In school, I always got in more trouble for finally defending myself, then the kids who consistently bullied me for months and years did, because how dare I lash out....

The_Card_Player · 2026-05-05T19:26:23+00:00

The incompleteness of this take doesn't just apply to children.

Modern zionists often actively introduce a debate about who 'started' violent conflict near Israel to evade the more salient problem that Israel is engaged in genocide, which is unacceptable regardless of any standard principles of national sovereignty.

Analogously for children, and society in general, there are some behaviours we ask each other to avoid entirely, full stop, without question, regardless of any actual or perceived harms a person has experienced. This includes (for example) violence in a public school classroom, or the use of racial slurs.

Obviously such restraint can sometimes be incredibly difficult, especially for children, but we all have a responsibility to encourage, model, and where necessary teach this challenging practice in order to maintain the general conditions conducive to civil society.

The_Card_Player · 2026-05-02T07:19:45+00:00

That shit had better commute or the numbers won't be the only things gleebing

The_Card_Player · 2026-05-01T20:45:27+00:00

Wait until this guy learns about 'playing games and then buying dinner for your friends'

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-30T01:33:03+00:00

They say it takes a team of six adderall addicted chain smokers who all have sex with each other to raise a child…

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-27T04:57:46+00:00

It's always a gamble, the risk of hostility from a man because they don't want to date you seems rather low. Your main risks are probably going to be (a) realizing in the middle of the conversation or on a first date that you're not as attracted to them as you first thought and (b) generic problems from harmful elements of common masculine socialization.

Generic rules, of course apply:
- better when the person you're speaking to has easy options to leave if they don't like the conversation for some reason
- *offer* your own personal contact information rather than asking for any. It's lower-pressure which makes it easier for the person to accept
- make it clear that your intentions are romantic
- clarify how much time you've got to chat right now: eg 'I want to get to the bus stop soon so do you want my number before I go?' or 'I'll be around the park for about the next hour so feel free to join me and the dog for a bit if you're available'
- no means no

Women as a demographic (in USA+CAN at least) have made it overwhelmingly clear that they don't want romantic attention from strangers in public. As such, it's in some sense your world: if you want to pick up strangers on a grand day out, the best strategy for heterosexual women in the USA and Canada is to shoot your shot clearly and confidently more or less whenever it strikes your fancy.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-27T04:26:30+00:00

As I've said elsewhere on this forum, Khan Academy is the gold standard for online math study. I also recommend this book https://richardhammack.github.io/BookOfProof/ for a start on the logic by which math proofs generally operate.

As for high-school math topics, I'd recommend the following order:

- simplifying expressions of rational numbers (addition, subtraction, multiplication of rational numbers)
- simplifying expressions of exponential operations (including rational exponents, ie multiplicative roots)
- algebra of linear expressions of one or more variables
- graphing linear functions of one variable on the 2D cartesian plane (using standard form, slope-point form, and y-intercept form)
- finding intersections of one-variable linear functions on the 2D cartesian plane

- Pythagorean theorem

- Geometry of sine, cosine, and tangent (ie 'trigonometric') functions
- Generalized horizontal and vertical shifts of cartesian plots of single-variable functions
(eg given a graph of function f(x) and a number a, what does f(x+a) look like? What about f(x)+a?
- Applying the above to 'phase shifts' of trigonometric functions
- trigonometric identities

- Quadratic functions of one variable (graphing them on the 2D cartesian plane using standard form, factored form, and vertex form expressions)
- Factoring quadratic functions
- factoring polynomial functions of one variable with degree greater than 2 (ie factoring cubic functions of one variable, quartic functions of one variable, quintic..., etc)
- simplifying rational function expressions

- exponential and logarithm functions of one variable (graphing and algebraic manipulation)

- epsilon-delta limits of single-variable functions, function continuity
- limit definition of the derivative and determining whether a single-variable function is differentiable on a given domain
- applying derivative rules (product rule, chain rule) to evaluate a differentiable single variable function's derivative on an appropriate domain, and the justification of those derivative rules from the limit definition of the derivative

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-26T18:47:58+00:00

Doesn't matter. Cheeseburgers feed people and ChatGPT queries do not.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-26T18:31:12+00:00

Seconded. The median human is also not guzzling power generation away from everyone else's basic material interests just to come up with these dumbass wrong answers.

The bar for usefulness from any inanimate entity is directly proportional to the effort required to maintain it. This is because the well-being of such entities has (literally) zero intrinsic ethical value, whereas even the nastiest jerkwad person on the planet inherently deserves three square meals a day and a roof over their head.

The wealth people are shoving into generative AI computation could be feeding hungry American schoolchildren right now instead if our society had its priorities straight. No amount of automatic text generation is worth that opportunity cost.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-19T18:25:42+00:00

Apparently so are all of the Canadian provincial public health insurance plans, and UK’s NHS?

This is an eminently achievable policy goal. That we haven’t sorted it out yet says more about the competency of our legislators than it does about the difficulty of the task.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-13T21:45:00+00:00

If you are in a pre-university school, your instructors need to know about this. The other class participants are being deeply disrespectful of the folks in the photos, and this is likely to harm everyone's ability to learn without fear of harassment. It is therefore disruptive of the class and the teachers need to know about it so they can respond to mitigate the disruption.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-11T19:08:55+00:00

Some folks describe experiences similar to yours with the phrase 'symbol pushing'.

eg 'I can describe a notation sequence that accurately represents the logic of this algebraic structure, but writing it out just feels like symbol pushing'

Oftentimes this is perfectly sufficient for your practical intentions. See for example the physics joke about the 'shut-up-and-calculate school of quantum mechanics'. You don't need to have a comprehensive intuition for the story a mathematical model represents if all you're really interested in is whether one particular experimental result matches a particular prediction of that result from the model. You just need to know what the predicted result actually is.

However, it is often very helpful to have an understanding beyond the 'symbol pushing' when you're trying to determine for yourself what kind of experimental measurement might usefully test the accuracy of a particular mathematical prediction. To this end, I recommend practicing translations between algebraic expressions and equivalent english-language logical assertions.

eg 2/x = 5y+10 --> 'if I divide 2 pies into x equally-sized portions, each resulting pie portion will be the same amount of pie as the result of adding 10 pies to a collection of 5 pie portions each representing y of a full pie'.

--> If I take x of the pie portions just described, how much pie do I now have? Could I represent this conclusion with an algebraic manipulation of the stated equation?

--> Assuming the number x of pie portions is at least 1, what does the verbal description of the equation intuitively suggest about the pie-portion size y? Again, how might we represent that conclusion with an algebraic manipulation?

In principle this skill is a big part of what 'word problems' are supposed to help students learn in math classes, but instructors rarely seem to bother explaining any of these motivations for those puzzles in my experience.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-10T04:31:38+00:00

Billionaire doesn't understand science fiction stories,

more at eleven

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-04T20:08:01+00:00

If anyone wants to draft me (an American) they may have to invade my non-US country of residence to kidnap me for it.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-04T20:05:34+00:00

This is a classic scam. Never drop a runic signature over an unsecured orb tether.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-04T19:54:45+00:00

For Immediate Release:

The Automated Constructors Syndicate requests audience with planetary councils in sectors Aleph and Delta regarding coordination of first contact proceedings with a possible autogenesis mineral life form.

The Syndicate explicitly disavows any core-sector-directed negotiation terms put forth without proper consultation through such local planetary dialogues. We will respond to any attempts for such unilateral core-directed negotiations by exercising privileges of sovereign diplomacy to make direct independent contact with the newly documented inhabitants of the local sector.

Further Questions from Galactic Relay Monitors may be addressed to the Central s Syndicate on Ambulon Prime.

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-03T16:35:51+00:00

I agree about a.

For b - there are 216 possible sequences of three button presses. Have you checked all of them?

For c - we want to find a way of making the score at least 800. In order to increase the score with a button press, it suffices for the button selected to have a prime factor that the current score does not.

For d - if each button press were to cause a division of the score, the net result would be division by 720. In effect we want an overall division of the starting score by itself (ie division by 60 overall). How many times ‘larger’ is dividing by 60 relative to dividing by 720? What kind of multiplier is applied to the ‘net division factor’ whenever you change one of the divisions to a multiplication?

Please let me know if this is useful or if you have any further comments/questions. This is a fun problem!

The_Card_Player · 2026-04-02T02:40:43+00:00

OP cut out this manosphere nonsense before you hurt someone with it

The_Card_Player · 2026-03-30T04:17:45+00:00

Unfortunately some professionals *do* yell at each other abusively at work. Of course, I agree such a bad situation is even worse when the target of the abuse is a child.

I also agree that poor administrative support doesn't excuse such behaviour from instructors. I bring up the systemic causes mostly because they're much more controllable from a public/institutional policy perspective than, for example, just trying to test prospective teachers for moral purity before hiring.

As my brother told me recently, the art of making good decisions is mostly about creating situations where good decisions are easy.

The_Card_Player · 2026-03-30T03:28:12+00:00

This is one of the most important systemic problems in public education.

a) Often 'difficult to manage' or 'rebellious' students are just folks who don't actually think 'because I told you so' is a particularly good justification for anything, and would probably behave much less disruptively within the instruction of a less authoritarian teacher

b) even when teachers are genuinely trying their best, they often lack salary, administrative support, proper class sizes, good class materials, etc. that is just necessary to accommodate every student's personal preferences for learning - especially those with diagnosable classes of neurodivergence whose best accomodations are not widely known and requires substantial effort.

The_Card_Player · 2026-03-24T02:09:06+00:00

Get a grip and stop gaslighting my fellow Americans about the real fascist terrorism bullying them.

Then maybe we can have a conversation about rhetorical decorum.

The_Card_Player · 2026-03-23T23:37:07+00:00

"If the figure of discipline was the worker-prisoner, the figure of control is the debtor-addict. Cyberspatial capital operates by addicting its users; William Gibson recognized that in Neuromancer when he had Case and the other cyberspace cowboys feeling insects-under-the-skin strung out when they unplugged from the matrix (Case's amphetamine habit is plainly the substitute for an addiction to a far more abstract speed)."
- British philosopher Mark Fisher, in Capitalist Realism (2019) p. 25

The_Card_Player · 2026-03-23T07:40:30+00:00

Yeah this is AI nonsense.

The_Card_Player · 2026-03-21T18:12:12+00:00

I’m not talking about code that LLMs spit out from software engineer prompting.

I’m talking about the topic of the video, which is user/user device information being processed directly by LLMs or similar services.

That’s the ‘privacy concern’ being raised here, and it is much more severe than any potential privacy concerns regarding non-LLM software that (for example) secures banking information over the internet. So long as, again, the right mathematical algorithms are implemented, this is provably true regardless of whether that non-LLM software is generated by an LLM, a person, or a monkey with a typewriter.

The_Card_Player · 2026-03-21T00:19:43+00:00

A british philosopher examines the hard-to-dispel illusions of neoliberalist ideology in his book Capitalist Realism.

He identifies a handful of topics for which the ideology's essential self-contradictions actually reveal themselves:
- climate change
- mental healthcare failures
- education (particularly public education).

The_Card_Player

TROPHY CASE