the roamer

First lecture in a course that I have taken over and teach for the first time. A very large class, second-year students who are eager to learn and who are also anxious, as the course was taught very rigidly before. I have discarded slides altogether and develop the material on the whiteboard, as I used to do. So liberating. 10-20 minutes for setting the scene, then I give them a mini case to work through with their neighbours. The students are wonderful. The room buzzes in eager discussions between them; they compare notes, check each others calculations, argue earnestly with each other. Live discovery of fundamental truths, in a shared space. The subject is alive and speaks to us. After the session I release my notes, which put all the micro insights together. Real teaching, I and Thou, is possible. I am lucky to be a teacher and to have these students. Life is good. #teaching #lectures #HigherEducation #IAndThou #AcademicChatter #StopTheAICorruption

BREAKING: Scientists at Angelus Silesius University have discovered that under certain conditions, humans are capable of writing and thinking unaided, without the help of standard prompt-driven AI software bots. "It sounds counterintuitive, but it almost looks as if our subjects wanted to do these things on their own", texts Professor Melanchton, the project lead. "We don't fully understand the mechanisms yet, but our study suggests that humans may have some sort of in-built agentic capabilities." #StopTheAICorruption #LiveThePromptfreeLife

Accidental discovery: The Mouse that Roared (1959). Director #JackArnold. With #PeterSellers and #JeanSeberg. An entertaining and quietly meaningful low-budget film, made before Peter Sellers became a major star. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick is a tiny European mountain state, run by a bunch of aristocratic incompetents whose incompetence does no one any harm. They decide to venture a pretend invasion of the USA, which by mistake succeeds. A next-generation "Q-bomb" drives much of the plot, slighlty tasteless or insincere perhaps, but the film's tastelessness is honest and cheerful rather than creepy. Sellers plays three characters: the Duchess, the Duchy's scheming Prime Minister, and a naive game warden who is meant to be used as a pawn but who prevails over his masters. A charming film. All the anarchic elements of an Ealing comedy; cheaply made; silly; authentic. As an antidote to today's cinematic routine merchandise, it feels intensely current. #TheMouseThatRoared #film

Our Lady Joan Mastodon was in pontificating mode, as she often was when dinner had been disappointing. The purpose of the Save Draft button, she expounded, walking up and down in front of the open window, is to make it easier for you to delete your ill-considered posts before you send them. The Draft feature is _not_ meant to let you edit your posts and then send them. Write this down, Sir Archibald, you should take notes like the others. We write a toot (she continued), and as we write it we have a feeling it's a little off. So we save it as a draft. _Then we forget it_! That's the whole point of the Draft feature. We never return to old drafts. We toot live. Oh for heaven's sake, Archie, you are still not taking any notes. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. It took our Lady Joan until after dessert to regain her cheerful spirits. She did not like it if her knights ignored her lectures. And she was right on the Draft feature, of course. #JoanMastodon #DeletingIsStrength

Every once in a while I visit this short video by Elle Cordova, to refresh my enjoyment of her erudite sense of humour. I watch it once; then I realise I need to watch it again; then again, and again, and so an hour passes with this short piece on permanent repeat, each repeat revealing another nuance in the battle of the punctuation marks. A flawless masterpiece. En Dash speaks to Oxford Comma: "_I signify every word and blank space in a page range, I am the infinite stairwell between integers, I am the bloody embrace between two countries at war, and on a gravestone I am the entire life lived between birth and death, who are you?_ " https://youtube.com/shorts/ky0YOo7_Y0o #ElleCordova #EnDash #OxfordComma #punctuation

You can see the empty eyes, Lestrade. The self-satisfied smile. This man is no murderer, Inspector. He is an AI victim. Holmes's voice revealed something akin to pity for the man in custody. It is plain that our man here has lost all capacity to plan anything as complex as an actual murder of a physical human being. Notice his hand, still grasping the ergonomic mouse even though you have taken away his laptop. Too much ego boosting from the Affirmation Machine has closed him in on himself. If you check his laptop, you will find an open Claude session, not a floor plan of the victim's apartment. Your murderer is still out and about, Lestrade. What the man before us needs is rest and an Affirmation detox. #SherlockHolmes #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption

@VeeRat I had a hospital appointment the other day. The treatment was super competent, also personally very friendly. But, yes, the blocking-out of covid is complete. No one wore a mask, not the doctors, not the nurses, none of the other patients. I wore my FFP2 mask. One nurse said; "May I ask, why do you wear a mask?" My answer: "Because of covid." She: "Ah, I see. But how do you know you have it?" "No, I don't have it. I don't want to get it." :-)

@jonny@neuromatch.social 《 Fable in particular is known to have baffling gibberish intermediate messages, and in general if any of the intermediate "thinking" text was visible it would make it abundantly clear that the only reason these things appear to work is by sheer brute force, just keep generating text until something seems plausible. 》 Oh, lovely. This example shows us in archetypical form the original sin of genAI, doesn't it. Brute force being used to hide the absence of substantive alignment. Highly instructive (and entertaining), as is your entire thread. #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz "Did Turing every discuss how well flattery works for winning the imitation game?" Oh, excellent. You've earned the Pithy Remark of the Year 2026 award. (Yes, I dare the rest of year to prove me wrong!) #RichardDawkins #TuringTest #GenerativeNarcicsm #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption#PithyRemarkOfTheYear

Johann Sebastian Bach, Great Fugue in G Minor, BWV542. James Howard Young plays the tenor recorder, bass recorder, great bass recorder, and contrabass recorder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOl0ymgnNWo&list=RDNOl0ymgnNWo&start_radio=1 #BassRecorder #Recorder #JSBach #GreatFugueGMinor #BWV542 #JamesHowardYoung

@auschwitzmuseum@mastodon.world Rivka Regina Krzywanowski, we remember you. #Shoah #RivkaReginaKrzywanowski

@CiaraNi My father was 17 when he was sent to fight in Russia. He got wounded, a lame leg and pieces of shrapnel near his spine for the rest of his life. He was released from the army and became a student in Berlin for the rest of the war. Except in April/May 1945, when he was called in to be part of the motley crowd of children, old men and invalids that where meant to "defend Berlin" in the dying days of Hitler's Reich. He survived. In June 1945, he and his brother joined the Social Democratic Party to build a new society. We were fortunate to be freed. On reading your post, I lit a candle and put it into our kitchen window. We are in a small town in rural Wiltshire in England, no one will know the reason, but then at this time no one in our sleepy town is up any more, so no matter! :-) Eternal gratitude to all those who sacrificed so much to free Europe from this evil.

@samuelpepys@mastodon.social "He would not be wooed to go to a play, nor to White Hall, or to see the lyons, though he was carried in a coach. I never could have thought there had been upon earth a man so little curious in the world as he is." And the man W. Stankes doesn't even want to see the lions! Not even the lions! We share your disbelief and disappointment. And more importantly, my friend, we look at you and we love you for your own unstoppable curiosity about everything around you: the lions, plays, la musique, ship building, the fabric of your new overcoat, a good meal, ..., nothing that does not interest you. #Pepys #curiosity #CuriosityIsLife

Young Reginald had not tooted much since he had joined the fellowship. Inevitably, some of the lads from the loader side of the table turned him into unflattering memes. For a while, "Why don't you go Reginald!" was how they told each other to shut up. Our Lady Joan Mastodon did not like it. "Our Reggie is with us," she said one evening as they sat by the fire, "I enjoy his company. Don't you?" #JoanMastodon #silence #comradeship

@bodhipaksa@mastodon.scot Well put. Reading the Dawkings piece is useful for all sorts of reasons, including alerting us to the self-mirroring state of mind that is being created by intensive exposure to the Dark Machine. #StopTheAICorruption#noLLM #RichardDawkins

Therefore. Maybe. With you? #permutations #May4th

@Nickiquote@mstdn.social

Love these exercises, and love your list.

Somehow I would have to find space for these four long-running British series, all related to the ITV channel:

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984-94);
• Inspector Morse (1987-2000);
• Foyle's War (2002-15);
• Endeavour (2012-23).

Each of these easily passes the "still entertains me when re-watched a decade later, and it still moves me" test.

If I could keep only 4 titles for future watching, these are the ones.

@bert_hubert@eupolicy.social << What started as a few people [...] being caught up in hype has now resulted in an environment where leaders cannot speak honestly about their beliefs on how best to guide organisations, for fear of being removed [...]. This means that the least sensible recommendations are going totally unchallenged, resulting in employees being evaluated on totally gameable metrics such as “money spent on AI”, and those employees must play along to avoid being terminated. >> Thank you for the link! An exceptiomally insightful, if frightening, report by @ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club on the mechanisms through which AI mania spreads. In my own work in a university context, I see glimpses of the same mechanisms, thankfully a little less extreme. We haven't reached the token-count yet, nor the firing-the-sceptic stage, but no doubt those will come to us too. We certainly have otherwise sensible colleagues ruthlessly pushing "AI innovations" because it buys them promotion. #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption

@maxpool@mathstodon.xyz As a young UK lecturer in the 1990s, I was actively involved in the European student exchange programmes and on one of my visits to the Netherleands we were shown an actual hardware implementation of the Phillips Machine. I can't remember which institution we visited, though I think it probably was the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Their version of the machine was built in 1951. #PhillipsMachinehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Machine

@NunavutBirder@mas.to Lovely shot! All four feet in the air at the same time, if I see this corretly? My dog Castorp is a Whippet, and the Whippet body too is constructed so as to allow for all four feet to be up at the same time when running. The motion is that of a coil that gets through a cycle of being suspended and being released. He also does nifty sharp turns when he runs, though I imagine that the Arctic Hare's turns are sharper still! :-) #ArcticHare #HowToRun #whippet_moments

Good work, both! @Yehuda@turtleisland.social and @Tzipporah@turtleisland.social#InstancesThatMakeADifference #Indigenous

@maxpool @johncarlosbaez You are not the only one.

@silk_flame @VeeRat The first two of these would have been valid answers for me too. :-)

@xtaldave@social.vivaldi.net Remarkable. Perhaps not surprising, but remarkable nonetheless, and truly frightening. To read Dawkins's exchanges with claude gives me a glimpse into the faux-dialogical LLM exhanges that many of my coworkers will have on a daily basis. I can see how having these experiences will change one's entire outlook on life and on others, and how language gets corrupted along the way. Frightening. #StopTheAiCorruption #noLLM

@sarajw@front-end.social "Every property that made these protocols feel old and uncool in 2014 is part of what's keeping them alive in 2026." Excellent essay on the resilence of the core internet, by Terry Godier. It lifts up the spirit of the battle-weary follower of #JoanMastodon. Thank you for the link Sara. (It makes such good sense in your post profile.) Hat tip to @tg@indieweb.social for his great essay. #ThePersistentInternet #TheResilientInternet #OurWeb #ProtocolsNotCorporarions #TerryGodier

@oxtyped@mastodon.hackerdrinks.social Oh, your post opens up memories. There was no overlap between her work and my own presence here on Mastodon, except that when I came here in November 2022, I was so excited about this strange new network and its customs, I felt so liberated, and I wanted to find out about everything related to it. I followed Nova, listened to her being interviewed, and even as someone not really connected to her work, the force of her personality, the focus, the energy she brought into her projects became part of how I perceived the idea of the Fediverse. From my external perspective, I saw a truly remarkable person.

@mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca The man is right! (Martin Buber would agree, too.) #PopeLeoXIV #IAndThou

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz My father was in the senior admin team at the Technical University in Berlin, not an academic. In the late 60s, early 70s. TUB had a collaboration with MIT, and my father for a while had close contact with several academics at MIT, friendships that lasted well beyond the time of his professional involvement. I grew up surrounded by all sorts of MIT paraphernalia! Myself, I studied first in Berlin, then postgrad in Cambridge, England. Life was such that I stayed in England. As a PhD student I once spent half a year with my supervisor in Cambridge, MA. That, too, is an eternity ago! Happy memories.

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz Wow, a fascinating programme. I wish I had a better grasp of category theory, my ever-curious self has made several attempts at getting into it, I failed each time! Abstract vector spaces: yeah! Measure theory, Hilbert spaces: I can follow most arguments. Graph theory: I love it. Category theory: help! On a biographical note: I read M&M's 1972 Limits to Growth as a boy in the mid-70s, it turned me into an environmentalist. My father had an MIT work connection and we had all sorts of 1960s MIT systems books at home. I patiently re-drew all the big flow diagrams from Limits to Growth by hand, on sheets of A3 paper. That was at the same time that I played through the dynamics of John Conway's Life, by hand, using coloured pens on huge sheets of grid paper. Somehow the two exposures (Meadows, Conway) are merged in my mind, these activities shaped the way young Roamer thought. I may have been 12 or thereabouts. Happy memories.

@DerPeder @save_social Bravo!

@caten@mathstodon.xyz UK university lecturer here. Many of us will have had the urge to make a move like yours, at least occasionally if not routinely. Wishing you every success and much joy in your endeavour.

@AstroMikeHudson@mastodon.online @samuelpepys@mastodon.social Hiding in plain sight. :-)

@samuelpepys@mastodon.social "I calling her beggar, and she me pricklouse" Frank exchanges are at the core of every healthy marriage, and you and your wife are doing well, Sam, very well. And "pricklouse" is excellent: your wife is even better with words than you are, Sam. And I love how you're putting the entire episode into brackets! Without it, we merely read "So up and to my office () and there all the morning." The most subversive use of brackets imaginable. Either way, your charming entry has made my Saturday morning blues go away. You are a good man, Sam. #Pepys #Pricklouse #marriage #brackets #diary

@samuelpepys@mastodon.social "...; but the fellow do it in kindness, and is one I am beholden to." And those are the things that matter, Sam, you are so right. The kindness, not the oddness of their action toward you. #Pepys #KindnessWillPrevail

@franklinlopez@kolektiva.social Sounds as if you got it solved, bravo. Others here have recommended the Fiio Echo Mini, and I concur. This is what we got for our twins. No screen at all, and good audio quality. Along with headphones and mini loudspeakers. (A minor hurdle is that one needs to transfer files onto the device.)

@franklinlopez@kolektiva.social Carrier pigeons has my vote!

@hagaesthetic@mastodon.social Oh, I can answer that. 57.09%

@auschwitzmuseum@mastodon.world Stella Esther Radomysler, we remember you. We remember your sister Ruth (Rutti). We remember your father and your mother, Bzabel and Léa. #Shoah #StellaEstherRadomysler #BzabelRadomysler #LéaRadomysler https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/klarsfeld/French%20Children/html&graphics/T1126.shtml

Every learning one mistake too late. #SixWordStories

@auschwitzmuseum@mastodon.world Max van den Berg, we remember you. #Shoah #MaxVanDenBerg

@marick@mstdn.social A beautiful and melancoly book. I have read it many, many times. It tells us so much about the way this one mathematician thought about his work and about the source of his creativity. A very narrow view, poetically expressed. A false view when stated as a general insight. Also a sad illustration of the harm done to creative minds by the competitive Oxbridge system at the time. This whole world now lies so far behind us, doesn't it. I guess it ended in the 1930s. Hardy's statement is wrong and harmful, but God has forgiven him, and she has placed him amongst her Angels and Archangels, where he helps them prove heavenly theorems. :-) Littlewood mentions an endearing story about Hardy. Hardy was a meticulous proofreader who never missed any errors. Once when he received the proof of one of his own papers from the printers, he did overlook one typo. What had he missed? A mis-spelling of his own name in the reference list! #GHHardy

@wjwillemse@mastodon.social Oh, that image is so apposite it hurts. #thewaywelivenow.

@johncarlosbaez :-)

@atax1a@infosec.exchange You use your words, I use mine. I am happy with what I wrote. Feel free to ignore my post.

Checking out where exactly the "Sea of Azov" lies. Good work, comrades. #SlavaUkraini

@darkling@mstdn.social Indeed. Our Lady Joan told her knights always to aim for perfect custard consistency. "Dare to be inconsistent in your toots, strive to be consistent in your puddings" was her customary scolding of the cook when they messed up the dessert. [The Suppressed Sayings, Aphorism 254.]