Michael Ekstrand

@md.ekstrandom.net

2242 Followers 1008 Following

Info sci prof @ Drexel, trying to keep the machines (esp. RecSys & IR) from learning bigotry and discrimination. ADHDS9. Usually self-propelled. Opinions those of the Vulcan Science Academy. 🐰x2. 🏡 https://md.ekstrandom.net 🧪 https://inertial.science

Duchess grew up in an isolated cult commune/village deep in the Echo’s Fringe. Several generations ago, scouts found some ancient archives from the pre-Abyss world that included, among other things, an extensive collection of PC Gamer magazines (and probably a few other similar ones), which they started to interpret as religious texts. Duchess is Sparked, the first in the village to manifest inherent WEIRD abilities (they’ve had a few Attuned). The elders take her WEIRD visions as a sign that she is blessed by the ancient prophets for her piety.
At the same time, professional and higher education organizations that have lobbied OMB not to overturn the current system of indirect cost reimbursement are grateful for its decision to maintain the status quo. “It provides us some breathing room for further discussions about a better solution that is fair and that increases accountability and transparency,” says Debbie Altenburg of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
The Wadi leader from DS9 “Move Along Home”, with the caption “Forty-second shap”.
A screenshot of a green-skinned reptilian woman and a human woman in a Victorian snowstorm, with the caption “Good evening. I am a lizard woman from the dawn of time and this is my wife.”
A Star Trek Enterprise title card, reading “Post-9/11 Militarism (Part XIV)”.
Deep Space 9 title card saying “Revenge of Pope Karen”.
Deep Space Nine title text over a picture of the station, saying “The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.”
A screenshot of a terminal, showing the command "lenskit pipeline diagram" producing an in-terminal diagram of a recommender pipeline.
A photo of Chrisjen Avasaralla in The Expanse, wearing a red leather jacket, saying “sometimes I fucking hate being right”.
Nada (Roddy Piper) in John Carpenter’s They Live, standing in the bank lobby holding a shotgun and wearing sunglasses. The caption reads “I have come here to chew bubblegum and reproduce research.”
- 2-5x x86-64 (V3/Haswell/Zen or later) boxen - 1-2 w/ in-support NVidia GPU - SFF fine - non-GPU can be mini PCs - all with at least 256GB SSD, more is better - Windows Server license - 1-2x Mac Mini, 16+GB RAM - older ARM Mac Mini w/ good Asahi Linux support (or comparable ARM Linux box) - can consider running in VM on Mac Mini instead - Optional and expensive: Dell GB10 (or other DGX Spark) - Optional, relatively cheap, but low priority: Intel Mac Mini - Future: Windows ARM box Coordination server and storage can live on current NAS.
One in three Americans knows someone who has been shot. As long as a candid discussion of guns is impossible, unfettered debate about the causes of violence is unimaginable. Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.
William Roper: "So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!" Sir Thomas More: "Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?" William Roper: "Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!" Sir Thomas More: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
And it gets worse. Some of the most damaging evidence in both trials came from internal company documents where employees raised concerns about safety risks and discussed tradeoffs. These were played up in the media (and the courtroom) as "smoking guns." But that means no company is going to allow anyone to raise concerns ever again. That's very, very bad. In a sane legal environment, you want companies to have these internal debates. You want engineers and safety teams to flag potential risks, wrestle with difficult tradeoffs, and document their reasoning. But when those good-faith deliberations become plaintiff's exhibits presented to a jury as proof that "they knew and did it anyway," the rational corporate response is to stop putting anything in writing. Stop doing risk assessments. Stop asking hard questions internally. The lesson every general counsel in Silicon Valley is learning right now: ignorance is safer than inquiry. That makes everyone less safe, not more.
The pawn shop guys, with the caption “best I can do is all four”.
Hawkeye and the chaplain in MASH, masked in an operating theater as Hawkeye operates. C: Oh, everybody knows war is hell. H: War isn't hell. War is war, and hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. C. How do you figure that, Hawkeye? H. Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to hell? C. Well, sinners, I believe. H. Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in hell. But war is chock full of them-little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
A gif stitched from two clips: Clip 1: Gretchen in Mean Girls, in the classroom, concluding her Shakespeare interpretation with “we should totally just stab Caesar!” Clip 2: Wednesday Addams saying flatly “I do like stabbing.”
Sam Lowry and a colleague in the film Brazil, talking by a strange CRT teletype.
4-pane image of Bashir and Garak B: we’re watching all the Star Trek? G: yes, my dear doctor B: even the bad Star Trek? G: especially the bad Star Trek.
The vampire Lord Harkon from Skyrim, scheming from his lair to acquire a magic arrow that will blot out the sun and let vampires rule the land
Like many “ideas” that have been issued from the Oval Office, this one doesn’t seem to have been thought through with any clarity or even common sense. Even the most diehard Maga supporters would probably agree that slavery is, by definition, “bad”. It’s not a delusional fantasy of woke ideologues to suggest that it’s wrong to whip and shackle, to buy and sell our fellow human beings. Consequently, the only way to avoid making slavery look “bad” is not to mention it at all, not to admit that it ever existed, not to acknowledge that from our country’s inception to the end of the civil war, this crime against humanity was perfectly legal.
A Venn diagram of “what the fuck?”.
From wongbal on Tumblr. Hello and welcome to Deep Space Nine. We are a space station, not a starship, so you'll be spending a lot of time with all these delightful side characters like: bisexual fashion lizard. hologram of Frank Sinatra. goblins. goblin comes in 3 varieties: bartender, nephew, and idiot. our doctor is a twink, our commander is antifa and the captain talks to the gods sometimes. our policeman is sometimes a liquid and the science lady is part worm. we have many fine storylines, such as: Goblin Does A Crime, Watch The Irishman Suffer, or The Horrors Of War. As you stroll along our promenade enjoying a raktajino or delicious jumja stick, watch out for our nefarious villains: Pope Karen. clones of Jeffrey Combs. and a horny bastard reptile man who seems convinced this is actually his show. we suspect he may be possessed by demons. Have fun! Deep Space Nine: now with Worf™!
A screenshot of the New Tab page in Firefox. Under "Popular Today", the first and largest article is from CBS News, with a headline and lede quoting Donald Trump saying that murdered Minnesota mother Renee Good's actions "were pretty tough".
"Search Assist", claiming "Woodpecker secrets refer to the unique adaptations of woodpeckers, particularly their long tongues, which help them access food hidden in tree crevices. These specialized tongues can be coiled inside their heads and are essential for their feeding habits."
The poster for Batman Forever
The Ghoul from Fallout (TV series), having captured Lucy, explaining the wasteland’s golden rule: “thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time.”
A blue book with a sculpted loop: Calculus, 7th Edition by Larson, Hostetler, and Edwards.
Garak with a big grin and his hands spread, with “die mad about it” in rainbow letters between his hands.
Tumblr post from wongbal Hello and welcome to Deep Space Nine. We are a space station, not a starship, so you be spending a lot of time with all these delightful side characters like: bisexual fashion lizard. hologram of Frank Sinatra. goblins. goblin comes in 3 varieties: bartender, nephew, and idiot, our doctor is a twink, our commander is antifa and the captain talks to the gods sometimes. our policeman is sometimes a liquid and the science lady is part worm. we have many fine storylines, such as: Goblin Does A Crime, Watch The Irishman Suffer, or The Horrors Of War. As you stroll along our promenade enjoying a raktajino or delicious jumja stick, watch out for our nefarious villains: Pope Karen. clones of Jeffrey Combs. and a horny bastard reptile man who seems convinced this is actually his show. we suspect he may be possessed by demons. Have fun! Deep Space Nine: now with Worf™!
A fluffy black lionhead rabbit looking at an orange and red splatter LP (Deceivers by Arch Enemy).
An orange and red record spinning in a black turntable, with an amber whisky and the album cover (Deceivers by Arch Enemy) resting on the dust cover.
A black lionhead rabbit investigating an orange and read spatter/sunburst LP (Deceivers by Arch Enemy).
A still from The Blues Brothers of Carrie Fisher as the Mysterious Woman, carrying a military assault rifle, preparing to murder Elwood Blues.
DuckDuckGo "search assist" informing me that "To specify dependency constraints in a pyproject.toml file, you can use the constraints key within the [project] table to define version limits for dependencies. This allows you to impose specific version requirements for packages that your project indirectly relies on, ensuring that secure or compatible versions are used.", sourced from packaging.python.org and python-poetry.org.
A black rabbit resting on a yellow blanket on a chair.
The cover of Keep Me Fed by The Warning
Screenshot: "Free access to information is a pillar that upholds the edifice of our societies, and for this reason, we are called to defend and guarantee it," he said. "Current events call for particular discernment and responsibility, and it is clear that the media has a crucial role in forming consciences and helping critical thinking". The pope also spoke about the challenges facing news media with the rise of AI. "Artificial intelligence is changing the way we receive information and communicate, but who directs it and for what purposes? We must be vigilant in order to ensure that technology does not replace human beings, and that the information and algorithms that govern it today are not in the hands of a few," he said. He nominated "transparency of sources of ownership, accountability, quality and objectivity" as key to news media.
A white plate containing green and white beans, mashed potatoes, and a white fish with brown glaze.
Sole and Marco introducing the RecSys 2025 program.
A black title card for a talk entitled "Searching for Fairness", with clear colors on black, and a mostly-grayscale photo of a winter climber on a mountain holding a camera on the right third of the slide.
A title card showing purple-pink cityscape under a pink sky, with the title "Where are the People?" in an Art Deco font, and the subtitle "Political, Ethical, and Humanist Foundations of Information Access" in a medium-formal script font below it.
A white record playing on a black turntable, with a light amber whisky and the liner resting on the dust cover. The liner is white with a cutout, showing the road case lyric booklet inside the liner.
A black and white photo of Johnny Cash in his older years, looking at the camera with a guitar on his hands. A caption in large white letters reads “HERE’S JOHNNY”.
A bibliographic database entry for Pedagogy of the Oppressed, with a generated TLDR reading "A single, unpressurized, gravity/centrifugal, entirely internal lubricating system is described for can end seamers and similar apparatus."
In addition to orchestrating the discriminatory hiring scheme, Cornell created other racially filtered hiring pipelines, including a $16 million National Institutes of Health-funded initiative called the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program. or First. This program, the stated purpose of which is “enhancing compositional diversity,” required hiring committees to revise applicant lists repeatedly until they were diverse enough. If the applicant pool wasn’t diverse enough, the process was paused for “additional robust outreach.” Imagine if the races were reversed. Suppose a whistleblower uncovered internal emails showing that a university had run a secret search to ensure that qualified black applicants were excluded from consideration. Suppose the school selected only white candidates to produce a racially predetermined outcome. There would—rightfully—be national outrage. It would be a landmark civil-rights case. That’s exactly what Cornell did—except I’m white.
A 4-panel meme of Bashir and Garak B: We're watching all the Star Trek? G: Yes, my dear Doctor. B: Even the bad Star Trek? G: Especially the bad Star Trek.
Nicolas Cage and John Travolta talking through a wall.
A picture of a woman with wings, flying out of an open drawer in a wall of filing drawers as far as they eye can see.
A white LP on a black turntable, with the album liner (“Beyond the Black”) resting on the dust cover, with an amber whisky.
A screenshot of "Search Assist", giving the answer "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 uses systemd-networkd to manage network configurations, allowing it to detect and configure network devices as they appear. This service is useful for both simple and complex network setups, including virtual machines and containers.", and citing the Arch Linux wiki and man7.org.
A still from The Blues Brothers, showing Jake and Elwood in their car in the park by the bridge where the Illinois Nazis are marching, with the caption "I hate American Nazis".
A photo of the klingon Gowron, holding a dagger with a chaotic grin on his face, and a googly eye in the middle of his forehead.
All 7 seasons of Deep Space 9 on DVD, the old colored box-per-season edition.
A screenshot of a slide titled "Cultural Discovery?", with concert photos of The Warning and Jinjer.
Bugs Bunny in a tuxedo with the caption “I wish all Trump administration lawyers a very step on a LEGO.
Robert DeNiro in black clothing and hood with lighted goggles.
A black turntable playing a gray record, atop which is a white Leichtturm notebook, a glass of amber whisky, and the liner for Welcome to the Black Parade.
A black Rex rabbit, shedding on her back, eating a good pile of Romaine lettuce.