You're reading the public-facing archive of the Category Theory Zulip server.
To join the server you need an invite. Anybody can get an invite by contacting Matteo Capucci at name dot surname at gmail dot com.
For all things related to this archive refer to the same person.
Jules Hedges (Mar 24 2020 at 18:10):Folks: Given the unprecedented social meltdown, don't feel you need to stay strictly on topic, at least on #general. Many of us are stuck at home. If anybody really needs to rant about their annoying flatmate or lack of toilet paper or whatever, feel free
Jules Hedges (Mar 24 2020 at 18:10):If everybody rushes at once, we can always create a separate stream for that stuff
Nathanael Arkor (Mar 24 2020 at 18:11):let's put conversations that are completely CT-unrelated in #off-topic, so just that people who are only interested in CT-related things don't have to be swamped by unrelated conversations
Tobias Heindel (Apr 03 2020 at 18:20):Jules Hedges said:
Folks: Given the unprecedented social meltdown, don't feel you need to stay strictly on topic, at least on #general. Many of us are stuck at home. If anybody really needs to rant about their annoying flatmate or lack of toilet paper or whatever, feel free
permalink: “Jule's calling to the trolls”
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Apr 03 2020 at 22:55):It's been a long time since I had this volume of interaction with people online. It's nice to have an outlet and a connection to this community, but the old insecurities of not knowing what tone people are taking or whether anyone actually cares about the crafted details of your messages were not missed. Also the ever-niggling questions of whether this is more procrastination than socialising gnaws away at me...
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 03 2020 at 23:05):Maybe the following suggestions could help:
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Apr 03 2020 at 23:19):Thanks Fabrizio, those are some good suggestions. I've started a new stream, #monoids based on your third point. Maybe I'll get some biters tomorrow!
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Apr 03 2020 at 23:20):Oh whoops, I mean... Maybe I'll get some biters tomorrow :wink: :smirk: :nerd:
John Baez (Apr 03 2020 at 23:54):I guess you're from a younger generation, Fab, if you think that ending sentences with a period means "seriousness/being pissed". For me the lack of punctuation signals "not giving a damn", sort of like leaving your shoelaces untied. But okay, maybe not everyone likes periods at the end of sentences. At least we know what's going on now.
John Baez (Apr 04 2020 at 00:00):Fab wrote:
If you feel like procrastinating, use this platform to do research.
:+1: YES!!! :+1:
John Baez (Apr 04 2020 at 00:01):I'm too busy finishing papers and talks right now to actually do any research, but in a while I'd like to start....
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 00:08):John Baez said:
I guess you're from a younger generation, Fab, if you think that ending sentences with a period means "seriousness/being pissed". For me the lack of punctuation signals "not giving a damn", sort of like leaving your shoelaces untied. But okay, maybe not everyone likes periods at the end of sentences. At least we know what's going on now.
Yes, it's a bit weird. I think it depends on the kind of people I used to hang out with digitally 20 or something years ago. Back then no one in the IRC channels I lurked into was ending sentences with a period (unless they were pissed for something). Clearly I got this kind of imprinting. It's weird because in non-chat written text (forums, papers, books, etc) I'd consider a sentence ending without a period as totally savage :D
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 00:10):...It's actually fascinating how netiquette rules evolve in weird ways. For instance, I have the tendency to capitalize everything: Even on my pc my folders names are all capitalized. 90% of my developer friends absolutely hate this, and put everything lowercase. It seems to be a widespread habit among programmers, and it drives me nuts
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 00:11):(Also here stream names are all in lowercase, for instance D: )
T Murrills (Apr 04 2020 at 00:11):I think the same thing applies to using capitals; all-lowercase and stops-indicated-by-message-ends-unless-internal-to-the-message is a norm I, as part of a younger generation, I guess, am used to. Including periods can be taken to imply that you went to extra effort to end your sentence, instead of using a message-end, which would have done just as well! It can feel as though the writer wants this to be the last word on the subject, and wants you to know it.
But I definitely think it also depends on the form of the words and thoughts involved: long paragraphs are maybe expected to have punctuation breaks, so it’s not unusual if they also end with punctuation. Plus, there are many other opportunities in a paragraph to gauge tone! (Like that exclamation point just there, or the way I tend to word things—is it reflective of a person sharing their thoughts and engaging in conversation, e.g. “I think”, or am I simply stating facts bluntly?)
I think the “period -> terseness” inference applies mainly when messages are short and convey one particular point. Then it can be read as condescension, because of the inferred sense that this is all that needs to be said on the subject!
John Baez (Apr 04 2020 at 00:22):We used periods on "usenet news" back when I first started using the internet around 1988, and I think I'm too old to change - or more precisely, too old to want to change.
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 00:29):There's no need to, my point is that as long as someone becomes familiar with someone else's writing style the margin for misunderstadings is reduced :slight_smile:
John Baez (Apr 04 2020 at 00:30):Yup!
T Murrills (Apr 04 2020 at 00:31):definitely! For what it’s worth, I haven’t gotten senses of terseness or condescension from @John Baez ‘s messages. It’s difficult to figure out why, but I think it has to do with there being “enough content” in your/his messages for tone to be inferred even without a large sample size with which one can become familiar!
Fabrizio Genovese (Apr 04 2020 at 00:32):Me neither!
sarahzrf (Apr 04 2020 at 04:07):i think the periods thing has to do also with like
sarahzrf (Apr 04 2020 at 04:08):in real-life conversations, sentences are often ill-delimited or sort of open up for the interlocutor to respond
sarahzrf (Apr 04 2020 at 04:10):and then if you deliberately don't do that—if you make sure to use self-contained sentences that tie themselves off in a real-life conversation—it creates an impression of curtness or lack of desire to continue a back-and-forth
sarahzrf (Apr 04 2020 at 04:11):and if you use text to talk a lot, you learn ways, often non-standard in formal writing, of communicating prosody in those mediums
sarahzrf (Apr 04 2020 at 04:13):and using periods consistently at the end of sentences creates a corresponding prosody in text to what i was trying to describe in spoken language
sarahzrf (Apr 04 2020 at 04:14):(this definitely all overlaps with what @T Murrills was saying :slight_smile:)
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Apr 04 2020 at 08:33):John Baez said:
For me the lack of punctuation signals "not giving a damn", sort of like leaving your shoelaces untied.
Punctuation inside the sentence is essential, and I absolutely hate people who do not use commas/colons/semicolons to give pace. They don't care about the reader. But the final period is sacrificeable.
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Apr 04 2020 at 08:34):(I now noticed I am a 'final period' person on PC, and the opposite on mobile)
Andrew Hirsch (Apr 05 2020 at 14:29):There's a whole book about how language has evolved for all of our text based communication. The period thing in particular is a thing for younger people on the internet.
Andrew Hirsch (Apr 05 2020 at 14:30):John Baez said:
We used periods on "usenet news" back when I first started using the internet around 1988, and I think I'm too old to change - or more precisely, too old to want to change.
There's a whole chapter about the linguistic differences between people who went on usenet back in the day and people who started socializing online as a normal thing when they were teenagers!
Cole Comfort (May 06 2020 at 18:52):Has anyone else had difficuly connecting to the Theory and Applications of Categories website (www.tac.mta.ca) for the past few days?
Hendrik Boom (May 06 2020 at 18:57):"Has anyone else had difficuly connecting to the Theory and Applications of Categories website (www.tac.mta.ca) for the past few days?"
Just tried it. Browser fails to connect, and pinging it tells me
PING www.tac.mta.ca (138.73.27.39) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 138.73.100.1 (138.73.100.1) icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
Cole Comfort (May 06 2020 at 18:59):Hendrik Boom said:
"Has anyone else had difficuly connecting to the Theory and Applications of Categories website (www.tac.mta.ca) for the past few days?"
Just tried it. Browser fails to connect, and pinging it tells me
PING www.tac.mta.ca (138.73.27.39) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 138.73.100.1 (138.73.100.1) icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
I will ask Geoff Cruttwell what's up as I think he is maintaining it.
John Baez (May 06 2020 at 19:01):Yeah, it's been down for almost a week now.
Cole Comfort (May 06 2020 at 19:18):John Baez said:
Yeah, it's been down for almost a week now.
Hopefuly they can get it up and running soon, because there are a lot of papers that are only digitally archived on the TAC website.
John Baez (May 07 2020 at 05:44):Ugh!!!
Pastel Raschke (May 07 2020 at 07:19):archive.org has you covered
mostly... i think one of the two tac papers i tried wasn't there
Alexander Campbell (May 07 2020 at 08:06):Here you can find a TAC mirror: https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/tac/2020/index.html
Alexander Campbell (May 07 2020 at 08:07):Though I see the usual site is up now.
Cole Comfort (May 07 2020 at 08:29):Alexander Campbell said:
Though I see the usual site is up now.
Yeah I emailed Geoff and no one had told him. It was up like 20 mins later :big_smile:
Nathanael Arkor (May 07 2020 at 11:44):Seems like a good time to add automated alerts when it goes down…
Gershom (May 07 2020 at 18:00):if someone wants to pass it on, uptimerobot.com has a nice free automated alert service.
a13ph (May 08 2020 at 17:20):Both at the time of the question and now, this link shows me a redirect to http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/
Which both then and now, works for me.
On the site they list:
Home site Canada - http://138.73.27.39/tac/index.html
Mirrors:
The National Library of Canada - http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/tac/index.html as part of its Electronic Collection
The Electronic Library of the European Mathematical Society - http://www.emis.de/journals/TAC/. The journals at this site are further mirrored at http://www.emis.de/tech/mirrors.html
Anonymous FTP - ftp://ftp.tac.mta.ca/pub/tac/html
Henry Story (Dec 25 2021 at 12:46):"Everybody wants to be a cat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_xogxEXCbw
Jules Hedges (Jan 01 2022 at 16:37):Happy new 2022 all!
Jules Hedges (Jan 01 2022 at 16:37):May all your diagrams commute this year
John Baez (Jan 01 2022 at 16:45):Whoa, every object in Set just became terminal.
Christian Williams (Jan 01 2022 at 19:04):happy new year!
Tevikyan Ashot (Jan 01 2022 at 19:11):Happy New 2022 Year !!!
David Michael Roberts (Jan 03 2022 at 04:41):@John Baez except the empty set :stuck_out_tongue_wink:
John Baez (Jan 03 2022 at 17:54):Whew! I didn't see that one. So Jules' wish did not make truth values collapse, we're just living in a preorder rather than a category now.