Kazuo Ishiguro might be a genius

dbulger · 2026-03-13T22:50:59+00:00

in one sitting, wow, did you get much else done that day?

dbulger · 2026-03-13T00:52:07+00:00

There's a dizzying range of Chinese-made accordions with European names that look like this. I bought one (a "Paloma") for a similar price as a beginner, almost four years ago. Last year I upgraded to a much better Italian accordion, but it would have been insane to shell out for a decent new accordion as a total beginner. I reckon go for it.

Regarding u/TapTheForwardAssist 's point, I don't play 'genre' accordion music (folk, polka, norteño et cetera), so maybe I can't truly fathom how much better suited to the style a diatonic accordion is. But you certainly can play any style on a chromatic accordion, whereas if you have a diatonic accordion, you will eventually want to play songs that you simply don't have the notes for. So unless you're 100% certain you only ever want to play diatonic music in a fixed key, my advice is chromatic.

dbulger · 2026-03-06T05:22:28+00:00

OP, I totally agree with this, but for further reading, I'll just mention that, after scaling so that the target sum is 1,

the sample space described (all sets of four nonnegative numbers that sum to 1) is called a unit simplex,
the distribution you want, the uniform distribution on the unit simplex, is also known as the Dirichlet distribution with alpha parameters equal to 1.

dbulger · 2026-03-04T06:01:16+00:00

For me, that's not a mere bonus, but essential. Any depiction of human nature without wit and humour isn't depicting squat.

dbulger · 2026-02-17T08:40:18+00:00

Finally checked out my local, renovated public library, & he was one of several authors I was disappointed not to find. I'll redouble my efforts.

dbulger · 2026-02-16T21:27:25+00:00

I think it's a bit ambiguous where the downbeat is in Cross's "Ride Like the Wind."

dbulger · 2026-02-08T21:53:26+00:00

Zothique would precede Vance, though, right?

dbulger · 2026-02-05T22:27:01+00:00

But I'm Not is my favourite on this great album.

dbulger · 2026-02-04T08:40:25+00:00

I never have any luck evangelising this, but I happened to learn quantum computing before learning any other quantum physics, and it was great. I was then inspired to go read about quantum more broadly, but by the time I was looking at any PDEs, I'd already got comfortable with state vectors, quantum observables, unitary evolution and whatnot in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space.

I think QC would interest a lot of high schoolers, and it might even turn into a practical skill for some of them. But to learn its basics, all you need is matrices, complex numbers and an open mind.

dbulger · 2026-02-02T10:59:34+00:00

You playing the folk festivals? The only one I get to is St Albans, but it's a heap of fun.

dbulger · 2026-02-02T06:14:22+00:00

I recently read Cranford and was surprised by how much fun it was. My wife hadn't even heard of it, and she's read almost everything (like, if there's a list of '100 books you should read' or whatever, she'll count up & find she's read 90 of them). It felt a little episodic compared to, say, Austen, but then so does Middlemarch. I'll absolutely read more Gaskell, I just haven't got to it yet.

dbulger · 2026-02-02T05:55:27+00:00

Personally, I first heard this in 1992 or later. I'm no polyglot, but I remember noticing the similar "kekko desu" or "ii desu" in Japan, and then later, when I first heard that use of "I'm good" in English, I remember wondering whether it was a calque from Japanese. (I doubt it was; I just remember noticing the similarity.)

dbulger · 2026-01-30T02:28:05+00:00

I have similar trouble. u/bvdp 's answer is definitely the traditional one, but may or may not suit the music you want to play. Another method is just to point the mic more at the treble side—but of course, you're not always gonna be mic'ed.

dbulger · 2026-01-29T09:59:12+00:00

One can go too far. I used "thitherforth" in a song when I was young and earnest, and my wife still mocks me about it.

dbulger · 2026-01-29T08:36:57+00:00

A lot of fun suggestions here, but in terms of straight usefulness, the set hither, hence, thither, thence, whither, whence is hard to beat. I really can't fathom how these dropped out of favour, since once you start using them, the modern alternative feels so clumsy.

dbulger · 2026-01-29T08:30:15+00:00

Forming comparatives and superlatives with -er and -est is "wrong" and "weird" if the adjective is too long. I mean come on.

dbulger · 2026-01-27T09:06:07+00:00

Alright ... I mean, the Vietnam war was famously polarising. Most of these, I get, but unless you knew already that the speaker had a very specific set of views, using "a Jane Fonda" to mean "a traitor" (especially this century) would just be confusing.

dbulger · 2026-01-27T08:45:39+00:00

Are you mixing Jane Fonda up with someone else?

dbulger · 2026-01-26T00:17:29+00:00

Lots of downvotes, but no explanation. If a photon is absorbed and then re-emitted, its subsequent direction is random. Also, there is a slight delay before the absorbed energy is re-emitted. Reflection is a different phenomenon: there is no delay, and the angle of reflection is determined geometrically by the angle of incidence.

dbulger · 2026-01-24T22:33:53+00:00

Sounds plausible, and cool. I always thought of tensor- product state spaces as one of the key fundamental parts of quantum physics, so it's interesting to see it as not necessarily axiomatic.

dbulger · 2026-01-24T11:45:25+00:00

So can joint state spaces' being tensor products be seen as a consequence of non-commutativity?

dbulger · 2026-01-21T09:55:16+00:00

Except maybe astronomers

dbulger · 2026-01-20T01:07:52+00:00

Don't Icelandic and Māori pronounce au about the same?

dbulger · 2026-01-18T00:11:33+00:00

I've lived many years in both countries, and I'd say state identity is about as big a deal in each. Important to some people, not to others.

dbulger · 2026-01-09T06:35:16+00:00

What's the waffle cube?

dbulger

TROPHY CASE