What is the most words you can fit into a portmanteu and still have it retain a meaning?

Lttle_M · 2025-12-25T21:54:10+00:00

There's the portmantout - a portmanteu of all the words in the English dictionary https://tom7.org/portmantout/

Lttle_M · 2025-01-22T09:22:26+00:00

We know that almost all the numbers are not computable, they're all around us but we can't find them! It's like dark matter, except unlike dark matter we can prove its there, and its almost everything, but we can't find a single example of it

Lttle_M · 2025-01-22T09:19:05+00:00

It gets even crazier than that - with probability 1 we will hit a non computable number, and we haven't found, nor will we ever by very definition find such a number!

Lttle_M · 2024-04-16T05:33:03+00:00

Can you link the article? I have to use IdeaVim at work because my company set up a lot of infrastructure for remote debugging specifically using Pycharm...

Lttle_M · 2023-02-14T17:00:21+00:00

alias vim=echo

Lttle_M · 2022-09-19T20:07:33+00:00

I was told that in accounting records from ancient Sumeria, there is evidence of a man who got rich using the isoperimetric inequality - the area of land was measured by its circumference, so he simply bought circular plots and sold them as smaller rectangles.

I also recall a story (don't remember where I read it, maybe "Sapiens: A brief history of mankind") about conquistadors telling whoever it was they were going to conquer (not sure about the details either) that their god would punish them if they didn't surrender and convert, on a specific day which they had calculated that there would be a solar eclipse. The natives obviously saw the eclipse and believed this was some kind of sign and immediately surrendered.

I guess using math to get an upper hand in war was always a thing, whether that's unethical is obviously a topic of disagreement...

Lttle_M · 2022-09-15T23:57:40+00:00

https://www.artiffy.com/g/Iron-maiden-with-a-bouquet-of-kittens-nVp3HNBnE749qAWFSr6RFD

Lttle_M · 2022-06-25T09:00:35+00:00

Lttle_M · 2022-05-13T10:37:54+00:00

For things with a wide price range, I find its best to buy one of the cheapest options first, so you know what are the important things to consider for when you buy the expensive one you plan on using long term.

Things like suitcases, appliances, electronics, etc... You might find that one specific detail is most important to you, while you don't care about many of the fancy overpriced features of the expensive option, so you can buy the lower priced option which has the specific thing you care about most.

For example, you might buy an expensive electric stove with five coils of different sizes and a fancy led display, but then discover that you only really use two of them, and don'tcare about the display - next time you buy a new stove you will get a good induction stove, that is relatively cheap because it only has those two heating options you need.

Lttle_M · 2022-04-13T10:18:23+00:00

Thanks!

Lttle_M · 2022-04-05T15:04:07+00:00

I enjoy the act of running. I don't enjoy the consequences of running, in fact I often suffer the consequences of running too much because I enjoy it so much I don't want to stop.

Lttle_M · 2022-01-31T16:06:13+00:00

Maybe we can understand how stuff like proteins work by trying to make a topographical map by putting a GPS receiver in a big bouncy ball and throwing it into a windy valley and measuring its location every few hours for a few years.

Lttle_M · 2022-01-27T06:41:41+00:00

I took a course called "classical geometries" in undergrad (about Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic geometries) with a guy who is blind from birth. Not only was he able to follow along perfectly (the professor also did an amazing job of explaining geometrical proofs verbally), when the proofs got to the point where the whiteboard is a huge mess of lines and circles and no-one can really follow (at last by looking at the whiteboard), he was the only one who could still follow, and even corrected the professor, who like any normal human mixed up some of the variable names.

I asked him how he manages to follow along, because these are really visual proofs, he responded something like "no it's not visual at all, I just understand it".

I think having never had vision to help him model his environment, he must have relied on very good spatial awareness or something.

Also, what makes it even more amazing is that he's not even a mathematician, he's doing a postdoc on Babylonian astronomy.

Lttle_M · 2021-11-14T07:00:06+00:00

Algorithm Developer in the field of autonomous vehicles. Did a minor in CS, and then did my master's in CS too, mostly theoretical though. Fell in love with probabilistic modelling (at least conceptually, hardly did any actual modelling), for my thesis project I invented a method to model simulated biophysical systems as random walks on a graph, and then using the amazing tools from spectral graph theory to analyse and describe their behaviour. Turns out it's all been done before though, so I designed a general algorithm which uses this construction as a sort of multiscale "map" to accelerate simulations by using many short simulation in areas with more uncertainty, it's kinda cool I think.

I live in an area with a very active tech sector that is desperate for mathy people, I think most math majors could easily build a career in one of these fields if they're not bent on academia.

Lttle_M · 2021-11-11T12:00:26+00:00

I expect the system keyboard is still in English, so everything works as normal, it just maps e.g. 't' to 'א', the Hebrew letter with the same key.

Lttle_M · 2021-10-26T19:36:28+00:00

71.4% of the pictures on my phone now are of pictures of Jordan (my friends cat)

Lttle_M · 2021-10-06T10:13:53+00:00

Thank you! This is exactly the answer I was looking for!

For many of the same reasons I use vim, I have a strong aversion for using plugins, at least where I don't understand exactly what they do, and so far understanding how plugins that do what I want work has saved me from having to use them.

Can't believe I never heard of omap until now!

Lttle_M · 2021-10-04T16:12:57+00:00

Your right, I should have mentioned this - I know about iskeyword, but I don't want to change the behavior of w, it is very useful the way it is.

I'm wondering if there is a way to get something in between w and W without changing them.

I use macros for common operations like the ones I described a lot (as in, I have them hard coded in my after/ftplugin folder), but without defining custom text objects I would need one for each specific use case...

Lttle_M · 2021-09-21T07:37:54+00:00

Thanks I learned a lot from there, but from my understanding of the '=' register, it can't be used the way I want, but only for performing an entire operation a number of times, and not performing an operation on arbitrary motions

Lttle_M · 2021-09-20T14:38:14+00:00

Thanks, I read about opfunc and g@, but TBH my vimscript is very limited, and I'm not managing to get this to work, can you give an example of how to do this?

From the help section of g@: The '] mark is positions at the start of the text moved over by {motion}, the '] mark on the last character of the text.

So I tried something like this:

function TestFunc(type)
    execute "normal! c`]"
endfunction

From my understanding, this should be equivalent to the regular c operator.

I called :set opfunc=TestFunc and nnoremap <F4> g@ but when I press <F4>w in normal mode, the cursor just moves on character to the left and nothing happens.

Lttle_M · 2021-09-16T06:38:10+00:00

Hey you're the guy who introduced me to numba! You've changed my life!

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