaps it's not an important castle in history, but it has become important in contemporary english language folklore.

Today I completed my planning for my summer course for math teachers "Computer Science for Math Teachers"

But I'd love to know of any additional topics I ought to include. Main goal is to get the rest of the math faculty comfortable enough with code that they use it in a natural way as one of many problem solving techniques and teach this to our students.

When my lesson plans have a CS component other math teachers often skip it just because they don't feel comfortable.

I'm going to mostly teach them in python. Our "final project" will be building a class of objects for vectors. I think this will work well since math teachers already know all about vectors.

I will emphasize that looking up how to do things when programming is normal. I don't expect them to be able to "cold code" most of them can already read and write pseudo code for things like iteration and functions.

There is just a small gap when it comes to classes, and seeing code as a tool.

Writing the "venture capitalist gets eaten by ants" part of the story today so I'm having a pretty good time.

He sort of brings it all on himself, poor guy.

And for the record, the ants don't kill him. Natural language programming is to blame. The ants are just recycling and being responsible.

Death by vibe coding.

If you live in CA you could look for this tiny poppy. Just like onenicebugperday said "look at them!"

https://www.tumblr.com/futurebird/783149779381288960/image-descriptions-in-gray-tiny-gravel-rather?source=share

I know this is typical but I find it so upsetting.