#mastodonEl #emacs #lisp

hey programming nerds, i am considering moving from being a hobbyist Elisp/CL programmer into doing some more professional work. probably in webdev land.

do you have any tips for how to do so? what to learn/polish up on, how to showcase self, or related things, or resources for doing same, etc. does one need to do a bootcamp to learn stuff, or to become employable? (for context: i don't have a background in stem, but rather humanities. currently work as a translator. am self-taught in lisp stuff and feel my blind spots pretty acutely.)

i assume i need to focus on python, sql, js, or other similar things, but perhaps this is not necessarily so? i condered learning clojure properly, but it seems a higher barrier to entry also, job-wise...

@johncarlosbaez I've heard that Lie algebras are only tangentially related to Lie groups though ^^

Short version:

ⓐ progress in math ≡ progress in human understanding (NOT problem solving);

ⓑ such progress can only be brought by asking interesting questions;

ⓒ such questions can only be found by (human) learning a problem, thinking hard and ideally getting stuck;

…

why yes, we stock both genders

Merriam-Webster's Time Traveler feature can tell you which words were added to the dictionary in a given year!

https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler

https://franktisellano.github.io/datatype/

What on earth!

Turns data tuples into charts. As a font!

WhatsApp today (paraphrasing a little): "Tired of human communication? Annoyed by having to use your own words when chatting with loved ones? Use Meta AI to show how much you really care!"

Did you know that by simply flipping one bit Google Maps could default to "Open Now" and that the only reason it doesn't is lobbying by Big Closed?

A tenure support letter I just read describes a certain conjecture as "prestigious". I had never seen that before.

#academicchatter

Fucking hell as if receiving automated rejection letters for jobs wasn't bad enough.

We Used to Be Able to Buy Things in This Country. “Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy.” https://dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to-be-able-to-buy-things

Me, who writes typo-filled posts:
"The Odyssey was fun! It failed the Bechdel test tho!🤡"

Emily Wilson, heat bringer:
"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem."🔥🔥🔥

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

Love this erratum on the Guardian's Cocktail of the week “Bar Antoine’s jardin éphémère”:

“A recipe for a summer spritz cocktail overstated the amount of elderflower liqueur by some margin: 35ml was the intended measure, not 235ml (18 July, p15)”

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/jul/17/cocktail-of-the-week-jardin-ephemere-recipe-bar-antoine

And to my children I leave 127 open tabs in Firefox.

DAMN! I have never seen anything like this written in the journal Science. But I also have never seen an administration like President Palpatine's #ScienceFunding
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/assault-science-funding-continues

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@DavidWood/116983339289510925

Recieved by Annals of Mathematics in 2018 and accepted in 2026, just a few days ago!

1. I had no idea this very famous paper was not published.
2. I will never complain again about how long it takes me to get a paper rejected or accepted! (My record is 2 years —that one was rejected— but the average is much closer to 1 year than 2, let alone 8.)

Brazil is so petty. #FIFA

«Amid the rise of artificial intelligence, technophobes and Luddites have continued to insist that machines “can’t really write”—at least not the way humans can. Those naysayers will be hard-pressed to wave away The Great Gatsby, the debut novel from the super-advanced Xerox 914 photocopier—an exciting new voice that wrote Gatsby after being trained on a data set comprising a paperback copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.»

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/book-review-the-great-gatsby-by-the-xerox-914-photocopier

if a non-tech person needs to make a personal website, very simple portfolio (some images, poss video), a CV-like list of a few things, contact details, even on a single page, what would you suggest they use? i could set up a static site for them, but then they are left dependent on me knowing how to do that, and continuing to help them whenever they need to change stuff. is (free, hosted) wordpress still like the go-to option?