iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 7h

By the way: you can use a "private mention" as a draft post. Just don't mention anyone in it. When you're ready to post it for real, use "Delete and re-draft" to set the visibility you want.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 8h

@v_i_o_l_a @ElenLeFoll It is! I feel as though there's a major fight going on between one part of my brain that wants to read the music but cant, and another part that's reading the words and claiming there's some text there. Also a bit like the music I try to read in dreams if I'm lucky enough […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17h

@ElenLeFoll The experience of reading it certainly does things to my brain! An odd mixture of them. It's the reinterpreting of all the musical symbols as text, together with so many of them being the wrong way round and so on. It's illegible music with words in, sort of, but looks as though the […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18h

Worth visiting just for the animation on the landing page (which goes on and on and on and on).

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026

@Plumbert Makes sense. Completing a complementary pair

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

@Plumbert That, I believe, is the saying that @futurebird's post is implicitly answering.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

@attilakinali @linguistgoneforeign Say 50% as a generous upper limit, since the mosquito is diluting the imbibed blood with its own blood and takes time to absorb it from its stomach (during which time it'll be either metabolising or exhaling some alcohol, whatever mosquitoes do)? So (assuming […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

@linguistgoneforeign Hmm. How does the alcohol content of your blood (as drunk by the mosquito) compare with the alcohol content of the beverage (as consumed by you)?

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Reposted by Tim J

Scary "Grampus" Jerry 👻 @jerry.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

There are major account take-over problems happening right now on mastodon instances - all appearances are that the actor is using stolen passwords, probably from malware running on desktops. I've suspended hundreds of compromised accounts over the past 48 hours, but only two on mine. If you […]

infosec.exchange

Original post on infosec.exchange

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

@paulc @futurebird Next challenge: get them to type one tab character rather than an arbitrary number of spaces. (I suffered from that a lot with stuff I was typesetting. "I've already put it into the right layout"—which of course I'd then have to laboriously strip out . . . )

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

So it was basically "longest, long, short, shorter, shortest" and we've since given names to five more levels.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

Large, long, breve, semibreve, minim. With lengths that are large, long, brief, semi-brief or minimal. But nowadays, we mostly use the "semybrefe" as the longest one. Anything longer usually means the tempo has sped up hugely and we're now in 4/2 or 3/1 or something. (It's tempting to say […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

Some OED quotes about note lengths. c.1475: "Dame Musyke gan on her craft to recorde ... Whyche laarge, whyche long, whyche brefe, whyche semybrefe." Court of Sapience (MS Trinity Cambr.) 1728: "The Large...contains 8 Measures, tho Mersennus makes it 12." E. Chambers, Cyclopædia 1782 […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

(As long as neither kind is the kind that doesn't vote in polls, anyway.)

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

People can be divided into two kinds, and combining a long questionnaire with their vote in this poll might help determine what kinds those are.

discuss.systems

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

Noooo, stop favouriting that corny toot. It wasn't funny, and I'm not even familiar with the film!

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Reposted by Tim J

myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

They used to be called "carriage returns" because in those days they were pulled by horses.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

@futurebird You could take an actual typewriter in, though! If it's worth it just let them see that it's a Thing The Ancients Did . . .

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

[Bug] In the above toot, tapping the #språk hashtag offers "browse posts in # #språk", but the others behave normally. It seems to be specific to that one hashtag.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

[Test] Some text so it's out just the hashtags and CW #TagWithA #TagWithÅ

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

And for what it's worth, I still ended up going to Den Danske Ordbog (ordnet.dk/ddo) to look up the words I'd been unsure of. That's what I should have done in the first place.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

If you wonder why I call it that: I used #GoogleGarble just now to check something in someone's #Danish bio. It translated their pronouns, "hun/hende", as "her/him". Given that in #Norwegian "hun" means "she" and "henne" means her, even I can tell that this might not be *quite* correct . . . ! […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Nettopp ønsket å sjekke noe i noens danske bio. Heldigvis var dette ikke pronomenene deres: #GoogleGarble oversatt 'hun/hende" på dansk som "her/him" på engelsk! Til og med jeg vet det er i det minste mulig at "hende" på dansk betyr "henne" på norsk . . . (Og dette er hvorfor jeg kaller det for […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@keithwilson.eu It's because there'd have to be a negative leap second this time (the earth has sped up slightly for a change). The idea is to leave it alone for the next 3000 years or so. (Personally, I'd prefer one or two leap minutes a century. I think letting a whole hour accumulate is a bit […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Reposted by Tim J

myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

When I teach my 9th grade math students about the converse I tell them that it's one of the most important concepts they will learn in my class. I'll share this lesson with you, for free! A statement of the form "If ---- then ----." is called an implication. If you swap it around? *That's* the […]

sauropods.win

Original post on sauropods.win

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@leeglidewell @futurebird Labels are fun and useful, but they're extra things to learn—I think the right order with most things is to learn the name *after* understanding the thing. "By the way, that 'A⇒B doesn't imply B⇒A' thing has a name you can use to talk about it". I remember our maths […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Reposted by Tim J

Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

It sounds like something truly terrible is happening to these goats. The truly terrible thing that's happening? I am not walking fast enough toward them with the evening grain bucket. Poor poor goats.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@sundogplanets I don't much like the leap hour solution, though. That's a whole time zone's worth of discrepancy! I'd have preferred a leap minute once or twice per century or whatever it works out as. That should be infrequent enough to avoid any negative ones, while still keeping midday close […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@hosford42 I agree, it does (but I've not looked that one up)

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@hosford42 So basically it's a bit complicated and at this point I'm wishing I'd done linguistics at university rather than electronic engineering ;-)

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@hosford42 This is not something I'm an expert on! But from what the OED says, that's the sound "enough" ended with in Old English (with spellings like "genog"). It was one of these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_… . But they're unsure how the versions that use ȝ were […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

@Lapizistik Or it could be "Þe oulde Lyoun", unless someone's being paid by the letter? Lots of nice spellings available . . .

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

I have the library name and card number saved for pasting in, but still the process is laborious and annoying. Before they "improved" the website two or three years ago, it was at least possible to autofill the form, and you could stay logged in for a sensible length of time.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

I like being able to access the online #OED with a library card. What I DON'T like is their login process: • Start typing your library's name, while their popup list does its best to stop you after each keystroke. • Select your library from the list, even if it's now the only item left and […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

I've a feeling something similar happened last time I tried to order from them, and I ended up having to use Amazon just so I could actually get the book. :-( Frustrating.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

Damn. Just tried to order a book via bookshop.org. There's a Visa verification page, which freezes. (And although "choose payment method" is shown before then, there's only one option to choose from—namely the card payment that it's not letting me make.)

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

@ionica I'm guessing "zeker" in Dutch is like "sicher" in German or "sikker" in Norwegian? So "definite, certain, secure" etc.?

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Reposted by Tim J

Ambivalent Dictator For Life @pikesley.mastodon.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

Mastodon is the social network to be on if you want to guarantee that your joke will eventually be explained back to you in the most earnest possible way

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

mnemonic (n.): 3. Something forgettable that helps you forget something memorable. (Obviously includes (1) and (2).) #mnemonics

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

@leahmcelrath.bsky.social To me that seems very right as well, though. Unifying.

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

@leahmcelrath.bsky.social As for theories of subjective consciousness, my main feeling is that *every* theory feels preposterous to us in one way or another, even if it might be correct. Maybe it's impossible for us to come up with one that doesn't seem that way, simply because the human mind […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Tim J @timtfj.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

@leahmcelrath.bsky.social It also bothers me that in what I've seen of the AI debate, most people seem unaware even that there are different categories of consciousness to discuss, let alone theories of them. (E.g. is the capacity to have thoughts distinct from the capacity to have subjective […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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