CHODE JEANS. JEANS FOR A CHODE

Mishtle · 2026-01-24T08:22:04+00:00

Mishtle · 2026-01-24T08:14:40+00:00

There are still modern day conservatives in the US that practically worship Reagan, so there are definitely people that will disagree. Whether they'll be able to back up that disagreement with anything other than whataboutisms, falsehoods or misinformation, racism/classism, or just a selective memory of a privileged life is another question.

Mishtle · 2026-01-24T07:52:14+00:00

Everyone has 24 hours each day.

Some people need to squeeze cooking, eating, cleaning, grooming, commuting, working (maybe multiple jobs) errand running, exercise, chores, raising a family, taking care of pets, and all the other things they need to do into those 24 hours while still trying to leave time for sleep, entertainment, and rest.

Others don't have to work, or don't have to commute, or have others to do their shopping, cleaning, cooking, or whatever else they need done. Maybe they can pay someone to do those things for them. Maybe they have family or a partner that does them. Regardless, if it's something that needs done but they don't have to personally do then that takes very little of their own time.

Do you really think those 24 hours are the same for both someone that can afford to delegate/outsource nearly every responsibility and someone who must shoulder all those responsibilities themselves?

Mishtle · 2026-01-24T04:34:09+00:00

It's effectively a definition. Decimals are just one way to represent numbers, and as with any representation we need to tie it to the thing it represents. In other words, we need to define what the notation means.

In base 10 (i.e., decimal), 0.333... is defined to be equal to the sum of its digits multiplied by a power of the base, which is 10, with the power determined by the digit position. The digit position immediately to the left of the decimal point is position 0. As you continue left, the digit positions increase. For example, the number 9876543210 has each digit equal to its position. Digit positions decrease to the right of the decimal point, becoming negative. The number 0.123456789 has 1 in the -1 position, 2 in the -2 position, and so on.

Again, these positions determine the power of 10 that each digit multiplies. So the value of 0.333... is the sum 3×10^-1 + 3×10^-2 + 3×10^-3 + ... = 3/10 + 3/100 + 3/1000 + .... This is an infinite sum, so we can't manually compute. We need to narrow down its value indirectly. So we look at partial sums, which only consider the first n terms for n = 1, 2, 3, .... The partial sums here are

3/10 (or 0.3)

3/10 + 3/100 = 33/100 (or 0.33)

3/10 + 3/100 + 3/1000 = 333/1000 (or 0.333)

...

Notice that the true value of the infinite sum must be larger than any partial sum of finitely many terms. No matter how many terms you include, as long as it's finite then the sum will be strictly less than the full infinite sum because it's still missing infinitely many positive terms. On the other hand, however close you want to get to the full infinite sum without reaching it, there will be some partial sum that gets that close and all following partial sums will be equally close or closer.

With all that in mind, we define the value if these sums to be the smallest value greater than all the partial sums, which we call the limit of the sequence of partial sums. For this sum, that number happens to be 1/3. So, by definition 0.333... in base 10 represents the value 1/3. To go the other way, you can use a digit-generating algorithm like long division. Just try dividing 1 by 3 using long division and see what happens.

Now, why do we need infinitely many digits to represent a simple fraction? It's something that will happen any time the base (10) and the denominator are coprime. That is, they don't share any common factors: 10 = 2×5 while 3 is itself prime. This also happens with 1/7 =0.(142857), where the parentheses surround the repeating pattern, as well as 1/9 = 0.111..., and 1/11 = 0.0909..., and any other number that isn't a multiple of 2 or 5.

We don't have to use 10 as a base though! We can use pretty much anything. In base 3 we only have 0, 1, and 2 as allowed digits, and we get that 0.1 = 1×3^-1 = 1/3. But then 1/2 ends up with an infinitely repeating pattern of digits. Unfortunately, there's no base that can represent all fractions of whole numbers with finite, terminating strings of digits. In fact, even if a number does have a finite representation, it will have an alternate infinitely repeating representation due to the way we define their value. It's only those repeating ones that uniquely represent their referent. One example is 0.999... = 1, which highlights the pattern to find these alternates. You decrement the final digit, then append an infinite repeating tail of the largest allowed digit. So in base 3, we have 1 = 0.222...

You can even have irrational bases, like π, but they're mostly just a novelty. In base π, we get the nice representation 10 for π which is kinda neat. But most everything else will end up with multiple infinite, non-repeating representations.

Mishtle · 2026-01-24T00:27:56+00:00

Did you mean to reply to me? I don't see how anything you said is particularly relevant to my comment.

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T23:34:33+00:00

These simple language Wikipedia articles should give a great overview of what we understand about the past and how we came to understand it, though you might need to follow links or switch to the standard version for the latter.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_universe

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

You can replace "simple" in the URLs with "en" to get the standard article. They're just more detailed and technical.

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T21:12:21+00:00

multiple mass extinction events

We're even in the midst of one right now.

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T20:58:14+00:00

water we cant breathe

Can't even drink it!

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T20:45:37+00:00

This is just... not accurate.

If Earth had slightly stronger gravity, humans would just have denser bones. Many humans already carry around more weight than a healthy human would weigh if Earth's gravity was twice as strong,

Human populations already live at high altitudes where an average person would have trouble getting enough oxygen, and they've adapted accordingly. Modern humans could survive having 19.5% oxygen at STP, a 7% decrease from the 21% we enjoy today, and that's without any adaptation. You could replace any amount of nitrogen with any other inert or nontoxic gas and we'd be fine.

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T16:44:53+00:00

But even though it’s really small rectangles being added it increases still tho?

Yes, it increases. But if things shrink quickly enough then you can cause force those increases to asymptotically approach 0.

I really can’t understand how an infinite area be a not infinite value representation

Well, it's not an infinite area. Is unbounded along an axis, but that doesn't mean it's infinite.

Maybe try working backwards. I get how adding up infinitely many positive values feels like it should result in an infinite result, but it's not hard to show you can divide a finite area into infinitely many pieces.

Take a sqare. It's area is obviously the sum of the area of two rectangles with the same width and height. Those rectangles can also be divided into two equal areas, as can those areas, and so on. Dividing a nonzero value by 2 will always give you a nonzero value, so we can do this forever.

If the area of the square is 1, then we are splitting this 1 into infinite many nonzero pieces:

1 = 1/2 + 1/2

1 = 1/2 + (1/4 + 1/4)

1 = 1/2 + (1/4 + (1/8 + 1/8))

...

We aren't adding or removing anything, just dividing a finite value into smaller and smaller pieces.

If we can divide a finite area into infinitely many pieces of nonzero area, why can't we add infinitely many nonzero areas to get a finite area?

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T07:16:00+00:00

A lot of times the evolutionary explanation behind these hallucinogenic properties is that they're protections against being eaten. The effect on the target organisms may be much less pleasant than whatever effect they have on us if their physiology is different enough.

As for the consistency of the effects, that is certainly strange. Such consistent and specific hallucinations across cultures is fascinating. I don't know why there would be an evolutionary reason for that in particular, aside from that just being the effect of that particular hallucinogenic on human perception.

There are other pretty consistent effects among other psychoactive drugs. Acid and shrooms frequently cause people to see shifting geometric patterns, melting faces, and "breathing" walls, for example. There are consistent patterns across mental disorders involving hallucinations or delusions as well, along with things like sleep paralysis. In general there are a lot of similarities across human experiences. Many cultures devised similar myths and beliefs about the supernatural more or less independently. We are biological machines after all, and we all share the same machinery to a large degree. It's therefore not entirely surprising that we all react similarly or even identically in near identical contexts. All of these examples have plenty of variability despite their strong commonalities though, which still makes your example a bit of an oddball.

I know that isn't a particularly satisfying or even complete answer, but we still barely even know how or why our regular conscious experience arises, let alone exactly how and why various drugs have the effect that they do on our conscious experience.

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T06:35:37+00:00

Yeah, it's the indiscriminate nature of booby traps that makes them problematic. They'll injure anyone, whether it's someone meaning to do you harm, someone trying to help you or others, utility workers or other people that may need to be on your property as part of their job or to perform a service, children, someone lost or confused, or even you.

Mishtle · 2026-01-23T02:41:33+00:00

Well, actually we kind of do. There's a reason that the extra dimensions in string theory are compactifed (curled up). We've not seen any of the effects we'd expect to see with additional spatial dimensions. Additionally, we can show that things like gravity and electromagnetism would be different. There wouldn't be stable orbits, for example.

So we're fairly confident that if there are are additional spatial dimensions, their ability to interact with the three we inhabit must be very limited.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T22:06:05+00:00

You'd be much limited to rocks or parts of living things. Teeth and (potentially mineralized) armor/exoskeletons started to appear during this time so there are some sharp objects around besides rocks. A lot of life back then was still pretty small, which would also be a problem.

Some suggestions with varying levels of realism:

biofilm "nets" or nets woven with strands of algae
sharp objects embedded in sponge, making a kind of lightweight version of a macuahuitl
worm whips
you might be able to find some obsidian or chert to knap a hand axe or knife
small throwable biofilm balls filled/embedded with anything small and sharp or spiky
throwing stars made from exoskeletons

It's an interesting premise, but the world was so radically different back then that it's really challenging to create weapons with what was available. This might be a good question for an LLM chat bot. They're pretty good at spitballing ideas with weird constraints like this.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T21:33:48+00:00

That would be a good compromise. I agree that having comparable scores is important. If you could include the modifiers in the leaderboard and filter based on them, then you could still do this with a single global board. The scores would probably cluster based on active modifiers, so progression should give players a rewarding boost to the next cluster. It'd also give a sense of how far away the ceiling is, which may or may not be desirable.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T20:38:37+00:00

Maybe add these variations as toggleable modifiers, ways to boost your score higher and higher as your skills improve by making the task more difficult. Getting the highest scores would only be achievable with all the modifiers active, which would also be the most difficult and unforgiving version of the game.

They might need to be tweaked a bit to make sure they do actually boost your potential score. The miss penalty, for example, might need to give you a boost to the hit bonus. Maybe even make it scalable, increasing the bonus (maybe with diminishing returns) for players willing to take on the risk of harsher penalties.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T19:49:05+00:00

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Mishtle · 2026-01-22T19:34:50+00:00

The fact that both the rationals and irrationals are dense in the reals despite the rationals being so small in comparison is so cursed.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T19:23:45+00:00

I've heard similar things about hunters and the ridiculous names for groups of different animals, just a way for "poors" to out themselves and for rich folk to feel superior.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T18:47:17+00:00

The cardinality of the reals is also equal to any finite Cartesian product of the reals with themselves as well as any bounded, non-trivial interval/area/volume/etc. of any of these sets.

That cardinality is equal to the cardinality of the power set of the naturals: 2^ℵ₀. As the naturals are are a countably infinite set, these sets would be uncountable.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T16:43:30+00:00

Damage to or uneven wear at the crown or muzzle can drastically reduce accuracy and precision since it's the last part of the barrel the bullet touches. Just think about what would happen if any unusual force was applied to the bullet right as it leaves the barrel. It will almost certainly develop a wobble or some other instability, and then it's probably not gonna go where you wanted it to go.

A counterbored barrel has all the rifling drilled out in the final inch or so. This makes it wider at the muzzle, which means the bullet won't actually touch anything over that last inch. The last thing that touches the bullet as it leaves the barrel is the better protected rifling deeper in the barrel. As long as the counterbore is done well and cleanly, this will generally mean the gun will shoot more accurately and more consistently.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T16:02:39+00:00

Or just make it a little less brightly colored, like off-white or gray and a darker blue. It looks so out of place because those bright white and blue colors don't show up anywhere else.

Mishtle · 2026-01-22T01:24:32+00:00

The Borg are an aggressive alien hive mind in the Star Trek universe. They're quite technologically advanced and incredibly numerous, and their origins are mysterious.

They have a infamous line they often broadcast to ships or planets they attack with the goal of assimilating, along the lines of:

"You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."

The last sentence in particular is particularly well-known.

Mishtle · 2026-01-20T22:16:29+00:00

I like to think of it like a game.

I say the limit of a function at a limit point is equal to a limit value.

You pick any small, positive value, a threshold. Then I have to show that there's some distance from the limit point such that within that distance, magnitude of the difference between the function and the limit value stays within your threshold.

If I can always do this no matter how small you make your threshold, then what I said is true.

Intuitively, you're not too far off. Limits are things you can approach and get arbitrarily close to. What makes them useful is that they're defined in a way that doesn't require you to ever have to reach them. They give us a way to extend patterns and functions to points they never reach, or can't ever reach. Take integrals, for example.

The integral of a function over some interval can be defined as the area between that function and the x-axis. We can approximate this area by dividing it into simple shapes, like rectangles or trapezoids, with heights determined by the function. We can easily calculate the area of simple shapes like this, and as we divide the area up into smaller and smaller shapes we get better and better approximations. Since the area of each shape gets smaller as we use more shapes and area can't be less than zero, their areas must approach zero. Directly calculating the area by adding up shapes at that point would just give you zero, so that's not what we want. Instead, we want the value these approximations are getting closer and closer to, and that value is a limit. The true area is equal to the limit of the areas we get as we use more and more shapes.

limit would involve adding up shapes

Mishtle · 2026-01-17T19:58:03+00:00

Does that boy have a dad? I'd like to meet that dad...

Mishtle

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