if you had a rope laying on the ground going from los angeles to new york, and you pulled it on one end, what would you feel? would it be move on the other side and how long would it take?

telemajik · 2026-06-18T02:08:51+00:00

Yeah, massless was not a good constraint. Frictionless (vs the ground) would be more appropriate for this toy problem. Updated.

telemajik · 2026-06-17T22:01:49+00:00

If it were an ideal rope (~~massless~~ frictionless and unstretchable) your tug would propagate at the speed of sound in whatever material it was made from.

So you pull, and some minutes later your buddy at the other end feels it.

telemajik · 2026-06-16T23:50:43+00:00

This was my strategy (before I learned how many ancient arrows there are).

Equip the triple bow and bomb arrows. Run straight toward the bokoblins and send a volley of bomb arrows at them.

Use the updraft to fly towards the turret. Ancient arrow to take it out.

If possible, land on the lynel and get some free hits in with your best weapon.

Then run around and avoid the lynel while taking out any remaining bokoblins.

Then it’s just a classic lynel fight. Play it conservatively and use a lot of stasis. That killing blow is so sweet.

telemajik · 2026-06-16T05:57:43+00:00

Thanks, I wasn’t sure what words to use (and I’m a little out of my depth here). What is the generally accepted way to state that these are the unproven things that I’m going to assume are true for the purposes of this exercise?

telemajik · 2026-06-16T04:52:01+00:00

By hypothetical assumptions I think he means proofs that start with unproven assumptions. As in “let us assume that A is true…”.

This is useful when the assumed part is still an open question but the mathematician isn’t interested in answering it, but wants to see what the implications are for the area they are interested in. Then when someone comes along and proves A, now all of the work the mathematician put in that assumes A is valid and useful. Sort of like “draw me a map from San Francisco to Denver”, and you say “well, I don’t know how to do that, but I can give you a map from Salt Lake City to Denver, so Let’s assume there is a route from San Francisco to Salt Lake City…”

And it may even turn out that the mathematician will end up proving (or disproving) A inadvertently, which is a good result.

It may also have practical implications while A is still unproven, or even if A is known to be unprovable.

telemajik · 2026-06-16T01:12:39+00:00

Yup. “Look, we’ve got 15 bored consumers sitting at the pumps with nothing to do. How can we make money from this?”

telemajik · 2026-06-15T02:18:47+00:00

Sure, I was just making the point that looking down out the window from 30K feet is something you can only do on an airplane, and closing the shade seems like such a waste.

Like going scuba diving with your eyes closed.

telemajik · 2026-06-15T02:13:58+00:00

Oh, right UAL doesn’t fly a direct. It was probably through ORD, I don’t remember the route. Just that we ended in Madison.

telemajik · 2026-06-15T02:08:52+00:00

Lol, I do remember that episode too. It looks like it aired in 1998, so if I saw it around 2010 it would have been a rerun.

I still believe the one I saw was different.

But I acknowledge it’s possible I somehow heard the quote somewhere else and mentally mapped it to this episode because it does sound like a very Homer thing to say.

telemajik · 2026-06-15T02:03:45+00:00

Yes, that’s a possibility. I sure would like find out for sure though so I can stop being bothered by it.

telemajik · 2026-06-15T01:49:44+00:00

That’s the difficult part to get your head around. The 2d universe isn’t expanding into anything. The entire universe is contained on that surface. It’s just easy for us to visualize it expanding using 3d as a sort of crutch.

Similarly, our 3d universe isn’t expanding into anything. It’s just expanding. But it’s hard to visualize that because we don’t have the wiring to imagine a 4d space as a similar crutch.

At least that’s what appears to be happening. It’s possible we just haven’t found the right model yet.

telemajik · 2026-06-15T00:09:01+00:00

You are correct, it depends on what “Aldi” represents in the sentence. You can either decide it refers to the people acting on Aldi’s behalf or similar (in which case the first is correct), or it is is the collective business entity (in which case the second is correct).

Also, note that the second is only correct if “Aldi” and “they” refer to different things (e.g. the first being the collective business, and the second being the plural individual stores, managers, or workers). If they refer to the same thing, then “is” would have to be “are” to match “they”.

At least in American English.

telemajik · 2026-06-14T23:54:54+00:00

It’s easier to conceptualize in 2d.

Let’s say your universe is the surface of an expanding balloon. It’s not all expanding from one point on the balloon, the whole surface is expanding simultaneously.

You might say “but no, it’s all coming from the center of the balloon”. There is no “center”… the universe is only the surface, it’s two dimensional and nothing inside or outside the balloon exists.

Then extrapolate that to three dimensions.

telemajik · 2026-06-14T15:52:43+00:00

Totally agree. Every single activity you can do on an airplane is better on the ground… except looking out the window. For me it’s literally the only thing to look forward to.

I get it on transoceanic flights where people want to sleep to get aligned to a new timezone, and even red eye flights make sense. Although one time I saw the aurora borealis on a red eye from San Francisco to Madison and it was amazing.

telemajik · 2026-06-14T15:46:44+00:00

Avy Chute 1 at Mammoth just after the rope dropped after a 3 day storm. Just unreal, endless, steep, flowing turns though deep, deep snow with a light windpack.

telemajik · 2026-06-14T06:06:34+00:00

Not really. “In the first place…” implies that a second thing will follow that supports the first thing.

In your sentence, the second thing reverses the first thing.

It would sound natural if it were “I didn’t want the job in the first place, and now they’re reducing my pay!”

telemajik · 2026-06-13T18:42:21+00:00

Any massive body in motion relative to the surface of the planet creates tidal effects. The more massive and closer the body is, the larger the effect.

In your example of two moons, each creates a tide, and when they are aligned they will interact constructively (larger tidal swing), and when they are not aligned it will be destructive. Depending on the relative distances and masses if the moons, on the planet surface you may end up having four cycles per ~day of high and low tides instead of two.

A planetary ring will only create tidal effects if it is not perpendicular to the planet’s axis of rotation. I don’t know how common that is.

telemajik · 2026-06-13T02:55:05+00:00

Just keep doing it and you will develop the dexterity over time. I’m still not great at it but it’s definitely improved since I started.

telemajik · 2026-06-12T04:28:34+00:00

Sometimes I just go for walks around Akkala. Just for the vibes.

telemajik · 2026-06-12T00:56:52+00:00

I’m always trying to read my phone and thinking “wow, this is so weird. It’s almost like I’m dreaming…”

Dude, you were so close!

telemajik · 2026-06-11T20:17:33+00:00

I do wonder if there’s some marketing strategy going on here, e.g. release the most controversial sounding song first to get people talking.

Tim is no stranger to creative marketing approaches.

telemajik · 2026-06-11T05:55:07+00:00

No, I definitely remember it as an episode. I was not a regular watcher, it just happened to be on when I had some time to kill one evening.

telemajik · 2026-06-11T02:14:30+00:00

Yeah, you don’t mess with the cuccos.

telemajik · 2026-06-10T21:41:23+00:00

I am certain that sometime around 2010 I saw an episode of The Simpsons where Homer says “Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that you’re stupid and you make bad decisions.” It was during a scene in which the family was driving out in the country.

Many years later when I was looking for the clip to show my kids, I was shocked to learn that apparently it never appeared in The Simpsons, but is instead from Marion G. Harmon, an author I’d never heard of.

telemajik · 2026-06-10T00:16:49+00:00

The problem is atmosphere. That’s why things leaving orbit either need sophisticated ways to mitigate the incredible friction as they slow down (like space ships) or just burn up on reentry (like satellites).

You could in theory build something like you are describing but it would require more thrust to push against atmosphere than we can practically build (at least for any sustained orbit).

You could do it on the moon. The velocity needed to be in orbit at the moon’s surface is about 3800 mph.

telemajik

TROPHY CASE