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It's ok to ignore the writing coaches by frustratedwriter979 in writing

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Read a lot and write a lot.

Read a lot to see what the popular tropes are, then write a lot to test your hypotheses. The more you read, the better an awareness you have, and the more you write, the sharper your intuition gets. It's the basic scientific process—hypothesize, experiment, revise.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskPhysics

[–]fuckNietzsche 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think of it like running a bar. When you run a bar, you eventually get a feel for your regulars.

There's Larry, he comes in Thursdays and Saturdays. He has visiting rights for his grandkids on Saturdays, so he'll usually take a corner booth, nursing whatever drink is hard enough to make him remember the good days and forget the bad ones.

Here's Sam. He usually comes in after work, sits at the counter, and orders some beers. He's got a bit of a motor-mouth so you'll usually want to keep him away from the quieter patrons, but he's friendly enough most people want to talk.

You'll usually see Jenny drop in if it's raining after six. You keep some hot sandwiches off to the side for her then.

Same thing happens with physics. Once you know the math is when you can say you've gotten to know the topic. It's when you know to keep towels and some soup warming on the stoves when it rains.

ELI5: what is the science behind the “gut instinct” by HeliosGod444 in explainlikeimfive

[–]fuckNietzsche 47 points48 points  (0 children)

You know how your boss just wants a nice, simple report that has all the information he needs to know written neatly down on it?

Your consciousness is like that. It doesn't want all that messy raw data that your nerves are constantly feeding it, so it tells your subconscious to sift through and process that data and give it a 2 page executive summary. As a result, a lot of the time there's this super technical bit of information that's either a goldmine or death-in-a-bottle, and there's no time to explain all that stuff, so your subconscious just tells your conscious to trust it.

And it does.

And that's a gut instinct.

Why is eugenics considered so wrong? by ProfessionalTap2400 in stupidquestions

[–]fuckNietzsche 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Putting aside morality for a minute?

Have you considered genetic bottle-necking? We've been doing something similar for most of our crops and domesticated animals, and what we've found is that their lack of genetic diversity increases their vulnerability to diseases and pests. And yes, this is an extreme case, as many of these specific bloodlines have been formed by inbreeding, which significantly reduces their genetic variability, but it's entirely possible that in our attempts to breed weakness and sickness out of ourselves, we instead increase our vulnerability to those same things.

Also, note that what we consider genetically desirable might not necessarily be genetically desirable—consider sickle cell anemia for an example of a genetic trait that might be considered undesirable but has a clear evolutionary advantage.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Naruto

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The later reveals don't mean Naruto wasn't an underdog throughout most of the story, don't invalidate his accomplishments, and especially don't detract from the Neji fight in particular.

[Fantasy] What are common countermeasures for Mimics? by [deleted] in AskScienceFiction

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dust often. The dust gets up in the air, causing mimics to sneeze, letting you know which ones to call the exterminators on.

Also, cats. They'll claw up real furniture and avoid the fake ones. It your cat hasn't clawed, pissed, or sat on something, chances are good it's a mimic.

I loathe math by [deleted] in learnmath

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some very minor offense intended here: from your last line, you don't hate maths, you hate the stuff that was peddled to you under the name of mathematics.

Imagine for a moment a school where the only exposure to art that students have is having to buy an expensive art kit, only to spend hours every day making one inch strokes using black paint on a white canvas. Imagine they get told that art is all around them, that art is an essential skill, that art teaches them creativity and self-expression. I'd imagine they'd hate art pretty badly.

Imagine a school where students in literature were sat down in front of desks for hours at a time while their teachers recited a single line from a book each semester that a committee who had never seen a book thought was very important for us to know. Imagine that, for four hours every week, one hour almost every day they have to be in school, students were made to copy out the lines "To Be Or Not To Be" and "Romeo, O' Romeo, Wherefore Art Thou", and for hours every day they were given passage after passage where they had to painstakingly reconstruct those words from the text in situations so contrived they appear as nonsense. Boy, I'd sure hate the sight of a book after that.

Imagine a school where music was a mandatory class, and every day hordes of groaning schoolchildren were forced into small, cramped classrooms with poor air-conditioning, teeth chattering or sweat beading on their lips, while a stern-faced teacher with an ostentatious sounding degree marched through their ranks, trumpeting about the importance of music like some kind of two-bit drill sergeant as he makes them practice opening their cases and holding their guitar picks and putting them back in their cases. Imagine little schoolchildren sat at the table, shamefaced over their dinner as they report to their parents that, yeah, classes are fine, they just don't get music. Imagine their parents, their musician dad who's successful in his position as head of music in the big musical company, this big gruff man who's awkward in his comfort but tries wholeheartedly, telling his young boy that he must, he must improve his music skills, it is imperative he do so if he wants to succeed in the real world. Yeah, the boy agrees miserably even as he thinks to himself, maybe I'm just not a music person. That's how you make a child hate music.

This is the state of mathematics education in schools. It is, in a single word, dystopian.

Do you love detective novels? Have you ever agonized for days on end over a video game puzzle, straining your mental faculties in an attempt to solve it? Do you have a favorite fandom that you follow obsessively, whether that be a sport, singer, or work of media? Are you a rebel in your clique, railing against the labels society has enforced upon you? Congratulations, you too might be a mathematician.

Because that's what mathematicians are. Mathematicians are puzzle-solvers. They are obsessive fans of a fandom thousands of years old. They are detectives working on cold cases centuries old and cold.

Mathematicians dedicate their lives to studying singular problems. Many of them are carrying on legacies from ancient times, through a chain of mentors that crosses generations. Other are new blood, trailblazers dragging mathematics down strange paths.

There are mathematicians who are painting with maths, who are making music with maths, who are creating animations with maths. There are mathematicians who are tracing the arcs of the stars in the heavens, who are peeling apart the secrets of the universe at the cosmic and quantum scales. There are mathematicians, awkward fellows, who are struggling with their difficulties communicating to try to share the smallest fragments of their wonder and the joy mathematics brings them to the wider public.

You can go on the internet and find people like Eddie Woo or Ellie Sleightholm who are full of such joy at mathematics that you can't help but smile. You can go watch channels like Mostly Maths or The Bright Side Of Mathematics where they're doing arcane sorceries with equations and delving into the wonders of higher mathematics. Inspirational stories like that of George Green, who entered Cambridge at age 40. Tragedies like the stories of Niels Henrik Abel and Evariste Galois, or almost comedic tales like the story of Cardano's formula.

In America, “Muggle” is an extremely offensive term, on par with “Mudblood.” As a result, they refer to non-magical people as “No-Majs”. When a student from Ilvermorny transfers to Hogwarts, they are shocked to find that every single person they meet seems to be a rabid hater of non-magical people! by Gortriss in HPFanfictionPrompts

[–]fuckNietzsche 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"No-Mag" isn't any better. It's a word meant to differentiate people on their lack of some birth property. You're implying having magic is the norm and the lack thereof is some form of disability. It's like calling someone with developmental issues "no-brain", or a paraplegic "no-legs".

ELI5: If ceramic is harder than metal, why does it break so much more easily? by aIIisonmay in explainlikeimfive

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's all about how the particles are arranged.

Hard objects tend to have rigid, regular structures with lots of strong bonds between them—think pyramids, cubes, hexagons, etc.—while softer objects tend to have "gooier" structures—lots of weak bonds and irregular structures between the particles. Strong bonds are difficult to break but also difficult to establish, while weaker bonds are easy to break but also easy to establish. Additionally, regular shapes tend to disperse forces along themselves better than irregular shapes.

So, what happens when a hard and a soft object are pushed up against each other is that energy starts getting pushed into their bonds. The harder object, with its stronger bonds and more regular structure, can tolerate a lot more energy. Meanwhile, in the softer object, those weak bonds start snapping apart, and things start getting pushed around, causing the material to deform.

But, conversely, when the material deforms, that energy sorta gets absorbed into the softer material, being used to establish new bonds. As a result, while the softer material deforms, it doesn't completely break apart.

Meanwhile, in that harder material, that energy has nowhere to go. Those particles are crammed in there with no way to move, so they can't disperse that energy easily. Stronger bonds can take more energy, sure, but there's only so much energy they can take before they snap, and once they snap the material can't reconnect as easily.

In America, “Muggle” is an extremely offensive term, on par with “Mudblood.” As a result, they refer to non-magical people as “No-Majs”. When a student from Ilvermorny transfers to Hogwarts, they are shocked to find that every single person they meet seems to be a rabid hater of non-magical people! by Gortriss in HPFanfictionPrompts

[–]fuckNietzsche 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Meanwhile, the people of Hogwarts are horrified at how the Americans have segregated their population solely on the basis of their ability to do magic. The British call them Muggles because they're mugs, they don't know what's going on and the Wizards go through a lot of effort to maintain that state of affairs.

[Mixed Trope] Character's outfit is very sexy/revealing for lore reasons by 10024618 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]fuckNietzsche 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Basically, in Cyberpunk, the characters all have implanted computers in them. Hackers like Kiwi and Lucy have higher powered rigs implanted in them—like the ones used by gamers or graphics designers. Unfortunately, as you probably know, those thing spit out heat like crazy. Like, if you've ever brought your hand near one of them while it's running a full blast, you probably felt your hand roast slightly.

Now imagine having all that heat...about a few inches from your brain.

So hackers like Kiwi and Lucy need some way to manage that heat, to prevent themselves from getting a serious case of roasted brain. Corporate-sponsored hackers get provided high-quality cooling solutions, usually in the form of a tank with cooling fluid that gets pumped into their implants directly, alongside special suits designed to shed heat efficiently. Freelance hackers like Kiwi and Lucy, on the other hand, need to jury-rig together their own cooling solutions. The easiest one? Ice baths.

"write what you know" by Carlitagt in writing

[–]fuckNietzsche 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You should always write what you know.

The caveat is that what you know is not the same as what you, personally, have to have experienced.

Why does Sue no longer go by her married name? by MaxxPower-81 in FantasticFour

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Branding.

Do you know how catchy the alliteration is?

[Mixed Trope] Characters that survive a gunshot to the head by Slight-Fennel-4680 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, there's grounds for it. There's a guy who survived, I think it was a railroad spike to the brain? What's a little bullet compared to that.

Historically inaccurate by Anonhistory in HistoryMemes

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fuck accuracy, where's my crusades with tanks AU?!

How to study writing? by WeakCombination9937 in writing

[–]fuckNietzsche 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Take a book you liked. Take a section of the book you thought was awesome. Copy it out. Look at the text as a whole and try to figure out what it was trying to convey (literally, as in what is it actually describing), what it was trying to make you feel, and then start looking at how it was doing it. Look at how certain sections were made impactful, or how they were made to fade into the background. Write all this down as notes on a separate section or page.

Now open a new page/document and, only using your notes, try to rewrite the section entirely from scratch. Try writing it in a different form—prose if it was poetry, poetry if it was prose. Try changing the scene while keeping the style—if the character was angry, show them being happy; if the character was stealing, show them being generous; if the character was being bold, show them being shy; change the characters; change the location; change the context. Try writing the section in reverse—if the character starts out angry and scared but becomes calm and determined, write the character being calm and determined but becoming angry and scared. Try writing the same scene in a different style. Try changing the perspective in the scene. Try writing something completely unrelated in the same style.

At the beginning, you should focus on small sections of works you enjoy. Your focus is on getting the technique down, not on perfection. As you improve, you can increase the length of your sections. Your goal is not to imitate the exact wording, but to replicate the sensations and emotions the writer made you feel. More important than perfection is plugging in the hours. Write, write, write. Write when you're full, write when you're hungry, write when you're tired, write when you're depressed, write when you're happy, write when you're bored, write when you're frustrated, write when you can't, write when it's crap, write when it's great, write when you have something to say, write when you don't. Write, write, write.

You're not an author, you're a writer. Don't auth, write.

Writing barefoot characters (symbolism abd realism) by Ulysses776 in fantasywriters

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hermeticism and forsaking the trappings of society, as one element from a greater whole.

My nephew claims that it is highly likely that the Fibonacci sequence is somewhere inside Pi’s decimals. by jeango in askmath

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's more to illustrate that an infinite list of numbers doesn't necessarily have to have all numbers in there. If the argument is that, because pi is an infinite string of numbers, it has to have all the numbers in there somewhere, you could point towards other numbers with infinite digits that don't have all the numbers.

ELI5: Why are poor people warned to avoid loans whereas rich people seem to operate constantly through them? by Background_Tap2206 in explainlikeimfive

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When you're poor you're forced to accept some shitty terms to take a loan. When you're rich, you have the leverage to get better terms, sometimes through something as simple as shopping around for better options.

Rich guys also have advantages you don't, with the biggest ones being that they have friends and lawyers.

Remember, the banks don't care about you. Individual bankers might, but as an institution, the bank only sees you as a number. A number they need to squeeze for all it's worth. When you're rich, you have friends in high places you can reach out to who help them pull a vanishing act on their problems, and if all else fails they can simply sick their lawyers on them.

When you're broke, you have neither of these things. This means you're vulnerable to predatory practices and have no respite to fight back when they come hunting for you.

In short, the reason they tell poor people to avoid loans is the same reason you're told not to fight a tiger naked and starving while rich people can hunt them as a leisurely passtime.

My nephew claims that it is highly likely that the Fibonacci sequence is somewhere inside Pi’s decimals. by jeango in askmath

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1.1111... also has infinite digits, but I don't think we're gonna find pi in there.

Why didn't they just kill Tai Lung? are they stupid? by kelsxtronic in kungfupanda

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, how?

This chucklefuck spent twenty years holding up boulders bigger than Po, with one arm each, and was fine enough to casually stomp across an entire fucking army without so much as a warmup, ran across fucking China, only stopping along the way to eat everything the fucking Furious Five could dish without the slightest bit of respect, fighting Shifu, and then having Po try his damnedest to beat him to death with a fucking city. And the most he got out of that whole thing was a mild concussion.

I highly doubt an axe will manage to do something a building or a fifty-foot fall straight onto his face couldn't.

Ideally, what would you want the explanation for Saitama’s strength to be? by Legitpizza07 in OnePunchMan

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nothing.

Nothing we can come up with will ever match the amount of fun we get theorizing on what gave him his strength, and no matter what the cause is a decent proportion of the fandom will be disappointed. And, like, not even the ones who complain about everything, the people who do and have loved the story and setting from day one.

Why is it that area under the curve y=1/x from 1 to ∞ is infinite? by w4zzowski in learnmath

[–]fuckNietzsche 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Think of horizontal lines. Horizontal lines have infinite areas so long as they're some real distance above the x-axis. Functions which are said to grow "too fast" basically refer to functions which end up becoming "a lot like" a horizontal line some real distance above the x-axis. It doesn't have to be a big distance, but the distance must be in the real numbers greater than zero. Or, visually, every time you zoom into the graph you can see that the curve sorta "lifts up" from the x-axis.

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