tschenkel

Theoretical engineer (aerospace and biomedical), associate professor of continuum mechanics, ex-petrolhead turned eco-warrior (worrier?), FOSS advocate, non-competitive cyclist, general outdoor enthusiast, renaissance man, general in the AI resistance.

After multiple rounds of "restructuring" at my university, I decided to take the (in)voluntary severance offer and am now planning new adventures in SE Asia.

he/him
editor: emacs/evil

born@326ppm

github pages: https://ts-cubed.github.io/
github: https://github.com/TS-CUBED
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nprofile1qqsf0ck55araa9x0p4tmtr20smeeja4yl5kjaxc9ee0jxxkvtrtkmhgprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt8n6997

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relay.momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-08-30 06:15:52 GMT

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Maybe [@juergen_hubert](https://mementomori.social/@juergen_hubert ) has some insights on that?

2026-08-01 20:04:43 GMT

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I'm not sure if that's officially a word. Just made that up. But I think it should be a word. So, your welcome to it 😁

2026-08-01 16:48:53 GMT

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I just had a new pair of glasses made. And after decades of wearing tortoiseshell frames I decided to go for ultra thin titanium to make a very clear distinction from glassholery.

2026-06-03 19:17:51 GMT

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https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/116/687/783/211/146/729/original/f062f36b2e932bbc.png

2026-02-16 08:55:41 GMT

From commentary on Sun Tzu (孫子, 孙子, SunZi), The Art of War:
"Sun Tzu saw the practices in his work as merely a physical extension of the Daoist philosophy. As such, he believed that someone unpracticed in Daoism would miss the subtlety of his work, leading to a misunderstanding of the work."
Looking at how his work became a cornerstone of exploitative management techniques, with some who couldn't be further from the Dao unironically quoting him, makes this ring so true.
道可道非常道
#daoism #taoism #philosophy

2026-01-18 16:35:43 GMT

If you know me, you'll know that I'm not a friend of AI - but like the original Luddites I am not against the technology per se, but the use of it to drive an exploitative societal development.
@npub1fdr…lvhs has put it more eloquently than I ever could. So, read this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur

2025-11-20 07:10:25 GMT

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Aren't London prices that high because of investment by nonresidents? Tax non-first-owner-residences in London more to pop that bubble? Could bring prices down a bit and make living in London more affordable?
But it would be a blow for all "normal" people with high mortgages on their London homes, that would end up with negative equity.
However you turn it, the system is broken.

2025-11-19 08:59:21 GMT

Ok, another service ends up on my "avoid for ethical reasons" list.
Pity, the Curve payment system is one of the only ones that work on de-googled phones.
https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/controversy-as-lloyds-acquires-curve-for-reported-120m
#curve #lloyds #ethicalConsumer #ethics #banking #finapps

2025-11-18 23:18:26 GMT

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Those applications were around and successful before genAI came around. Completely different technology.
That they are always used in the same breath as genAI is just an attempt to gain some credibility.
So, genAI is likely going to do severe damage to these scientific machine learning applications when genAI triggers the next AI winter - ill wind, indeed.

2025-11-16 15:59:39 GMT

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But I am only judging actions and words of people who are still alive:
A person living in 18th or 19th century Britain may have had the common empire mindset, and be a decent person.
A person, who - in the 21st century - is only to happy to accept the wealth his first world country has amassed on the back of the third world countries they exploited; and then pushes away responsibility - because it was not them that did the exploitation - will be judged by me as not a decent person.

2025-11-16 15:00:44 GMT

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And there in your last sentence lies the problem. You and I think so, but too many - including many who, in my field of work (academia), push the "deconise your curriculum" activities, with a fundamentally colonial mindset - do not. "We brought them civilisation, and they squandered it, and now they want to come here to destroy our country!"
Just in case it was not obvious: the last sentence in quotation marks is NOT my opinion :)

2025-11-15 09:06:06 GMT

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The response from the spokesperson is the icing on the cake.

2025-10-27 07:26:26 GMT

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I tell my students that I found that I need to know much more about a subject if I want to use AI on it, than if I were to do something myself.
Yes, if I am an expert on a subject, it may save me time (in many cases it doesn't), but I need to work with the AI for a while to get a good result, which I can only do, because I know what a good result is.
It's like working with a student who is good at reading, but can't make transfer.
Some students accept that point, some don't.

2025-09-15 07:18:31 GMT

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I've heard arguments that only 10 thousand at that march were hard right racists, and 100,000 were "people with legitimate grievances". Even if those numbers are correct, by going to this event, those people with grievances became complicit.
As a German, I heard the question "if not all Germans were Nazis, how could Hitler take power?".
My answer to those 100,000 is:
Because of people like you.
If you gave grievances, supporting Nazis is not the way, unless that way is becoming Nazi yourself.

2025-07-18 19:35:37 GMT

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You can speed that up. Just tell the LLM that it got something wrong. Even if the original answer was perfectly correct, it will apologise profusely and contradict the correct answer it gave before.

2025-05-20 13:00:17 GMT

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If accessibility was the reason then surely the best option would be to remove the DRM from the ebooks, so they'd be accessible by whichever TTS system one chooses to use.

2025-01-04 16:58:53 GMT

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Wow, "Grandpa Brian" is a bit too honest for Meta's comfort 😂

2024-11-23 23:41:23 GMT

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I haven't tested it, since my car doesn't do Android Auto. But IodeOS is an alternative to e/OS that supports it (according to the changelog of a recent update). May be worth a look. I'm very happy with it on my FP5. Also seems to be more secure and better with updates than e.

2024-08-27 21:56:54 GMT

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While we should definitely do what is technically possible to avoid wind turbines killing birds, the problem is blown out of proportion:
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds
"A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects."
So if we want to save birds, we need to build more wind turbines.
And don't get me started on cats! Pet cats kill 8000 times* more birds than wind turbines (4 billion per year in the US).
*using the high estimate for wind turbine bird strikes. Using the lower one, it would be 30000 times more.

2024-08-20 06:16:57 GMT

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Can confirm it does work on Firefox for Android. But it needs a little trick:
Go to
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/
and set Firefox to show the "Desktop Site" via the menu. Then the "Add to Firefox" button will activate.
It seems the extension is compatible, but not marked as "mobile" on the addon page.

2024-06-19 22:10:00 GMT

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Hmm. I hope that paint won't do any damage to the rare lichen that grow on the monoliths. They'd be threatened enough by climate change. Would be ironic if they'd be killed by the paint used to raise awareness.