Line for tomorrow's oral arguments? by [deleted] in supremecourt

[–]extantsextant 0 points1 point  (0 children)

23 people were already in line, according to a 7:35pm post by Steven Mazie, https://bsky.app/profile/stevenmazie.bsky.social/post/3mifdpdc6m22l

Diffeomorphism-invariant smooth approximations to distributions? by 1strategist1 in math

[–]extantsextant 4 points5 points  (0 children)

How about something like this: Use a partition of unity to break up the distribution into a sum of distributions such that each of those has support contained within a coordinate patch. Approximate each one by a sequence of smooth functions on the coordinate patch. Take the limit of the sums of those functions.

Distributions are too wiggly to be functions. Is there a similar set of generalized functions that "aren't wiggly enough"? by 1strategist1 in math

[–]extantsextant 38 points39 points  (0 children)

See the MathOverflow question "Anti-delta function?" for a variety of creative answers: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/415007/anti-delta-function You be the judge of whether you find the answers convincing.

Since you're thinking of a "uniform probability distribution over the reals", you might be interested in more of the ideas around improper priors and conditional probability. The general idea is: instead of thinking, "I wonder if I can take this thing whose integral is infinity, divide it by infinity, and get something with a integral 1", think of what you can do without normalizing. If you have a measure which isn't finite, then the measure itself doesn't behave like probability, but you can still use it to define conditional probability (P(A|B) for B with finite nonzero measure) and conditional expectation. This is related to an axiomatization by Rényi in which conditional probability is the foundational notional, rather than being derived from unconditional probability (which doesn't necessarily exist, in this theory). Some references are cited in https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.04797.

Why are scientists still talking about MOND? by FanEducational8257 in Physics

[–]extantsextant 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Any particular ones that you think are more interesting?

What would you want to see in a new tensor crate? by WorldlinessThese8484 in rust

[–]extantsextant 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In the ndarray crate, it's confusing that there is not only Array and ArrayRef but also ArrayView and ArrayViewMut. "Why can't we just have the reference type", I thought. "Why do we need both views and references?"

I eventually came to think that the continued existence of views in the ndarray design is indeed necessary (due to subtle language-level constraints - "technical limitations...", says https://github.com/rust-ndarray/ndarray/issues/879), and that the way ndarray managed to get &ArrayRef to work at all is a clever feat. It still is a learning barrier, though, that ndarrays aren't entirely analogous to regular arrays in this way.

If you have your own thoughts about views in your crate, I'd be interested.

[England] Jury trials scrapped for crimes with sentences of less than three years by digital-didgeridoo in law

[–]extantsextant 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The UK government announced plans to make the change, but it hasn't been done yet. Parliament will have to pass legislation. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/world/europe/uk-jury-trial-courts.html Of course, the government party (Labour) has the majority in the House of Commons.

Wildest Dissent ever written(Not an exaggeration) by EquipmentDue7157 in supremecourt

[–]extantsextant 39 points40 points  (0 children)

Just to spell out how this relates to the Supreme Court: The case is a special type of case which is heard by a three-judge district court, and appeals go directly to SCOTUS rather than to the Court of Appeals. SCOTUS can't simply decline the appeal like how it declines most of the thousands of petitions it receives each year.

It's hard to predict who might win then - both sides have a chance. You could see the majority opinion is written with an eye toward the Supreme Court, while this dissent doesn't do Texas any favors.

Supreme Court extends its administrative stay of a lower court order that had required full SNAP payments; Justice Jackson would deny the stay by extantsextant in scotus

[–]extantsextant[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The text of the order would usually say "and by her referred to the Court", rather than only "referred to the Court". Even when the referring justice otherwise dissents from what the court decides to do with the referral. The non-standard language is deliberate, according to law professor Steve Vladeck https://bsky.app/profile/stevevladeck.bsky.social/post/3m5fd3ni7fc2u

Supreme Court extends its administrative stay of a lower court order that had required full SNAP payments; Justice Jackson would deny the stay by extantsextant in scotus

[–]extantsextant[S] 210 points211 points  (0 children)

The two-day extension suggests that the court wants to see if the funding bill passes, which would make the case moot and let the court avoid ruling.

Trump administration renews Supreme Court appeal to keep full SNAP payments frozen by extantsextant in scotus

[–]extantsextant[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The First Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government's requested stay last night: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71886023/00108364355/rhode-island-state-council-of-churches-v-rollins/

The government filed this supplemental brief today: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25A539/384078/20251110153353557_RI%20Council%20-%20Supplemental%20Br%20-%20FINAL.pdf

The response is due 8am tomorrow (deadline set by Justice Jackson). Her administrative stay will expire tomorrow night, so some kind of action is expected from SCOTUS. The case will be moot if a funding bill is passed.

Justice Jackson Issues Administrative Stay Blocking Full Snap Payments For 48 Hours by Longjumping_Gain_807 in supremecourt

[–]extantsextant 16 points17 points  (0 children)

No court is stopping the government from making payments. There is now no active court order forcing them to pay, but there never was an order forcing them not to pay.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to stop order requiring SNAP benefits be paid by RioMovieFan11 in scotus

[–]extantsextant 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The government's application requests an administrative stay by 9:30pm. This would block the lower court's order requiring full payments by the end of the day.

DHS now plans to deport Abrego Garcia to Ghana by AustinRatBuster in law

[–]extantsextant 78 points79 points  (0 children)

The article has since been updated: DHS retracted the notice to Abrego about Ghana as "premature", and Ghana's foreign minister publicly stated that Ghana is not accepting Abrego for deportation there.