#Filtering Data

[automaticdata]

So, um.

I may be starting to get a weeeee bit annoyed with people on the r/Hermitcraft subreddit.

Like, when I made the meme that is still getting an insane amount of notes (holy crap thank you so much I am super flattered), it was understandable that people didn't know what it was in reference to. I went, "ah, probably should have linked Cleo's vid!" and lived and learned, you know?

But Cleo's video has been out for a week. It's only twenty minutes long, and the moment when they and Grian meet up is five minutes into the video.

And like. Grian seems to really want people to see his friends' videos? Like when Gem's snail arrived, he deliberately left that plot thread dangling to be answered in Gem's video. The guy has made an eight hour video showing off the other Hermits' bases. I also highly suspect that one reason Grian is one of the last people to upload collab videos he's in is because his higher subscriber count means his video will automatically racket up to the top of the recommended page, and he wants his friends' videos to get a head start on him.

So the fact that there's this significant amount of Grian fans who won't even watch five minutes of someone else's video to get an answer that Grian left hanging is ... it's just super disappointing, ngl.

And just. Don't even get me started on that "continuity error" comment. I actually had a pretty long response to that on reddit. TL;DR: it's not a continuity error because there's perfect continuity as long as you watch Cleo's video.

Grian does not have to fill in the gaps, that's not his responsibility, nor should it be. The point of a series like Hermitcraft is that you get multiple perspectives. If you're upset that one perspective doesn't show everything, then you shouldn't be watching SMPs.

[cozylittleartblog]

snow miku 2024 🧡🥄❄

art print on my etsy for the holidays!

[thankstothe]

[grison-in-space]

look computational psychiatry is a concept with a certain amount of cursed energy trailing behind it, but I'm really getting my ass chapped about a fundamental flaw in large scale data analysis that I've been complaining about for years. Here's what's bugging me:

When you're trying to understand a system as complex as behavioral tendencies, you cannot substitute large amounts of "low quality" data (data correlating more weakly with a trait of interest, say, or data that only measures one of several potential interacting factors that combine to create outcomes) for "high quality" data that inquiries more deeply about the system.

The reason for that is this: when we're trying to analyze data as scientists, we leave things we're not directly interrogating as randomized as possible on the assumption that either there is no main effect of those things on our data, or that balancing and randomizing those things will drown out whatever those effects are.

But the problem is this: sometimes there are not only strong effects in the data you haven't considered, but also they correlate: either with one of the main effects you do know about, or simply with one another.

This means that there is structure in your data. And you can't see it, which means that you can't account for it. Which means whatever your findings are, they won't generalize the moment you switch to a new population structured differently. Worse, you are incredibly vulnerable to sampling bias because the moment your sample fails to reflect the structure of the population you're up shit creek without a paddle. Twin studies are notoriously prone to this because white and middle to upper class twins are vastly more likely to be identified and recruited for them, because those are the people who respond to study queries and are easy to get hold of. GWAS data, also extremely prone to this issue. Anything you train machine learning datasets like ChatGPT on, where you're compiling unbelievably big datasets to try to "train out" the noise.

These approaches presuppose that sampling depth is enough to "drown out" any other conflicting main effects or interactions. What it actually typically does is obscure the impact of meaningful causative agents (hidden behind conflicting correlation factors you can't control for) and overstate the value of whatever significant main effects do manage to survive and fall out, even if they explain a pitiably small proportion of the variation in the population.

It's a natural response to the wondrous power afforded by modern advances in computing, but it's not a great way to understand a complex natural world.

[jcmarchi]

MIT scientists pin down the origins of a fast radio burst

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-scientists-pin-down-the-origins-of-a-fast-radio-burst/

MIT scientists pin down the origins of a fast radio burst

Fast radio bursts are brief and brilliant explosions of radio waves emitted by extremely compact objects such as neutron stars and possibly black holes. These fleeting fireworks last for just a thousandth of a second and can carry an enormous amount of energy — enough to briefly outshine entire galaxies.

Since the first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of FRBs, whose locations range from within our own galaxy to as far as 8 billion light-years away. Exactly how these cosmic radio flares are launched is a highly contested unknown.

Now, astronomers at MIT have pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst using a novel technique that could do the same for other FRBs. In their new study, appearing today in the journal Nature, the team focused on FRB 20221022A — a previously discovered fast radio burst that was detected from a galaxy about 200 million light-years away.

The team zeroed in further to determine the precise location of the radio signal by analyzing its “scintillation,” similar to how stars twinkle in the night sky. The scientists studied changes in the FRB’s brightness and determined that the burst must have originated from the immediate vicinity of its source, rather than much further out, as some models have predicted.

The team estimates that FRB 20221022A exploded from a region that is extremely close to a rotating neutron star, 10,000 kilometers away at most. That’s less than the distance between New York and Singapore. At such close range, the burst likely emerged from the neutron star’s magnetosphere — a highly magnetic region immediately surrounding the ultracompact star.

The team’s findings provide the first conclusive evidence that a fast radio burst can originate from the magnetosphere, the highly magnetic environment immediately surrounding an extremely compact object.

“In these environments of neutron stars, the magnetic fields are really at the limits of what the universe can produce,” says lead author Kenzie Nimmo, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “There’s been a lot of debate about whether this bright radio emission could even escape from that extreme plasma.”

“Around these highly magnetic neutron stars, also known as magnetars, atoms can’t exist — they would just get torn apart by the magnetic fields,” says Kiyoshi Masui, associate professor of physics at MIT. “The exciting thing here is, we find that the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the universe.”

The study’s MIT co-authors include Adam Lanman, Shion Andrew, Daniele Michilli, and Kaitlyn Shin, along with collaborators from multiple institutions.

Burst size

Detections of fast radio bursts have ramped up in recent years, due to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). The radio telescope array comprises four large, stationary receivers, each shaped like a half-pipe, that are tuned to detect radio emissions within a range that is highly sensitive to fast radio bursts.

Since 2020, CHIME has detected thousands of FRBs from all over the universe. While scientists generally agree that the bursts arise from extremely compact objects, the exact physics driving the FRBs is unclear. Some models predict that fast radio bursts should come from the turbulent magnetosphere immediately surrounding a compact object, while others predict that the bursts should originate much further out, as part of a shockwave that propagates away from the central object.

To distinguish between the two scenarios, and determine where fast radio bursts arise, the team considered scintillation — the effect that occurs when light from a small bright source such as a star, filters through some medium, such as a galaxy’s gas. As the starlight filters through the gas, it bends in ways that make it appear, to a distant observer, as if the star is twinkling. The smaller or the farther away an object is, the more it twinkles. The light from larger or closer objects, such as planets in our own solar system, experience less bending, and therefore do not appear to twinkle.

The team reasoned that if they could estimate the degree to which an FRB scintillates, they might determine the relative size of the region from where the FRB originated. The smaller the region, the closer in the burst would be to its source, and the more likely it is to have come from a magnetically turbulent environment. The larger the region, the farther the burst would be, giving support to the idea that FRBs stem from far-out shockwaves.

Twinkle pattern

To test their idea, the researchers looked to FRB 20221022A, a fast radio burst that was detected by CHIME in 2022. The signal lasts about two milliseconds, and is a relatively run-of-the-mill FRB, in terms of its brightness. However, the team’s collaborators at McGill University found that FRB 20221022A exhibited one standout property: The light from the burst was highly polarized, with the angle of polarization tracing a smooth S-shaped curve.  This pattern is interpreted as evidence that the FRB emission site is rotating — a characteristic previously observed in pulsars, which are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars.

To see a similar polarization in fast radio bursts was a first, suggesting that the signal may have arisen from the close-in vicinity of a neutron star. The McGill team’s results are reported in a companion paper today in Nature.

The MIT team realized that if FRB 20221022A originated from close to a neutron star, they should be able to prove this, using scintillation.

In their new study, Nimmo and her colleagues analyzed data from CHIME and observed steep variations in brightness that signaled scintillation — in other words, the FRB was twinkling. They confirmed that there is gas somewhere between the telescope and FRB that is bending and filtering the radio waves. The team then determined where this gas could be located, confirming that gas within the FRB’s host galaxy was responsible for some of the scintillation observed. This gas acted as a natural lens, allowing the researchers to zoom in on the FRB site and determine that the burst originated from an extremely small region, estimated to be about 10,000 kilometers wide.

“This means that the FRB is probably within hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the source,” Nimmo says. “That’s very close. For comparison, we would expect the signal would be more than tens of millions of kilometers away if it originated from a shockwave, and we would see no scintillation at all.”

“Zooming in to a 10,000-kilometer region, from a distance of 200 million light years, is like being able to measure the width of a DNA helix, which is about 2 nanometers wide, on the surface of the moon,” Masui says. “There’s an amazing range of scales involved.”

The team’s results, combined with the findings from the McGill team, rule out the possibility that FRB 20221022A emerged from the outskirts of a compact object. Instead, the studies prove for the first time that fast radio bursts can originate from very close to a neutron star, in highly chaotic magnetic environments.

“These bursts are always happening, and CHIME detects several a day,” Masui says. “There may be a lot of diversity in how and where they occur, and this scintillation technique will be really useful in helping to disentangle the various physics that drive these bursts.”

This research was supported by various institutions including the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Trottier Space Institute at McGill University, and the University of British Columbia.

[kay-selfships]

me clicking “not interested” on a post about a canon x canon ship involving my f/o knowing full well it doesn’t do anything

[drfuckerm-d]

here come the CHECKERS EDIT to inform you all that i have made a 🔞 bluesky, where you can find the full image as well. this will also be where i post anything nsfw.

you want it? YOU GOT IT! 💋❤️✨love u guys 🫶

[neomedievalist]

downloaded tumblr mobile just bc i’m out of the country away from my computer and man 1. this app sucks 2. having to see how many posts i’ve blacklisted instead of them being hidden by xkit is so funny

[pynkhues]

Doxxing and a new criminal offence under the Criminal Code

In a world-leading move, the [Australian Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment] Act introduces a new criminal offence involving “doxxing" by amending the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) (Criminal Code). Doxxing is the targeted release of personal information in a malicious manner using a carriage service. There are two new offences relating to doxxing:  - releasing personal data that is menacing or harassing towards an individual; or  - releasing personal data relating to one or more members of a group due to that person’s belief that the group is distinguished by race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality or national or ethnic origin.  ‘Personal data’ in this context has been given a more expansive definition than ‘personal information’ as defined under the Privacy Act. Personal data encompasses information about an individual or group member that enables them to be identified, contacted or located, including names, photographs or images, work or business addresses, places of education and worship.  The maximum penalty for a doxxing offence against an individual is 6 years’ imprisonment and an offence against one or members of a group is punishable by up to 7 years’ imprisonment. It is also immaterial if a group is actually distinguished by any of the characteristics listed above. As the doxxing offences are contained within the Criminal Code they are not subject to the exemptions under the Privacy Act, meaning small businesses and journalists could also be charged with, and found to have committed, a doxxing offence.

Source

[the-sunshine-dragon]

Realized this week that I use youtube like I use tumblr and that is specifically creating my own experience and specifying exactly what videos I want to see versus having an algorithm tell me (outside of the little pane of recommended or similar videos next to a video you're currently watching) and that realization has made me very happy.

[catboy-emh]

Hi, are there any blogs here that thirst-post about Data and/or any of the Soong androids here that also DON’T ship datalore? Please I need more android content! 💛

[satanfemme]

why is a post about high eating disorder rates in trans men tagged as transandrophobia. do you think trans women are immune from diet culture and systematic fatphobia. why.

[aggravatedanarchy]

Whoever made Zalgo text readable to AI: keep one eye open at night, fucker.

[daisyachain]

Tried to sleep in. Had a convincing dream that coworker died in a road accident. Woke up in dream. Checked news in dream. Real. Woke up in real life. Checked news in real life. Not real.

[pierswife]

There's a positivity blog that I follow that does this, so I think I want to start doing this too as a way to assure myself that I'm doing fine

Accomplishments of the day:

Folded half of the laundry that I fell behind on

Put things on hangers and back into the closet where they belong

Showered

Keeping up with my meals and snacks (so far)

Keeping up with hydration

Got my grocery shopping done and put away

Took out the recycling

Brushed my hair and teeth

Took my meds on time

Taking a moment to step back and let myself decompress (would say took, but this is something I'm in the middle of doing rn triggers go brrr rhjajs /lh)

[queengeni]

Pro tip: when posting your art add a overlay layer on top of the finished piece and add a picture of the most disturbed, ugly, and non-sense ai pic you can find so you can force the machine to inbreed