Xavier Snelgrove's Avatar

Xavier Snelgrove

@wxs.ca

Creating Orbital Studies Magazine. Towards a more beautiful science. https://orbitalstudies.com

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19.11.2024
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Latest posts by Xavier Snelgrove @wxs.ca

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Wayfinding: Teenhood · Luma A panel of teens discussing what they wish technologists knew about being a teenager online. Wayfinding: conversations about navigating the tensions of tech in…

Adults love to talk about the impact of technology on kids, but we so rarely listen to the kids themselves.

Next week's Wayfinding event is trying to change that: a panel of teenagers talking about their relationship with technology.

Join us on Wednesday

18.02.2026 21:06 👍 7 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
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Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

12.02.2026 16:31 👍 10354 🔁 3079 💬 162 📌 419

This is one of the only good takes

11.02.2026 21:24 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The real world is what is left unsaid when we have said everything. What we have said is language and the world is not language. A rock is not a word.

Guy Davenport

The real world is what is left unsaid when we have said everything. What we have said is language and the world is not language. A rock is not a word. Guy Davenport

”The real world is what is left unsaid when we have said everything. What we have said is language and the world is not language. A rock is not a word.“

— Guy Davenport

11.02.2026 15:59 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I'll be doing one of these sessions, we'll take the love of complex patterns and structures which often draws us to work in tech, but instead we'll leave our screens and go for a walk in the woods, foraging new patterns, grounding the abstractions in the natural world.

09.01.2026 18:00 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Frankly amazed that any biology gets done at all tbh

10.11.2025 16:24 👍 13 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0

You're a thoughtful talented writer! Although I have not been in the Rails ecosystem, I relate a lot to the nostalgia for a joy and creativity orientation in tech which I struggle to find today. Appreciate that you're putting in the work to try to recover it. In the end it's just made out of people.

10.11.2025 14:31 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
❧ Orbital Studies Magazine ☙ Ways of Seeing the Objective World

We're accepting new writing for Orbital Studies, a literary science magazine cultivating a poetic orientation towards the world revealed to us by science.

Issue theme: *Ways of Seeing The Objective World*

Deadline Dec 10: orbitalstudies.com

Please share! We pay all contributors.

29.10.2025 19:18 👍 6 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
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Paul Klee
The Bounds of the Intellect, 1927

21.04.2025 08:55 👍 51 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0

🤔

21.04.2025 02:58 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Each type of touch neuron can detect specific sensations, such as vibration or temperature; together they generate our complex touch experience. www.quantamagazine.org/touch-our-mo...

18.04.2025 15:47 👍 42 🔁 16 💬 0 📌 1
An addressed envelope with some instructions. Further instructions on the back of filling out an index card and receiving further social messages.

An addressed envelope with some instructions. Further instructions on the back of filling out an index card and receiving further social messages.

Just got handed an invite to Western Toronto’s fastest growing screen free social network PostPost Social

The full protocol specification is available if you want to self onboard postpost.social

10.04.2025 17:52 👍 21 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 1

You should update your pinned post to reflect this change!

31.03.2025 15:55 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

In response to all the ai pushed on us & predictions of replacing professions, I think "Men have forgotten this truth," "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
My images take extraordinary amounts of time for me to make and I wouldn’t have it any other way

27.03.2025 16:49 👍 37 🔁 10 💬 3 📌 0
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Exeter's unassuming Co-op worker leads astonishing 'double life' Christophe has designed logos for the likes of Rihanna

TIL that most modern heavy metal logos are designed by a guy who works at the Co-Op in Exeter
www.devonlive.com/whats-on/wha...

23.03.2025 16:57 👍 457 🔁 147 💬 20 📌 13
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Anachronisms | Are.na the anachronistic is a way of thinking about the heterogeneous within time

Periodic reminder that are.na is the best place on the internet. Legitimately somewhere I feel awe/movement, not something I typically get through this little glowing demon rectangle.

Here's a great channel on anachronism: https://www.are.na/francesco-venturi/anachronisms

24.03.2025 03:49 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1

today is the day

22.03.2025 11:17 👍 353 🔁 101 💬 27 📌 2

Layers of information in an archival document:

- What is said
- What is not said
- What is alluded to
- What is omitted intentionally
(and unintentionally)
- What is misleading
- What is ambiguous
- What is highlighted
- What is downplayed
- What is weaponized
- What is unintelligible today
...

27.01.2025 13:15 👍 445 🔁 126 💬 10 📌 17

Dear trainee friends (et al.),

'Tis true that parts of the sky are falling & this is distracting. However, if you happen to have done A THING (paper, etc.), we want to support you. Don't hold back from letting us know. So we can learn and 👏.

We're still here for the science.

Sincerely,

Everyone

18.03.2025 21:33 👍 144 🔁 28 💬 1 📌 1
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Alchemy - Yale University Press London Flush with hundreds of illustrations, this book revisits the histories of chemistry, medicine, ideas, and culture through the lens of alchemy   The craf...

Well, this seems now to be official. Trust me, it is a beautiful thing.
yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

18.03.2025 09:03 👍 40 🔁 7 💬 4 📌 0
An index card that says:
Screen-Free Social Network!
Decorate an index card and mail it to:
  PostPost.social
  #616-2938 Dundas St. W
  Toronto, ON M6P 3N8
  CANADA
Include $2 for return postage, wait, and soon you'll receive a package of Posts!

Wow!

Billionaire-Free!
Made in Canada!

Then: beautifully composited atop the image, the text "New Accessibility Feature: include a note with "call me:" and your phone number, and we'll call to describe your package of Posts.

An index card that says: Screen-Free Social Network! Decorate an index card and mail it to: PostPost.social #616-2938 Dundas St. W Toronto, ON M6P 3N8 CANADA Include $2 for return postage, wait, and soon you'll receive a package of Posts! Wow! Billionaire-Free! Made in Canada! Then: beautifully composited atop the image, the text "New Accessibility Feature: include a note with "call me:" and your phone number, and we'll call to describe your package of Posts.

By popular demand https://PostPost.social now includes accessibility features: send us your phone number and we'll read your posts aloud to you!

#toronto #socialmedia #mail #accessibility

11.03.2025 16:24 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Antiqua et nova. Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence (28 January 2025) Antiqua et nova. Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, 28 January 2025

this morning @wxs.ca led a discussion on Antiqua and nova - here are some my thoughts! www.vatican.va/roman_curia/...

18.02.2025 21:24 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
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A new study finds ants best humans at tests of collective intelligence.

Learn more: scim.ag/4h2K0ID

03.01.2025 14:25 👍 509 🔁 167 💬 26 📌 74

I'm going to make enemies, but saying that we know the number of parameters of the brain is akin to saying that you have no clue about the brain. It's a complex multilevel system tightly integrated with the rest of the body. The statement doesn't even make sense, or "not even wrong" as they say.

23.12.2024 14:54 👍 98 🔁 11 💬 3 📌 4
Original post on mastodon.social

"the body agent is using the bioelectric patterns as its memory, and simultaneously, these agential memories are doing their thing while using the physical body as their memory scratchpad" […]

04.12.2024 02:52 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I try to post my reminders that spaced repetition propagates a soulless and depressing conception of learning at regularly spaced intervals to help people remember.

05.12.2024 17:59 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

They mean instead tasks with a quantifiable performance metric. The notion that these capture the primary characteristics of human cognition/intelligence is not just mistaken but corrosive.

03.12.2024 14:55 👍 11 🔁 1 💬 3 📌 0

I wish more words were like "cringe" and pointed directly at a physical experience. Friends have suggested "blush" or "chills" as other solid candidates.

01.12.2024 19:32 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Just heard the phrase "atpyicality accelerationism" from a teacher.

29.11.2024 17:48 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0