Twitter Streams: Top Tweets From Selected Accounts, Grouped By Topics

Twitter Streams: Top Tweets From Selected Accounts, Grouped By Topics

 

 Twitter has streams of tweets described at "Top Tweets" from Twitter-selected users for a number of different topics. They are made so people who don't have Twitter accounts can easily find interesting tweets, and thus find Twitter worth signing up for. The urls all start with "twitter.com/i/streams/stream" follow by a number. There are a number of them with low integer numbers like 1,2,3,5, but there are gaps like the missing 4. I suspect the missing numbers were once valid but removed, but this is just a guess. After a hundred or two of the low integers ID numbers, the numbers start back up with huge numbers like 686639666779426849, which is apparently the result of a switch in how Twitter numbers tweets, a change to using Snowflake IDs, announced in 2010 in a blog post Announcing Snowflake.  The name Snowflake ID comes from snowflakes being known of as unique, which is an essential property of Twitter ID numbers.



If you click these links while you are logged into Twitter, you will see an out of place looking login form. Just ignore it. If you log in on it, you will lose the nice list of top tweets from selected accounts twitter picked and you will be on your normal timeline.

I don't find these listed anywhere, and it seems like a useful list, and I've spent an absurd amount of time figuring this out, and I want to stop thinking about, so I am hopefully taking it out of my brain and putting it on the internet.

Limerick - There Once Was A Man From Nantucket

This is nothing special; just an attempt to write a clean language limerick, that scans properly, and record me reading it, and trimming it and publishing it, and I have succeed, so I am pleased.



There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who had a most wonderful bucket,
A straw in this pail,
Remained filled with ale,
No matter how long he would suck it.

Dallas Bombot: Killer Robot Or Not?

Was the device used by Dallas police to kill Micah Johnson a killer robot?

 

Transcribed from NPR's show All Things Considered episode "Robot Used By Dallas Police To Kill Gunman Sparks Debate"

When Dallas police chief David Brown announced last week that Micah Johnson was killed by a robot with a bomb, it raised a lot of questions that we've been trying to answer.
What kind of robot was it?
Has it been used this way before?
And, Is this use ethical?

Well new information today is filling in some of the blanks.

Lauren Silverman of member station KERA has more:

"After hours of negotiating with Micah Johnson while he was holed up in the parking garage of El Centro Community College, Dallas police chief David Brown said "Enough."

"I knew that at least two had been killed, and we knew through negotiation this was the suspect because he was asking us how many did he get, and he was telling us how many more he wanted  to kill."

Brown asked his team to come up with an idea. So they attached a pound of C4 explosive to their bomb disposal robot, and detonated it within a few feet of where Johnson was hiding.

"This [wasn't an] ethical dilemma for me. I'd do it again to save our officers' lives."

The heavy duty, mostly metal robot is about the size of a lawn mower, with hefty treaded wheels, cameras, and a large extendable arm.

It's made by Northrup Grumann subsidiary, Remotec.
To understand this robot, it helps to know some basics.

  

Howard Chizeck, an engineer at the University of Washington, says there are three types of robots.
First, the industrial ones, you might see on an assembly line, maybe putting together a car.

"They basically are tools that do exactly what they are told to do."

Then there are autonomous robots; these are the ones that tend to get the most attention, at least in Hollywood: think Robocop or Terminator.

Finally, Chizeck says, there are telerobots.  That's what the Dallas police used.

"Things like bomb defusing robots or drones, search and rescue robots, where there's a human in the loop."

These are all over the place. Think of drones flying over Pakistan, 

or robots that do micro-surgery

Tim Dees is a former police officer and tech writer for policeone.com. He says telerobots are a common tool among large law enforcement agencies, like the Swiss army knife of robots

"I've seen 'em with shotguns with water cannons, with uhh arms that... articulate enough to open a package, so... they're used for all sorts of things. "

Dess says bomb disposal units do routinely carry explosives with them.

"Unlike on TV, where ah you have some sweaty guy trying to decide whether to cut the red wire or the green wire, the more common way is to, what the bomb guys will call, "render it safe", which usually means blowing it up right where it is."

Arming a robot with an explosive to blow up a person, as was the case in Dallas, that was a first. Still according to Michael Horowitz, that doesn't make the device a killer robot, exactly.

"A killer robot would be something that was more autonomous, that was actually programmed, and could do things on it's own, without human supervision."

Horowitz is a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He says some people wonder whether this type of remote technology might make police more likely to use lethal force, since they're not directly in danger.

Another question has to do with security. Engineer Howard Chizeck says there's a risk that the robot could be hacked: "If somebody disrupts that information stream, right, they could potentially take over and command that remote  robot or just make it not work."

Chizeck says hacking probably isn't something we need to worry about, unless police start using remotely controlled robots more often.

For NPR News, I'm Lauren Silverman, in Dallas.

  

All Things Considered Staff

Esperanto - Pasporto Al La Tuta Mondo

The "Pasporto Al La Tuta Mondo", Passport To The World videos for beginning Esperanto Students, in a playlist, in numerical order.  I found the videos in a channel, but not in a playlist, and out of order, and I like things like this in order, and sometimes one searches for playlists, and than channel wouldn't in such a search.









I'm not real fond of this, but I did the Duolingo tree and don't find strengthening the skills is improving my Esperanto much. I think I need to spend more time hearing spoken Esperanto and I am extremely weak in responding. Recognizing written words, reading simmple sentences, and figuring out to how write sentences when you can cheat and look up words in Google Translate is immensely easier than understanding speech, even limited vocabularly speech, and that is much easier than pulling words up in your at a rate fast enough to have a conversation, evan a simple one, for me.

So while this video series so far isn't ideal, it doesn't seem to be helping me understand spoken Esperanto better.

If any has suggestion for good material or techniques for improving hearing and speaking other than Evildea, I'd like to know.

Mnemonics for the Periodic Table Of Elements

Periodically I try to remember the Periodic Table Of Elements. Here are some mnemonic devices to aid in remembering the names of the chemical elements and their positions on the table.

Some of these I found and some I made up.

Since I first posted this, four new names have been added for ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium, and ununoctium. They are Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson.

I haven't managed to fill in the whole quiz at either Sporcle or JetPunk since the four new names were added.

Group 1
Hateful Little Nasty Kids Rub Cat's Fur
helium lithium Na-sodium K-potassium rubidium cesium francium

Group 2
Beer Mugs Can Serve Bar Rats
beryllium magnesium calcium strontium barium radium

Group 3
Says You
scandium yttrium

Group 4
The Zebra Hates Rats
titanium zirconium hafnium rutherfordium

Group 5
Vince Never Talks Dumb
vanadium niobium tantalum dubnium

Group 6
Crows Make Weird Sounds
chromium molybdenum W-tungsten seaborgium

Group 7
Men Talk Real Bad
manganese technetium rhenium bohrium

Group 8
Fire Ruined Our House
Fe-iron ruthenium osmium hassium

Group 9
Cows Really Irritate Me
cobalt rhodium iridium meitnerium

Group 10
Never Poke Poodle Dogs
nickel palladium platinum darmstadtium

Group 11
Cows Are Awful Rulers
copper Ag-silver Au-gold roentgenium

Group 12
Zoos Can Hold Cats
zinc cadmium Hg-mercury copernicium

Group 13 - Boron Group
Big Al Gave In Tiny Numbers
boron aluminum gallium indium thallium nihonium

Group 14 - Carbon Group
Can Silly Germans Snatch Lead Flakes
carbon silicon germanium Sn-tin lead flerovium

Group 15 - Nitrogen Family - Pnictogens
New Popes Assign Subordinate Bishops Monthly
nitrogen phosphorus arsenic Sb-antimony bismuth moscovium

Group 16 - Oxygen Family - Chalcogens
Open Source Software Terrifies People Lately
oxygen sulfur selenium tellurium polonium livermorium

Group 17 - Halogens
Five Cows Barging In At Tom
fluorine chlorine bromine iodine astatine tennessine

Group 18 - Noble Gases
He Needs A Keen Xerox Repairman Only
helium neon argon krypton xenon radon oganesson

Period 4 Transition Metals
Sam Tried Very Cold Money, Felt Cold Near Cold Zone
scandium titanium vanadium chromium manganese Fe-iron cobalt nickel copper zinc

Period 5 Transition Metals
Your Zebra Needs More Time Reading. Reading Pleases Striped Creatures
yttrium zirconium niobium molybdenum technetium ruthenium rhodium palladium silver cadmium

Period 6 Transition Metals
He Takes Women Running Out In Parks And Hopes
hafnium tantalum W-tungsten rhenium osmium iridium platinum Au-gold Hg-Mercury

Period 7 Transition Metals
Rabid Dogs Sure Bark Hatefully. Most Dogs Remain Calm.
rutherfordium dubnium seaborgium bohrium hassium meitnerium darmstadtium roentgenium copernicium

Lanthanides
Lately College Parties Never Produce Sexy European Girls That Drink Heavily Even Though You Look
lanthanum cerium praseodymium neodymium promethium samarium europium gadolinium terbium dysprosium holmium erbium thulium ytterbium lutetium

Actinides
At Three Planets, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Amy Cured Berkeley California. Einstein Failed Making Nobel Laws
actinium thorium protactinium uranium neptunium plutonium americium curium berkelium californium einsteinium fermium mendelevium nobelium lawrencium

The chart above is from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table

Periodic Table Mnemonics - Mnemonics For The Periodic Table Of Elements - Elements Mnemonics - Memorize the Periodic Table - Memorize the Elements

Any Posts Are Better Than No Posts - The Escape From Twitter Client - #RIPTwitter

I was just thinking a silly thought about an escape from Twitter client for Twitter addicts, that looks like Twitter, but it sends your pseudo-tweets out to numerous forums of your choosing, and it shows posts from those forums similar to how Twitter shows blogs posts, but has a reply box available. Not a real idea, really, just a way of griping about Twitter, really.

When I try to write a reply to a tweet on Twitter.com in a desktop browser, Twitter hides the tweet I'm trying to reply to. Let's suppose you ask to list these numbers in order of preference: 215, 875, 214, 2159, 152, 857, and 421. When I click reply, your tweet becomes unreadable, and I have to try to remember that list of numbers and maintain it along with my resorted version. This is not a design that anyone wanting people to chat with each other could possibly make thinking it's a good system for chatting. This can only be the result of a decision to make chatting extremely difficult. It's not possible to do such a perfect job of making a terrible conversation system by accident.

People talking to each other doesn't pay their bills. A system that makes chat easy also makes harassment and threats easy. So, making a good chat system costs Twitter money without increasing it's income. Users and users talking to each other are baggage, it's only user's wallets that matter, either directly by buying things from within Twitter or by sharing ads or sharing tweets from paying accounts who ultimately want you to buy something.

One gets used to their not or very little monetized free chat system, and then the makers get tired of paying for it, and the users won't pay anything so long as there's any free alternative left, so it becomes an ad server, with users and their chat seen by the providers as a necessary evil.

When I post here, I don't feel like I'm at at party listening to other people talking and occasionally tossing in a few words of my own.  When I'm on Twitter, or any similar system that shows frequent incoming posts, where it feels like there's as many people seeing your stuff as there are people whose stuff your see, it gives you the illusion you are having a shared experience with people.

I'm on a desktop, and whether I'm tweeting, writing a post, on Facebook, sitting at a computer is usually all I'm doing, other than perhaps eating. I'm not watching TV or a movie and tweeting. I might have over a hundred tabs open, but I'm only actually concerned with a few of them while tweeting, like reading something linked to in a tweet.

So some people are watching a movie, talking with someone in real life, sitting back on a couch with a smartphone, looking at Twitter every half hour during commercials, while I'm sitting at a desk focused solely at twitter.com. The illusion of a shared experience is truly an illusion.

Twitter's made using it to talk with other people, to have a coherent conversation, so difficult, so miserable, that while using it, I am diverted from thinking about what's going on in the world, what's happening in my life I want to share, how are the people  I follow who I feel some connection with doing, to "What a terrible system for communicating this is."

#RIPTwitter

Pulling Teeth might be a better blog title for me than Words In Posts

Why don't I write more?

1. Low self esteem. Don't feel I have anything worth saying. Nothing deep, nothing profound. I don't know how to bring about world peace, or stave off global climate catastrophe, or make space exploration vastly more cost effective, or extend human life.

2. Memory. Hard to write with my memory.

3. Ignorance. Can't do anything like roll off descriptions of countries based on my reading, or churn out paragraphs of comparisons between the modern American empire and the Roman Empire. because I've never studied them much. I read some books on politics long ago, but a few books that you've forgotten is a far cry from being knowledgeable.

4. The Twitter Habit.  I got used to trying to say stuff in under 140 characters, hoping for a reply, a retweet, a fave, now called a like. This might be a more important reason than one would think. One is only a tab away from your blog, so why would being on twitter.com stop you from writing? Well, one is reading when on their timeline on Twitter.com, and what one is reading is not long form articles or stories like one can produce in a blog post, one is reading aphorisms, original or quoted, headlines (aka link text) either copied or pasted verbatim

[Hours pass doing other stuff]

Well, it's time to post this or forget about it, and I'm trying to generate some content, so I'm posting it.