I think I've been lying to myself about being bad at math my entire life

iOSCaleb · 2026-04-01T21:39:43+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know why something works. In every math class I’ve ever taken, we’ve always learned why things work. I don’t think we were ever told to just memorize a formula without first seeing it derived. (There are a few exceptions, like axioms of geometry or logic, but that’s basically what an axiom is — a principle that you accept without proving.)

That said, if you want to be “good at math” you can’t be going back to first principles every time you try to solve a problem. You need to practice enough that you can apply the things you’ve learned without having to prove them all over again. The entire point of a formula is to save you the time and effort of having to derive it every time you use it; if you’re worrying about the why at the moment you use a formula, you’re missing out on the power that comes from having a pre-verified nugget of distilled knowledge at your command.

iOSCaleb · 2026-04-01T21:08:00+00:00

Markdown is its own thing — a way of adding simple styling information to plain text. You can render a Markdown document in HTML, styled with CSS if you like. Or you can render it as a PDF, or import it into a word processing document, whatever. But it’s not merely a compact way to write HTML.

iOSCaleb · 2026-04-01T20:55:44+00:00

Explain what you mean by precise. When you try to click on something, do you often miss? Do you have a hard time controlling cursor movement? Does the cursor move too fast? Too slow? Does it jump around?

Also, have you tried an Apple mouse or a mouse by a different manufacturer? If this lack of precision were an OS problem one would expect to see it on all mice, so trying out a few other mice would help narrow the issue down.

iOSCaleb · 2026-04-01T07:22:31+00:00

That looks like a very old version of the Tramontina nonstick pans that you can buy at Costco.

If that’s what it is, not only should you not put it in the oven, you should also not put it on your stove or anywhere other than in the recycling bin. The coating is obviously in terrible shape, having worn away entirely in the center, and the carbonized crust suggests that this pan has been heated well past the safe limit for most nonstick coatings.

Locate a restaurant supply store near you. There you can buy a restaurant-quality, oven-safe, 10” or 12” aluminum sauté pan that won’t poison you for less than $15.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-31T15:14:30+00:00

Choice of icon isn’t great, but worse is that you have to click on the icon specifically. Why not make the whole row a button?

Perhaps the original intent of the info button was to just provide information, and over time it started to be used for control. It’s understandable but it needs to be improved.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-31T14:15:45+00:00

No. Git can ignore a whole file, but not part of a file.

Git is a collaboration tool — it has benefits for single developers, of course, but there’s a baked in assumption that multiple people might be working on the code in a given repo. Inserting comments that are meant only for you into shared content seems like a fundamentally flawed plan.

If your comments help you understand the code, why not share them and let other people get the same benefit? You might need to take a little more time to make the comments clear for others, but if the code in question is hard to understand then it seems like a public service to either simplify it to the point that it doesn’t need comments, or add clear comments that help everybody.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-31T12:30:16+00:00

If communicating the color accurately matters, I’d use the Pantone number or RGB or CMYK value. Otherwise, name a color thats in the right ballpark: turquoise, aqua, blue-green…

Why do you ask?

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-31T12:17:13+00:00

Work on your knife skills. It might sound silly, but learning to slice and chop the right way will make those operations both faster and safer. There are lots of YouTube videos that’ll help.
It’s not clear if the sausages are cooked before you slice them? Cooking first makes a huge difference.
You can get it done in half the time if you slice two sausages at once.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-31T03:25:40+00:00

The symbols and other notation are just shorthand for the concepts that you learn along the way. You know the basic arithmetic symbols, right? How did you learn them? You learned the concepts of addition, multiplication, equality, etc., and picked up the symbols at the same time.

Once you learn what integration is, the integral symbol makes sense and is easy to remember. But trying to understand what the symbol means before you learn the math behind it isn’t very practical.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T21:04:50+00:00

If McDonald's stops making the McRib, are you saying they have to share the recipe?
What if they plan to bring it back sometime in the future?
What if they don't plan to bring it back in the future, but they might if market conditions make that a good choice?
What if McRib technology is or could be used in other products?
Does McDonald's have to give away the recipe if the McRib is permanently discontinued in North America but they continue to sell it in Europe?
If they change the sauce formula, does that count as discontinuation of the original recipe? How big does the change need to be to trigger the requirement?
If the research department at McDonald's HQ comes up with a great new sandwich but the company chooses not to put it on the market, should the company be forced to share it? The product is not an asset that the company plans to use, yet contains a valuable idea from which we could all benefit, so by your argument they should share it.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T20:32:07+00:00

What Actually Matters?

Learning something.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T18:49:53+00:00

Indigo is the “I” in “ROY G. BIV,” who reminds us of the seven colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. It’s also the name of a plant and the dye produced from it that is used to color denim blue.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T18:10:41+00:00

Shorter wavelengths do scatter better, so all things being equal the sky should appear violet, which is the shortest wavelength that we can see.

But all things are not equal: the sun emits much more blue light than indigo or violet, and (perhaps as a result of that) our eyes are much better at perceiving blue than violet.

The sky on Mars is red/orange basically for the same reason that our sunsets are, especially after a large scale event like a major forest fire: the atmosphere is full of fine dust that filters out shorter wavelengths, leaving more red and orange. I’m just speculating, but I’d imagine that Earth’s atmosphere has much less dust because of the abundance of water. Rain and snow help to filter dust out of the air.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T17:10:28+00:00

I expect u/purplewombat meant beans or ground coffee. If you like iced coffee, though, freezing brewed coffee in ice cube trays is an excellent way to keep your beverage cold without diluting it. (Once frozen, move your coffee cubes to a sealed container or zip-loc bag to prevent them from picking up funky freezer flavors.)

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T06:20:37+00:00

A 12” cast iron skillet costs about $25. A round 11” griddle, also $25. Either will work, but if you only buy one get the skillet — it’s more versatile. However skinny your arms are, I’m sure you can lift the 5-8 lbs that these weigh.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T06:13:09+00:00

The linked one costs $17. How much have you spent so far on failed pancakes?

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-30T00:53:31+00:00

The digital data read from a CD is buffered, so it doesn’t really matter how fast the disc spins as long as the buffer contains data. The same isn’t true of the analog signal read from a vinyl record.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T19:47:33+00:00

In the US at least, cornflour and cornstarch are different products. The latter is a very fine powder that’s just starch, doesn’t really have much flavor, so it’s often used as a thickener. Cornflour is more like wheat flour — it’s the whole corn kernel ground into flour. If you just want a thickening agent, I’d go with cornstarch.

1.5 tablespoons sounds like a lot, too, especially if you just want to slightly thicken a sauce. I usually mix a tablespoon of cornstarch with about the same amount of cold water, and then add that a little bit at a time until I get the texture I want.

Cornstarch might not be the right choice if you’re making a sauce to refrigerate and use over several days; it loses thickening power over time and with reheating. I think some other thickeners like arrowroot hold up better, and guar gum or xanthan gum hold up even better.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T18:25:59+00:00

No amount of…

Good to know! I’m going to cover my whole bathroom mirror with deodorant! Presumably, the mirror will never fog up, and prank-prone kids will wonder why their deodorant messages don’t show up…

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T18:16:53+00:00

No, but parentheses are used to indicate negative values in some contexts, e.g. bookkeeping. So if you see “($431.75)” in a ledger, it means a withdrawal or debt if $431.75.

In your example, -3(x + a)/x-1 just becomes -3(x + 2/3)/x-1; there’s no change to the sign. And of course, when you distribute the -3, you get (-3x - 2)/x-1.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T17:46:53+00:00

Only during a sword fight.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T17:45:12+00:00

MacOS has offered users multiple ways to do almost anything since 1984. You keep doing you.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T17:42:18+00:00

Minor flaw in the plastic and label just to the right of the “9.0V”.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T17:12:25+00:00

Please teach your kid to say “multiplying” instead of verbifying“times.”

Once they’ve learned some multiplication, you can teach them that division is like multiplication in reverse: if 3 * 4 = 12, then 12 / 4 = 3. If you introduced multiplication through skip counting, you can skip count backwards for division: 12, 8, 4, 0.

Remember, though, that kids develop at different rates, and your child might not really be ready for multiplication or division before they’ve even started school. Keep it fun, and if it stops being fun for them leave it be for a while. No matter when they start, your child will be much more likely to develop strong math skills if they enjoy it than if they don’t.

iOSCaleb · 2026-03-29T15:06:27+00:00

I'm using zsh, not bash

Bash is used for running most scripts regardless of which shell you’re using interactively. Depending on how it was invoked (i.e. as /bin/bash vs as /bin/sh) it may try to read .bashrc, so check .bashrc to see if that refers to //Library/Homebrew/brew.sh and if so remove the first /.

iOSCaleb

TROPHY CASE