Charlotte Aten

I am leaving the university system, possibly forever, at the end of this month. I will be living in the woods, studying mathematics and (hopefully) farming enough to survive. I have posted an essay explaining why I'm doing this on my website:

https://aten.cool/leaving_university_2026.html

#math #research #academia #USpol #mathematics #trans #transgender #farming #solarpunk #fascism #university

I've had this succulent for over a decade and recently its pot sprouted mushrooms for the first time. They lasted about one day. All I can figure is that spores got in through the open window.

#gardening #nature #succulent #fungi #fungus #mushtodon #mushroom #mushrooms #plants

My partner and I have started to settle in to our new living situation, which means that I can start posting more regularly and putting more time into #math research again. Nature is being good to us. Check out this toad I found.

#mathematics #nature #solarpunk #toad #toads #toadsofmastodon

After months of procrastination, I've finally eliminated the last two #YouTube links from my web page! All of my seminar talk videos have now been moved to #PeerTube and I can begin moving my math research livestream recordings over. Who knows, I may even have some new, PeerTube-exclusive content in the not-too-distant future.

#academia #DeGoogle #seminar #math #mathematics #research #livestream

Earlier this summer I read the 1926 fantasy novel "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees. In addition to being amused with reading the novel exactly 100 years since its publication, I was surprised at how modern its depiction of Faerie felt. I won't spoil it more than that, but you can get a copy at Project Gutenberg if you'd like to check it out:

https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/68061

#literature #fantasy #Faerie #fae #fey #fairy #fairies #ProjectGutenberg #1920s

While teaching a course on algebraic theories last semester I mentioned at some point that the familiar bicomplete categories Top and Poset were not algebraic, but were topological. A student asked about this later on and I found that the #Wikipedia page on «topological category» pointed to categories enriched in Top, not categories with a forgetful functor to Set which is topological. While I have lost a lot of faith in Wikipedia recently, I am pleased to report that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_category is now a disambiguation page.

#math #mathematics #topology #algebra #CategoryTheory

I've posted a one-pager of advice for mathematics students (both undergraduate and graduate) on my website:

https://aten.cool/one_pager.html

I wrote a draft of this a couple years ago. I now feel a little strange posting it as I leave the university system. I certainly don't approve of many things the AMS has done recently, for instance. Still, I hope that this information is useful for current students and that one day I'll be able to update it with pointers towards people and groups that I can whole-heartedly support.

#math #mathematics #university #academia #research #advice #education #AMS #AmericanMathematicalSociety

I've added a page of software recommendations to my website: https://aten.cool/software.html

I often find that I post on Mastodon either asking for recommendations or recommending software myself. This can be helpful, but these conversations are ephemeral. I also sometimes want to post «I'm having fun using Geany!» or something similar, but that doesn't feel worthy of a post on its own.

#software #Geany #GeanyIDE #Mastodon #Linux #Android

My experiment with #selfhosting a code forge using #Forgejo has come to an end. Even though it wasn't too expensive to rent a VPS, I still disliked having another form of rent to pay. I'd much rather be hosting something from my own hardware at home. In addition to this, my current use-case doesn't seem to justify the effort it takes to properly maintain the service.

I had a couple projects I was sharing on my website via this code forge, both of which used to be on #GitHub. I've realized they work better as static files/archives you can download directly. They're tiny and there's no need for a live web application to share them.

I did learn a lot by setting up the Forgejo instance, including how to use wildcard #SSL certificates and #nginx. I took copious notes, so I'll probably have a much smoother time of it if I try hosting another web application at some point.

For projects that are better served by a Forgejo instance, I've made a #Codeberg account:

https://codeberg.org/caten

#VPS #software #programming #WebDev #WebDevelopment #WebApplication

Acabo de leer el cuento Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius por Jorge Luis Borges por primera vez. Hace años leí un resumen de este cuento en íngles y aunque no hablo español con mucha fluidez las palabras matemáticas y las ideas lingüísticas familiares me ayudaron entender. Espero que puedo leer y escribir con fluidez finalmente. Leer parece más fácil que mirar las películas para aprender el idioma.

#literatura #Borges #JorgeLuisBorges #matemática #matemáticas #math #lingüística #Español

The text of the proposed US federal operating system identity monitoring bill has been posted:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/text

#fascism #OperatingSystem #USpol #Linux #AgeVerification #surveillance #FOSS #law #legal #technology

Another #Lua observation: I had gotten in the habit of using the #Python #JSON library for storing and reading small amounts of data. I'm quite set on switching over to #LuaLang wherever I used Python before and it's so nice to just write my database files in the same language as the code itself.

I'm aware I could write my data as a Python script and import it, but this felt less natural than the analogous construction in Lua. This is probably because Lua is an extension of SOL, a language for describing data.

All the little conveniences like not having to put quotation marks around string keys and being able to assume an unassigned key is nil are really pleasing me, too.

#software #scripting #database

@dirtwizard666@cyberpunk.lol What about #Lua ?

Does anyone know how to make this patronizing warning go away in #Librewolf? I have to suffer through this every time I want to visit a local address, and I don't want to just start manually adding all the addresses I visit. I'd just like to turn the thing off completely.

If I can figure this out, I might try to do the same for the "no HTTPS" warning.

#WebBrowser #HTTPS #HTTP #web #internet #Firefox #networking #security #Mozilla

@dirtwizard666@cyberpunk.lol I like that JSON-like databases are just valid Lua scripts, so it's a nice replacement for Python + JSON.