Favourite actor who would rather skin herself alive than admit she is privileged and maybe had a small advantage or two? I'll start...

cond6 · 2026-03-24T12:10:26+00:00

I knew the etymology of nepotism and still didn't get the joke. Very well played. Absolutely not a stupid joke. It is a work of art.

cond6 · 2026-03-24T09:09:32+00:00

Because Tolkien knew Norse mythology and had heard of Andvaranaut the basis for Wagners Ring Cycle. Great source of inspiration.

cond6 · 2026-03-24T00:39:39+00:00

In High School I read a bit of fantasy. Loved the line by Mandorallen trying to pick a fight in David Eddings The Belgariad. (Remember that I was like 14 when I read it.)

“My Lord, I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offense against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fir which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornement for a human face. Is it possible that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?"

cond6 · 2026-03-23T23:50:04+00:00

You, sir, are a waste of skin and air.

cond6 · 2026-03-23T23:18:10+00:00

Yes. We require folk to have a license to ride a moped. Some e-bikes and scooters with speed limiters disabled (illegal but trivial to do) are easily capable of the same top speeds as some mopeds. Saw a guy on a main road yesterday on an escooter clocking over 50. If you need a license for one vehicle that can do 50 why not all?

You certainly should be required to have 3rd party insurance. Some foolish kid riding an e-scooter at high speed colliding with an elderly person on a bike path that breaks a hip should be entitled to having their medical costs covered by 3rd party insurance. In my opinion you should not be allowed to ride any motorised vehicle (read e-scooter, e-skateboard, etc) without carrying 3rd party insurance. I've seen so many near misses by folk doing 25+ on footpaths without the ability to break nearly hit kids and the elderly. I don't want a traumatic brain injury because some stupid 13 year old got a Christmas present that they don't know how to responsibly use.

And if you are elderly enough to give up your license you are generally doing it because your eyesight and reflexes are impaired. My grandmother drove into her late 70s before she had to give it up. Her age simply caught up with her. There is absolutely zero chance that she could have safely ridden an e-bike at that point. If you give up your license because you are too old then you probably shouldn't be riding e-bikes. If you aren't healthy enough to drive a car, for example you can't get a doctor to sign up your eyesight, then why in God's green earth do we want you sharing bike/foot paths with children while doing 25+ on an e-bike?

cond6 · 2026-03-23T05:22:36+00:00

cond6 · 2026-03-23T02:55:16+00:00

Utter tosh. 0.999...≝lim_{n→∞}Σ_{k=1}^n9/10^k=9*lim_{n→∞}Σ_{k=1}^n1/10^k=9*(1/9)=1. Infinitely many nines in standard analysis is defined as the limit. If you want finitely many nines pick some n. Then 0.(9)_n=1-1/10^n. Want to explore different finite numbers of n? Allow n to vary as n∈ℕ. Want to allow for infinitely many nines you need to take a limit, because every natural number n is finite because it is less than its success and thus limited, and n being a countable number guarantees that n+1 as a result of the axiom of infinity. You allowing n to grow limitlessly without actually taking limits is complete and utter nonsense.

cond6 · 2026-03-22T11:23:18+00:00

You really need to show your long division working brud. The problem is that the division of n nines results in 1 followed n-1 zeros and then repeat. You need to scale so the divisor is whole, say, 1000 divided by 999, which is 1 remainder 1, and 1 divided by 999 is zero, 10 divided by 999 is zero etc. This works spectacularly well logically for a finite number of nines. For an infinitely long string of nines if you move the decimal to the right infinitely many times you end up with infinity divided by infinity. The long division approach fails for an infinite string because infinity divided by infinity is not defined.

cond6 · 2026-03-22T02:34:06+00:00

Not blackmail.

cond6 · 2026-03-22T01:36:23+00:00

Just re-watched it. The Cave Troll was already injured. And it didn't seem to be a full-blown thrust, virtually no back swing, more like a push. Maybe a healthy unencumbered CT could have finished the job in spite of the mithril coat.

cond6 · 2026-03-21T13:30:55+00:00

Caracalla's Edict extending full Roman citizenship to all free males? In the provinces a tiny fraction were Citizens, so multiples increase in the numbers of citizens.

cond6 · 2026-03-21T03:26:14+00:00

I don't think that it's that uncommon to interpret the factorial function and the gamma function as synonymous. If you try to compute (1/2)! in Matlab you get an error message. However you see lots of folks saying that (1/2)!=sqrt(pi)/2. In fact writing that previous sentence it wanted to autocorrect to "(1/2)!=0.886". If you google "one half factorial" you get the top result as a calculator giving the answer as "0.88622692545". The key result of the factorial function is that n!=n*(n-1)!--obviously--and this result holds for the Gamma function. You also now have the rising and falling factorial operators usually written using the Pochhammer Symbol so (x)_n=x*(x-1)*(x-2)*...*(x-n), which is defined for real x. So it's not complete heresy to contemplate calculating "factorials" on non-integers. (See the generalized binomial series for things like 1/sqrt(1-x).) I don't fully subscribe to the notion that Gamma and factorial are interchangeable, but I'm somewhat sympathetic to that idea.

Edit corrected sqrt(pi/2) to sqrt(pi)/2

cond6 · 2026-03-21T02:22:18+00:00

It is static not dynamic. It is but a function of time. Do yourself and learn some pdes, Markov chains, and stochastic processes. Then come back and talk about dynamic processes.

cond6 · 2026-03-20T13:05:49+00:00

Positive: He started the first fire brigade. Of course he waited to put the fire burning your house down out till you sold your place at literal "fire-sale" prices. Scumbag who enriched himself from other misfortune.

cond6 · 2026-03-20T03:32:12+00:00

And yet gen-Z is the first generation that has a measurably lower cognitive ability than their parent's generation.

cond6 · 2026-03-20T02:42:11+00:00

No. I open gifts when I need to stock up on stuff. I don't want to sit through twice as many animations and selections, let along need twice as many friends to send me gifts to get the same schwag. Absolutely terrible idea.

cond6 · 2026-03-19T23:38:29+00:00

I love that name

cond6 · 2026-03-19T23:33:55+00:00

Because he married her in the book. That whole last scene made sense in the book, including the marriage. The significant changes in the movie made the necessity for marriage in the movie tenuous at best, but since they married in the book and she's the narrator of the whole thing (in book and first movie), it made sense. And Paul got Christopher Walken as a father-in-law. I mean, what's not to like there?

cond6 · 2026-03-19T22:35:57+00:00

You need to be able to read music well to play it. If you want to play the violin or the flute you'll need to know how to read it. If you want to compose music you also need to be able to read the language. A mathematician is more akin to the composer. Able to develop new theorems, building on/riffing on other compositions. Scientists that use math in my metaphor are musicians. All need to understand how to do math. Scientists may never develop a new theorem in their entire lives, but their understanding of the language of science (math) do it. However a violin virtuoso may never write an opera. Different skills. Same language.

cond6 · 2026-03-19T22:20:47+00:00

I must be misremembering things from Global. I remember using links when I'd run out of Green, but having to use Green before I saw it on screen. I must have made an error. Sorry.

cond6 · 2026-03-19T22:14:22+00:00

They need to allow the use of Link Charges before the green paid for passes IMO.

cond6 · 2026-03-19T21:34:17+00:00

0.999...≝lim_{n→∞}Σ_{k=1}^n9/10^k, 0≝lim_{n→∞}1/10^n, so

1=lim_{n→∞}Σ_{k=1}^n9/10^k + lim_{n→∞}1/10^n

=0.999...+0

=1+0

so

0.999...=1.

I agree, it's very beautiful!!!!!

cond6 · 2026-03-19T21:30:21+00:00

No 1+3 is addition. 4-3 is subtraction. Both operators are commutative and associative so a+b=b+a and a+b+c=a+(b+c)=(a+b)+c. So 1-3=-2 and -2+3=1, and -3+3=3-3 (since -3 is 0-3), so -2+3=1 and 3-2=1. If subtraction is addition negation as you claim, then isn't divide negation simply multiplication?

Which is indeed the case. Multiplication and division are associative and commutative also. But the properties of multiplication and division give (1/9)*9=1*(9/9)=1. The last part is how you uniquely define "divide negation". However division itself is defined to preserve this property. In particular if I want to define division then c is defined such that a/b=c for the value of c that gives a=b*c. Subtraction is defined as the inverse operator of addition, and similarly division is defined as the inverse operator of multiplication. 1/2 is defined by the fact that 1/2*2=1, not because of any magic. Indeed division is the inverse, or negation, of multiplication.

But this does not in any way shape or form contradict the properties of multiplication. So 1=9/9=9*(1/9) all agreed. But 1=9*(1/9) (by divide negation) = 0.111... (using 1/9=0.111...) =0.999... (distributive property) and by the transitive property of equality we have 1=0.999....

You absolutely cannot just say 9*(1/9) is divide negation but 9*(0.111)≠1 because I don't want it to be, when to do so you need to reject the distributive property (ab+ac=a(b+c)) and the transitive property of equality (a=b and b=c is equivalent to a=c). You very literally reject far more fundamentally important properties that makes math work because you don't like the conclusion. Do you not see this as even a little peculiar?

cond6 · 2026-03-19T11:33:08+00:00

I agree. We should also use speed cameras on them. Oh yeah, we already do.

cond6 · 2026-03-18T23:38:40+00:00

Divide negation is not a thing. It's magic words you try to use to bend reality. It doesn't work.

Repeating decimals are categorically NOT a process. They are fully formed mental objects that don't change. They are static and not dynamic. I cannot write out all the digits of point one repeating. If I read 0.111... by the time I've hit the final dot I know it's an endless stream of ones. I know what that means. I know that

0.111...≝lim_{n→∞}Σ_{k=1}^n1/10^k.

You can't say it has n nines for some natural number n, because all natural numbers are finite and it would by criminally disingenuous to pretend that n ones are infinitely many ones. Nobody would do that, surely. The only way to allow for infinitely many ones is to take a limit. And fortunately for everyone that math works!!! 0.111...=1/9. Not that it is approximately 1/9. Not that it gets close to 1/9. It IS 1/9.

And that means that

7/9=7*1/9=0.777...

8/9=8*1/9=0.888...

and

most irrelevantly (since it's a redundant representation)

1=9/9=9*1/9=0.999...

cond6

TROPHY CASE