#MIT

[manichewitz]

some photos i took from emerson college’s encampment for palestine. most of these were taken only a few hours before the boston PD attacked hundreds of protestors and brutally arrested 108 students, most of whom were poc, jewish, and/or queer.

anyone who spent any amount of time in the encampment will tell you just how much it brought us all together—there was always food, music, arts and crafts, and hundreds of messages of support written in chalk.

after the BPD was done brutalising us for peacefully protesting, they power washed down the walls of the encampment—all of these messages are gone. theyre trying to erase what happened, but they’ll never truly be able to. everyone saw, and everyone will remember.

[memys-art-stuff]

It is vital that we keep the efforts of so many students across the United States from going to waste. We need to keep the momentum going and ensure that news of the cruelty happening to the people of Palestine is not ignored or suppressed.

Despite what many news outlets may have you believe, what is happening in our world is not minor in the slightest. It is a genocide that is happening before our eyes, day after day. Do not forget the administrative responses these colleges have given to the act of bringing attention this inhumanity. This is history happening now, and these colleges are on the wrong side of it.

These students are calling to divest college funds from Israel. Do not let the media warp their efforts and paint them as an antisemitic mob. Do not let those opposing these demonstrations hide behind claims of antisemitism to justify their actions. This is about stopping human suffering, and to believe anything different is willful ignorance.

[nasa]

Chris Williams

Born in New York City, Chris Williams considers Potomac, Maryland, to be his hometown. A private pilot and Eagle Scout, Williams is a board-certified medical physicist and holds a doctorate in physics from MIT. https://go.nasa.gov/49YJJmf

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[informationatlas]

Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots, then develop friendships with each other

Researchers from Northeastern University, in conjunction with scientists from MIT and the University of Glasgow, conducted a study exploring the impact of teaching a group of domesticated birds to communicate using tablets and smartphones. The findings indicate that utilizing video calls may assist parrots in mimicking the communication patterns observed in wild birds, potentially enhancing their behavior and overall well-being in the homes of their owners.

via smithsonianmag.com

[vixen-academia]

Free MIT online courses that sound interesting

Arts & Literature

Introduction to World Music

Reading Fiction

Literary Interpretation: Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare

Introduction to Photography

Foundations of Western Culture II: Renaissance to Modernity

Studies in Poetry - Briths Poetry and the Sciences of the Mind

Studies in Literary History: Modernism: From Nietzsche to Fellini

Screen Women: Body Narratives in Popular American Film

Studies in Poetry: "What's the Use of Beauty"

Queer Cinema and Visual Culture

Monteverdi to Mozart: 1600 - 1800

Writing and Experience: Reading and Writing Autobiography

Advanced Topics in Hispanic Literature and Film: The Films of Luis Buñel

Major Authors: Rewriting Genesis: "Paradise Lost" and Twentieth-Century Fantasy

Arthurian Literature and Celtic Colonization

Contemporary Literature: Britsh Novel Now

Studies in Poetry: 20th Century Irish Poetry: The Shadow of W. B. Yeats

Writing About Literature: Writing About Love

Introduction to European and Latin American Fiction: Great Books On The Page and On The Screen

Popular Culture and Narrative: Use and Abuse of the Fairy Tale

Victorian Literature and Culture

Reading Poetry

English Renaissance Drama: Theatre and Society in the Age of Shakespeare

Introduction to Fiction

International Woman's Voice

Major Authors: Oscar Wilde and the "90's"

Prizewinners: Nobelistas

American Authors: American Women Authors

Shakespeare, Film and Media

Japanese Literature and Cinema

Woman's Novels: A Weekly Book Club

Classics of Chinese Literature

Major English Novels

Topics in South Asia Literature and Culture

Introduction to Literary Theory

History & Social Studies

American Classics

The Middle East in the 20th Century

Africa and the Politics of Knowledge

The Rise of Modern Science

European Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Century

Philosophy of Love

Human Rights: At Home and Abroad

The Nature of Creativity

Introduction to Comparative Politics

Riots, Rebellions, Revolutions

Introduction to the History of Technology

Ancient Philosophy

Youth Political Participation

[sayruq]

[oldguydoesstuff]

In 1978 MIT CS students Danny Hillis and Brian Silverman designed a working computer capable of playing tic-tac-toe against a human opponent entirely out of Tinker Toys.

The machine consisted of 10,000 wooden parts and fishing line, and was designed with the help of a LISP program running on a DEC PDP-10.

In a letter to computer pioneer Gordon Bell describing the project, Hillis said the machine could have been built by any six-year-old with 500 sets of Tinker Toys, and a PDP-10.

[taviamoth]

🚨 For the 5th consecutive night, students at Columbia University continue the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, undeterred by over 100 arrests, and returning with larger tents than before.

The students have declared that they will not stop until the University, with its $14 billion endowment, divests from zionism.

Despite a number of suspensions and censorship, students are not backing down. Tour guides for new students have resigned in protest of the repression. Support rallies continue outside the university.

The liberated zone at Columbia has inspired others: At Yale University in Connecticut, an encampment named Gaza Plaza with demands of divestment continues for the third consecutive night despite suspension threats. At Yale, a number of graduate students undertook an 8-day-long hunger strike to demand their university divest from zionism.

Students at the New School in New York also began an encampment, as did a number of students in Boston, creating three encampments at MIT, Emerson, and Tufts to demand divestment and cessation of attacks on students. Encampments are also taking place at the University of North Carolina, Washington University, and Miami University in Ohio.

[girlactionfigure]

awiderframe

[paper-mario-wiki]

I've got a question to someone more Mathematically Learned than me:

What is the current Edge Of Human Knowledge in regards to the origins and fundamentals of the natural world? What's the current thread that most people are trying to follow to get down to like. The exact reason for the nature of the universe? I've heard that in the first second directly after the big bang, things were quote "a little weird," unquote. And I want to know what that means. I'd like to know what gaps in our knowledge of physics we are most focused on trying to fill right now.

[xdeaktiviertxuninteressantx]

Beziehung für immer kann es nur geben, wenn man in der Zeit der Wegwerfgesellschaft den Mut zum reparieren hat.

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned that the smoot is a unit of measure named for Oliver R. Smoot, an MIT student who as a fraternity pledge was forced to measure the Harvard Bridge using himself as a ruler. A smoot is equal to five feet, seven inches. (x)

[reasonsforhope]

“When it comes to explaining Roman engineering, people looking to demonstrate their genius have a variety of use cases, but the secret to why their concrete has remained when even modern buildings crumble after just a few years of disuse has eluded scientists.

However at MIT, scientists have cracked their concrete code to show that Roman concrete was self-repairing—it could naturally close cracks in as little as 2 weeks...

Indeed, the Romans did things with concrete that modern societies haven’t—just look at the Pantheon in Rome which still has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. Aqueducts built to water the city literally still do, 2,000 years and sometimes more after they were built.

It was once assumed that lime was added to concrete with water to create a paste in a process called slaking, but by using spectroscopic imaging, Masic and his colleagues at MIT, and elsewhere in Switzerland and Italy, have determined that the Romans heated the lime ash to high temperatures to create what is known today as “quicklime.”

“The benefits of hot mixing are twofold,” Masic says. “First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction.”

In such concrete as this, cracks that form allow the easy travel of the lime clasts into open space which, when coming in contact with water, seal and close the cracks. The team mixed their own Roman concrete and it took only 2 weeks for a deliberately inflicted crack to close.

By contrast a contemporary concrete block was made without quicklime and it never repaired itself.

As a result, the team are working to commercialize this as self-healing Roman concrete in order to reduce the 8% of global emissions attributed to the manufacture and laying of concrete in cities.” -via Good News Network, 1/9/23

[gunsandspaceships]

When Tony and Rhodey met each other

We know that they already knew each other in the spring of 1987 (IM1), right?

But for how long at that point? When did they actually meet?

While researching these questions, I discovered some inconsistencies and logical errors in the MCU.

It is known that Tony was born on May 29, 1970, and Rhodey on October 6, 1968. So Rhodey is 2 years older.

1984 - Tony went to MIT for his BS when he was 14 years old. Rhodey was 16.

We have information that Rhodey did not attend MIT for his Bachelor’s degree. He received it from the Air Force Academy and went to MIT for his Master’s degree. The minimum age for admission to the Air Force Academy is 17. Logic says that if Rhodey is not a genius like Tony, the appropriate age for him to start MS would be 20-21. But this would mean that he did not enter MIT until 1988. This is where the problems begin.

Spring Break 1987 (most likely March) - from what Tony said in the first Iron Man at 0:53:10, we have several interpretations:

Was it true?

a) One day, Rhodey woke up with a transgender/transvestite named Ivan in the same bed, and Tony witnessed or heard about it;

b) it was Tony’s joke and nothing happened, because Rhodey said “Don’t do that. They’ll believe that”.

Where were they?

1) They already knew each other. Rhodey was already studying at MIT. Logical error.

2) They didn’t know each other yet, but Rhodey was already at MIT getting his MS, meaning he started it at least in 1986 (18 years old). Logical error again.

3) They didn’t know each other yet and Rhodey was attending the Air Force Academy.

4) They knew each other because they met outside of MIT (maybe at some engineering competition, for example), and spent that spring break together.

1987 – Tony graduated from MIT. Graduation usually takes place in May.

What is 100% true we don’t know, because there is not enough information.

But the logical answer would be: at the time of spring break 1987, Tony was 16 and he was finishing his BS degree. Rhodey was 18 and he was still doing his BS at the Air Force Academy. At some point, they met and struck up a friendship. Then in 1988 or 1989, Rhodey went to MIT to get his master's degree at the same college as Tony because Tony was most likely getting his master's degree there at the time.

The movies never mention that Tony was getting a Master’s degree or actually received one, but there are enough hints to draw a conclusion, and I will do so in my next post.

[dihalect]

for months, MIT has been punishing students who speak up or protest for palestine. last week, the undergrad association held a referendum to establish solidarity with pro-palestinian activists on campus, to call for a ceasefire, and to tell the administration to sever ties with israel.

over 40% of undergraduates voted, and the referendum passed!

(you can read the text of the referendum here)

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Q-Does Gay's resignation mark the end of DEI?A-No because Harvard is a cesspool.