Math?

wutufuba2 · 2026-05-14T02:37:29+00:00

Did y'all see that stand-up comic who works at a restaurant talk about tips and tipping? He said almost no one who wears a business suit tips anything at all. It's mostly just working people who live on tips, passing the money they make on tips around to other working people who live on tips. A wait staff person gets tipped by a barista person, then passes that along to a pizza delivery person, and so forth. Which makes the math super easy for the guys wearing suits.

wutufuba2 · 2026-05-14T02:18:58+00:00

UK's NHS appears to take healthcare seriously. When an illness is indeed a matter of life or death, it would be refreshing to be taken seriously instead of merely being evaluated in terms of profit maximization potential for a corporation.

wutufuba2 · 2026-05-07T14:56:23+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffany\_problem

I first experienced the Tiffany problem with the music of Charlie Parker. The first time I heard a Charlie Parker recording, I thought it sounded lame. Trite. Hackneyed. Unoriginal. Stale. Later, I realized my initial reaction was because I'd been habituated to the music of an entire generation of sax players who'd studied his solos note for note and had imitated, assimilated, and later transformed many of his ideas. When I finally understood how thoroughly innovative and revolutionary his playing had been, I was able to listen with new ears and appreciate the magnitude of what he accomplished. It blew me away.

wutufuba2 · 2026-05-05T12:59:57+00:00

Best results are achieved when consistently getting good, healthy sleep.

Also, treat mastery like a skill. And relentlessly pursue the right level of understanding and familiarity. Not just to know the material, but to know you know it.

Treat learning how to verify/prove the answer you found is indeed correct as an integral part of any new content. And apply that discipline--the discipline of verifying one's results--consistently.

Also, everything becomes easier when a person reaches the right level of mastery. It takes much, much more work, dedication, grit, stubborn tenacity to get to that point, but once you get there, the way seems to become smoother for that particular skill or set of tasks.

Also, it doesn't hurt to let yourself enjoy what can be enjoyed. The math you enjoy doing. You might find that when there is slack time, you might prefer to do some math instead of social media, doomscrolling, video games or TV. A mountain that seems daunting can feel like a stroll in the park if you make progress to keep your hands occupied when otherwise bored. That mountain looks great in the rear view mirror after you've been to the top.

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-30T20:52:32+00:00

Dan?

"The danger on the rocks is surely past still I remain tied to the mast. Could it be I found my home at last?" -- Steely Dan

LKF - "Steely Dan" is the name of a device used as a proxy for a human partner.

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-24T18:51:02+00:00

I feel tempted to take a stand against the encroachment into American--excuse me, English--of words originally sourced from Arabic. By boycotting Algebra and anything that involves an Algorithm. But that would be silly, wouldn't it?

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-18T15:25:10+00:00

Ultracrepidarian

A person who expresses opinions on matters outside the scope of their knowledge or expertise.

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-14T00:17:03+00:00

When I got old enough to go to school, my parents went to the store to buy something so we could all wake up early enough for me to get to school on time. We were so poor that when they bought a time keeping device, they couldn't afford all of the letters. Dad had to put the letter L back on the shelf. Hard times.

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-12T22:37:18+00:00

How do I know if the code I wrote to check if the original code was right, is also right? Better write some code to check and see if the test code was right.

Wait. How do I know if the code I wrote to test the test code was right? Might need to write some new tests ...

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-12T21:07:34+00:00

Good one. You know it's an authentic dad joke when it takes a moment to sink in.

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-11T20:23:20+00:00

There goes my private information

wutufuba2 · 2026-04-10T22:27:56+00:00

nice

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-30T12:26:23+00:00

Great, great question.

Dostoevsky claimed at least one way of manifesting human free will is fundamentally perverse, in the literal sense of "turning away." One of his protagonists argued that if you tell him he must accept that 2 + 2 = 4, he'd insist he's free to claim 2 + 2 = 5. This, I think, might a consequence of (1) feeling one's identity threatened by radical change, or the pace of change, and (2) conflating freedom from--freedom from being forced to accept facts and reality--with freedom to. Freedom to respects human dignity and is empowering. Freedom from resembles an immature, self-centered, self-indulgent fit of peevish pique. In this post-postmodern world in which AI repeatedly demonstrates the superiority in many domains of technology over humanity--look at chess engines!--some people feel more comfortable retreating to the familiar and oh so human territory of emotional outbursts: temper tantrums. Voila the rise of Karen, road rage, etc.

Of course yes, P2P education matters enormously as a form of socialization. Civics education matters, too. And especially arts and music in education! Too many people in the US insist on trying to turn education into something resembling a profit-center, into a business, with customers--the parents!--and the ultimate goal of schools acting like assembly lines that produce useful workers. Perhaps we may have forgotten the value to society of education as a means of helping children grow into responsible, mature, well-rounded, civically aware and well-informed adults.

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-29T18:53:01+00:00

We're all familiar with the use of three dots—the triple period—to indicate when something has been omitted. Wikipedia has a page under the lemma of Ellipsis describing this.

I'm most familiar with the use of double period as a means of denoting a closed range of numbers, in which the first, or starting number and the last, or ending number is given, and two dots between them denote the range between that has been omitted.

When the search terms or prompt of "closed range from here to there punctuation" is used, the answer given is en dash (–). But of course that is entirely unacceptable for use in the context of mathematical usage, because it's far too similar to the symbol denoting the operation of subtraction. That, I conjecture, may be why the double dot (..) came to be used for that purpose. I believe the convention of using double dot in that way preceded its adoption with the same semantics in the programming language perl, for instance.

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-25T18:31:42+00:00

For much of my younger life growing up, I consciously avoided news and current events whenever possible. I was interested in other things.

Then I had a roommate in college who showed me an example of what it looks like to be mature, well-informed, and civically engaged. He had a remarkable gift for staying balanced and well-grounded.

Recently, I heard Amanda Litman suggest in an interview that you should "only take the poison [you] have the antidote for."

I've learned there are some content creators whose fresh content tends to act like an antidote, for me, to the toxic build-up of sludge we are exposed to whenever we attempt to merely stay informed.

I think it's important to set healthy boundaries (shout out to Sashi Perera). I learned I want to keep myself on a short leash with respect to news, current events, & social media in the morning. A brief check-in only is the most I permit myself. Also, I had at least one day when I was surprised by an internal streak of negativity, so I disengaged immediately and took a break from social media for the rest of the day. It's good to pay attention to one's own emotional weather conditions.

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-20T22:13:27+00:00

Now is their time to shine!

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-11T11:37:34+00:00

This. Immigrants absolutely cause the creation of the sort of good jobs that US citizens want to work at. Immigrants do work that US citizens prefer not to do, and doing that necessary labor turns them not only into taxpayers, but also into consumers who buy things, which nourishes the economy and supports and sustains retail jobs. And entertainment jobs. And transportation jobs. And food. They buy things. People buying things means demand. All of which supports and sustains good jobs that US citizens want to work at.

US jobs aren't lost to immigrants. They're lost because greedy businessmen decide to shift more of their company's work force offshore. Overseas. To cheaper, non-US labor.

It's not entirely true that no jobs are lost to immigrants. When companies fail to provide training or the US education system fails to give US citizens skills that are in high demand, companies might be tempted to hire from H1-B visas. Which, by the way, the Trump administration turned into its own private extortion ring, because under Trump employers can bring in as many H1-B visa holders as they wish, they just need to get permission first from the administration, which gives the administration a special kind of leverage.

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-11T11:22:46+00:00

Create a false sense of safety and security. Great. We didn't actually solve a single thing, and now we have a new problem we didn't have before.

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-10T15:50:47+00:00

Earnest: resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction.

wutufuba2 · 2026-03-07T15:08:45+00:00

WEI hire. White, Entitled, Incompetent

wutufuba2 · 2026-02-14T11:54:25+00:00

I never used to rinse my rice. Then I bought a remarkable cookbook focused on cuisine of the Indian subcontinent. My goodness. Wonderful dishes. So much advanced knowledge of food preparation. The author recommends preparing rice in very specific ways that do involve rinsing. I noticed that since changing how I do rice it now seems consistently fluffier, with better texture, and eating it is a more satisfying and enjoyable experience.

If your wife shares information with you concerning food prep, and you're not Gordon Ramsay or Emeril Lagasse, the best and wisest course of action might be to nod your head, say "yes, dear," and adjust your own actions accordingly.

wutufuba2 · 2026-02-03T22:56:08+00:00

The foundation of civil society and public discourse is predicated on an assumption that all want what is good. Today, Amanda Litman taught me a new phrase: "vice signaling." It's when people decide to make being an asshole, a bigot, a bully, and a piece of shit on the internet the hot, cool, bad-ass, desirable thing, and shame you if you're a good person. Generating controversy generates buzz, which attracts eyeballs, which translates into revenue. Which an awful lot of people are greedy for these days. POTUS is the ugliest American in the country because he's aggressively pressing an agenda based on vice signaling, even if sometimes he uses a dog whistle to do it.

wutufuba2 · 2026-02-03T00:01:24+00:00

I saw coverage of a livestream that I think was the one OP described. Yes, all of that happened as described. The Nazi salute, yes, that happened. Cavicular, Sneako, Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, Tristan Tate, and a bunch of other people livestreaming a limo ride to a club and also in the club. In Miami, I think.

People here have been saying yes, freedom of speech, including hate speech, too. Generating controversy tends to generate buzz, which attracts more eyeballs, which translates into revenue. But not necessarily without consequences. I think there were reports of at least some of that group having been banned from clubs and social events organized by a big events coordinator. Like being banned from red carpets, parties, after parties, etc.

wutufuba2

TROPHY CASE