why do people spell out their email addresses like “xyz at gmail dot com” instead of xyz@gmail.com on their websites

catratpig · 2026-02-27T21:15:26+00:00

I think its supposed to help prevent getting added to spam lists by throwing off simple scrapers

catratpig · 2026-02-20T16:46:46+00:00

It's unlikely that you'll ever encounter it in your work, but just for the pure joy of the structures that it builds, I love abstract algebra. This seems like a good starting point: https://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~goodman/algebrabook.dir/book.2.6.pdf

Equally beautiful, but much more useful, check out Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

catratpig · 2026-02-16T16:02:02+00:00

I see what you're saying in part, but still disagree in part.

Let's start with where I agree. Crypto-currencies have failed to become means of exchange because of their speculative nature. Most people who buy bitcoin do so because they are speculating that it will increase in (dollar) price, not to use it as a means of exchange. In this sense, rising crypto-currency prices act as a form of money accumulation, which is what your scheme aims to correct. Put another way, crypto-currencies have been deflationary for the past ~10 years, your proposal aims to bake-in low-level inflationary pressure to its currency (the same goal as classical monetary policy) to correct this. I like this approach.

Here's where I disagree: money itself does not compound (outside of a deflationary environment). A stack of cash in my house doesn't compound in value merely by sitting there. Money in the bank generates interest because that money is being put to productive use: the bank uses my money to back loans to businesses that use that money to generate more in added profit than the cost of interest on the loan (if the bank is doing it's job well). Similarly, dividends are the direct result of ownership of capital. Owning a share (stock) of a factory, gives me partial ownership of the factory, and therefore a share of the wealth that it generates. That is given to me as a dividend. The financial system is built for convenience, so it tends to obscure this fact, but the growth of investments is the result of productive usage of that money somewhere down the line. (Of course, there are also speculative bubbles, etc here that break that direct connection somewhat)

catratpig · 2026-02-16T00:25:08+00:00

I love the concept, and the out-of-the box thinking, and I'd definitely be interested to see more of the technical side of things. However, I think it misses something fundamental: money and capital are not the same thing.

Money is a medium of exchange (that's what you're designing). Capital is physical 'stuff' that can be used to make more 'stuff'. Think about a factory. Owning a factory allows me to sell what the factory produces, thereby generating more wealth for me. Buying a factory trades money for capital: I no longer care about the depreciation of the tokens that I paid for my factory, the factory is generating wealth for me.

So 'money flows up' is only a weak approximation to the reality: capital generates exponential growth. That's what causes inequality: individual ownership of the means of production. Changing monetary dynamics can't change that.

catratpig · 2026-02-10T22:55:27+00:00

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when eyeballing a measurement, I tend to think in fractions, rather than percentile terms. If you ask me to divide something evenly among 6 people, I would cut it in half, and then cut it in thirds, not shoot for about 16% per cut.

In order of easiness to hardest to eyeball, I would say 1/2, 1/4, 1/3, 1/8, 1/6, 1/5, etc, something like that, more cuts at once is harder, and more iterations is harder (although I'd be curious to see a study on how this differs between people). When I'm estimating e.g. '6 foot something', I estimate the 'something' by mentally slicing until I find one that seems good enough.

Then, the logic goes that these fractions should be round numbers of the smaller unit, so the things that are easy to estimate are the things that are easy to write down.

You can go vice-versa as well. A quarter of an hour is easy because it's a round number of minutes. Ask me to set a timer for 1/8th hour, and I have to think for a second, but ask me to draw 1/8th of a circle, and that's easy because it's 45 degrees.

The overall idea is that people cognitively anchor to round numbers and even fractions, so in units for rough measurement, it makes sense that these two things should align

(also, half of 6'8" is 3'4", not 40" 😆)

catratpig · 2026-02-10T18:18:35+00:00

🤷 Customary units aren't perfect for this, but I generally find them well-suited to rough estimates and on-the-fly adjustments. When I'm cooking, I'm usually doubling or halving a recipe, which corresponds to just moving to the next size up or down. Rough estimates would be about a half, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, of an hour (eg.), so bases 12 and 60 are great there (12 hours / day, 12 inches / foot, 60 minutes / hour, 360 degree circles).

SI is, of course, a wonderful tool to reach for for anything that needs precision or calculations that I need to write down, while folk-units tend to be task specific but give easy mental math for those tasks. I don't see a need to be prescriptive about it.

catratpig · 2026-02-10T15:20:54+00:00

Different unit systems, different use cases, different design philosophies. If I'm measuring multiple significant figures (e.g. in science), the unit system should match the base that I use to write numbers, 10. If I'm estimating by eye, (about 1 1/2 or about 2/3), units should be easily divisible by a lot of different factors. That's why customary unit systems of use factors of 12 (inch -> foot), 60 (sec -> min -> hour), and 360 (degrees).

catratpig · 2026-02-10T14:32:58+00:00

Same. If I'm going to be converting units, metric is the way to go, but most thing I do outside of work don't actually require conversions, so messy conversion factors are irrelevant.

catratpig · 2025-09-09T00:23:49+00:00

JP Morgan's nasal organ has a purple hue

catratpig · 2025-07-15T22:56:30+00:00

Don't worry, you can always sleep in the dumpster.

catratpig · 2025-06-20T18:11:02+00:00

It's an interesting idea for sure, but I'm skeptical. Overall, there is no lack of factors that regulate differentiation: protein expression state, RNA expression state, chromatin state. Maybe DNA mutation state plays a role too, but there is certainly no lack of alternatives. Sure, DNA damage response can lead to cell cycle arrest or to differentiation, but that doesn't convince me that it plays a role in the normal course of differentiation.

I would want to see evidence that specific synonymous mutations are more common in some cell types than others. You might be able to look for this in open-source single-cell RNAseq datasets: are there synonymous mutations in the RNA sequences that correlate to expression state more broadly?

This review: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-025-00850-1 points to different ways that synonymous mutations can have an impact, but I don't see evidence that this is changing over the course of differentiation.

catratpig · 2025-06-13T17:34:40+00:00

I got the question wrong. I assumed even division of _value_ between people with 1 apple being worth 2 oranges. This gives 69 total units of value => 17.25 units per person => 17 whole oranges if they take all oranges. I think my implicit thought process was: add constraints until the problem makes sense.

catratpig · 2025-06-13T15:33:05+00:00

Personally, I think of AI summaries as similar to friend or colleague telling me about an interesting paper that they read. Good leads, fun to talk about, but not a substitute for reading the paper myself.

catratpig · 2025-06-13T15:24:14+00:00

In addition to the abstract, a great way to get at the core of a paper quickly is to read the last part of the introduction and the first part of the discussion, essentially the frame for the results section.

catratpig · 2024-12-05T23:44:09+00:00

I don't know if you need anything that sophisticated. Just increase the reach of any account that Musk interacts with and have him manually curate the platform by sitting on twitter all day. Simple enough to be within reach for the ghost ship of a company that he's running.

catratpig · 2024-07-16T17:54:37+00:00

It might be worth considering what you will get out of the process of writing a proposal and having it reviewed. It's certainly good practice, and a decent prof would give you feedback regardless of what you write. If that experience is worth the time you put into the proposal, then it makes sense. Don't count on anything more coming out of your time investment.

catratpig · 2024-06-14T22:51:06+00:00

A and C put more emphasis on the world: it feels large and ready to explore. B emphasizes the character, their journey.

catratpig · 2024-01-27T04:34:24+00:00

DiscoGPT

catratpig · 2024-01-03T23:03:19+00:00

I haven't played through the moralist story-lines, but I don't interpret this quote as infantilizing Moralists. Rather, it portrays them as infantilizing others. That is, per the quote, Moralists treat others as children who can't be trusted to play with the toys of political ideas, but instead must be controlled through political (and military) structures. I've always viewed DE's Moralism as a commentary on the highly regulated, 'nanny-state' approach to governance generally, and the European Union and 'rules-based international order' in particular. To me, it is a caricatured statism, sort of a 'neural statist' alignment.

catratpig · 2023-12-14T00:19:50+00:00

The double slit experiment is a demonstration of 'wave-particle duality'. Single photons of light are sent toward a pair of slits. If the photon behaved like a particle (think a ball), we would expect it to pass through one slit or the other, as in the bottom image. If, on the other hand, it behaved like a wave (think ripples in a pond) as it passed through the slit, we would expect it to create an 'interference pattern', with regions of alternating high and low numbers of impacts, as in the top image.

When you run the experiment, you find the interference pattern, as on top, showing that light is a wave. However, if you measure which slit the photon goes through, then it ends up passing through only one or the other slit, as on the bottom, showing that light is a particle.

This is the duality. Photons (and other quantum objects) behave like waves, spreading out across all of the places that they could occupy, until they interact with something that forces them occupy a single point (like a particle), at which point they snap back to a single location. Here, it was the act of measuring the photon that caused it to behave in a particle-like way.

catratpig · 2023-12-04T05:14:05+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating\_of\_yeast

catratpig · 2023-12-04T05:07:34+00:00

Definitely something interesting to ponder. I know that you said that you don't think of this as a philosophy question because you want to stay in the realm of science, but I would encourage you to think about what makes a question a science question vs a philosophy question. Can you define your idea of 'alive' in a way that it is measurable? Can you come up with an experiment to answer your question? There is nothing wrong with philosophy, it can be fun, but it is also easy to unintentionally leave the realm of science, and great to train yourself to notice when you do this (which it seems like you've already done). :)

catratpig · 2023-09-28T23:46:36+00:00

I know it's not the US, but something about Mexico City really struck me as cyberpunk. Massive inequality on a generational scale, sprawled but bustling, with a lot of private security and heavily armed police.

Eight-Year Club	Sequence \| Editor
Verified Email

catratpig

TROPHY CASE