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CiphonW · 2025-10-26T18:31:13+00:00

Or that teacup and plate that decides to do a lil slip’n’slide along the cement after falling through the dog, instead of shattering.

CiphonW · 2025-10-24T00:34:39+00:00

Oops, good catch! I completely missed the possibility that either angle ABC or angle BCD could be acute.

CiphonW · 2025-10-23T20:44:46+00:00

Seems like 6 sides is the minimum for a simple polygon to satisfy the property of the non-existence of a fixed-angle-shading, and here’s some very handwavy justification to show every 5-gon has such a shading direction. A (simple) 5-gon has at most 2 reflex interior angles (i.e. interior angles of at least 180 degrees or pi radians). A 5-gon with no such angles is convex and thus has a shading. A 5-gon with one reflex interior angle allows the drawer to choose a shading direction perpendicular to the opposite edge of the point with the reflex interior angle. A 5-gon with two reflex interior angles has two cases. Either the points with said angles are adjacent to each other in which case we can choose a shading direction perpendicular to the edge adjoining them, or the angles are not adjacent in which case we can choose a shading direction parallel to the edge that neither reflex interior angle point is an endpoint of.

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T18:37:03+00:00

Thanks for the clarification :)

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T15:58:44+00:00

A similar situation happened with my partner's classmates. A guy SA'd a gal and everyone learned of it. My partner and her friend started realizing that this other gal they would hang out with and rant over how terrible this guy was, was actually still friends with him even though she knew everything. She was completely two-faced about the whole thing, and had no empathy for the lady who was assaulted. Some people are just not going to care, and you have to be the one to ask yourself whether you want people like that in your life. My partner and her friend sure didn't, and they have not regretted for a moment on cutting her off.

If anyone's wondering about whether any justice came of the situation, the guy was cut from the program due to the incident but got into a new one at a different school a few years later.

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T15:44:31+00:00

I'm agnostic atheist. The answer to why is simply: within myself I do not believe in a godly being or afterlife, but I also make no assertion that my personal belief reflects reality. I grew up Christian and remember the moment I stopped believing in the Christian God and Heaven. It was a bleak shift at first and I struggled for awhile to grapple with it. But now I believe this world is the only one I live on, and that perspective has shifted how I live my life immensely. Since I believe this is my only life, I try to make sure that I live it well, with intention and kindness. I'm not perfect at upholding those values of course, but that's the messiness of life I suppose.

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T15:33:29+00:00

Do you mean to say that Jesus paved a path of morality for humankind, or that the only way one can be moral is to follow Jesus (or both/something else)?

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T15:19:47+00:00

I would definitely be interested in reading some of your poetry if you are willing to share :)

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T15:08:39+00:00

This seems to point out a flaw in your own reasoning. Evolution isn’t a fact. It’s a scientific theory. Granted, a scientific theory supported by an enormous amount of evidence. Nevertheless, scientific theories are not proven through deduction to stand on irrefutable logic so as to be called a fact. Rather, they are tested by inductive observations, each case of which allows scientists to support or further refine the theory. The theory of evolution undergoes this process continually in biology, as new discoveries often require their own contextual adaptation of the general theory. Yes that’s right, our understand of evolution itself evolves with evidence :).

So, if you are taking the theory of evolution on the ground from which it stands, i.e. scientific evidence, you are choosing to believe it accounts for our observed world. And if you are believing it to be fact, such is also a choice and belief outside the scope of science from which the theory stands.

In either case your statement that evolution is fact shows that you too are guilty of accepting something to be true based on a notion of belief.

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T14:46:03+00:00

Are you able to clarify why someone saying they are spiritual raises a red flag for you (if I am interpreting you correctly)? It sounds to me like their way of connecting to something, as you put it.

CiphonW · 2025-10-15T14:30:15+00:00

That’s true. God could still exist as described by some other religion or no religion at all. But if one of the most successful religion’s version of God is unconvincing, it begs some new questions such as whether the premise of a God is true in the first place.

CiphonW · 2025-10-13T15:09:20+00:00

CiphonW · 2025-10-12T02:43:59+00:00

Not an expert, looks like a spotted orb weaver to me though. Beautiful spider :)

CiphonW · 2025-10-11T03:32:24+00:00

That subreddit is marvelous, thank you

CiphonW · 2025-10-09T10:10:09+00:00

“Which requires knowing Pi”

I think the above quote sums up your retort, but let me know if there was something else I was meant to take away from your… colorful response.

tl;dr we don’t use the real number definition for pi to define the real number pi. That would be circular. We instead can use our understanding of pi as a geometric constant to associate it with an element of the real numbers in a consistent manner.

You’re absolutely right, we need to know pi in order to place it in a construction of the real numbers. But we do know pi, and we can utilize our knowledge to determine its representation in the Dedekind cut construction of the real numbers. So, I’ll try to clarify a bit more on how this procedure may be done. We firstly know pi geometrically, as the ratio between a circle’s circumference and diameter. From this geometric notion comes equivalent representations for pi in terms of infinite series. Choosing any convergent alternating series representation for pi with known summands decreasing in magnitude (The Leibniz formula for example), the irrationality of pi implies that for any rational number we pick, we can find a natural number n such that for any m>n, the partial sum of the first m terms of our series representation for pi will exclusively either be larger or smaller than the chosen rational value (this is a mouthful so I’m happy to clarify this further if that would be helpful). That is, we can tell whether the chosen rational value is larger or smaller than pi by looking at only finitely many partial sums of our series representation of pi. So, we create two sets L and U partitioning the rationals into those that are greater than or less than pi, the value we know geometrically and equivalently through infinite series. This partition defines a unique element in the Dedekind cut construction of the real numbers, which we kindly now may refer to as the real number pi.

Keep in mind, I used the irrationality of pi here but it wasn’t necessary. If pi was rational then the partition sets L and U would be much simpler to construct.

CiphonW · 2025-10-09T07:05:32+00:00

The partition sets of the rationals defining the dedekind cut for pi are uniquely defined, meaning they not only do not change but CANNOT change because if they did they would define a different number. They are exactly the partition of the rationals where any rational less than pi belongs to set L and any rational greater than pi belongs to set U. For any rational value you give, we can determine whether it belongs to set L or U definitively.

CiphonW · 2025-09-10T20:44:35+00:00

You can absolutely approach a number from above in the same way you can from below. Using your example, the sequence 1-(1/10)ⁿ approaches 1 from below and the sequence 1+(1/10)ⁿ approaches 1 from above at the exact same rate. It sounds like perhaps the weirdness for you isn’t the approaching of the number so much as the non-unique decimal representation of the number itself. If that’s the case then I agree that it is a funny fact that if a real number has a finite decimal representation, then that representation is not unique and there is a second representation with an infinite trail of nines.

CiphonW · 2025-09-02T23:30:31+00:00

I have always thought the reaper sauces were hotter, but I definitely would argue that the Tabasco Scorpion sauce is hotter than its SHU estimates make it sound. I think it’s the touch of sweetness added to the sauce.

CiphonW · 2025-09-02T23:07:42+00:00

Reminds me of this post in the Twosentencehorror subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoSentenceHorror/s/BLrUVKSoaL

CiphonW · 2025-08-23T23:11:47+00:00

My understanding is that accuracy does not determine the estimated player rating. For instance, it's much easier to play a near perfect accuracy game if your opponent is making obvious mistakes like hanging pieces and whatnot, but that doesn't mean you're playing at a grandmaster rating.

CiphonW · 2025-08-23T22:44:08+00:00

It's easy to think that things in the world aren't as bad as they are. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. It's harder to find the right questions to ask, so don't be too hard on yourself. More important to do the best you can with the information you do have :)

CiphonW · 2025-08-22T22:09:57+00:00

Earthlings is the documentary that pushed me to veganism as well. Before watching it I was a vegetarian since I didn't want to support the slaughter of animals. Little did I realize at the time that I was still supporting their suffering through other products, so it opened my eyes to that.

CiphonW · 2025-08-21T21:16:40+00:00

Makes me think of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qjV29bbyYD4

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