Monica

I've been hearing a lot about Mastodon for a while and thought I'd look around, see if I know anyone there, see what it's like, see if it seems to work better than Twitter... and the first step is to choose a host community/server, from dozens of options. The options are grouped into categories like "Tech" and "Arts" and "Activism" and there's also "General" and "Regional". None of the regional offerings are my region, so I browsed General and Tech.

All of the communities have names and short blurbs. Some sound serious and some sound less-so. Mastodon is a Twitter-like social network, so -- unlike topic-focused Q&A sites, subreddits, forums, etc -- one should expect people to bring their "whole selves". That is, a person on a tech server is likely to also post about food and hobbies and world events and cats. From the outside, I can't tell whether the mindset of the Mastodon-verse it "well yeah, duh, the server you choose is really just a loose starting point because you need to start somewhere" or if there's more of a presumption that you'll stay on-topic (more like Reddit than Twitter, for example).

A selling point of Mastodon is that it's distributed, not centrally-managed; anybody is free to set up an instance and set the rules for that instance. One considering options might reasonably want to know what those rules are -- how will this instance be moderated? But I see no links to such things. Many instances also require you to request access, which further deters the casually curious.

I guess the model is that you go where your friends are -- you know someone who knows someone who knows someone with a server and you join and you make connections from there. That's a valid and oft-used model, though I wasn't expecting it here.

Them: Do you have room at your seder for two more?

Me: Of course.

Them: We don't want to impose.

Me: We'd love the company.

Them: Are you sure? We don't want you to have to cook extra at the last minute.

Me: "Let all who are hungry come and eat." Also, I cook on the assumption that Eliyahu and his entourage will appear at the door. It's fine.

(And if Eliyahu doesn't show up, I have food for lunch the next day.)

Dear Brain Trust,

I have a technical problem that I'm a few clues shy of solving. Can you help?

I have a personal web site, which I built using an SSG called Yellow. I'm using a few of their extensions, most importantly Blog. The way you use Yellow is to download and unpack a ZIP file, download any extensions you want into that directory structure, and add your content (also into that directory structure). The source is on GitHub but they also give you these ZIP files.

Last summer I downloaded those ZIP files, unpacked them, started tweaking things, and added my own content. I never cloned their repositories; I just took the ZIP files. Eventually I figured out that the easiest way for me to deploy my site was to use GitHub: I created a private repository, into which I added my then-current versions of both the tooling and the content, and I update it as needed (for example to add this post).

Yes I now know this was the wrong way to go about it. Apparently we won't have gotten "send clue back in time" working in my lifetime.

Since then, they've made some updates that I would like to take advantage of. I want to update to the new version, incorporating the changes I made to the previous version (figure out what they were and how to apply them). And I want to figure out a better way to organize this so that the next upgrade is more straightforward.

I imagine that what I wanted to have done instead was to fork their repos, apply my changes, make a separate repo for my content, and (do magic here) so it all works together. I don't know what that magic is. I'd like to check my assumptions about this being a better approach. Is there some other way I should be managing this? Another way to think about it is that my project (my site) has GitHub dependencies (those other two repositories); I'm not familiar with how dependencies are typically managed.

I mentioned I'm using GitHub for deployment. More specifically: I make edits on my personal machine, commit and push, and then on the hosting server I pull and, wham, the site is up to date. There's no explicit build step and I'm not fussing with rsync. My "aha" moment was that git can already figure out what's changed and needs to be pulled, so why should I have to? I like this simplicity.

I have found the version of the blog extension I started from (thank you for explicit version numbering), so it is possible to identify the changes I made to the original.

Should I create new repos (or forks) from the previous version, apply my changes, get that working, and then try to do the upgrade from there? How should I manage the multiple git repositories so that everything ends up in the right places? There's one repo for the base system (yellow), one for all the extensions (which overlays the file structure of the base system), and then I need a place for my actual content. How do I do this?

I'm asking about words, not observances or concepts.

When a Jewish boy comes of age, he becomes obligated in the commandments, bar mitzvah. Usually the occasion is marked in the synagogue, which is also called a bar mitzvah. When a Jewish girl comes of age, she becomes obligated in the commandments, bat mitzvah, and she might have a bat mitzvah in the synagogue.

These terms are from the talmud. The word bar literally means "son of" (in Aramaic). The word bat literally means "daughter of". One might also see the term b'nei mitzvah, which is plural, when more than one person is marking the occasion in the same service. The word b'nei is unambiguously plural in Hebrew, unlike the sometimes-numerically-ambiguous "they" in English.

Hebrew is a gendered language; there is no neuter term like "child" in English.

What term are people using for nonbinary or genderfluid people? This is going to come up in my synagogue, and it must have already come up in others, but I don't know what they did. I have some readers who might know: what are people using instead of bar or bat?

While the talmud recognizes four genders, I don't think its conclusions about the other two are going to satisfy most modern people.

There is (in non-pandemic times) a major event in my kingdom (AEthelmearc), Ice Dragon. A feature of this event is the arts & sciences pentathlon, which used to be the premier A&S competition in the region. It was the premier A&S competition in the East Kingdom before AEthelmearc split off into its own kingdom.

The competition is divided into several major categories, like clothing and cooking and performance. Each major category has sub-categories like pre-1400 women's clothing and bread and storytelling. You can enter things in individual categories, and if you enter at least five different major categories, you can compete for the overall pentathlon prize. An important feature of the competition, in my opinion, is the cross-entry: if an item qualifies for more than one category, you didn't have to choose only one. Embroidered gown? Clothing and needlework. Belt woven from wool you spun, with a buckle you made? Spinning, weaving, and metalwork. And so on.

I haven't been tracking the event lately (I stopped traveling for SCA events even before the pandemic, due to both changing interests and the inherent Shabbat complications). I was reminded of the event by a post I saw tonight on the kingdom blog, which referred in passing to the limit of two categories for cross-entries. I'm not sure when that was introduced, but it was not always there.

With that rule change one small but fun challenge went away: the single-item pent entry. Can you come up with one work that legitimately fits five major categories? I did this one year and had great fun trying it, and learning some new crafts in the process (which should be one of the goals, encouraging growth). I'm disappointed to learn that this small bit of the event's history is no longer accessible.

It was a book. A book of music that I composed, illuminated (like books of hours), with an embroidered cover. I performed one of the pieces. The book was a gift for my then-baroness (of blessed memory); she had appointed me as her bard and I made the book to honor and thank her. But I embroidered the cover because of the Ice Dragon pent. And I might well have bought a blank bound book, focusing on the music and the illumination (my actual skills), but for the pent.

And I'm glad I did make the book. I learned about bookbinding. I asked a curator nicely and got a private tour of a collection of actual renaissance volumes so that I could inspect their bindings (which are usually not very visible when books are displayed open behind glass). My embroidery was not very good but was full of spirit, as they say.

The single-item pent entry is not the optimal path to winning the pent (if winning the pent is your goal). You can probably make five stronger entries by focusing and avoiding the constraints of other parts of the project. I did not win the pent the year I entered the book. But I had loads of fun with the project (and apparently made an impression). And my baroness really liked the book. So, win all around.

Stack Exchange published some year-end statistics, as they've done for the last few years. Their focus was on looking at how many questions get closed, per site (sometimes a few, sometimes more than 60%) and how many of them get edited and reopened (very few). I don't really care about that, at least at the level of detail they have in some wide tables, but the data includes the number of questions asked for the year, and that piqued my curiosity. My impression has been that activity in general and new questions are down, sometimes a lot, across the network, but I hadn't looked at all the data. Until now.

I downloaded the CSV files for 2018 through 2021. As with all such efforts, the task starts with data-cleaning -- some site names were not consistent across the four files, which messes up sorting and grouping. There are older files, but I got tired of hand-adjusting site names and filling in placeholders for sites that didn't exist that year. While, anecdotally, SE's been in decline for much longer, it feels like things accelerated in 2018 and 2019, so that's what I looked at.

I loaded everything into a spreadsheet for now, just to be able to eyeball it easily. (I might load it into a database later for actual queries, and would include the close-related data if I do that.) I added a "trend" column, up/down/stable, based on eyeballing the data. There were some edge cases that led to me adding an 'erratic" option too. And sometimes it's a judgement call; I didn't work out precise formulas, and some of my "stable"s could be "down"s or vice-versa. I can share the file I assembled, if you want to ignore my assessments and make your own.

The counts include all questions that were asked; we don't know how many were subsequently deleted.

There were a few sites with upward trends:

• Biblical Hermeneutics
• Chess
• Engineering
• History of Science and Math
• Islam
• MathOverflow
• Quantum Computing (which has a corporate sponsor and is a hot research topic)
• Christianity (recent rise)
• Literature (recent rise)
• Operations Research (recent rise, site created in 2020)
• Retrocomputing (recent rise)

There are about 30 I judged to be steady; while there are fluctuations year to year, the activity is all in the same general ballpark.

The other ~140 sites are having more difficulties.

A few that jumped out at me and/or are of personal interest:

• Mi Yodeya had about 4000 questions in 2018. In 2019 there was an organized activity that led to more questions, about 4500. It took a drop after that (~2900 and then ~2600).

• Writing was at ~1800 in 2018. 2019 was the year of the question drive and a big push to finally be allowed to graduate. We succeeded, and then six weeks later Stack Overflow Inc. blew up our world. 2021 is down to ~1200, which is actually higher than I expected.

• Some technical sites are down by about half, including Software Engineering and Quality Assurance. Hmm.

• Cooking went from ~2700 questions in 2018 to ~2300 in each of the next two years and then to ~1500 in 2021. I would have expected that site to get a boost from the pandemic (more people are cooking at home). On the other hand, Travel dropped a ton from 2019 to 2020 (and stayed low for 2021); I think the reason is pretty obvious there.

• English Language and Usage dropped by half, from ~22k in 2018. The Workplace is also down by half, from ~5500 to ~2500. Graphic Design is down even more, from ~6800 to ~2700.

• Interpersonal Skills had ~2600 questions in 2018. In mid-October of that year, they were kicked off the hot network questions list amidst some controversy, reducing their advertising reach. That doesn't explain everything, but the next year was down by half, and in 2021 they were down to ~450, less than 20% of the number from 2018. Noteworthy: when SE decided to "graduate" almost all remaining beta sites, this one asked to stay in beta. So they seem to recognize that they have things to sort out.

• Beer, Wine, and Spirits, which has struggled for years, is down from 151 questions in 2018 to 70 in 2021. Homebrewing is also down by two-thirds.

I couldn't figure out how to make Markdown tables without a ton of manual effort. Here are a few screenshots for the curious. ( Read more... )

From Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen:

When you arrive at the gates of Graceland, there is no longer a human being whose job is to show you around. You are handed an iPad, you put in little earbuds, and the iPad tells you what to do – turn left; turn right; walk forward. In each room, a photograph of where you are appears on the screen, while a narrator describes it. So as we walked around we were surrounded by blank-faced people, looking almost all the time at their screens. As we walked, I felt more and more tense. When we got to the jungle room – Elvis’s favourite place in the mansion – the iPad was chattering away when a middle-aged man standing next to me turned to say something to his wife. In front of us, I could see the large fake plants that Elvis had bought to turn this room into his own artificial jungle. “Honey,” he said, “this is amazing. Look.” He waved the iPad in her direction, and began to move his finger across it. “If you swipe left, you can see the jungle room to the left. And if you swipe right, you can see the jungle room to the right.”

His wife stared, smiled, and began to swipe at her own iPad. I leaned forward. “But, sir,” I said, “there’s an old-fashioned form of swiping you can do. It’s called turning your head. Because we’re here. We’re in the jungle room. You can see it unmediated. Here. Look.” I waved my hand, and the fake green leaves rustled a little. Their eyes returned to their screens. “Look!” I said. “Don’t you see? We’re actually there. There’s no need for your screen. We are in the jungle room.” They hurried away. I turned to [teenager], ready to laugh about it all – but he was in a corner, holding his phone under his jacket, flicking through Snapchat. [...] I realised as I sat with [teenager] that, as with so much anger, my rage towards him was really anger towards myself. His inability to focus was something I felt happening to me too. I was losing my ability to be present, and I hated it. "I know something’s wrong," Adam said, holding his phone tightly in his hand. "But I have no idea how to fix it." Then he went back to texting.

I realised then that I needed to understand what was really happening to him and to so many of us. That moment turned out to be the start of a journey that transformed how I think about attention. I travelled all over the world in the next three years, from Miami to Moscow to Melbourne, interviewing the leading experts in the world about focus. What I learned persuaded me that we are not now facing simply a normal anxiety about attention, of the kind every generation goes through as it ages. We are living in a serious attention crisis – one with huge implications for how we live. I learned there are twelve factors that have been proven to reduce people’s ability to pay attention and that many of these factors have been rising in the past few decades – sometimes dramatically.

The article is an interesting read (though it does not list those twelve factors). It's an excerpt from a forthcoming book, which I presume does.

--

Edited to add (2022-01-09): I've now seen some challenges to the research in this book, including that the CMU study was not peer-reviewed and that some other studies have not been reported accurately.

I followed a link and followed a link from there and... eventually ended up at this video about an adopted lobster, and I learned a lot about how lobsters work. Huh.

Well, not the pandemic itself, but the way people are responding to it.

Forwarded through some intermediaries from Reddit, one long-time doctor's explanation for leaving the field:

(Heavy content warning)

We can tell, almost without fail, which ones will die when they come through the door of the ICU, but we do everything in our power to keep them alive - BIPAP, ECMO, ventilator - knowing we are stretching out the inevitable. We use paralytics with ECMO and ventilators, then ease them off to see if they can function. And as the drugs wane, the look of terror emerges, the tears. We try to calm them, to swallow our desire to scream at them: This is your fault! This didn't have to happen! Often, their spouse or their uncle or neighbor is nearby, dying along with them. And we work hard for those rare cases where we can pull them back from the edge.

I could deal with all of that. What I can no longer handle is the screaming, not from the patients, but from the families. [...]

He begged me to bring in his family. A nurse called them, because they had never come to the hospital. They refused to wear masks, and so would not be admitted. The nurse told the wife that her husband was likely dying, and was begging to see them. All she cared about was masks. She would only come if she and her daughters didn't have to wear any.

The nurse came to me and told me the wife wanted to speak to me. I got on the phone and she ordered me to cure him with ivermectin and vitamin C & D. I explained to her, those do not work, they have been extensively studied and the amount of ivermectin needed to treat even mild COVID would kill a human being. Once again, I was told I was ignorant. [...]

I stepped outside, went to the wife, and identified myself. I told her that I was sorry, that we had done everything we could, but her husband had passed a few minutes earlier. I did not manage to get the words of the sentence fully out of my mouth when I felt the fist strike my face and heard the screamed words "You murderer!" [...]

I started looking for a new job the next day. I will never treat a patient again.

From a friend: just because something has a name doesn't mean it deserves a name. Exhibit A: consecotaleophobia. Exhibit B: Zymarikaphobia.

Seen on the net; source unknown:

Transcript:

Lost Roomba!!!

(Photo)
His name is "Higgins". 35cm /9cm high / 2.8kg
DOES NOT BITE!!!

Roomba app info:
Battery: 3%
Dust bin: 190%

My husband left our bungalow door open and our Roomba escaped!!! We followed his cleaning track for 4 Km down to the beach where we lost his trail. Higgins can not swim!!! Please help us bring Higgins back! (Tear-off strips with contact information)

On the way to Thanksgiving dinner we found ourselves wondering what happens to the turkey that the US president pardons each year. We were both under the impression that the president is presented with two turkeys, one of which gets pardoned and one of which becomes dinner. I said I thought the pardoned bird went to a zoo or some such, and that it would be wrong for it to go back to the farm where it could become somebody else's dinner.

We talked about the similarity to the two goats on Yom Kippur, one of which becomes an offering and the other of which is sent to Azazel. I pointed out that neither of those goats gets out alive (though they at least serve a holy function), and said I didn't think the turkeys worked like that.

When we got home I looked it up, and found that we were both wrong on several points. (I blame that West Wing episode, though perhaps my mistaken impression predated it and I shouldn't.)

The president is presented with one turkey, not two. There is a backup turkey, in case something unfortunate happens to the first one. (Still on the goat theme: like the backup wife for the high priest on Yom Kippur? Topic for another day...)

This turkey is presented by the National Turkey Federation. (Today I learned that there is a national turkey federation.) This started in the 1940s, apparently as tribute. They ate the turkeys until sometime in the 70s, when presidents started sparing them. The regular ceremonial pardon started with Bush the First (though it also says Reagan pardoned one).

I hadn't thought about this at all, but there is a selection process where a pool of candidate turkeys is filtered on not only size and appearance but also tolerance of loud noises, flashes, and large crowds.

And yes, the turkeys end up at various places where they will not become food.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, someone shared a link to a blog post from Zoe Chant, who -- because we were all suddenly in lockdown and dealing with extra stress -- offered a free e-book of hers to anyone who asked. I asked, she described a few options, and I chose Dragon of Glass, the first book in what would be the Fae Shifter Knights series. I loved it and got each of the following books as they came out. The fourth and final book just came out a few weeks ago, so I'm finally getting around to writing about them.

As implied by "fae", the knights (one per book) are from another world or realm. They're transported, one at a time, into modern-day Earth, and have to learn about magical cooling boxes and lights without flames and smartphones and television -- and social conventions. I enjoyed the fish-out-of-water aspect, laughing not infrequently. It would be easy for this to be overdone, but it's not.

The knights were one fighting band on the other side, where their world fell to evil magical beings. Somehow, during their final battle, they were frozen in glass and sent into our world. (That's explained, but it would be a spoiler.) Each knight has a corresponding person in our world, a "key", who can help unlock that knight's magic (which is greatly diminished in our world). Each of the four books focuses on one of the knights while contributing to the overall story. When I started reading Dragon of Glass I thought I was getting some light-hearted fluff, but there's more depth to the series and I found the larger story engaging.

As implied by "shifter", each knight has an alternate, magical form -- dragon, unicorn, gryphon, firebird. (When they were frozen in glass, it was in those forms, at the size of tree ornaments. The set got broken up; part of the quest for the knights and keys already here is to find the other ornaments.)

Aside: There is a whole genre of "shifter romance" that I was largely unaware of two years ago. These books, and many of Zoe Chant's other books, are in this genre. There are definitely romantic elements (and some sex scenes), but as someone who's not really into romances, I didn't find it overdone or intrusive. It was just part of the story -- not the reason for the story like (as I understand it) with some mainstream romances.

The knights have a leader and mentor, a "fable" -- not a fairy, as the character keeps insisting. (At a foot tall and with wings, you can understand the confusion.) As a reader I had more trouble connecting with this character than with the knights and keys, though the fable does get some funny, snarky lines. (Part of my problem is a personal one: the number mismatch of singular "they" trips me up as a reader, every time, even when I know who the referent is. My brain treats it as a runtime exception or something. I've tried to overcome it, but have not yet succeeded.)

The final book, Firebird of Glass, was heavier than the others (as was the end of the third book). The series has been building toward a final confrontation (the forces that took over the knights' world want ours too), and at times the book is sombre and grim. When I started the book I had predictions, expectations, of how this final confrontation was going to end; partway through the book I developed different predictions -- and in the end the author surprised me with something I never saw coming but that felt right.

I enjoyed the series, and I think some of you would, too.