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LiSA is a legend for quite some time already, but this first take is elite. Gurenge, Kimetsu no Yaiba.

_{^{Public Service Announcement. April 1, 2020}}
During this frightening time of COVID-19 it is important to keep stocked up on essential supplies. Especially ammunition for your firearms. As part of your preparedness you should ensure that you have a minimum of two firearms for each member of your household. Discount multi-packs of firearms and ammunition are being made available during this time to make it easier for you be prepared. Various companies with manufacturing capability will be mobilized to increase our national manufacturing capacity to ensure sufficient firearms can be made available to everyone.

Starter Guns will be available which are sized just right for the little ones. The NRA offers discounts to those who can show proof of mental impairment or illness.

Please use firearms responsibly both during and after drinking. Remember, there is nothing to fear. Keep a minimum of one handgun always within arms length and be ready to draw it and begin shooting. Social distancing makes it easier to aim. It is important to protect yourself from the insidious threat of COVID-19 during these dangerous times.

^{_<no-sarcasm>}
The Department of Homeland Security has deemed gun shops as essential businesses to remain open even though clothing for newborn babies is not essential.

New York and other authorities have deemed liquor stores to be essential services.
_{^{</no-sarcasm>}}

So, it turns out the lake was insanely crowded last week when I went fishing. We're talking ten times the people you'd find on a normal busy day. Thankfully all my coughing and sneezing made sure I didn't have anyone crowding my fishing spot. Mind you, I always cough and sneeze in late March, because that's when all the cars turn yellow with pollen around here. I wasn't going to tell them that though.

1. Create or use an existing homoiconic language. By definition, these are languages where code is readily manipulated as any other sort of data by the base language itself. I was looking at using an modestly extended version of Curry combinators (with stochastic and I/O combinators added) for simplicity. Programs could then be thrown as data to programs of the same kind.
2. Construct a rudimentary optimizer for the initial kick. I'm feeling the genetic algorithms approach here, but if completely desperate could randomly generate programs and hope something sticks to the wall before the heat death of the universe.
3. Find or make a standard structure to describe optimization problems and construct a useful random optimization problem constructor.
4. Go meta. Using the best optimizer I have, use it to construct a population of optimizers that then compete on the random optimization problems to determine the next generation of best optimizer (I'm expecting a population rather than a single one because I'm using a stochastic process which has more than one possible output). I can similarly optimize my random optimization problem constructor in the same fashion to come up with more challenging, useful, or complex optimization problems.
5. Figure out what's going on.

The idea is to take the human out of the loop near completely and see what happens. Since I think the basic building block, the Curry combinator is rather inefficient, the point is more to build a model of how bootstrapping works than to build useful, efficient code (my primary contribution to efficiency is to pick a system that isolates the resource-consuming copy combinator) - though I have no problems with that, if it should be a consequence.

A key problem is that we don't know what to expect from bootstrapping, particularly metrics for things like rate of improvement. Some samples, even if they aren't practical, would help us come up with conceptual models of bootstrapping. For a crude example, suppose we can measure the rate at which the productivity of our efforts increases as a function of our present productivity. If that function slows down enough, we'll cap at a near future amount little better than present. If it's linear, that's exponential growth (at least as long as it lasts). If it's greater than linear (at least for a stretch), then there's an genuine near-singularity in the near future.

Some useful features down the road would be ways to log information about generations (I'm sticking with the genetic algorithms paradigm though there's no reason to expect future generations of optimizers to strictly follow it).

If there's interest, I can go on. At this point, my hope is that this is close to simple enough that people will look at it and think "Hey, I can do that" and maybe we can bust open this particular concept (and how to measure it) in a way that doesn't require an army of coders.

When I submit stories, probably 99% of the time it is based upon a journal paper. I always like to copy the abstract, since by definition that is a compact summary written by the paper authors themselves; however, the abstracts can be long or technical, so I don't like to put them in the main summary. I've taken to putting them in SPOILER tags, but often times when an editor has worked over one of my submissions (like today), they move the abstract beyond the "[Continues...]" section. How do I do that when constructing the submission? Do I have that capability, or is that an editor-level thing?

Professors worried students will share lectures with 'right wing sites'

Jon Street
Managing Editor
@JonStreet
on Mar 19, 2020 at 12:42 PM EDT

        Professors across the country are expressing concern over courses being moved online as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
        One professor expressed concern that "right wing sites" could expose what is being taught in college courses.

Professors across the country are taking to social media to express their concern over being forced to deliver their course lectures online amid the coronavirus outbreak, sharing with each other tips on how to limit the number of people who are able to see what they're teaching students, and criticizing "right wing sites" and even Campus Reform, specifically.

Texas Christian University Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Farris tweeted Thursday, "if you are recording a lecture on anything controversial, be prepared for right wing sites to ask students to share it." Campus Reform reached out to Farris via Twitter Direct Messaging to allow her the opportunity to further explain her comments or to clarify. She later blocked the author of this article on Twitter.

LaSalle University Assistant Professor of Public Health Christen Rexing replied to Farris' tweet, asking why others could find topics such as "gun safety, women's health, elections, etc." to be "controversial, as they are "evidence-based."

"Seems like the flood gates could open," Rexing commented in response to courses moving online.

University of North Carolina political science graduate student Stephanie Shady also weighed in, saying, "Annnnd I just realized that the second half of my course focuses on public opinion towards and politicization of immigration. This will be interesting." Another user with the Twitter name "Prof CWO" replied "Sigh, I teach about white nationalism and this has been my biggest fear since we began transitioning to online instruction."

Columbia University political science professor Jeffrey Lax said he has been "thinking about" how students would be able to record classes.

Trinity College Associate Professor of Political Science Isaac Kamola who, as Campus Reform previously reported sought to hire a "Campus Reform Early Responder," specifically mentioned Campus Reform in his reply to Farris.

"If Campus Reform harasses you or someone you know, the best response is to 'follow the money.' Campus Reform receives $1.4 million from the Leadership Institute, a Koch-funded organization designed to delegitimize academics they consider too left. They are not a new [sic] source," Kamola tweeted.

A user whose website says they are a history professor at a "community college in North Texas" wrote, "I'm taking steps to limit this but nothing is foolproof."

Farris asked how Gunter was working to ensure her lectures are not made public, to which Gunter responded with one tip for her colleague.

"Instead of posting videos direct to LMS (which would then own them) I'm posting links to the videos on youtube. The videos themselves are 'unlisted' meaning you can't find them in a search or if you go to my page-only if you have the direct link. Doesn't stop link sharing though," Gunter said.

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14563

So, here I am, trying to wrap my head around the fact that liberals FEAR the possibility of the public learning what they are teaching. Does that make any sense at all? If I want to shape the world, wouldn't I WANT more people to hear the word, to understand my thoughts and goals, and hopefully to get on board with my agenda?

Instead, we have liberals who FEAR the idea that their thoughts might go viral.

Imagine that. We might suspect that liberal college professors are actually just propaganda indoctrination technicians. Brainwash the kids while they are young, before they develop critical thinking skills, right?

Make a hand sanitizer with 90 % alcohol.

Offer it in various colors and fragrances, just like any good hand sanitizer.

But your line of products has the fragrance and taste of popular alcoholic beverages. Each fragrance of your product is labelled with a name similar to the alcoholic beverage it smells/tastes like.

Make it safe for human consumption.

Don't market it as a beverage. It's not. Really. It's a hand sanitizer. It's very slightly a gel in consistency and viscosity.

It can be sold anywhere. Grocery stores. Convenience stores. Schools vending machines. Church parking lots.

But licensed and heavily regulated alcoholic beverage stores might not be able to sell it since it is definitely not an alcoholic beverage.

Nothing for anyone to get upset about. It's just hand sanitizer.

My book site, mcgrewbooks.com, has been online for years now. It doesn’t really need SSL because there is no sensitive information shared, just HTML to read, pictures to look at, links to follow, and free e-books to download. To buy a physical book there’s a link to Lulu, which does have SSL.
        That is, there’s no technical reason to need SSL.
        Then a few years ago Google said sites without SSL would be downgraded in their search algorithm, and I worried a little, but my traffic numbers didn’t drop.
        But looking at the site after Firefox’s last upgrade I noticed a broken padlock next to the URL. Most people don’t know anything about SSL, but a broken padlock sure looks ominous to them!
        So I started looking into it. My host wants almost half of what I pay for hosting to add SSL, which would only serve to make my readers less uncomfortable. It’s not really expensive, about twenty five bucks a year.
        Then I found LetsEncrypt.org, which offers free SSL certificates. I don’t know if my host (R4L) would allow it, and it would take some research to figure out how to use it.
        What do you folks think?

Dear Web Developers, how about not helping goog with their vendor lock-in, bloat, and monopoly over the web?

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24004

I can't expect that sanity will prevail. If that were possible, we wouldn't have made it to where we are today.

BTW, the US Census website is trash that doesn't work in Palemoon. Guess I'll fill out a paper one.

Thinking of COVID-19. I am reminded of an episode with medical insurance company about a year ago. It's about one specific drug that I take for arthritis. (a drug that makes me somewhat immune compromised but not sarcasm compromised)

They stopped shipping it to me in 90 day supply. I had to start getting it in 28 day supply -- and from a "specialty" pharmacy. "specialty" usually means for a drug that is ultra fantastically expensive and/or needs special handling, refrigeration, cannot be beamed by transporter, or all of the above and more.

Instead of the usual 90 day bottle, it now comes in special packaging with all kinds of special scary warnings. WARNING - CYTOTOXIC COMPOUND! Don't touch it with your fingers, etc. (how do they think I've been swallowing it once a week for the last 13 years?) My wife definitely wanted to keep some of that packaging and photograph it. Use it for things she sent to friends, etc.

So I called them and asked why can't this be filled the way it has always been? But no real answer. They did send me to the specialty pharmacy. Those people had a lot of questions. The gist of it sounded like they think I have cancer. But I've been taking this drug for over 13 years, I tell them. Really? They are a bit astonished. Yes, for arthritis. My arthritis specialist and I know that is off label use, but it is sometimes used this way. And it is effective. (and anything to not take, or take less hydrocodone is good IMO)

It suddenly dawns on me. They think if I'm dying of cancer, I might not be around for 28 days, let alone 90 days. So why ship a 90 day supply of what was a very inexpensive generic drug. I assure them I've really been taking this drug more than 13 years and intend to keep taking it for a long time.

Then I notice it starts coming from the regular pharmacy again, in 90 day supply. No scary warnings or frightening packaging. My doctor never had mentioned handling or touching this drug in any special way different than any other pill that I take. And I'm the only one that handles or touches it.

If you haven't guessed, it's Methotrexate. And it is cheap.

Edit: thinking about it, this may be more about the pharmacy than the medical insurance. Insurance has an incentive to keep things cheap.