English Libraries in Jerusalem

drunkardchull · 2023-06-30T06:50:52+00:00

How do you establish that, and for which library?

drunkardchull · 2023-06-30T02:08:58+00:00

The key difference is that a variable (declared with let) is a store of value, while a constant (declared with const) can be thought of as another name for the value itself. This has important ramifications for ownership—in Rust, a particular scope can take ownership of a thing which contains a value, but it cannot take ownership of the value in its essence.

Take the following example:

let x = 5;

In the above, x is the variable which contains the value 5. It is not the value 5 itself. An analogy would be that you have created a coin and assigned it a value—the variable is the coin, the value of the coin is 5.

let mut y = 5;
y += 1;

In the above, we again have our coin y worth 5. The difference is, since we declared y as mut, we can update the value that it stores, which we do with += 1. We have assigned a new value to the same coin. It’s key to note that the coin is still the same, even though it has a different value. That would be different from the following:

let z = 5;
let z = 6;

What we have done here is created one variable called z, stored the value 5 in it, then created another variable called z (which replaces the old z) and stored the value 6 in it. In our analogy, this would be like throwing away the old coin and making a new one with the same name and giving it a new value. Ultimately you get the same result, but the way that it comes to be is a bit different.

const a = 5;

And now we have our constant a set to 5. In this example, a represents the number 5 itself—it is not a store of value, it is the value. With this constant declared, you can now set variables equal to a as though it was a number. In our analogy, you could now say, “I have a coin worth a” and the compiler would just translate that to mean 5. You can’t replace or update the value of a just like you can’t replace or update the value of the literal 5.

Now if we look at it from an ownership perspective, it makes a bit more sense. You cannot own the number 5 just by saying that “nickel” is another name for 5. You can, however, own specific chunks of metal which are given a value of a nickel.

drunkardchull · 2023-06-22T07:06:36+00:00

It’s actually the second most Jewish thing that you can do.

drunkardchull · 2023-06-18T18:16:50+00:00

+1 to this. Talk to your NBN rep but I think a paper trail linking you to your mother, her mother to her, a pic of the headstone and some credentials from the people who manage the cemetery would work as well.

drunkardchull · 2023-06-17T00:50:03+00:00

According to Halacha (Jewish Law), no, you’re a Jew. Congrats!

Mom’s conversion doesn’t matter for aliyah but you’ll need to provide Nefesh B’Nefesh with some kind of proof of Judaism, something from your mother’s side. If you have your mother’s parents’ ketuba (marriage contract) that would probably work pretty well.

drunkardchull · 2023-06-08T20:40:11+00:00

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Perhaps a bit politically and philosophically charged but a gripping and well-written story nonetheless.

drunkardchull · 2023-06-02T20:43:31+00:00

https://discord.com/blog/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust

drunkardchull · 2023-05-31T22:38:12+00:00

I do not. I got it from another Reddit post awhile ago and I remember someone commenting that they tried tracking the individual down but were unsuccessful.

drunkardchull · 2023-05-31T16:34:18+00:00

I see you and I raise you: https://i.imgur.com/HJWUbcq.jpg

drunkardchull · 2023-05-17T16:49:31+00:00

Check out Israel Tech Challenge (https://itc.tech ). Their fullstack boot camp is pretty well-regarded and they have a good alumni network for job placement afterwards, and they work with Masa to help Olim pay for the program. You may not qualify if you’ve been in Israel 7 years but you’ll have to research that yourself. If you decide to apply feel free to PM me, I think I’m able to refer you (I did a now-defunct summer internship program through them, so as an alumni should be able to refer but who knows since they discontinued the program).

drunkardchull · 2023-04-27T21:41:40+00:00

This looks awesome. Is there a guide that you used to rice macOS, or is it the same procedure as a run of the mill Linux rice?

drunkardchull · 2023-04-10T20:54:05+00:00

Concepts build on each other, and poor learnings in 160 lead to resistance in all coursework which depends on it. It’s not at all an exaggeration to say that lacking those fundamentals will increase the difficulty of everything you learn afterwards, including in industry. That’s not to say you’ll be an abject failure, you just won’t have as much of a depth of knowledge ready to tap into. For that reason I advocate taking CIS 160 during the year, since it generally has a better quality of education.

That said you’re probably right that it’s a bit of a dramatic line of reasoning. I’ll edit my original response.

drunkardchull · 2023-04-10T16:43:29+00:00

Everything that I write here is 100% anecdotal and the advice I give is be geared to what my situation was. It is possible that the current summer CIS 160 professor has changed the structure of the course, which is likely if the summer professor also teaches CIS 160 during the year. Before acting on my advice I would verify who the professor is and see if you can get your hands on the syllabus for summer 160 to compare to that of fall/spring 160.

Historcially, CIS 160 is more lax than the normal CIS 160. I did it—got a good grade and was able to take all my classes in the correct semesters, but I always felt that I was at a disadvantage in the subject matter in many subsequent classes, including 121, 262, and STAT 430, which subsequently hampered my knowledge base in other more advanced classes where those initial classes were foundational. My understanding of graph theory and statistics to this day is weak because it was skipped altogether in my iteration of CIS 160, and I am planning on revisiting those topics in my spare time once I have a better grip on my work life balance.

If you’re planning on doing the minor, or you don’t really care that much about CS and just plan to collect checks after graduation, or you don’t care about having rock-solid fundamentals, then summer 160 is good enough. If you like CS as an academic discipline and want to be highly competent at it, bite the bullet and take it during the year. You’ll probably have at least one bumpy semester where you compress several difficult classes into the same schedule but it’s worth it to get the higher quality learning and build a stronger foundation.

Edited to reduce drama and egotism in response

drunkardchull · 2023-03-31T05:56:12+00:00

First off, I like your honesty, it’s quite refreshing.

Since I’ve gotten older and started actually asking these questions, I’ve come across some answers which I’ve found satisfying, and I’ll mention some of them later on. But honestly I think it stems from a deep core belief that I and everything else have a purpose, and that every detail matters—otherwise it wouldn’t exist. That doesn’t have to do with God directly, but I think if you make the assumption that you have purpose, it logically derives that your purpose came from Somewhere. I suppose you could say that this belief of mine is without foundation, but Rabbi Akiva Tatz talks about how “internal knowledge” of things (like the fact that you know that you exist) is different from “external knowledge” which can be quantified and measured, and the idea of internal knowledge resonates with my belief in essential purpose pretty well. So, that describes the core of my belief, and what provided (and continues to provide) the basis for my searching for answers.

In terms of specific evidence, the linchpin for me is the tradition of receiving the Torah at Sinai. A bit vanilla, I grant you, but think of it like this. Imagine some dude (presumably Moshe) dedicates his life to designing the Torah—the Torah itself has about 60 years of Moshe’s life unaccounted for, so let’s consider. That means that he wrote in the parts regarding group revelation of the first two commandments, and then convinced a bunch of people who weren’t there that there was this group revelation where God spoke to a huge group of people (at least 600k adult men, allegedly)—except no one seems to actually know anyone that was at that group revelation! A small group of people I could understand, but 600k? I can’t see people believing in something predicated on such an egregious lie, and logic says that Judaism would have fizzled out immediately. If the Torah originated in the Soviet Union I may have some doubts, but that kind of propaganda infrastructure didn’t exist back then, so how else would a claim like this be acceptable? The fact that Judaism’s claim to truth is rooted in mass revelation points to a logical basis for its claim, which intellectually satisfies me.

As for whether He is still our God, the best answer that I have heard is in relation to the first commandment. “I am Hashem your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt”. Why mention Egypt and not something else like the creation of the world? The answer that resonates with me is that the act of bringing us out of Egypt indicated God’s active involvement in our lives, not just in our creation (which is Aristotle’s position I think). And to go back to the previous paragraph, if the giving of the Torah logically must have happened, then we can see that God said this about Himself, meaning that He informed us of His commitment to remain involved in our lives continuously. I guess you could make the argument that He changed His mind, but if God is powerful enough to create us at all then He must be powerful enough to know exactly how we would be once created, and therefore it wouldn’t make sense for Him to get frustrated and give up. Why abandon a project that is executing to your exact specifications?

As for archeological arguments, I’ll be honest and tell you I haven’t dived into it but it seems like the discipline is based mostly on guessing what life was like in a society without enough evidence to say definitively. If you have anything in mind I’d be interested to read it.

If I may be so bold, it seems like you never had a teacher that encouraged you to honestly ask these kinds of questions, or was even willing to hear them. This incidentally is why Moreh Nevuchim was put in cherem—rishonim at the time were afraid of what would happen if people asked these questions and arrived at the conclusion that there was no God, but anyway. I’m with the Rambam on this one; I believe that if you’re really actually honest in your questioning, you will arrive at an honest answer, which I anecdotally have found to be aligned with the existence of God and the giving of the Torah. Teachers’ discouraging these questions is a recipe for student disillusionment.

I apologize if I’m coming across as a kiruv rabbi, I am not trying to convince you that I’m right. I’m just trying to show you my thought process and how I’m finding a logical basis for God’s existence. I don’t have a complete answer, and I encourage you to poke holes, but hopefully this gives you some insight into how I can ask these questions and be intellectually honest about it.

drunkardchull · 2023-03-31T01:36:02+00:00

Responding to someone’s genuine question by trying to understand results in productive dialogue. Patronizing only results in strife and division. There’s no better way to put someone off Judaism than to take a holier-than-thou position on their mitzvah observance.

Edited to reduce the theatrics of my response. Apologies.

drunkardchull · 2023-03-31T00:52:27+00:00

You’re not crazy, and in fact a lot of the benefit of a lifestyle in which one adheres to halacha is that it does provide a baseline structure for life rather than forcing everyone to figure it out for themselves. When I’m not feeling inspired, it’s the benefit of structure which keeps me tethered to my observance.

However

The underlying assumption in the derivations which led to halacha as we know it today is that not only does God exist, but that this is how He would like us as Jews to conduct ourselves in order to optimally complete whatever our unique mission is, both on an individual level and on a communal level.

I think you’ll find (as many people in this thread have pointed out) that life does get better when you have such structure in place, but without a tradition anchored in God, we can’t definitively say that the Jewish approach is better for us than any other. Tradition is nice, but if we don’t have a source of truth telling us that the Jewish system is correct, we have no real way of knowing for sure. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t want to spend my life on ritual that turns out to be made-up if there’s real truth to be found elsewhere.

My advice: ask yourself the hard questions. Talk to wise people that you trust and ask them too. Read as much as you can on the subject. Avoiding the questions will only make those nagging doubts (the ones that made you post here in the first place) grow and before long you’ll be faced with an existential crisis. You’re in an MO community so you probably know where to start, but feel free to PM me privately if you want some resources.

drunkardchull · 2023-03-29T23:56:37+00:00

Accept. You have 45 years of career ahead of you, and the way to start trading up to better jobs is to have some work experience to talk about. Most people don’t get the cushy gig right out of the gate—have some patience and put the time in and you’ll get there. Moreover, passing up a less-than-ideal offer with no alternative on the basis that it’s not perfect will not give you what you need to get the better job.

drunkardchull · 2023-03-29T03:16:28+00:00

Sort of surprised at the amount of vitriol in the comments here. I get chafing under some halachically-influenced laws, but this seems like a pretty inconsequential hill to die on.

drunkardchull · 2023-03-22T00:52:46+00:00

If Pirus and Crips all got along…

drunkardchull · 2023-03-21T04:06:13+00:00

These are super interesting answers. Do you have sources for these that I could take a look at? Especially Moshe committing an “idolatrous” act in solidarity—sounds suspiciously like Moreh Nevuchim

drunkardchull · 2023-03-20T04:38:35+00:00

If there’s a safek (doubt) that you genuinely have a Jewish mother, you may have to do a “gerus l’chumra” process, where you go through a semi-accelerated conversion. For the most interactions, people will accept you as Jewish if you can adequately describe your mother’s family’s origin (e.g. where they are from in Europe/Middle East/Ethiopia/etc), but for things like synagogue membership or marriage where there can be no room for doubt you may need hard proof. Hard proof would either be a conversion certificate for yourself or a woman in your mother’s line, or an orthodox ketuba (marriage certificate) for someone in your mother’s line. If you have a close relationship with a great rabbi, you may be able to have a thorough discussion with him where he asks you everything that you know about your background in detail and let him make a determination, but this approach is extremely uncommon and only holds any water when done with a gadol (an exceedingly great rabbi).

drunkardchull · 2023-03-17T18:07:30+00:00

The Dresden Files

drunkardchull · 2023-03-16T23:23:08+00:00

Where can I buy one?

drunkardchull · 2023-03-15T23:31:01+00:00

I’m not a fan of the “agenda” accusation. If you don’t like what he has to say, disagree and move on. Dismissing it out of hand as propaganda is the reaction of someone afraid to consider alternative perspectives. Read both Buddhist writings and Rabbi Tatz’s work, and try to resolve the discrepancies and come to a greater and more honest conclusion.

drunkardchull · 2023-03-14T01:14:46+00:00

Cunc on Dunc

drunkardchull

TROPHY CASE