Michael Roberts

Still hoping to save the world. In Old Norse. On a steam tractor. While discussing the past, technology, steam, textiles, etc with excessive intensity.

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@flamiespeed @trndytrndy That's how generations are supposed to be defined -- shared formative experienced. The great generation experienced war, the boomers experienced a unique moment of post-war rebound. Genz isn't really a thing, but the covid gen is. (The cusp gen is, too -- born c. '80)

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@halcionandon @spoonfulofhan I am an autistic parent of autistic kids.

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@halcionandon @spoonfulofhan Those aren't disability lobby groups, though... Those are parent groups. Autism moms and so on. The autistic moms are too busy being exuberantly autistic someplace with their happy, healthy autistic kids. (I'm an autistic dad, so I'm generally off with them someplace)

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@tylerblack32 Honest Q: is this different for autistics? Because I've always been better with more info on these kinds of things, and my gut feeling is it's an autism thing

(Also no-one believes me when I'm sick, which is why I had a GB issue ignored till it caused a heart issue)

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@fishernig @eunuch_fruit @eurocompel Yes you can, which is why we need to keep using the term "transexual"

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@The_Bootes_Void @guiltsouroboros @eunuch_fruit @eurocompel But it is, so whether that's the logical reason why or not is moot. Put down the straw man, lol

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@michael_hoerger I mean, for me Canada would be more helpful, but..... :D

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@raghu_venugopal @westcoastweathr Why? It sounds like you're saying you need to game out shutting folks down. Some people would rather a dr look first. Most of the time I have a better understanding of my results than my generalist physician does. I want to see them so I know when to worry -- and when not to.

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

We don't usually think of nine-hour movement activists as hobbiests. Ten engines marshalled on short notice by GWR workers is a whole model engineering club, tho. And they literally led the parade for the 9 hour day. Ham. Spect. 🗃️

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@Neutral_Smith @TheHost_ The last thing I remember from my GB surgery was looking for the word "engine," and my brain being so shut down I had to make a circumlocution involving..... Thermodynamics.

Unfortunately instead of teasing me about it, I think they genuinely thought I was an arrogant braniac

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@JosephRoyMiller @lthlnkso There's the rub. (But to be fair, I'm using a reference that's probably not commonly known, and have already been warned -- there's the key point)

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@Markallen0729 @iky_fwjett When I read the original post, I was figuring on something more like three flights an hour because it sounded like non-emergency stuff. If you'd said 3/day, I'd have laughed at you.

You are *not* improving your case, lol.

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

Something about this minimalist add ammuses me:
(The Kingston Whig Standard apr. 22 1851)
🗃️

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

@DECO22155891 @Moonlight_myths Yeah, here a room in a house is about 1200$. A junior two bedroom is about 2000 so with roommates you can get it down to about 1000$ (plus utilities)

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

Henry Petrie, and engineer who built a massive equipment Emporium we should all wish we could go visit, served on a grand jury in a fortune-telling case in March, 1901.

Does this have great historical significance? No.
Do I find it amusing? YES.

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

Sharing without Comment from the Daily Expositor (Brantford) Feb 19, 1874:

🗃️ CanHist

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

One of the key figures in my dissertation was a bit of a joker... to update his language here, we could translate "chair business" to a similarly colloquial "sitting on your ass."
Its just a bit hard to work this stuff into a Serious Historical Narrative(tm) and that makes me sad

[Michael Roberts @Magnunnr]

Apparently, this is for colic. Which makes sense but is still a bit... alarming. 🗃️

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

I don't recall the last time a world leader gave a speech at Davos that was this consequential. There is so much to unpack in @MarkJCarney's remarkably honest remarks.

It should, of course, be noted that while it is very welcome that he calls out the "fiction" of the rules-based order, he is also indirectly admitting that Canada and other Western states happily went along with the fiction as long as the conduct of the US primarily affected other countries.

It is only now when Western states are on the receiving end of American heavy-handedness, that this fiction is abandoned.

Still, Carney pointing out that middle powers have significant influence within the system if they choose to stop the pretense is essential as it calls the bluff that the major powers can order the system without buy-in from the rest.

As I see it, it lies in the US interest to retain a reformed UN-centric multilateral system, rather than destroying or seeking to replace it with a Board of Peace. It also lies in the interest of the US to use a reformed UN system as an instrument of burdenshifting, rather than adopt even greater defense obligations through the creation of a new, US-led system.

Here are the last paragraphs of Carney's speech.

"We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger. Better. Stronger. More just.

This is the task of the middle powers. The countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power. We have something too. The capacity to stop pretending. To name reality. To build our strength at home and to act together. That is Canada's path. We choose it openly, confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us."

[Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro]

This is probably the most interesting and funniest paper you’ll read today:

In 2009, neuroscientists put a dead salmon into an fMRI scanner.

The salmon was shown photographs of humans in social situations and was asked to infer the emotion experienced by the person in each image.

The results?
Several brain regions of the salmon showed statistically significant activation.

Does this provide evidence of post-mortem interspecies perspective-taking?

Not quite.

What it does show is something more important, although somewhat more boring:

When data are sufficiently complex, it becomes incredibly easy to find significant results, unless statistical controls and multiple comparisons are handled with extreme care.

Paper in the first reply: