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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 9h

Computers are good at arithmetic. A human must still do the mathematics to set that up.

I use computers to make short work of the drudgery, but that means fuck all if I can't prove that the spectral radius is between zero and one so that the numerical algorithm converges.

GIGO but Advanced(tm).

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 9h

I get asked a lot why I decided to major in mathematics over CS.

It mostly boils down to my distaste in trying to keep abreast of whatever new hotness tool has taken over the discipline.

Coming back to mathematics is like coming back to an old friend. Meanwhile, I hate my computer.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 10h

Let me tell you about actuarial exams sometime! That was the last time I experienced this level of hell, and that was mostly because sitting an exam could happen only once or twice per year, and it was hundreds of dollars at a whack.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 10h

bsky.app/profile/nrr....

Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 16h

I am getting utterly annihilated by deliverables this week, good lord.

Two chapter summaries, two lecture summaries, a "YouTube short"-style quickie lecture, four problem sets, a paper, and studying for assessments that happen tomorrow.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 10h

Current catus

I am playing the role of Galaxity. Valérian continues to use me as furniture, and Laureline both asserts dominance over him and uses me as a chewtoy.

I wish she wouldn't, but given my dramatically increased "what the fuck?"s per hour this week, I'll let her have it.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 13h

Stewart is very much a fan of exceedingly ugly numbers in the solutions to his exercises, and it makes them the exact antithesis of a joy to work through.

I won't say unkind things about the man here, but I'll just say that his estate should finally let him rest peacefully.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 16h

It's rough! I'm definitely cussing a lot as I work!

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 16h

I am getting utterly annihilated by deliverables this week, good lord.

Two chapter summaries, two lecture summaries, a "YouTube short"-style quickie lecture, four problem sets, a paper, and studying for assessments that happen tomorrow.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 1d

The fact that I'm able to dredge this shit up from the depths of my brain is truly something. I lost my permanent residence the same semester I took this course, and I'm frankly surprised I retained any of it.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 1d

Oh, no, I suddenly remembered Gauss-Codazzi.

This is apropos those tedious Christoffel symbol computations since you need them for the second fundamental form, which is used for… something involving geodesic curvature and submanifolds that I've since forgotten.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 1d

This lamentation comes from figuring out how to get a good practice routine together from Stewart's exercises that new learners can use to get good.

I guess his exposition is alright if you're familiar with the material?

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 1d

weh!!!

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 1d

oh no you turned me into a yinglet wizh your Beams and Rays, and now, i am a creature who Must Have Clams

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 1d

He was from a 28th century idea of Western democracy. She was a peasant from 11th century France.

Could it be any more obvious?

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 1d

The thing is that these problems are best written when they can be part of a practice routine, with later problem sets building off the last. The idea is pattern recognition and muscle memory.

They aren't meant to be hard for hardness' sake. That sucks more than most folks care to embrace.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 2d

I've decided that I'm not exactly a fan of Stewart's calculus text. A lot of the exercises feel like needlessly punishing tedium.

And, like, I have a notebook somewhere wherein something like 60 pages are nothing but variously correct Christoffel symbol computations.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 2d

Something happened in the last Windows cumulative update, and I have code running that leaks handles like a sieve that I can't seem to track down.

I'm getting uptimes of a couple days tops before performance gets unbearable.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 2d

This is exactly the chaotic energy that warms the cockles of my dark, black heart.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 2d

Rain, rain, here to play. All the storm grates read, "Drains to bay."

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 3d

This right here. Fedora without the Silverblue rpm-ostree stuff is a lot more like what you'd get with Arch or Ubuntu.

The Silverblue distributions under the ublue umbrella like Bazzite and Bluefin and Aurora tend to want you to use Homebrew or Flatpak to install most things.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 3d

i'd like to offer at least this. www.opensecrets.org/orgs/mcmaste...

it isn't conclusive, but it at least appears at first blush that they aren't utter fash.

McMaster-Carr Profile: Totals

McMaster-Carr organization profile: contributions by party of recipient, by source of funds, and affiliates.

www.opensecrets.org

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 3d

(I'm also curious but because of gooey tree resin reasons…)

Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 3d

That said, narratively, does a craft blindly attempting a jump at this point just get stuck? That's it?

Does the "stitching" of the "seam" between those two "pieces of fabric" snag or tear in a gruesome way?

Does the jump more or less become the entire plot for Star Trek: Voyager?

Hmm!

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 3d

We have a notion of connectedness but not a notion of distance, I guess? I might need to do some reading to get back into this stuff; it's been a very, very long while.

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Anti-Fascist Reliability Engineer @nrr.corvidae.org · 3d

The idea: a jump between points $r_i$ and $r_f$ temporarily distorts one of those manifolds such that smoothness drops off the map $\phi : M \to H$ for the hyperspace manifold $H$ used for traversal around $\phi(r_i)$, making it no longer diffeomorphic around a neighborhood centered at that point.

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