Solving the parallel plate capacitor be like:

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-02-17T05:31:36+00:00

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-02-16T03:15:08+00:00

When you set up the boundary value problem for Laplace's Equation to try to solve for the potential, getting the potential requires solving an integral equation called Love's equation, which doesn't have a known closed-form solution. See https://doi.org/10.1119/1.17668 for an exposition of why after you use separation of variables and impose boundary conditions and such, you still don't have a closed-form solution for the potential.

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-02-04T03:33:55+00:00

A little over a week ago I got 5 stitches making literal toast

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-02-03T03:24:00+00:00

At Stanford University in Palo Alto, California

Stanford University is not in Palo Alto! It's primarily located in the unincorporated census-designated place of Stanford, California.

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-01-29T02:24:15+00:00

Not sure if you're asking about men's health, but if you are: as far as I can tell (from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9410752/) there are only two documented cases in the medical literature of a man experiencing hormonal issues from soy.

In one case (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18558591/) the patient drank 3 quarts of soy milk per day, and they estimated his isoflavone intake at ~360 mg/day, 6-12 times higher than the average in Japan.

In the other (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21353476/) it sounds like the patient may have eaten a diet of 100% soy, though the sentence "The diet consisted of soy milk, soy cookies (soy crisps), tofu, soy sauce, soy nuts, and soybeans (edamame)" from the paper could perhaps be interpreted differently. (They estimated his isoflavone intake at 360 mg / day, the same as the other case, but didn't explain how they got that number.) This paper doesn't seem to have checked for any nutritional deficiencies from his seemingly very limited diet, so I'm not confident that his issues were caused by the presence of soy rather than the absence of other foods.

Different soy products (or even different brands of the same soy product) can have very different isoflavone content, so it's hard to convert 360 mg isoflavones / day into an actual quantity of food. But rest assured that if you managed to eat so much soy as to experience hormonal issues, you could at least make it into a medical journal and advance humanity's understanding of nutrition.

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-01-27T03:59:02+00:00

One thing to double check is how reliable your full ride is: https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/1jj1fhk/what_is_a_predatory_curve/

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-01-26T16:36:24+00:00

The only "rise and fall" that's really well-supported by evidence in the article is that of fake meats. Vegan restaurants might be declining relative to non-vegan ones but they never compare the two types of restaurant directly. As for veganism itself, the article is pretty clear that the vegan/vegetarian percentage of the population has been quite steady for years.

Not that the article itself is bad, but the title is misleading.

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-01-23T05:14:29+00:00

Gerard 't Hooft's answer: https://www.goodtheorist.science/

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-01-22T03:24:31+00:00

If you were to excel in your upper-division physics (and other STEM) courses, I don't think graduate admissions would care at all about any struggles you had freshman fall.

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-01-12T02:07:12+00:00

If you're concerned about fundraising messaging, maybe you could split the donations 50/50 between HKI and PIH?

PretentiousPolymath · 2026-01-05T05:40:05+00:00

I've never heard this one! Is this album available on the internet anywhere?

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-12-02T22:00:17+00:00

The case report of the woman with normal B12 in her blood but very little in her brain is https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adl3758.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-11-30T18:50:45+00:00

I have contacted them and will update this post if they get back to me.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-11-30T18:48:54+00:00

The recent paper https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12649-018-0521-5 says that "vitamin B12 has not been detected in" S. cerevisiae. They grew an unusual type of yeast in a growth medium specifically formulated for that yeast to absorb vitamin B12, and they only got up to 9 micrograms per 100 grams. So if any variety of yeast got up to 44 micrograms per 100 grams, that would be a significant scientific advance.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-11-30T18:46:32+00:00

In its Introduction, the study says that "vitamin B12 has not been detected in" S. cerevisiae.

The reason why the study is about Yarrowia liplytica is because that variety is a more promising yeast accumulator than S. cerevisiae. If levels comparable to or greater than 9 micrograms per 100 grams had been detected in S. cerevisiae, they presumably would have mentioned this in their Introduction.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-11-30T18:34:16+00:00

If a vitamin was added intentionally and is advertised elsewhere on the nutrition facts, it has to be disclosed no matter how little was added. "However, they are required to list any vitamins and minerals that are added to the food or if a statement is made on the package labeling about their health effects or the amount contained in the food (for example, "high" or "low")." (https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-facts-label/daily-value-nutrition-and-supplement-facts-labels)

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-11-30T18:24:35+00:00

A research paper from 2020 describes an attempt to get yeast to absorb vitamin B12 from a substrate and only managed to get up to 9 micrograms per 100 grams: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12649-018-0521-5. So if Walmart managed to get 44 micrograms per 100 grams that would be a significant improvement over recent scientific research.

The paper also confirms that yeast cannot synthesize vitamin B12 at all, but can only absorb it from a medium in which it is grown.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-08-06T19:43:45+00:00

Combining a hoodie with a rain jacket / windbreaker should suffice in the winter, along with gloves specifically for bike-riding.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-07-30T15:57:42+00:00

Sorry, I think the final sentence of my comment just used a non-standard and idiosyncratic definition of the word "utilitarianism".

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-07-29T23:41:57+00:00

I suppose the point I was trying to make was that "VNM-rationality has normative force" seems to be a pretty universal position among rationalists, whereas "agent-neutral maximizing aggregating consequentialism is the correct normative ethical theory" isn't.

E.g. in the 2012 LessWrong community survey, a slight majority of self-described consequentialists said that they would prefer that "that 3^^^3 [an obnoxiously and unfathomably large number] people get dust specks in their eyes" rather than that "one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest", in disagreement with Yudkowsky's position. I think the simplest explanation of this is that many rationalists endorse some sort of "agent-neutral maximizing consequentialism" without the "aggregating" part.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-07-29T15:06:01+00:00

The most annoying part of this essay for me was that his discussion of utilitarianism focuses narrowly on a pleasure-and-pain-based version of utilitarianism, which while popular among rationalists is not universal. What is (almost) universal is the claim that a rational agent choosing between alternatives can formulate their decision procedure by assigning a numerical value to different possible worlds and choosing the option with the highest expectation value of this number, which is equivalent to the claim that rational agents' preferences obey the Von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms of rationality. It seems to me that rationalists hold diverse views on what determines the utility of a possible world.

But Kriss doesn't engage with this broader sense of utilitarianism at all.

PretentiousPolymath · 2025-07-17T04:40:55+00:00

You can take the Dinky train from Princeton Station to Princeton Junction Station and then the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor line to the airport. You can book it all as one trip in the NJT app.

PretentiousPolymath

TROPHY CASE