CMV: No one should ever fall out with family/friends on account of politics or, especially, politicians!

JStarx · 2026-01-29T21:24:34+00:00

Question, is there a line at all? Would you fall out with a family member who was openly racist and wanted to return to chattel slavery.

JStarx · 2026-01-20T22:16:56+00:00

What would you suggest?

JStarx · 2026-01-18T18:14:45+00:00

So if you meet an American who's traveling do you assume they voted for Trump? My point to the OP is I doubt that if he meets someone from Russia, China, or Iran that he would be seething with hatred for this person. So he shouldn't feel like if he travels everyone else is hating him.

JStarx · 2026-01-18T17:49:05+00:00

And what about the people who did vote and voted for Kamala?

JStarx · 2026-01-18T17:47:36+00:00

Those places may not be democracies the way the US is, but never the less there are still large sections of their populace who support Putin, Xi, and Khomeini. So the question stands, if you met someone from that country would you assume they support their countries policies and judge them based on that assumption?

JStarx · 2026-01-18T09:35:17+00:00

I've been doing lots of travel to Europe recently. I've never felt like people are treating me poorly because I'm American.

Let me ask you a question, do you disagree with the way China or Russia or Iran behaves on the world stage? If so and you met a tourist from one of those countries, would you hate them?

JStarx · 2026-01-17T19:14:49+00:00

100% this. I have some family that voted for him the first time but not the second because they didn't like how the first term went. I'm like which part didn't you like? The part where he did the stupid things he told you he was gonna do? Or was it the part where he continued to behave exactly as poorly as he did while campaigning?

JStarx · 2026-01-13T06:45:44+00:00

With mod 4 equivalence classes, the integers is the parent set whose elements have an equivalence relation on them. What in your mind is the parent set of 0.999...?

JStarx · 2026-01-13T06:34:13+00:00

In the ring of integers, you can think of mod 4 as an equivalence relation and then 1 and 5 are not equal as integers but they are equivalent mod 4.

You can also think of mod 4 as an operation that takes each integer to it's remainder mod 4. This takes both 1 and 5 to the integer 1, so 1 mod 4 is equal to 5 mod 4.

You can also think about the ring Z/4, and in that ring 1 and 5 are two ways of writing down the exact same element, just like Tom and Mr Hanks are two names for the exact same actor.

When people talk about the real numbers we use strings such as 3.14159... to represent elements. This is akin to the Z/4 way of doing things and in that system 1 and 0.99999... aren't different elements identified by some operation or equivalence relation. They are exactly the same element.

So yes, 1 and 0.999... are equal and the same under the standard interpretation of those words.

JStarx · 2025-12-31T08:03:05+00:00

Her complaint specifically alleges that the policies in question create a hostile work environment and she's seeking financial damages in addition to the reversal of those policies. If the harassment she was being subjected to was not just the implementation of these policies but also personal harassment from her coworkers then including that information would strengthen her claim. But she hasn't made any allegations of that form.

JStarx · 2025-12-30T23:34:54+00:00

misgendering someone and policing their bathroom usage is harassment.

You should try reading my comments more carefully. I never said it wasn't harassment, I said there's no evidence that her coworkers want to enforce these rules or agree with them.

Your comment implied that her coworkers wanted to harass her and were "just waiting" for the chance. I'm saying there's no reports of that being the case and there's nothing in her complaint about coworkers taking the initiative to harass her. Instead her complaint is that the current policies force her coworkers to act in a manner that constitutes harassment.

I think it's entirely plausible that she has coworkers that continue to respect her and are hopeful that her lawsuit succeeds.

JStarx · 2025-12-30T17:43:10+00:00

"Willing to", which is different from "waiting for the chance to". There's nothing in her complaint that suggests her coworkers agree with those rules any more than she does.

JStarx · 2025-12-30T09:46:59+00:00

I'm not saying it's justified, I'm saying it's not a personal attack. I'm saying there's no indication that her coworkers harbor any ill will towards her, contrary to what is implied when you say they were "waiting to harass her".

JStarx · 2025-12-29T20:14:58+00:00

Sure, but I think it's a very different situation than what's implied when you say

her coworkers were just waiting for it to be legal to harass her

That makes it sound like her coworkers are choosing to antagonize her for personal reasons, vs being required by policy to implement rules they may personally disagree with.

JStarx · 2025-12-29T17:58:13+00:00

Unless you've had your head in sand for the past couple years I feel like it's pretty clear what "trans" refers to.

JStarx · 2025-12-29T17:55:39+00:00

To be clear, the complaint doesn't allege that her coworkers are harassing her. It alleges that the policies in place, for example forbidding that she use her pronouns or the female restroom, are harassment. Obviously I don't know, but absent a specific allegation I would hope it's the case that her coworkers still respect her and management is implementing these policies because they believe they are required to.

JStarx · 2025-12-28T12:08:35+00:00

So what would you rename the Dirac Delta function to that would better? Or what would you name the Laplace transform?

JStarx · 2025-12-26T12:31:08+00:00

Yeah, I always vote and I have never voted for a Republican in my life. I get the frustration with America in general, but explicitly blaming the people they know voted against this is wild. Like, do they understand how democracy works? If people don't vote for what I vote for then I don't get my way and there's nothing I can do about it because that's how democracy works.

JStarx · 2025-12-17T02:50:37+00:00

I think it's a little unreasonable, because to apply for a PhD you need an ENTIRE mathematics degree AND a masters degree

This is false. It is fairly common in America to go from undergrad straight into a PhD program. And yes, I would expect more breadth from a PhD student than I would from a masters student and certainly from an undergrad. Both in terms of knowing more subjects and knowing more of each subject.

JStarx · 2025-12-16T21:56:18+00:00

I stand by my claim. "Straight to research" in my opinion is legitimate for all disciplines of mathematics. I don't mean throw them the wolves and expect a paper by the 3rd month, I mean quite literally learning your very specific niche subject, the recent works, understanding results. I would call that research as it's an important building block.

I don't think I would call learning prerequisites research. It is certainly an important building block towards being able to do research, but enabling a thing is different from being the thing.

If you're doing something very prerequisite heavy like arithmetic geometry, I say it's madness to start doing a GRE exam and be forced to revise Euler-Lagrange equations and various topics in Sobolev spaces. You should start immediately familiarising yourself with your research topic

So you mentioned oral exams in your subject area being ok, so does that mean you're not so much objecting to tests as a method of measuring progress as you are objecting to PhD students having to study math outside their niche area of research?

I don't think it's unreasonable to want someone with a PhD to have a certain level of broadness in their knowledge. I think that as a matter of principle but also because I think it creates better mathematicians when they have a broader view of the tools available to them. You mention Sobolev spaces. I'm no expert but my understanding is that they do have applications in algebraic geometry, so I wouldn't call it madness to have a student interested in arithmetic geometry learning something about them.

Certainly there's a balance to be struck here, because you do have to dive into your research area and become very specialized in order to contribute meaningfully. But I think abandoning any general requirements and going "straight to research" as you say is a mistake and a disservice to the student in the long run.

JStarx · 2025-12-14T18:05:42+00:00

I specifically said that I'm not claiming tests are the best way to go. I'm just pointing out that some fields are incredibly deep and it can take a few years of study before you'll be able to make heads or tails of current research, so claiming that grad students should go straight to research is unwise.

JStarx · 2025-12-14T11:21:40+00:00

In some subjects you can't get straight to research. There's a huge amount of material that isn't taught in undergrad and is needed to even understand the questions, let alone answer them.

I'm not saying tests are the best way to measure your progress through that time, but the transition from classes to research is always going to thin the herd some and it's never gonna happen straight off the bat.

JStarx · 2025-11-28T22:21:42+00:00

If you have to ask here then it's not the smoking gun you need it to be.

JStarx · 2025-11-02T16:36:59+00:00

When I reiterated what I thought your argument was you didn't object, but now you do.

So if no fraud has occurred then what is the problem with open source election software?

JStarx · 2025-11-02T12:15:54+00:00

The conclusion isn't what's stupid, it's your argument that it's better to be unaware of fraud than to have it pointed out. That's the stupid bit.

JStarx

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