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The Birdbassador

@birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy

420 followers 3 following 420 posts

enthusiast of things you like, detester of the things you don't like, but not in a mean way so i don't seem off-putting. just generally a solid follow [bridged from https://jorts.horse/@Birdbassador on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 1h

@mjskay.com and of course there's the pioneering theory shape work of unpleasant cranks

Image from Gene Ray's "time cube" theory of everything, showing earth rotating through a simultaneous four day period.

Figure from Jordan Peterson's "Maps of Meaning" showing a bunch of stupid set diagrams but in the upper corner is the "dragon of chaos"

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 1h

@mjskay.com you also gotta consider the rhizome as the ultimate theory non-shape

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 1h

@mjskay.com the set diagram bit manages to avoid my pet peeve of everybody drawing venn diagrams with their own discipline or research interest inexplicably and anti-copernican-ly in the center ("visualization is the intersection of hci, data science, and perceptual psychology" "data science is […]

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Reposted by The Birdbassador

Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 12h

to appear at #alt.vis 2025: THEORY IS SHAPES

sure "theory figures" are great, but @matthew.wiki, @maryamhed.bsky.social, me, and Carolina Nobre wonder: why always a 2D plane or a flowchart? why not icebergs, horseshoes, Möbius strips, or BLT sandwiches?
arxiv.org/abs/2510.01382

#ieeevis #hci

Abstract and teaser figure of the paper "Theory is Shapes" by Matthew Varona, Maryam Hedayati, Matthew Kay, and Carolina Nobre.

The teaser figure is an "iceberg" theory figure, showing four levels: the tip of the iceberg, containing a nested set diagram and a Cartesian plane. The next level down (just under the water) has a complicated flow charts and a combination flow chart and matrix. The next level down has the iceberg figure itself and a horseshoe. The final level contains a Möbius strip and a BLT sandwich.

The abstract reads:

"Theory figures" are a staple of theoretical visualization research. Common shapes such as Cartesian planes and flowcharts can be used not only to explain conceptual contributions, but to think through and refine the contribution itself. Yet, theory figures tend to be limited to a set of standard shapes, limiting the creative and expressive potential of visualization theory. In this work, we explore how the shapes used in theory figures afford different understandings and explanations of their underlying phenomena. We speculate on the value of visualizing theories using more expressive configurations, such as icebergs, horseshoes, Möbius strips, and BLT sandwiches. By reflecting on figure-making's generative role in the practice of theorizing, we conclude that theory is, in fact, shapes.

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 18h

Kids learning Rnglish shouldn't be reading the dusty old irrelevant novels of the lit fic canon. Instead, they should be reading things that are both more culturally resonant and pedagogically attuned to the skills they will need to develop in the digital age. That's why I propose replacing the […]

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 18h

Hot pockets are the natural evolution of bao buns, and are so obviously ergonomically superior that they make dumplings unnecessary. Here’s my recipe for xiao long pockets.

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 18h

One advantage that Microsoft and Apple have over OSS and Linux/Unix is that, if things go wrong, there’s a constantly-staffed help desk where I can call and talk to a human being to get my issues resolved. For OSS I have to resort to continually opening up new issues on GitHub projects until I […]

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 18h

in re: "mastodon doesn't support twitter-style main characters", i will be using responses to this post to workshop "what would be the Worst, most likely to Break Containment fediverse bait post."

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 1d

standing in front of the gate to moria explaining that "speak, friend, and enter" is a highly non-standard way of indicating a use-mention distinction and that the elves perhaps should have read gödel, escher, bach

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 1d

my brain does not want to continue studying the language i will actually need to use in less than a month, but instead wants to "take a break" and study the language that i have not needed to speak for like a year

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 2d

hello new fediverse users!
here's my advice from almost three years of posting!

1. choose a server by seeing what your followers on the old website joined and choose the instance with the funniest name
2. tonally vacillate between posts with premises like "what would slavoj žižek think about […]

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 3d

i'm going to make the nyt 40 cloves of garlic recipe. no man from woman born can harm me.

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 4d

in the talmud one of the inherent properties of man is "yetzer hara"—the inclination to evil. in the same way i maintain we have a "yetzer cringe"

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 5d

flipping off the hollerith tabulating machine to let it know that i detest it and all of its curséd progeny

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 6d

every single country seems to try to pretend they are the source of the "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes" quasi-joke. iceland even had t shirts and coasters on it. i think that we've just all got to admit that, in many places, the weather changes.

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 6d

i am baffled that there are people who, despite it all, seem to still legitimately /like/ computers.

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 13d

in keeping with "in the us, a hundred years is a long time, in the uk, a hundred miles is a long distance", in steamed hams one joke is that utica and albany are culturally similar enough that it would be absurd for regional slang to occur in one but not another, but albany and utica are about […]

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 16d

more delilo most photographed barns from me. idk if it's like walter benjamin style "work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" aura or what but you do feel a like psychic compulsion to take these pictures alongside several dozen of your compatriots doing the same thing

geothermal geyser near geysir in iceland

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 18d

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the tessellated swan wall and I thought well as well him as another

piece of art by hulda hákon titled "svanir" (swans) that's just a wall-sized panel of painted wooden swan heads

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 19d

Screenshot of a book reading "My earliest impulses of a morbid or anti-social kind must belong to my third year of life upon this freak-bearing planet. I recollect very clear the panic I felt when, playing the role..."

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 19d

this is loan word specific and should not be taken as approval of "atm machine" or "pin number"

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 19d

inadvertently duplicative words in loan words that i think are reasonable usage, by category:

generic terms in other languages that have become specific in english:
"banh mi bread"
"chai tea"

definite articles where it's awkward not to supplement with the english definite article
"i'd like to […]

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 23d

while i think most people understand that prefacing a post with various flavors of "um, actually" is annoying, i think there is still a huge number of posts where the "um, actually" is still there in a real, spiritual, sense, even if it has been excised from the text.

The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 24d

i understand that the chains of power are corrosive and corrupting for both the ruler and the subject, and that we should be building towards a non-hierarchical mode of being in which human agency and dignity are preserved through mutual caregiving, but just once it would be fun to shout "guards […]

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The Birdbassador @birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 25d

just did such a bad job writing a sentence that i had to edit almost every single word in it in order to make it make sense, gonna call it on posting for the day

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