AdeptVeritatis

mekkaokereke, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to random

As we hear reports that it will take 10 years (🤯) to replace the 1.6 mile Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, remember that China built the Danyang-Kunshan bridge and Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in 4 years each.

Danyang-Kunshan Bridge is 102 miles long, and 100 ft above the water.

Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is 16 miles and 623 ft tall, earthquake and typhoon proof, and can withstand a direct strike from a 300,000 ton cargo ship. That last point is unfortunately topical.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7iQqogVmr8

a_watch, 4 months ago to random German

+++ Großspenden-Ticker +++
990.000 Euro an das Bündnis Sahra #Wagenknecht von Thomas Stanger aus Klütz in MV 🧵
https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/praesidium/parteienfinanzierung/fundstellen50000/2024/

kravietz, 3 months ago to Russia

After we had a very interesting discussion with @AdeptVeritatis on modeling the #Russia #Ukraine war from economic perspective, I declare to write about the model by Peter Turchin.

Turchin is a scientist working in the area of complex systems, which in the past gained some publicity as “chaos theory” - modeling systems so complex internally that their states are usually only described in statistical terms and their behaviour is described as “chaotical”, even when it really isn’t. Such as societies, economies, political systems etc. In 2020 Turchin made some fame when people dug up his 2010 prediction that in a decade US may be hit by a wave of large civil unrests. He came to this conclusion based on modeling a combination of numerous economic and social factors which seemed to converge to a state usually resulting in unrest.^1

Turchin has been also attempting to model the war started by Russia and his team created a mathematical model that includes economic (military industry output) and demographic parameters (number of soldiers).^2 The model has evolved over the last two years but the latest version is probably best described, including its limitations, by this article^3. I was surprised to see people like MacGregor and Ritter quoted there, but Turchin seems to use them as the proponents of the most possibly cynical scenario for the purpose of modeling. But if you read the whole model description, which I encourage everyone to do, Turchin’s assumptions are quite impartial and as realistic as a simplified model can be.

The baseline scenario is quite pessimistic: to make the long story short, Russia has economy and population so large that it will simply not deplete before Ukraine’s does. That’s as cynical as it can be, and as a matter of fact this is the core argument Russians are always raising: they’re just too big to lose and therefore they always win.

However, Turchin also looks at alternative scenario where Ukraine’s economy (represented by ammunition production rate) is really equivalent to the whole EU and US, in which case the roles reverse.

The model in theory should not be interpreted as a real-world forecast, as clearly stated in the article’s disclaimer. But you really can’t not do it, because all the time it refers to actual numbers of actual people.

The primary issue I have with it is the inconsistency of the predicted human losses with reality: Ukraine’s losses after two years reach almost 300’000 while Russian are 3x less. This, if anything, is the opposite of real estimates.

The secret really lies in two factors: the number of shells fired (function of economy) and the “casualties per shot”, which is kind of arbitrary and set to 1/30. The number is, again, kind of estimated based on real Russian loses, but then, on page 8, there’s a key phrase “I set d2 = d1”. This try statement essentially assumes that Russian losses per shell are the same as Ukrainian.

If you try to play with these parameters in the live model^2 you can actually get losses modelled closer to the real estimates. Of course, this model’s deficiency is prominently mentioned by Turchin in the article. The primary Turchin’s conclusion from the model’s outputs seems to be that the critical condition for Ukraine’s victory is economical and industrial support of its allies. Which was only days ago sadly demonstrated by evacuation of Avdiivka.

I would add that the losses ratio is also a critical parameter, because while Russia may have population 4x larger than Ukraine, losses at ratio 1:13 (confirmed armour losses) or 1:7 (declared by Ukraine) aren’t sustainable even for Russia. Which clearly hints that any strategy that incurs such losses at Russia is preferable, which most likely implies a defensive strategy.

Also, in terms of model’s parameters, as Turchin himself notes, human losses suffer from very high uncertainty as both sides actively obscure them. At the same time, OSINT provides equipment losses which were in the past confirmed to cover up to 80% the actual losses, which could make the case for further improvement of the model’s output.

AdeptVeritatis, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to random

The video of the talk from Wim Taymans about #PipeWire at #fosdem is released.

video:
https://video.fosdem.org/2024/ub4132/

talk:
https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-1988-pipewire-state-of-the-union/

What a fantastic talk! Really helpful and interesting, although I follow the progress of the project quite closely.
Audio quality was much better than last year.

@pipewire

AdeptVeritatis, 1 month ago to art

#KaleidoSaturday

A patch full of flowers in the center of Berlin, where once has been a Reggae / Hip Hop club two decades ago.

#Art #MastoArt #GenerativeArt #PsychedelicArt #kaleidoscope #mandala #visuals

23-fold mandala animation with pink and green colors.

AdeptVeritatis, 9 months ago to nuclear German

Ach, die #Kernkraft ist gar keine Grundlast-Alternative?

Ein #Atomkraftwerk wird einfach heruntergefahren, wenn der #Strompreis zu niedrig wird.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20032375

Und wenn es mal wieder zu einem der technischen Ausfälle kommt, dann schnellen die Strompreise sofort nach oben, weil es kaum Resilienz gibt.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/finlands-ol2-nuclear-reactor-off-grid-power-prices-rise-2023-08-18/

PS: Unabhängig ist Finnlands Stromversorgung damit übrigens auch nicht.

#AKW #KKW #nuclear #Energie #ErneuerbareEnergien

AdeptVeritatis, 8 days ago to art

A 6-fold mandala of a poppy seed capsule, an 8-fold mandala of goldfish and a 16-fold mandala of reflections on water mixed together into a square (p1) kaleidoscope.

My recording function still drops parts of the recorded video so I have to guess the correct length for a perfect loop. But after 17 tries, this one seems to be good.

#TilingTuesday #Tiling #Pattern #Geometry #MathArt #MathsArt #MastoArt #Art

Animation of mandalas tiled into a kaleidoscope.

AdeptVeritatis, 7 months ago to random German

"Sowohl fremde Menschen als auch seine Kinder hätten ihn mehrmals mit kritischen Kommentaren zum Video konfrontiert."

:mastorofl: :mastorofl: :mastorofl:

Und er merkt es immer noch nicht.

https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/egmr-960218-bild-deutschland-video-polizist-unverpixelt/

AdeptVeritatis, 7 months ago to random

Why don't people ask #Hamas to start a #ceasefire?

AdeptVeritatis, 6 months ago to random German

Bei manchen Leuten ist es echt wichtig, dass sie auch weiter in den Nachrichten gehalten werden.

Damit wir nicht vergessen, wer die Hauptschuld an der ganzen Scheiße hat!

Dass sie sich eigentlich nur selbst in die Nachrichten bringen, ist dabei sogar noch besser. Danke an #Correctiv, die den Anstoß dazu gegeben haben.

https://correctiv.org/in-eigener-sache/2023/11/14/gazprom-lobby-sigmar-gabriel-erstreitet-halbsatz-gegen-correctiv/

#Gabriel

AdeptVeritatis, 5 months ago to rust

pw-videomix v0.2.1 is out!

After complex filter chains for endless combinations in last version:

Now with a color rotator node like changing hue constantly. Using a trigonometric function allows to select upper and lower borders for some nice effects.

Also the fader (stacker) is finally there to create slideshows of connected nodes with blending.

Try it out here:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/AdeptVeritatis/pw-videomix

#rust #rustlang #vulkan #egui #winit #opensource #freesoftware #creativecoding #art

AdeptVeritatis, 3 months ago to art

Hello #KaleidoSaturday!

This one is for my grandma. :mastolove:

#Art #MastoArt #GenerativeArt #PsychedelicArt #kaleidoscope #mandala #visuals

Animation of a 16-fold mandala from white and yellow / orange lichen on a tombstone.

AdeptVeritatis, 2 months ago to art

#KaleidoSaturday

This one is from a walk in the park, where I took a photo of grass with raindrops on it.
I made a 42-fold, rotating mandala from it, used that in another 8-fold mandala and mixed it into a color filter.

#Art #MastoArt #GenerativeArt #PsychedelicArt #kaleidoscope #mandala #visuals

Colorful mandala animation moving in waves.

AdeptVeritatis, 8 months ago to india

Goa Gil 72nd Birthday Celebration with Zion Rebel Ritual

on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nidL_jZPpg8

https://www.youtube.com/@GoaGilOfficial

on Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/goagilofficial

#goa #GoaGil #PsyTrance

kravietz, 3 months ago to Ukraine

Further details about evacuation of #Avdiivka are emerging on Telegram channels of the units involved. The units who held Avdiivka were:

• 110th Brigade
• 53th Brigade
• 47th Brigade
• 59th Brigade
• 3th Brigade
• “Alpha” and “Omega” special forces units
• Border force
• National Guard

One of the most critical roles was to secure the evacuation route from the most advanced positions in Avdiivka. This job was undertaken by 225th Brigade and GUR, including RDK (Russian Volunteer Corps), specifically “Timur’s unit”.

Casualties ratio in Avdiivka was described by general Tarnavsky as 1:7 in favour to #Ukraine defenders. OSINT data earlier indicated ratio of 1:13 in confirmed damaged equipment alone. Russia’s human losses since the beginning of January were estimated at 20’000, a number very similar to what Prigozhin called out last year after siege of Bakhmut.

Also note that Ukraine forces did not abandon Avdiivka completely, they just left the positions most exposed to the risk of encirclement in the town centre, to the south (“Zenit”, “Tsarskaya Okhota”) and to the east (“filter station”). Ukrainian forces continue to hold the coke plant and the front line to the north. It very much seems like the lessons from Bakhmut were learned and the most damaging urban fighting was avoided.

GaymerGeek, 3 months ago to random

Well that was close! The winner for the game for #VGCMarch2024 is Day of the Tentacle! It looks like a fun point-and-click adventure game. #VideoGameClub

AdeptVeritatis, 13 days ago to random

continuing my thread:
https://social.tchncs.de/@AdeptVeritatis/112361544630702267
(end of thread: https://social.tchncs.de/@AdeptVeritatis/112475509090514900 )

Flowering day 42 (end of week 6).
First two photos are from the Congo. Growth of the flowers has stopped. Now ripening begins.

The third photo shows the Grinspoon, which now is clearly lagging behind. But it is becoming denser.

1/x

Top bud of a Congo cannabis plant.
Side branch bud of a Grinspoon cannabis plant.

AdeptVeritatis, 3 days ago to random German

Die HAMAS beschwert sich, dass es bei der Geiselbefreiung zu einem Blutbad gekommen ist.

Also Humor haben sie auf jeden Fall.

AdeptVeritatis, 4 days ago to art

Wish you a nice #KaleidoSaturday ☀️

#Art #GenerativeArt #kaleidoscope #mandala #MastoArt #MathArt #MathsArt #PsychedelicArt #visuals

Mandala animation from a photo of a violet flowering Rhododendron.

AdeptVeritatis, 3 days ago to random German

Heute wird die Demokratie verteidigt.

An der Wahlurne!

#EU24 #EU2024 #Europawahl #Europawahl2024 #Wahl