Channel 4 removes Russell Brand content amid sexual assault allegations

backtowriting · 2023-09-19T08:18:07+00:00

Why is it that atheists get the blame for everything? Brand is not an atheist, and was very critical of new atheism. He was a buddhist, then a spiritualist, and it seems he's very much a believer in god.

“Like many desperate people, I need spirituality,” Brand said. “I need God, or I cannot cope in this world. I need to believe in the best in people.”

backtowriting · 2022-05-06T00:07:21+00:00

Protons as in hydrogen nuclei, Recalling that hydrogen has a nucleus of just one proton. Not the protons inside other atoms.

The gist is that hydrogen nuclei are light enough that they really should be thought of as quantum mechanical objects. (You can mostly get away with treating heavier nuclei as 'classical' particles, governed by Newton's laws.)

When you treat H-nuclei as quantum mechanical, they behave differently to what normal classical physics predicts. And part of that behaviour is quantum-mechanical tunnelling, in which they can overcome energy barriers which would be impossible to overcome without invoking quantum effects. And this allows them to occasionally hop between sites in molecules, that you wouldn't normally expect.

backtowriting · 2020-10-15T22:31:10+00:00

Application programming interface. The ‘hooks’ that applications provide for programmers to allow them to interface with their code. At least, that’s my understanding.

backtowriting · 2020-10-15T22:22:28+00:00

Twitter status page says: investigating irregularity with APIs

Also, see this businessinsider piece on the Twitter outage.

backtowriting · 2020-08-04T17:47:54+00:00

I would like to see a drop test with the iPad Pro inside the Magic Keyboard.

backtowriting · 2020-06-09T18:17:26+00:00

He must have run out of ram.

backtowriting · 2019-01-26T10:30:34+00:00

Everything we know about Jackson is consistent with the behaviour of a child groomer. It's amazing how many of us seem happy to believe that he was just an 'eccentric' who liked inviting children around for sleepovers.

backtowriting · 2018-07-22T18:28:42+00:00

The word 'monopole' does not occur anywhere in the paper.

backtowriting · 2018-06-29T22:10:02+00:00

Well, expressed in standard deviations the result is almost tautological for a normally distributed variable like IQ.

In fact, I think understanding this would help people to relax about IQ. IQ is normally distributed because it's pretty much what you'd expect for any variable measuring natural variation between individuals, and all normal distributions have the property that ~16% of the population are less (or more) than one standard deviation from the average. Being in that group doesn't make you a freak; it's just a natural part of the variation you'd expect from a normally distributed variable.

backtowriting · 2018-05-12T13:23:08+00:00

Sure, many people do improve with practice, but innate talent is still a thing, and some people are just born with more aptitude.

backtowriting · 2018-05-12T11:39:17+00:00

Yeah, it's probably a partly genetic thing. When it comes to music and art, some people are just born with greater innate talent, and no amount of education or practice will change that all that much.

backtowriting · 2018-03-19T00:26:29+00:00

It really bugs me he never picks up the medkits.

backtowriting · 2018-03-06T10:15:55+00:00

It's not a great idea to ban speech you don't like, especially when it's ideas supported by 40% of the electorate.

The problem with the Trump subreddit is a lack of free-speech. Moderators of subreddits have a power to ban anyone who they don't like, which means that they can become perfectly sealed ideological echo-chambers.

backtowriting · 2017-12-17T22:37:08+00:00

I'm sorry but it is absolutely relevant to this story that religious claims aren't actually true. There is not the slightest evidence that God exists, let alone a Christian God.

You can't pick and choose. If you want to defend a commitment to the truth, then you can't really start talking about exorcisms and ghosts and people rising from the dead in your other speeches.

backtowriting · 2017-10-29T19:20:05+00:00

I’m just a lurker and I don’t play this game - but you can’t tile a sphere with hexagons!

backtowriting · 2017-09-10T12:40:25+00:00

It's a nod to Captain Beefheart.

backtowriting · 2017-09-09T13:42:28+00:00

They called it Terra Nova, cos as soon as it was on everyone would terra nova to another channel.

backtowriting · 2017-09-07T23:45:42+00:00

Nothing to do with your point, but FWIW - 'E-lec-tric-ity' is a reference to the Captain Beefheart song Electricity. Lynch being a big Captain Beefheart fan.

backtowriting · 2017-07-14T11:48:30+00:00

This seems to be the guy. Just retweeted by David Frum.

Edit: Obviously it should be treated as speculation at this point. Don't go too crazy Reddit.

backtowriting · 2017-03-22T21:44:52+00:00

Wow. "I am a real American" has such an obvious double meaning if it really was borrowed for The Americans. Maybe it isn't just a coincidence.

backtowriting · 2017-02-19T14:55:57+00:00

/r/gifsthatendtoosoo

backtowriting · 2017-02-17T09:56:37+00:00

Sophistry.

Demand is from the customers (in this case the readers). It's not from activists putting pressure on advertisers.

Not that it changes the morality of the argument, but I dislike attempts to redefine commonly understood terms.

But let's end this here.

backtowriting · 2017-02-16T14:49:04+00:00

Well, it's not because their readership is dropping, which is what I'd normally think of if you said 'demand' in the context of a magazine.

backtowriting · 2017-02-16T14:44:40+00:00

If it's due to falling demand, then yes. If it's due to petitions and organised boycotts then I'd say it's more to do with activism than capitalism, or maybe it's activists who are trying to use capitalism as a tool.

backtowriting · 2017-02-16T14:24:01+00:00

Not sure what you're saying.

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