@davidshq You're welcome! I hope you enjoy them.

@Mastodon Thank you for responding to the feedback and pausing this change. I hope a good solution can be found that meets the needs of the community and the Mastodon organization. I also hope that afterwards, there can be a postmortem to understand how this happened so that a similar misunderstanding can be avoided in the future.

@BartoszMilewski I'm curious about this too. One factor could be mass. A heavier element would have a smaller ratio of bond energy to mass. So after reacting, the resulting gases would not expand as rapidly. Also nitrogen molecules are very stable so they release energy when they form. Phosphorus is not stable as diphosphorus so I am guessing it can't get as stable as nitrogen.

@stefan Thanks, I'm definitely feeling worried about the state of the world. But I appreciate your message. I hope you're hanging in there too!

@davidshq Thanks for sharing these. I've read Hold Me Tight and Getting Things Done. Both have been influential for me. I will look into the other books you mentioned.

I've had various books over the years that have been my "bible". A book that I read and re-read which really changes me. Here are some of them:
- Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection
- Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
- John Holts's How Children Fail (about education, but it was a major step toward my journey to unschooling which has helped me to see almost everything in a different light)
- Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication

@GertrudeZane Thanks! 😊

I really enjoyed the No Kings rally today in Rutherford, NJ. Despite some rainy weather there was a good turnout. The energy was upbeat.

I am glad I went to a local protest today. It was nice to know there are others in the area who want to resist this regime. I chatted with several people. I ended up even inviting one of the people met to join the fediverse!

#nokings
#rutherfordNJ
#newJersey
#resist

I'm starting a personal project to move my software services to free and open source software or at least to more privacy conscious companies. I'm following @cyberlyra 's Opt Out Project, https://www.optoutproject.net/the-cyber-cleanse-take-back-your-digital-footprint/ . I'm going to try to have somewhat regular working sessions where I chip away at the project. I'd love to work with other people even if they are working on their own projects at the same time. So if you'd like to join me, we could get on a call and make progress on our projects. The first session will be on Monday, 6/16/2025 at 12pm ET for an hour. Message me if you're interested.

@sundogplanets
In my PhD thesis on optical forces in complex beams of light, I refenced a 1540 book by
Petrus Apianus who reported that comet tails always point away from the sun. Here is the reference:
P. Apianus, Astronomicum Caesareum. 1540.

In case you are interested, here is a link to my thesis, https://www.proquest.com/docview/1669918098

Fun question!

I'm looking forward to the No Kings protest tomorrow. I'm going to a local protest this time. I hope to meet others who are standing up against this regime. Solidarity!
https://mobilize.us/s/R8qTWW

#NoKings
#resist
#rutherford
#newJersey
#uspol

@FediFollows Cheers! Thanks sharing these follow suggestions. I found it very helpful when I joined. I still have a sense of wonder when I see your posts with yet more interesting accounts. The depth and variety of people's interests is astounding. The fediverse is an amazing place!

@minmi Sounds about right. I also joined two years ago, and the influence is real! I am sliding towards free software and free culture radicalism. I'm not sure if it will be lucrative, but I am enjoying myself.

Three good things from today:
- my 4 y/o son asked if I needed a hug and then gave me one when I said yes 😊.
- I had three yummy pieces of Trader Joe's 72% pound plus dark chocolate.
- I went slow jogging at lunch. I am starting to train for a 5K run in September.

#threeGoodThings

@tiwack It's frustrating right? From my perspective, the current administration is acting in the interests of a small group, themselves. It would be nice to have an electorate who votes for leaders who work toward meeting the needs of all.

I've been reading about social choice theory and there are some fundamental flaws with voting whenever there are more than 2 options (including primaries, which is almost always). So systems like ours that depend on voting will eventually have problems. From this perspective, the current mess we are in is a by product of the political game. But I would way rather have flawed democracy than a corporation. That's worse than monarchy!

To move forward from democracy, I am interested in systems of government that are built on equality, but that does not depend on voting to make decisions. One form I am currently excited about it sociocracy.

@major I've been thinking about this article all day. I'm part of a small team at a small company, and we all are genAI skeptics. I haven't tried using agents yet. I definitely am going to try it out.

It reminds me of this wooden puzzle I had in grad school. You could use geometric reasoning to arrange the tetrahedra in a cube shaped box...or you could just jam the shapes in and shake the box till they fell into place.

These genAI agents don't need to "understand" the code in the same way a human would. As long as there are some constraints, the agents can essentially keep shaking until the code you want pops out.

"We should think of the methods [of voting], I believe, simply as convenient ways of doing business, useful but flawed. This gives them all a place in the world, but it makes none of them sacrosanct."
- Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice
by William H. Riker

Powerful! I don't think this idea is widely accepted yet. But I think it helps to make sense of the difficulties democracies are having around the world.

#socialChoiceTheory
#votingMethods

@vmstan Holy Mackerel! That was a close call. Glad you are safe.

Consumer Reports has been sending me a bunch of petitions recently. The most recent one is against massive pickup trucks which huge blindspots https://action.consumerreports.org/20221116_stop_blindspots. I think this kind of action can make a difference. It's a little reminder that the government is supposed to listen to the people and serve and protect them.

#resist
#consumerReports
#pickupTrucks
#pedestrianSafety

For some reason, I thought that iNaturalist was an only iOS app. I was totally wrong! They have a cross platform app, it is open source, and they are a nonprofit. I tried the app and I'm liking it so far. I'm excited to use it more and to contribute to the community!

#iNaturalist

I started using @phanpy 's Catch Up feature. It gathers all the posts on my timeline in the past several hours so I can see what I missed. I really like it so far. It shows which people have posted and you can separately look at original posts, replies, and boosts. It's nice to see the numbers.

I tend to look at original posts firsts going one author at a time, then I look at boosts and replies and tags.
#phanpy