Pinned toot

wired.com/story/real-heroes-ha

"Bolnick investigated his original work and, in a horrified instant, recognized his mistake: a single miswritten line of computer code. [...]
Why do I recount this story? Because I think society ought to give Bolnick some sort of a prize. We need moral examples of people who can admit when they’re wrong. We need more Heroes of Retraction."

I don't know about "Heroes of Retraction", but I do find the expressed sentiment inspiring.

Math humor, can't remember the source: mathstodon.xyz/media/D0NcV_7Ev

A computational model of the Moth Olfactory Network learns to read MNIST
openreview.net/pdf?id=HyYuqoCU

(submitted by higgsfield)

Is Mathstodon cut off from the Federation?

What a fascinating slide set:

therisingsea.org/notes/talk-ll

The logic part [ = meat of the talk] flew right above my head, but surely this approach sounds interesting: If we equip RNNs with memory, we achieve "differentiable Turing machine", and then *some logic/category theory magicks called "linear logic" happens?!?!* and you find yourself equipped with a differentiable version of functional programming.

Discussion and arxiv links on HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1

Understanding Extreme Numbers
nautil.us/blog/-how-to-underst

(submitted by dnetesn)

Ten More Things I Wish I’d Known About Bash
zwischenzugs.com/ten-more-thin

(submitted by jesperht)

Wearing my coat, I'd carry only 11 pockets. I'd count every one of them as useful. I'm envious of the he 1940s man and his multitude of pockets.

Mildly interesting piece of information:

"Bernard Rudofsky found the average man of the 1940s carried roughly 78 buttons and 24 pockets"

pbs.twimg.com/media/DT2M088VAA

Reddit presents: a prime number whose representation on a phone screen looks like a giraffe:

Fascinating! Robert Boyle's mission objective list for "science" includes:

- "Art of Flying" [check]
- "practicable and certain way of finding Longitudes" [check]
- "Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination, Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams" [getting there? kinda?]
- "Attaining Gigantick Dimensions" [what]
- "Varnishes perfumable by Rubbing" [WHAT]

blogs.royalsociety.org/history

Woah

"TIL: All the mountains of Titan are named after locations in Tolkien's middle Earth. There's Erebor Mons, and the Misty Montes and even a Doom Mons (pictured here)."

"Sometimes people say "Go for it!" and sometimes people say "You'll never be an XXX, you should be a computer science major so you have a secure job." But very rarely do people say "That door is open, but it will close if you aren't careful, so let's sit down together and work out the steps to get you there." So I think we need to do that more."

Anyway, here is a great essay on aspirations and dreams and importance of encouragement that is not only empty words but *concrete*. By SF author / historian Ada Palmer from her reddit ama.

Answering the question, "What's the most effective way for someone today to encourage space exploration and colonization of other planets?"

A Mastodon instance for maths people. The kind of people who make $\pi z^2 \times a$ jokes.
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