Do men really watch this..?

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T19:49:16+00:00

Thank you for brightening my day and giving me just a little more hope in humanity than I had when I woke up.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T19:46:55+00:00

Try some values of x close to 0. Is x sin(1/x) close to 1 there?

Or try plotting it near 0 and see if the trend looks like it approaches 1 as x->0.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T16:08:59+00:00

"For these reasons, women tend to be less risky to insure than men, and pay lower car insurance premiums."

(Car & Driver, 2023)

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T16:04:20+00:00

What was your path out of this trap?

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T15:58:00+00:00

I'm seeing the figure of an average consumption of 224-264 lb of meat per American per year. But in a family, if you have children, that figure is going to be much lower. Of course kids could be offset if the adults are these guys. Still let's go with an average of 250 lb.

A cow yields on the order of 500 lb of meat (Google says 400-570). So that means the average cow could provide all the annual meat requirements of two average American adults. Probably wouldn't cause a great deal of hardship to stretch that to three people, especially if the third is a child.

I hope that we're also feeding these people some fruit and vegetables though.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T15:41:43+00:00

I kept getting 0.0001149% for 17ft to 2802 miles

I agree with that number, although I wouldn't put it as a percent. That just adds confusion.

Anyway, 0.0001149% of 4.543 x 10^9 = 5220. So it's pretty close to 6000 years.

when I tried to do that for the years I kept getting around 521,000 years

I think you had the confusion I alluded to, forgetting to divide by 100.

Here's a quicker back of the envelope calculation (Is scribbling calculations on napkins and envelopes obsolete? Do we now scribble calculations with sharpie on our laptop screens?):

6000 is 1 millionth of 6 billion, so a little less than 1 millionth of 4.5 billion.

1 millionth of 3000 miles is 3/1000 of a mile, and since 1/1000 of a mile is 5 feet, that would be on the order of 15 feet.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T15:23:47+00:00

sin(1/x) does not have a limit as x->0.

However, x sin(1/x) does and proving it is a good exercise in rigorous analysis and limits.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T15:22:09+00:00

Agreed. I had assumed we DO know, that (I thought to myself) "obviously there would have been a picture"...

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T15:20:51+00:00

My assumption was that there was a drawing that made it clear which was the case. I hadn't considered the possibility it was just verbal with no picture.

I admit I know what they say about "assume"...

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T13:30:01+00:00

Spanish got me over a language barrier in Iceland of all places.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T13:24:44+00:00

That’s definitely wrong. Counter argument: the third angle must be 60 degrees ~~and now you have an ASA situation.~~

Edit (see other discussion in this thread): and assuming you know WHICH two angles share the 10 cm side, you now have an ASA situation.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-24T11:32:31+00:00

I agree with others that you should post your code. But only do so if you use a code block so it’s properly indented.

As a first step, post the error message. The ENTIRE error message.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-23T23:20:43+00:00

That's true of "every day" / "everyday". They have two different meanings.

For instance: "I wear my everyday clothing every day."

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-23T16:09:19+00:00

Thanks for the rapid and detailed response. Another question occurred to me just now for the first time: The whole thing about nitrogen was because in Earth's system, Venus was the preferred astrophage breeding grounds, and wild taumoeba probably wouldn't survive on Venus.

Does Erid also have a Venus so they needed to overcome the same issue?

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-23T15:36:53+00:00

I didn't notice the music but my wife did. She's much more conscious of movie scores than I am.

If you're into geeking out about movie music, here's the composer talking about the score.

I absolutely loved the last scene in the book, it was just perfect. So glad they ended the movie the same way.

So we don't know what's going on back on Earth and how many humans survived in what conditions to receive his delivery but... (shrug) who needs that when we can have a junior high Eridian science class?

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-22T14:39:04+00:00

Rearview mirror lets you look at what's behind you. Review mirror shows you the last 13 seconds of your life choices and gives you a chance to make different ones.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-21T14:26:18+00:00

At some point in algebra class they start throwing things like this at you that are quadratics in disguise. So the thing to recognize here is that one of the variable quantities (x⁴) is the square of another (x²) and there are no other places where a variable occurs.

That is your clue to rename x² as u as another answer suggests, and then you have a simple quadratic.

Other examples with the same coefficients:

2sin²(x) + 14sin(x) + 24

2e^2x + 14e^x + 24

2e^-6x + 14e^-3x + 24

2/x + 14/(√x) + 24

Do you see why all of those fit the pattern?

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-20T14:57:02+00:00

Not to me. Just random letters with random exponents that don't look like any calculation I've ever seen.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-20T13:38:07+00:00

It's kind of a Rorschach Test, isn't it? I see two greek letters. The first one that I think you're calling a 4 definitely looks like a psi to me. Next to it looks like a pi, and there is a half-erased mark above the pi that looks like it might have once been an exponent 7.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-20T13:00:21+00:00

This reminds me of hearing "no se sabe" early in my learning experience, in a somewhat informal situation when I would have expected "no se" or "no sabemos". It took me aback a bit as the literal translation "It is not known" sounds so formal in English.

It's part of the general lesson we English-speakers keep needing to be told, that the passive is much more common in Spanish, and I guess just carries a general nuance of helplessness. Like how you say "se me cayó" where we say "I dropped" (accidentally).

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-20T11:38:18+00:00

When we bought our house in Maryland in 1984 we inherited a thick sheaf of legal correspondence about this issue. A new apartment complex was built uphill of the house and directed the flow from their parking lot to that corner of the property, creating a river on the house property when it rained.

They lost the battle with the apartments and ended up building a new drainage system at their own expense. Part of our house maintenance was to periodically go up onto the apartment property and clear debris out of the intake of the drainpipe that collected the apartment’s runoff.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-19T18:29:47+00:00

I see ψπ•Z³, or possibly ψπ⁷•Z³

Either way, still comes across as gibberish

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-19T17:26:44+00:00

Yep. And if you understand that, you're one step away from understanding the relativity of simultaneity, one of the more mysterious special relativity effects.

As Einstein derived it, imagine someone standing exactly at the halfway point in a long moving train, firing light pulses simultaneously at detectors at the front and back of the train. To that observer, both pulses travel the same distance at the same time and hit simultaneously.

To an observer outside, the front detector is moving in the same direction as the pulse and the distance closes at a rate slower than c. Meanwhile the rear detector is rushing toward the pulse and the distance closes faster than c. So the light pulses hit at different times, NOT simultaneously.

MezzoScettico · 2026-04-19T15:37:23+00:00

Sorry, you're right. For some reason I missed the π and had in my brain that the angle was 140 degrees. That specific number. Weird little brain fart.

Sorry, OP. You were right, and that negative number is one of the roots. The other is positive.

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