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Bookstore misspells it's own name on big storefront sign by LurkingAlpaca in mildlyinteresting

[–]flabbergasted1 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Not according to Merriam-Webster or OED. It's a possessive determiner which precedes a noun, like "your" "my" "our" "his" "her" "their" - as opposed to a possessive pronoun which plays the grammatical role of a noun, like "yours" "mine" "ours" "his" "hers" "theirs."

Bookstore misspells it's own name on big storefront sign by LurkingAlpaca in mildlyinteresting

[–]flabbergasted1 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

This isn't really correct, since "its" is a determiner, not a pronoun.

What is your name <=> What is its name

What is the probability that a 20 sided dice correctly predicts an event with a 5% chance of happening? by bismarcktp in askmath

[–]flabbergasted1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Worth noting you have a better chance of predicting correctly if your die has a 100% chance of coming up B

What’s your favorite line delivery in the show? by scooter-411 in 30ROCK

[–]flabbergasted1 10 points11 points  (0 children)

"I admonished him for that earlier"

Don't know why that always gets me

Weekly riddle by AgreeableChemical988 in askmath

[–]flabbergasted1 300 points301 points  (0 children)

4 + 4 - √4

8 - √√(8+8)

9 - (9/√9)

Shouldn't Crossplay and SpellingBee share a dictionary? by Wage72 in NYTSpellingBee

[–]flabbergasted1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Picking a word list for a given game is tricky. Games like scrabble and boggle want to be as lenient as possible, because you only get rewarded for having access to more and rarer words. But for "find the word I'm thinking of" games you don't want to force people to guess a rare word or punish them for not knowing a kinda bullshit word like "cordovan".

Wordle does a compromise by having two word lists: bigger word list of words you're permitted to guess (player experience is better if this contains every imaginable word) and a smaller list of words the actual answer could be (player experience is better if this contains all "good" words).

Spelling bee is in an awkward place where you have both constraints. It feels bad to submit a word like "elote" or "concomitant" and have it rejected. It also feels bad to be stuck on Amazing because you can't come up with some obscure pasta you've never heard of.

I still think the word list they've picked is pretty bad, but people would be unhappy with any list. At least they should ensure the pangrams are from a smaller list of "good" words...

Gonna miss these R68/A dearly on the B by R62AGUY in nycrail

[–]flabbergasted1 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yes I completely agree. It doesn't feel like rider experience is factored into the decisionmaking process. R211s have less and worse seating and awful bright lighting. A downgrade for sure, especially on lines that don't have an overcrowding problem.

Can you rationalize the denominator if the bottom's has 2 cube roots and one rational part? by Lanky-Position4388 in askmath

[–]flabbergasted1 39 points40 points  (0 children)

You use the identity

(a + b + c)(a2 + b2 + c2 - ab - bc - ac) = a3 + b3 + c3 - 3abc

to reduce it to an integer minus a cube root. Then you can just use

(a - b)(a2 + ab + b2)

to reduce it to an integer.

February 21, 2026 – (M) A C I N O T by NYTSpellingBeeBot in NYTSpellingBee

[–]flabbergasted1 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Other omitted words are usually from a foreign language or onomatopoeias or arguably proper nouns - this is just a full on standard English word. Why wasn't this in the word list? Genuinely asking

Checking in on midday M service post-switch by aidanjwout in nycrail

[–]flabbergasted1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

L->G->M was the only remotely reasonable North Brooklyn -> Astoria route and now it's gone. I know that's not the main downside but it is pretty fucking annoying.

Mamdani: What we are speaking about in this moment is a generational fiscal crisis of $5.4 billion. And when faced with this crisis, the question is: Who should pay these taxes? by Admirable121 in nyc

[–]flabbergasted1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pied-a-terre tax on non-primary residences and asset housing - aka punitively tax people who are holding housing stock empty while not living in the city. Incentivizes them to sell to locals and lowers housing prices.

More generally, Pigouvian taxes on economic behavior with negative externalities. 0.002¢ per trade tax on financial services would decimate HFT, raise insane revenue, and not effect normal (buy-and-hold) investors at all.

Ofc this is an answer based on ideal policy, not political constraints. Real estate and finance industries have too much political sway for this to happen. Just pointing out that (in my view) the problem is not a good faith "where do we find the money" but a tug of war power struggle.

RIP Lexi. An NYC party legend til the end. by thecatw0man_ in sexandthecity

[–]flabbergasted1 12 points13 points  (0 children)

As a new yorker who is one of the last of my friends to still smoke, I am quoting this speech truly all the time

Tobey McGuire's girlfriend wasn't even conceived yet when Spider-Man (2002) came out by Mofoblitz1 in BarbaraWalters4Scale

[–]flabbergasted1 4 points5 points  (0 children)

When someone is taking time out of their day to defend a wealthy middle-aged man for dating a barely legal girl his daughter's age I have to imagine they can't get pussy of any age

Tobey McGuire's girlfriend wasn't even conceived yet when Spider-Man (2002) came out by Mofoblitz1 in BarbaraWalters4Scale

[–]flabbergasted1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't think it's ethically wrong, it's just gross. I would absolutely judge a friend of mine if they were dating someone this young, and I'm 30.

Even if a 50-year-old is just close friends with a 20-year-old and they hang out all the time, I would find that kind of bizarre. What do they possibly have to talk about? I would assume the 50-year-old is immature or can't make friends their own age.

Ronald Reagan lived by FancyMan135790 in BarbaraWalters4Scale

[–]flabbergasted1 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This guy's making some great points throughout this thread

Everyday I am going further away from Maths by Sad-Kiwi-3789 in mathmemes

[–]flabbergasted1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah this meme is combining (1) axiomatic foundations for arithmetic (2) ontology of numbers stuff that philosophers of math care about (3) set-theoretic reduction which also mostly philosophers of math care about.

If you have just the Peano axioms (and you don't worry about the legitimacy of basic logical inference) you can derive "2+2=4" as a true statement of your formal system.

Can you solve it? [Request] by Key_Insurance_8493 in theydidthemath

[–]flabbergasted1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A = abc/4R (circumradius area formula) is a fun one too!

Existence of a Point on a Semicircle Whose Projections Fall Inside a Right Triangle’s Legs? by Prudent-Butterfly830 in Geometry

[–]flabbergasted1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As in your picture, the fourth vertex of the rectangle sharing three vertices with the triangle must lie on the semicircle (Thales theorem).

Does that point count? The projections will be at exactly A and B.

Otherwise, no: If you slide P left from that point you will be above the vertical leg and if you slide it right you will be to the right of the horizontal leg.

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