Dr. Elda King, PhD @eldaking@weirder.earth
He/him, Brazilian, PhD in Electrical Engineering, aroace.
General nerdery: fantasy books, science fiction, cyberpunk, cartoons, strategy videogames and boardgames, too much internet culture, sometimes RPGs and anime.
Some undetermined kind of anarchist: I'm angry and I wish to build things. Neo-luddite: I love computers, but I hate what capitalism does with them.
If you don't CW your politics, esp. uspol, I'll block your imperialist ass.
Joined Oct 2020
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--- Introduction post ---
Hi, I'm Elda King. I toot horrible puns, nerd stuff, computer things, and fun/cool happenings in my life.
Feel free to follow... but new users, if your profile is empty and you don't have any public posts you look like a spambot.
Don't feel compelled to follow me back, and feel free to unfollow, mute or block me for any reason - I won't take it personally! If you don't care to see something, then just don't.
Feedback and call-outs are welcome but not mandatory.
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Good comic about the usual "this specific point of algebra is useless" complaints: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/learn
I like to compare math formulas to pages in a book. Yeah individual pages in a book aren't useful on their own, but you need them to read the complete book.
(Math teaching has many problems, but "this part is useless" is not one of them)
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Pick an instance to join the fediverse in 10 steps
1) Find a few instances focused on things you like
2) Check if they aren't too big (>10k users) or too small (<100 users). Those come with their own set of problems.
3) Look if it has open registrations - you want it to *not have it* as it means spambots! It is super easy to get into instances where you need either approval or invites, don't worry.
4) Look at the rules, see if you agree. Not only you have to follow them, but they shape your experience - for example if they don't require nudity to be under a warning, you could get random nudes at work; if they don't moderate transphobia, it is not a good place for trans people.
5) Look at which servers they block. If they block too few, massive red flag! Many servers are blocked for really obvious reasons: child porn, openly being literal nazis, doxxing and harassment, etc. But of course, you also want to check if they don't block something you really care about.
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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Dr. Elda King, PhD
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So, that Ed Zitron article is really good.
But.
11,525 words and not *one* mention of a 46-year tradition of fighting exactly the kind of thing he's talking about? Almost half a century of "no, actually, high information technology should empower the people who are forced to interact with it" and they don't get a single word?
I am not an FSF fangirl. I really don't like a lot of the people involved in free software, there are tons of problems with it, I'm not asking him to present FOSS or Linux as some panacea, but c'mon. A paragraph? A thousand words? When it's the locus of every serious attempt to avoid exactly the problems he's talking about, when people involved with it have been predicting everything he says since last century?
Apparently not.
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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Dishwasher at work was recently adorned with a magnet that you can spin round to show what state the dishes are in.
I thought this would be wrong too often to be useful, but so far I've only ever seen it in the correct state.
This magnet is in fact a #wiki, and it works for the same reason all wikis work: most people want it to be correct, and can update it easily.
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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Fedi:
"I'll follow this biologist, that lawyer and the psychiatrist over there, to widen my perspective a bit"
biologist: *i wrote this plugin in python for my blogging engine*
lawyer: *look at this nifty shell script i wrote*
psychiatrist: *i use arch btw*
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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Quote from the aforementioned post by Ed Zitron, where he talks about a preposterous design update to Spotify. Update that I happily missed, having deleted my account for a long time.
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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wind and truth spoilers
I really liked all the reveals about the past. It managed to cram a lot of history without being just a loredump and without feeling rushed. We got to see the arrival from Ashyn, the actual Recreance, and Szeth's past (and the Shin secrets)... Sanderson managed to pay out all the foreshadowing checks he wrote.
I also really liked the big twist at the end. I was already expecting the defeat and the escalation, but it managed to go much further than I thought: with Taravangian now holding two shards and the only god in Roshar, a land in eternal shadow, and most of the heroes' accomplishments undone. It built up to it through the rest of the book, didn't come out of nowhere, but damn that is a dark ending in a book full of joy. Loved it.
I already knew that, but I kind of regret reading The Sunlit Man before this. Some revelations would be better on the big conclusion than on the short (and not that great) story.
wind and truth spoilers
Some parts felt too long and repetitive, specially towards the end: Adolin's defense of Azir most of all, Dalinar's visions, Szeth's fights. Those are important parts, but there is too much of them, continuing long past they did their job. I think the 10-day timeline kind of pushed in this direction, had to stretch it to fill the timeline.
I loved how Kaladin's development is about learning to find joy in things besides the struggle. It is genuinely beautiful and resonates with me a lot, and makes for a much stronger message than endless self-sacrifice.
That is a theme of the entire book: every character gets to heal, to accept themselves, to forgive. It makes for a really good conclusion, and is a strong counterpoint to the darkness of the resolution (more on this later).
One other thing I didn't like was the stupid philosophical debates, specially the Jasnah vs Todium one. Just... stupid. Bad philosophy, bad rhetoric, frustrating to read. (Nale at least was supposed to be arguing in bad faith)
Finished reading Wind and Truth (fifth and "final" book of the Stormlight Archive series).
Really good conclusion, manages to live up to everything that was built up. A bit of a slog in some parts (more in the reply with spoilers). Really heartfelt. Perhaps my second favorite in the series, plus or minus one.
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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With all the nonsense and buzzwords in web technology, it's so refreshing to look at how astronomers name things.
"We are building a really fucking big telescope. It is called the Really Fucking Big Telescope (RFBT)."
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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me: working from home gives me the opportunity to focus on tasks free from the the distractions of a noisy office!
brain:
TROUT
TROUT
LET IT ALL OUT
THESE ARE THE FISH I CAN DO WITHOUT
SALMON
I’M TALKING TO YOU
SALMON
me: cool never mind
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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Looking at a button on the Steam backend that says "view detailed player breakdown" and I honestly didn't think my game was so bad it would cause anyone to have that level of crisis
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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“Complaints are missing data. When you complain you gather information about the institution, most of which is never revealed by it. To collect that data creates a very different picture of the institution”
- Sara Ahmed
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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Wild that the police say that they found a nutrition bro in a McDonalds and everything was just incredibly convenient enough for them to say it's the shooter and everyone is just going with it
On an entirely unrelated note, I found this wikipedia article
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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A real chess grandmaster doesn't have to clop clop clop the squares for the horsey. They just know what square it's gonna end on and they pick it up and put it there. Don't even have to do clop clop, woahhh! (turn around 90 degrees) neighhh
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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“Trans women are women”
what is "AI" good for
It is very important to remember that these unethical tools are actually very useful for some things!
For example, LLMs can create large amounts of text that looks superficially correct but upon deep inspection is fundamentally inconsistent.
That might be awful for answering questions or writing books, but it is _amazing_ for conducting disinformation campaigns and sabotaging real sources of information!
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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A red squirrel diving headlong into a tree snags the top award in the 2024 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, snapped by Italian photographer Milko Marchetti. Don't miss the other winners:
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/12/2024-comedy-wildlife-awards-winners/
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 1: Let's punch zombies with the power of the Sun!
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 8: You see, what is actually happening is that the air pressure in the room is increasing. This is because nearby, a LEGO(tm) replica of the White House is buried in the ground. But that LEGO(tm) White House replica is slightly wrong: the 1x1 pegs are replaced by 1x1 round pegs! This LEGO(tm) replica allows the STAND USER to manipulate air pressure in sealed rooms. We are all fucking going to die.
Dr. Elda King, PhD
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youtuber, pointing: …and you can check out that video here.
me: *nod* in the VLC menu bar.
He/him, Brazilian, PhD in Electrical Engineering, aroace.
General nerdery: fantasy books, science fiction, cyberpunk, cartoons, strategy videogames and boardgames, too much internet culture, sometimes RPGs and anime.
Some undetermined kind of anarchist: I'm angry and I wish to build things. Neo-luddite: I love computers, but I hate what capitalism does with them.
If you don't CW your politics, esp. uspol, I'll block your imperialist ass.
Joined Oct 2020
