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Garrett Wollman

@gwollman.bsky.social

540 followers 330 following 5.1K posts

@garrett_wollman from the Bad Place @[email protected] I make the network go, and stop, and go again at @csail.mit.edu. Not actually a colander full of beans. He/him (or they/them).

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · Apr 6

I gave up on trying to run my own feed generator and switched to a third-party service, so unfortunately all my old skating feeds have been deleted. New feeds published on my profile for #WorldFigure, #WorldSynchro, #EuroFigure, #GPFigure, and #JGPFigure, plus a feed that's all of those together.

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 4h

I think this is why (other than also the 35-year reading gap) it took me so long to notice the soap structure. When I was just reading things as they came across my newsfeed, which wasn't always reliable and I wasn't always interested, and the stories weren't in order, the bigger picture was cloudy.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 4h

OK, got my Vienna hotel sorted. Now the only things left are the Schengen electronic travel authoization thing, if that's really actually for sure happening this time, and the train from Wien Hbf to Praha hl.n., which it's too early too book yet. (Wikipedia says that ETIAS has been put off to 4Q26.)

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 4h

I guess the one difference with soap opera as we know it is that TV soaps are generally written and broadcast in chronological order. You can't look at the pub dates and see a later story slotted into an earlier continuity, except maybe flashback/dream sequences.

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 5h

@elfsternberg.bsky.social Realized this weekend for the first time, since I've never tried to read straight through before, that the Journal Entries are actually a soap opera. OK, a very sexy soap opera, but that's the structure, with favorite minor characters returning for occasional reprises.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 6h

Sound works on Windows.

Reposted by Garrett Wollman

Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin @ecmclaughlin.bsky.social · 8h

Every time someone drops into my comments asking about a general strike, I have to remind folks that unlike in Europe we have at will employment here allowing essentially anyone to be fired at any time for any reason, and health insurance tied to employment.

The amount of organizing

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 7h

(And since it's Right There, I'll hop over the border into Slovakia for an hour during one of those days. Nine days, four countries.)

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 7h

Could have gone Swiss via ZRH if I just wanted to do a regular round trip to PRG, but I (a) wanted to get some train travel and (b) wanted to get some new countries and I've already been to Switzerland. My Prague hotel is already set for Monday, so I'll get two somewhat zonked days in Vienna.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 7h

When you select business on the outbound leg, they give you a scary price, based on flying business on the return as well, but of course there's no reason to fly business on a daytime flight unless you really want to, and when you select economy for that leg the price is lower as expected.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 7h

I booked through United, because the only non-stop service out of Boston is going to be on Star Alliance carriers (mostly Lufthansa Group, none of it is operated by United proper), ending up with an open-jaw BOS-VIE out, PRG-FRA-BOS return.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 7h

The "fun" bit here was caused by Visa's habitual blocking of CNP travel transactions, although they claimed it was for "wrong CVV", but it took two separate phone calls (on different phones) and four waits on hold to get it resolved.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 7h

Wow, that was *just as much* of a hassle as I expected it to be, if not more so, but I finally managed to book my airfare to Vienna and Prague next March for #WorldFigure. Visa is always the biggest hassle booking international travel, not the airlines. Now all I need is a hotel near Wien Hbf.

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 11h

Apparently there's a big secondary market for older GPUs because they're better at FP32/64 than the current stuff.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 11h

Very depressing to read discussions about "After the crash, what are all these GPUs going to be good for?" because the consensus answer seems to be "e-waste": Nvidia's latest generation GPUs are worse than CPUs for normal precision floating point, even highly parallel stuff like fluid dynamics.

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Reposted by Garrett Wollman

Elf M. Sternberg @elfsternberg.bsky.social · 13h

So much hatred is directed at cities because cities are dense enough to support a variety of subcultures and require we learn to live with and even enjoy each others' company.

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 13h

A few hours late but at least I get to see the HNIC season opener. Probably won't watch the whole game at normal speed tho.

Reposted by Garrett Wollman

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 17h

Vought is not interested in “normal” democratic politics: He seeks to “traumatize” civil servants, use the military to suppress protests, and sees Trump as an agent of God’s will. He is convinced to be fighting a noble war to defend his “real America” of white Christian patriarchal rule.

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Reposted by Garrett Wollman

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 17h

Vought is a key figure in the world of Trumpism, with a rare – and dangerous – combination of ideological zeal and operative competence, a fully committed extremist causing massive harm to millions of people.

But if you only listened to The Daily, you wouldn’t get any of that.

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 1d

So is Skyline segment 2 going to open on time Thursday?

Reposted by Garrett Wollman

Jackie Wong | Rocker Skating @rockerskating.com · 1d

#JGPFigure Final qualifiers + substitutes
🇨🇦🇨🇳🇨🇳🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇳 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 JR PAIRS
🇯🇵🇰🇷🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵🇰🇷 🇦🇺🇰🇷🇺🇸 JR WOMEN
🇯🇵🇰🇷🇰🇷🇯🇵🇺🇸🇧🇪 🇯🇵🇺🇸🇩🇪 JR MEN
🇺🇸🇺🇦🇨🇦🇫🇷🇺🇸🇫🇷 🇨🇦🇮🇹🇨🇦 JR DANCE

🧵Full quals below

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 1d

Think this is wrong? Then lobby Congress to change the law! (Not a US citizen? Sorry, get your writer friends who are to lobby Congress. Or I don't know, get your government to bring the US before a WTO tribunal or something. The which they'll ignore.)

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 1d

The corporate liability bar knows this, of course, and there's no incentive for a defendant to agree to a broader settlement class than would be entitled to statutory damages, because it's too costly for any of the excluded authors to sue, so there's no need to pay out any settlement to them.

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 1d

I think you could in theory still have a class action without these elements, but no attorney would take the case because they'd have to recover their fees solely from the representative class members (the ones who actually file the suit) who might win and still get nothing depending on the facts.

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Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 1d

UNFORTUNATELY, while Congress allows the Berne bare minimum -- a suit for actual damages -- it made both statutory damages and attorney's fees conditional on registration either prior to the infringement, or within three months of publication if the infringement happened immediately at publication.

Garrett Wollman @gwollman.bsky.social · 1d

How much you can get in statutory damages depends on a few factors, notably whether the infringement was "willful", but this is the damages regime essentially any copyright class action needs to be in, because it doesn't have to be individually adjudicated and allows for awarding plaintiff's costs.