Today's Adventures

Aug. 30th, 2025 11:38 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] flaneurs
Today we went to the Tuscola Family Fun Day and the Arthur Amish Country Cheese Festival.

Amusingly, I'm wearing a goldenrod-yellow T-shirt with a corncob and the caption "This is my crop top." (It's full length.) I got at least half a dozen compliments on it. :D I bought it earlier this year at another event, definitely a good choice for fall festivals.

Read more... )

Covid vaccine heads-up

Aug. 30th, 2025 09:49 am
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
Because Bobby Brainworm is out to get us:

RFK Jr blocked CDC approval of the updated covid vaccine. There are three states where pharmacists can't legally give a vaccine without CDC approval: Massachusetts (where I live), Nevada, and New Mexico. In another 13 states, pharmacists can give the vaccine but only with a prescription, and CVS isn't shipping the vaccine to pharmacies in any of these 16 states.

Note: the vaccine is legally available in every state, because the relevant FDA committee did approve it, but some of us will have to get it from a doctor's office, which will be more of a hassle even when it’s possible.

P.S. Walgreen’s too, per a comment at Universal Hub.

Those are state laws, so call your state representatives and governor and tell them to change it.

“Massachusetts )

Weekend

Aug. 29th, 2025 08:24 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
Age must be catching up with me;
Three day weekend, now I'm free
To sleep as late as I can sleep.
-K Royka, 8/29/2025

snuffle / salsa / chacha

Aug. 29th, 2025 12:02 pm
graydon2: (Default)
[personal profile] graydon2
This is a small note about a delightful function. Not cryptography advice or serious commentary. Just amusement.

A couple years back I had occasion to read in slightly more detail than I had before about the state of the art in cryptographically secure PRNGs (CSPRNGs). These are PRNGs we trust to have additional properties beyond the speed and randomness requirements of normal ones -- inability for an attacker to reveal internal state, mainly, so you can use them to generate secrets.

If you look, you'll find a lot of people recommending something based on one of Dan Bernstein's algorithms: Salsa20 or ChaCha (or even more obscurely "Snuffle"). All the algorithms we're discussing here are very similar in design, and vary only in minor details of interest only to cryptographers.

If you follow that link though, you'll notice it's a description of a (symmetric) stream cipher. Not a CSPRNG at all!

But that's ok! Because it turns out that people have long known an interesting trick -- actually more of a construction device? -- which is that a CSPRNG "is" a stream cipher. Or rather, if you hold it the other way, you might even say a stream cipher "is" just a CSPRNG. Many stream ciphers are built by deriving an unpredictable "key stream" off the key material and then just XOR'ing it with the plaintext. So long as the "key stream" is unpredictable / has unrecoverable state, this is sufficient; but it's the same condition we want out of the stream of numbers coming out of a CSPRNG, just with "seed" standing in for "key". They're fundamentally the same object.

I knew all this before, so people naming a CSPRNG and a stream cipher the same did not come as any surprise to me. But I went and looked a little further into ChaCha in particular (and its ancestor Salsa and, earlier still, Snuffle) because they have one additional cool and weird property.

They are seekable.

This means that you can, with O(1) effort, "reposition" the Snuffle/Salsa/ChaCha "key stream" / CSPRNG number stream to anywhere in its future. You want the pseudorandom bytes for block 20,000,000? No problem, just "set the position" to 20,000,000 and it will output those bytes. This is not how all CSPRNGs or stream ciphers work. But some do. ChaCha does! Which is very nice. It makes it useful for all sorts of stuff, especially things like partially decrypting randomly-read single blocks in the middle of large files.

I got to wondering about this, so I went back and read through design docs on it, and I discovered something surprising (to me): it's not just a floor wax and dessert topping CSPRNG and stream cipher. ChaCha is also a cryptographic hash function (CHF)! Because a CHF is also something you can build a CSPRNG out of, and therefore also build a stream cipher out of. They're all the same object.

How does the construction work? Embarassingly easily. You put the key material and a counter (and enough fixed nonzero bits to make the CHF happy) in an array and hash it. That's it. The hash output is your block of data. For the next block, you increment the counter and hash again. Want block 20,000,000? Set the counter to 20,000,000. The CHF's one-way-function-ness implies the non-recoverability of the key material and its mixing properties ensure that bumping the counter is enough to flip lots of bits. The end.

Amazing!

But then I got curious and dug a bit into the origins of ChaCha and .. stumbled on something hilarious. In the earliest design doc I could find (Salsa20 Design which still refers to it as "Snuffle 2005") the introduction starts with this:

Fifteen years ago, the United States government was trying to stop publication
of new cryptographic ideas—but it had made an exception for cryptographic
hash functions, such as Ralph Merkle’s new Snefru.

This struck me as silly. I introduced Snuffle to point out that one can easily
use a strong cryptographic hash function to efficiently encrypt data.
Snuffle 2005, formally designated the “Salsa20 encryption function,” is the
latest expression of my thoughts along these lines. It uses a strong cryptographic
hash function, namely the “Salsa20 hash function,” to efficiently encrypt data.

This approach raises two obvious questions. First, why did I choose this
particular hash function? Second, now that the United States government seems
to have abandoned its asinine policies, why am I continuing to use a hash function
to encrypt data?


In other words: the cool seekability wasn't a design goal. Shuffle/Salsa/ChaCha was intended as a tangible demonstration of a political argument that it's stupid to regulate one of the 3 objects (CHF, CSPRNG and stream cipher) since you can build them all out of the CHF. (And, I guess, "obviously you should be allowed to export CHFs" though I wouldn't bet on anything being obvious to the people who make such decisions).

And then I googled more and realized that when I was a teenager I had completely missed all the drama / failed to connect the dots. Snuffle was the subject of Bernstein v. United States, the case that overturned US export restrictions on cryptography altogether! And as this page points out "the subject of the case, Snuffle, was itself an attempt to bypass the regulations".

Anyway, I thought this was both wonderful and funny: both the CHF-to-CSPRNG construction (which I'd never understood/seen before), but also the fact that Snuffle/Salsa/ChaCha is like the ultimate case of winning big in cryptography. Not only does ChaCha now transport like 99%[EDIT "double-digit percentages"] of the world's internet traffic (it's become the standard we all use because it's fast and secure) but that it was pivotal in the evolution of the legal landscape and all arises from a sort of neener-neener assessment that the law at the time was internally inconsistent / contained a loophole for CHFs that made the whole thing "asinine".
jesse_the_k: Scrabble triple-value badge reading "triple nerd score" (word nerd)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

@etymologynerd on TikTok[youtube.com profile] etymology_nerd on YouTube (note underscore)

My first fandom is language. Let me enthuse about the Etymology Nerd Adam Aleksic. He's a short-form video presenter, essayist, and recently-published author. He started on Reddit, but attained fame on TikTok, and his YouTube is 90% shorts (but not every TikTok has made it to YouTube). It's important that his videos are accurately captioned, cause he speaks faster than an auctioneer on meth. No video description and his hand-held camera means flashing and shaking images. The videos reward multiple views.

six links to short videos, accurately captioned without video description )

Three Essays to Read

If you prefer prose, his Substack newsletter offers RSS at https://etymology.substack.com/feed or luck into one of his maybe-monthly essays here via [syndicated profile] etymologynerd_feed (DW feeds only go back two weeks).

Want more? My first internet #lingcomm crush interviewed Aleksic on Lingthusiasm podcast 105—both audio and transcript there, with insights into best practices in vertical video and why it feels different than old-style horizontals.

Any linguistic communicators making you happy?

Interim

Jan. 2nd, 2025 09:13 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
In the space between
School and work are shut
Time flows, liminal
Year end, year beginning, but...

Has it yet begun?
Buildings shuttered still and cold
Time may hasten on
Spinning new things into old

Till doors open wide
Still we sit in hesitation
'Twixt the timely tides
Soon to ebb from new creation.

-Kate Royka, 1/2/2025

a reassuring trip to the dentist

Aug. 28th, 2025 02:38 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
I just had a reassuringly boring dental visit. I called yesterday because I'd been having pain on and off for the previous three days, and they gave me an appointment for this morning.

I felt much better last night and basically OK this morning, but I still wanted the dentist to check in case there was a problem—intermittent symptoms can be hard to diagnose. The dentist looked inside my mouth, poked in a few places, and took two X-rays, finding nothing wrong. His best guess is that something was caught between my gum and bone, and I got it out by cleaning my teeth yesterday; I don’t know why the previous three days of brushing and flossing hadn’t done the job.

The dentist did see a little tenderness in the area that had been hurting, and wrote me a prescription for something to rinse with. Other than that, call if there are further problems, or come back in three months for my usual cleaning.

I am pleased with the outcome: it stopped hurting, and the dentist confirmed that there's nothing wrong, so I don’t need unpleasant and possibly expensive dental work.

The dentist said to hold the prescription rinse in my mouth for “a few seconds,” then rinse with water, and I only need to rinse that side of the month. The printed prescription label says 30 seconds and not to rinse for 30 minutes afterwards, which I assume are the standard instructions for this medication.

Creative

Aug. 27th, 2025 08:01 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
I promise I'll be
Just as happy as you are
When the time is near.
-K Royka, 8/27/2025

Ravenous

Aug. 27th, 2025 06:58 am
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
I have devoured
Multitudes
No feast too large
Or morsel too small
To enter my gluttonous gullet
Tomes to
Phrases to
Words
All are sumptuous on my tongue.
-K Royka, 8/27/2025

Bruise

Aug. 26th, 2025 08:52 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
Found another bruise
Bigger than my palm at least
Wish I had a leech.
-K Royka, 8/26/2025

misc. comments 67:

Aug. 26th, 2025 08:43 am
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
Another collection of comments to other people’s journals:

[personal profile] elise was asking about "ways to learn to wanna when you're gonna hafta"

I said:

Sometimes I get things done by reminding myself that I don't have to want to do them, as long as they get done. Meaning that I'm not going to enjoy the task, but maybe I want to have done it, or maybe I'm leaning on bits of habit. That mostly works for small things: it's easier to think "don't have to like it, as long as it gets done" about relatively short things, like brushing my teeth, than about anything longer or more complicated.

Typing this, I realize that this is something I mostly do/need to do late in the day. Even with meds, I run out of executive function well before I run out of day (or evening).


[personal profile] cosmolinguist posted about feeling like everyone else hasn't just stopped talking about the pandemic, they're not thinking about it, and he quoted his manager saying "something like 'You're the only one who remembers covid.' Not in an accusing way or anything, just making an ob. Clearly based on the fact that I'm still masking and I've never seen any of my colleagues wear a mask at in-person gatherings."

My comment was:
As I said [on Mastodon], it reminds me of something Siderea posted about in 2018-19: a hundred years ago, in the 1920s, people didn't mention the Spanish Flu epidemic, even though flu was still killing a significant number of people every year (as it still is today). People did write about World War I, and men who died there, and there were novels about the young women who were never going to marry because of the gender imbalance, but it looked from 2018 as though there was an agreement or decision not to talk about the pandemic.

Six years ago, that seemed odd; four years ago, I was deliberately posting almost every day just so I would have a record of what those first months of the covid pandemic had been like.



A comment to [personal profile] buhrger, who lives in Alberta, about finding a new doctor:

It's not just your area, or province, that is short on doctors who are accepting new patients. A couple of months ago, we were talking to a friend of Adrian's, Ruth; they are both dissatisfied with their current doctor, but Ruth has had trouble finding another that she can get to reasonably. Oddly, I am seeing a nurse practitioner in that practice, and am entirely happy to keep seeing her, and not just because I don't want to roll the dice on someone else taking me and my combination of medical things seriously while still taking as given that I am a competent adult.


Comment to [personal profile] ambyr’s post about characters with an annoying sort of genre-awareness:

I haven’t read any Moreno-Garcia, but that shape of genre-awareness feels all wrong to me. I'm fine with characters having no idea they're in a horror novel, or a detective story, or whatever. And I'm fine with characters being aware if it's something like "if he's really a vampire, we should make sure all the doors are locked, buy some garlic, and not invite anyone inside," or with "there's no such thing as a vampire, what is this person really hiding?"

For example, I'm amused by the Terry Pratchett books where the characters know that million-to-one shots often work, so they're carefully trying to contrive those long odds against themselves before trying to do something like shoot a dragon. For me, that works in part because it's a given that the Discworld runs partly on Narrativium, and is out at the far end of some sort of probability curve.

"Don't separate the party" is a fiction-flavored way of saying :don't wander off" or "we should stay together" that doesn't require us to think we're actually in a work of fiction--but I would be annoyed by a book where the characters routinely said thet, and then someone ran off without saying anything or taking useful equipment entirely because the plot required it.


#burger and I were talking about (not) carrying cash:

If I’m out and about (not just going for a walk in the neighborhood) it’s usually for some sort of errand, and even if the main goal is to pick up a library book I’ll be passing shops and it often makes sense to go inside: maybe this branch of CVS has the specific earplugs I’m looking for, maybe the supermarket will have good berries.

That’s separate from the fact that I carry cash and credit card in the same wallet as my ID and other useful cards including my transit pass. Some of that is just-in-case planning: if one kind of thing goes wrong, I may need ny health insurance card. If I’m picking up certain prescriptions, they want me to show ID.

But mostly, having enough cash to get home in case I lose, or someone steals, my wallet is an old, ingrained habit. Once upon a time, that meant always having a subway token and a coin for a pay phone. Now, I keep a $5 bill in my daypack, and one in each of my coats that has a zipper pocket. It’s a firm enough habit that the daypack also has a Canadian $5 bill, just in case. (I didn't put a five-pound note in my pack when we were in London. Maybe I should have.)

Check

Aug. 25th, 2025 09:18 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
PT exercises, go!
Sit, stand, check!
Wall, up, check!
Now resistance band comes through!
Pull down, check!
Push down, check!
Twists and slides and sides and squats
10s and 15s, sets and lots
Finish them beyond all thoughts
Monday, check and check.
-K Royka, 8/25/2025

More spoons!

Aug. 25th, 2025 08:43 pm
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
[personal profile] sonia
Long ago and just up the hill, I went to an estate sale for someone I wish I had known while she was alive. Her shoes fit me. Her pants fit me. I got a great silverware set I'm still using to supplement the set of 8 each that weren't quite enough.

Her set had 16 each of knives, forks, and tea spoons. I didn't need that many, so I stashed away 8 of each, wrapped up in a piece of fabric, deep in the back of a cabinet. Recently, I was drinking enough tea with honey that I was running out of spoons between dishwasher runs.

Yes, I could and did hand-wash spoons, but where were the backup spoons? I could clearly visualize them in the back of a cabinet - in Portland. Had I gotten rid of them? I looked through all the kitchen cabinets I have now, and didn't see them. I must have passed them along when I got rid of so much stuff before moving.

I did some internet research to see if I could buy some matching spoons, but didn't see anything I wanted to order. Back to hand-washing.

Yesterday, I was looking deep in a kitchen cabinet for a container - and there was the fabric-wrapped bundle of backup silverware. Behold the extra spoons! Now that it's summer I'm not drinking as much tea, but it's good to know the whole set made the move with me. And maybe it will give me more spoons (in the spoonie sense).

A while ago I was looking everywhere for the small black folding umbrella that I use about once every 3 years. (I'm a hooded jacket kinda gal. Umbrellas don't work with bikes.) I dug through various drawers full of outdoor stuff and backpacks, looked everywhere it should and shouldn't be, and didn't turn it up. I guess I got rid of it? I liked it, though. A rarely used umbrella should be tiny and unobtrusive. I finally bought another small-ish black folding umbrella and put it where the first one should have been, in the bin of hats and scarves.

Today I got out a backpack I hadn't used in a while. It felt oddly heavy, so I felt around in its depths. Oh! The umbrella! Completely hidden down there. I put it with the other one in the hat bin. Maybe I'll have a guest who needs to borrow an umbrella someday.

At least I hadn't replaced the spoons. So far, past me didn't get rid of anything I really regret. I've always been good at remembering where things are, but I did lose track of some things in the big move.
pronker: barnabas and angelique vibing (Default)
[personal profile] pronker posting in [community profile] findthatbook
Chapters delineated the various Scandinavians in funny color illustrations, a section on each Danish, Norwegian, Swedish or Icelandic group, accompanied by appropriate paragraphs of descriptions in the fashion of a bestiary. The group I remember best are the Icelandic peoples because special attention revealed pride in their last name customs, Althingi, and generally posing as "super-Scandinavians." It may have been coffee-table-sized? Anyway, it was hilarious; I completely blank on the title. Thanks for any help!
solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)
[personal profile] solarbird

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.2 – 4 August 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.2.

Mostly small updates again this time, but there’s one big one – the Redmond Central Connector final segment connecting to the East Rail Trail at NE 124th is already open! Ribbon cutting isn’t ’til September 12th, and I imagined it’d open early but I didn’t expect it to be this early.

  • ADDED: Redmond Central Connector extension up to Eastrail at NE 124th is open earlier than expected! (Both maps)
  • ADDED: Warning flag: the Pier 91 section of Elliot Bay Trail will close from 2 September to 2 October for repaving and rebuilding, including getting replacing that weird steep over-rail bridge. There WILL be a posted detour, but it’s kinda long and involves Magnolia Bridge, so I’m flagging it. (MEGAMAP only)
  • ADDED: A block-long half-dirt connector between Ashworth and Densmore continuing N 157th for pedestrians and bicyclists willing to deal with a dirt path (both maps)
  • ADDED: Extension of a Shoreline Trail Along the Rail fragment south of NE 185th all the way down to NE 180th; at previous check, it didn’t quite connect, and now it does (both maps)
  • CORRECTION: 10th Ave NE from 155th to 185th was listed as UNMARKED BUT POPULAR, but has sharrow markings, so will be re-marked as SHARROWS (both maps)
Screen-resolution preview of the Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Enjoy biking!

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Haunt

Aug. 24th, 2025 08:23 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
Trees exhale at night
All day they give us air to breathe
Sun-dappled woods with friendly leaves
But dark's uncanny shadows seethe
And trees exhale at night.
-K Royka, 8/24/2025

One Million Rising zoom

Aug. 24th, 2025 07:34 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
I joined [personal profile] adrian_turtle this afternoon for a One Million Rising gathering/training session on zoom, led by one of her comrades from Talmud study. This was 90 minutes, distilling or summarizin six hours of training Aliza did recently.

There was less new information and ideas than I'd hoped for, but I'm glad I did it. I had nothing else specific to do with that chunk of time, and it didn't take away energy from some other form of activism. (In fact, I had called my congresswoman and senators half an hour earlier, while Adrian and [personal profile] cattitude were out shopping.)

Aliza presented some of the material from a specifically Jewish viewpoint/context, including that this organizing and resistance work could be part of preparing for the High Holidays. I'm not observant, but introspection is a useful activity.

I am now on the One Million Rising email list, and will see if anything interesting comes of that.

Fur

Aug. 23rd, 2025 08:24 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
A long-haired dog
So glad for pets
A short, sleek yapper
Not ready yet
A mess of pups
Part Great Dane, all
Most half asleep
In one big pile
Three tiny kittens
Handled too much
One still exploring
But sick of touch
A store of dogs
Asleep or jazzed
Upset or friendly
Walking or crazed
And one small island
In a furry sea
With sleek, calm reptiles
In dignity.
-K Royka, 8/23/2025

Untitled 8/22/2025

Aug. 22nd, 2025 08:50 pm
syzygis: (Default)
[personal profile] syzygis
Get the poem done
Then the sleep will come.
-K Royka, 8/22/2025

(no subject)

Aug. 22nd, 2025 04:18 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
Happy birthday, [personal profile] elisem!

Profile

tim: Tim with short hair, smiling, wearing a black jacket over a white T-shirt (Default)
Tim Chevalier

November 2021

S M T W T F S
 123456
78 910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags