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2
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1758
Joined
2 yr. ago

Some middle-aged guy on the Internet. Seen a lot of it, occasionally regurgitating it, trying to be amusing and informative.

Lurked Digg until v4. Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.

Was on kbin.social (dying/dead) and kbin.run (mysteriously vanished). Now here on fedia.io.

Really hoping he hasn't brought the jinx with him.

Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish

  • The main Fediverse mathematics hub that I'm aware of is Mathstodon, a Mastodon server. Caveat: There may be many others I'm not aware of.

    That said, it's supposed to be for people who live, breathe and work in mathematics, so it might not be the best instance for an amateur.

    I have seen more amateur stuff (in both positive and negative senses) under #math and similar hashtags on Mastodon though. Much of that isn't from Mathstodon.

  • Also not what you're looking for, but it may scratch some of the itch: déjà vu

    That is, (you think) you're inducing a sense of déjà vu and disgust within Sebastian.

  • Common misquote. The original is closer to "What is the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything?"

    That italic bit is a very important plot point.

  • Additional to other answers, back in the early days of alphabetic writing, some writings alternated left to right then back again right to left on alternating lines. This is called "boustrophedon", literally "(as the) ox walk(s)" because it's the same way oxen are used to plough fields.

    There's documented evidence of both early Latin and Greek being written this way. What's less clear is which direction they chose to start those writings.

    The problem with that is that you have to learn to read both directions. They often wrote the letters backwards when text went the other way, which came with its own set of problems. You probably don't have a mirror. You basically have to learn to write almost twice as many symbols. Some letters are their own reflection and you can't always tell which way something was written. etc. etc.

    Eventually someone influential will have chosen the direction for presumably a good reason (to them) and everyone else eventually followed suit.

  • This will be uplifting when and only when she succeeds. Until then it's merely hopeful.

    I don't say this to minimise what she's trying to do. I hope she succeeds. But she has a hell of a mountain to climb. It's not that long since VAT was eradicated on those products here in the UK, supposedly a modern, forward-thinking nation.

    She's in Pakistan. There's a lot more religious and cultural misogyny to fight there.

    Value Added Tax. Roughly equivalent to both "sales tax" and "luxury tax" elsewhere.

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  • Argh. That doesn't work. The "were-" in "werewolf" means "man" and there are no humans in that comic.

    Unfortunately there don't seem to be many ancient synonyms for "house" like there are for "human", so it's not really possible to obfuscate the meaning in the way that "were-" does.

    house-warehouse doesn't really roll off the tongue well, and it's open to the misinterpretation of "houseware-house", which is something else entirely.

    Badly translating back into Old English gives hūswāruhūs, which, if you corrupt vowels to "huswarahus", does kind of sound like a cryptid.

  • Some people genuinely do not understand the concept of GUI windows and how they work. They do not generate a full mental model of the desktop and the windows on it and only see the whole screen as one bewildering interface. They focus on what they do know in order to get by.

    This may be especially true of people who learned their IT with small screens or low resolutions where running an application full screen (or as the only active application!) is required to get anything done.

    Your colleague saw you click on part of the interface they were ignoring because they didn't understand it and magic happened.

  • Newton himself might disagree, given that he said that he was only able to produce his work because he was "[stood] on the shoulders of giants".

    That could put Euclid's Elements above Pricipia Mathematica.

  • While unlikely to be #1, I bet there's at least one computer programming book in the top 100.

  • Do you consider yourself a virus?

    Well, certain people do consider me to have some undesirable traits like ideas about getting our species off the planet, and if I didn't exist, I'd generate considerably less CO₂.

    Uncomfortable though it may be, the latter applies to everyone I've ever known, cared about or who has cared about me.

    And it is inherent. The singular purpose of certain genes is to make more of the same gene, and they've gotten very good at it. Humans and viruses are both emergent phenomena.

    But then, I suppose if we don't leave, we don't spread the disease elsewhere... so OK. You're right. We should never ever leave...

    And the only way to save the biosphere is to do something we're completely incapable of. We're screwed. Neat!

  • Fedimap.de - a reallife usermap of the Fediverse

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  • I reckon there's a few of us about on here.

  • I don't think that because the rich b-stards think that. I think that because I believe our species - regardless of race - has outgrown its environment. If I got this idea from somewhere else, it wasn't from Musk or Bezos or others like them. It might even have come from watching Star Trek or reading sci-fi.

    We're like a virus or a cancer that will ultimately end up killing the host. Earth's biosphere in this instance.

    The correct course of action is to destroy the infection or cut it out.

    And if you want what's being cut out to survive afterwards, yes, you have a lot of work ahead of you before you do so to ensure its continued existence once it's somewhere else.

    We need to consider what it would take to get every single one of us off this planet and living somewhere else.

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  • Good quality teas don't need sugar.

    People are going to add condiments regardless of what purists think. ¯(ツ)

  • That's the thing. Nothing is actually moving, it just appears to be. Space itself is increasing in volume.

    The best analogy isn't that everything's moving, it's that everything's shrinking.

    If you and a friend are stood 2 metres apart and you suddenly both shrink, proportionately, to half your height, the distance between you is going to appear to have doubled, when in fact it's still 2 metres.

    Universe expansion turns this on its head by the distance itself growing to 4 metres without either of you moving.

    As to why this doesn't happen on local scales: gravity has a tendency to hold nearby things together. And closer still, atomic forces.

  • nelsonmuntzhaha.mpeg

  • This. Winnie the Pooh is canonically a teddy bear, presumably only alive by some sort of magic. Likewise, Kanga, Roo, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet.

    Rabbit and Owl, however, were real, living creatures - the true inhabitants of the wood - with related magic allowing them to interact.

    So basically, yes, Pooh isn't edible.

  • I'm actually of the opinion that humanity needs to get off this rock as soon as possible. The uncomfortable truth is that fewer humans would in fact help the environment, and none would be even better.

    The problem is with how to implement that without it turning into murder.

    Hence, we leave.

  • Good call. They unprinced Andrew, they can unlord Mandy.

  • Sure you can, but why fabricate evidence against someone when you can trick them into making real evidence?

    The hard job of fabrication begins if and only if that fails.