Rob Simmons / is on Nostr

an admin for social.wub.site. interested in computer science education and cats. in boston. he/him.

profile pic by chrisamaphone

Website: https://typesafety.net/rob
GitHub: https://github.com/robsimmons
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-simmons-003b863/
I insist that it rhymes with "brewski": https://bsky.app/profile/simrob.com

Last Notes

2024-10-12 02:44:42

Gonna talk about our paper on Dusa (https://dusa.rocks/) a minute! One of the reasons @npub1yp3…un2n and I built this was Chris’s experience with answer set programming. It’s really useful, but we found every precise story about “what does an answer set program actually mean” really unsatisfying.
But saying something is unsatisfying prompts a question - what would make for a satisfying story? Is it just vibes, or can we say something more meaningful?

2024-10-02 20:21:25

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✨ thanks, not weird at all! I'll forward this to Jen - I do know it's vegan but I don't have the full allergen info on-hand

2024-10-02 17:10:49

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If a candy you eat for a couple of days before you have a period is something you or someone you know might be interested in trying out, your support will really actually help make this thing exist!
https://www.indiegogo.com/at/moondays-the-first-gummy-candy-for-pms-relief/x/8247004

2024-10-02 17:04:45

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Anyway, this has been a delightfully weird experience so far, and there are a couple of topics I plan to toot some more about:
1. The experience of being a "head of tech" who mostly got to successfully say "no, please don't build that tech" and how that's great.
2. Gender is a marketing construct, and how that's been a weird thing to encounter on top of gender already being weird.
3. Why crowdfunding seems to make sense for something like this.
Would love any questions other mastofriends have!

2024-10-02 16:58:44

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IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS!
1. If you have low gender tolerance, be aware there's some gender™️ in the link above.
2. If you want to help us out, Indiegogo will try to add an "Indiegogo tip," and it's VERY dark UI pattern. It's possible to set that tip to $0 by hand. Ugh.

2024-10-02 16:56:43

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Pitch ahead!
Jen has done a ton of work with gummy scientists, a job that exists, to develop a formulation for a gummy candy that is tasty & includes ingredients that might help periods suck less! I've tried it and I like it! (I don't have periods but I DO like candy.)
But to find out whether it works, we've got to make a ton of gummy candies and have people try them and tell you what happened, and today we launched a croundfunding campaign to try and make this happen: https://www.indiegogo.com/at/moondays-the-first-gummy-candy-for-pms-relief/x/8247004

2024-10-02 16:49:49

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And, like, there is some actual research on things that are maybe better at this than caffeine and Tylenol. Here's a study about magnesium: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22069417/
There are also some other studies where they gave folks some kind of nutrient and the other group a placebo and the result was something like "both groups said it helped a lot! maybe the actual ingredient helped more but that wasn't clear." And you know what, don't knock the placebo effect.

2024-10-02 16:46:54

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One of these projects is way, way different from anything I've done before - but a close friend from Pittsburgh, Jen Clarke, pitched me on it early this year.
Her pitch was basically: lots of people who get periods think they suck, and surely they could suck less. The leading product for dealing with this suck is like, Midol, which is, what, an expensive combination of caffeine and Tylenol?
(infomercial voice) there's gotta be a better way

2024-10-02 16:40:01

I'm at the point where I'm really enjoying not having a normal full-time job, because it's let me work on a bunch of different projects with a bunch of different people over the past year. And a couple of those projects are currently reaching some exciting points this month!

2024-09-07 12:03:51

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interesting - can I ask why? I’ve only learned about pcb design in, like, the last three years and I’ve mostly learned stuff independently rather than part of a community

2024-08-04 19:13:58

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god, yes - the comments section I’ve curated on that video is better art than the video, hands down