Jules @afewbugs@librem.one

Hello Fediverse! #introduction

We're a charity that helps people learn how to repair their broken things, and challenges the pattern of consumption of electronics and electricals in the first place.

We support community #repair and #reuse and repair businesses in London and beyond, and are active in pushing for the #RightToRepair in the UK and in Europe.

#RestartParties #RepairCafes #FixingFactories

it has not ALL been just a history of unilinear destruction of nature by humans.

So I will post different examples of this here every day this coming week.

1. Today, it's forest islands in West Africa. These were long thought of as last remnants of forest, surrounded by 'derived savanna', but James Fairhead and Melissa Leach showed that they were growing and created by people through villages, habitation and farming. Watch their film 'Second Nature' here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgsRnGmI3UU

Have you ever wondered how many Mastodon users other people follow?

Most active Mastodon users follow around 150 other people. (That's the median number anyway. So half follow less than 150, and the other half follow more than 150.)

About 10% of active Mastodon users follow more that 600 people.

About 10% of active Mastodon users follow less than 15 people.

The full distribution is based on a large sample of active Mastodon users.

#Mastodon #MastodonTips #MastodonMigration #Follow

Still thinking about this cat #streetart I saw from my work today. #catsofmastodon

"They formed a shield wall, ready to meet their enemy with pears."

It's a bold strategy, but I'm not convinced that it's wise or tactically accurate.

#TypoOfTheDay

Hmm, I haven't seen the Forbidden Gummy Bear cross my timeline on Mastodon yet, as it regularly did in the other place. Guess I should start it myself then.

A bear shaped amber amulet of exceptional beauty and exquisite craft skills, found in a peat bog near Slupsk, Poland, and dated to about 3,500 years ago. Now in the Szczecin museum in Poland.

@kevlin @cwebber described ChatGPT as Mansplaining As A Service, and honestly I can’t think of a better description. A service that instantly generates vaguely plausible sounding yet totally fabricated and baseless lectures at an instant with unflagging confidence in it’s own correctness on any topic, without concern, regard or awareness even of the level of expertise of it’s audience.

Some #sacred #moss traces the words carved into this recumbent gravestone outside #SelbyAbbey #Church in #EastYorkshire. I suppose that the moisture held in the carved depressions that form the letters has encouraged the moss to do its stuff. #Mosstodon #gravestone #memory #writing

@afewbugs I was going to post this very question yesterday. At the very least, when an image is uploaded the edit dialogue should appear. There are soooo many excellent posts on Mastodon that I'd like to boost but I refuse to do so if there isn't a good description.

So one of the major problems with #ChatGPT is that it's deliberately opaque about the basis for the claims it makes. What happens if you explicitly ask it to cite its sources?

Turns out the answer is - it will just spit out citations for non-existent papers and falsely attribute scientific discoveries to people who didn't make them!

(local differentially private mechanisms have existed since at least the 60s, and have been studied by that name since at least 2008: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0803.0924.pdf)

#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, PhD student Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars.

Not included in the 1974 Nobel prize for the discovery, Bell received a £3m prize for her work in 2018. She's using it to set up a foundation to improve diversity in STEM.

#WomenInSTEM #Histodons #ScienceHistory

Did you know you can tell the age of a fake Christmas tree by counting the rings of tape?