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12
Nov
2022

Mastodon

So, Mastodon . I’m on it. After a little wandering I’m currently at @simon_on_energy@fediscience.org. That instance feels comfy for now, but I might move in future. Somebody has set up mastodon.energy, which is nice, but they have no moderation or federation policies, which makes me think that they haven’t thought through running a social media instance, and that they might not be prepared to respond when (not if) something abusive happens (example here. Content warning for highly offensive language.).

I don’t know yet how much I’ll use it. A lot will depend on how both it and Twitter develop; it’s hard to find time to participate in both. If you are also on Mastodon (or something else in the Fediverse), feel free to give me a follow.

Cute model of an owl, wearing headphones and using a tiny laptop
Photo: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/692387. Public domain.
Posted by simon
16
May
2017

Google Scholar oddness

That was entertaining.

Like many people, I have some ongoing Google Scholar Alerts set up. These bring up most of the new relevant work in my area, as well as a fair number of false positives.

The spurious results usually come from astrophysics, which is fair enough as they use similar types of model and legitimately talk about tides a lot. Sometimes I also get medical stuff, when researchers use the word “tidal” relating to breathing.

But this is new. Today’s alert suggests that I read,

“Beyond the thong : Contexts, prepresentations, and the performances of erotic masculinities in male strip show(s)”

It appears to be somebody’s thesis in anthropology or some related field. It refers to a stripper called “Mike”, who shares a name with some of my software….

Posted by simon