for those of you with really bad and persistent heartburn like me, here’s a tip that I just discovered:
try sucking on an antacid like it’s a hard candy instead of just chewing it and swallowing it. that way it’s neutralizing the acid and washing it away every time you swallow. when I do this I get relief for the entire time that I’m sucking on it, and it takes a while for it to start burning again afterward
a while ago I posted a criticism of the word “idempotent” and this is what I was trying to say. in order to understand this word you have to either:
obviously googling a single word isn’t a problem on its own, but it becomes a problem when you’re reading an article that uses one fancy academic word after another and you can’t even get a clue about what the words are supposed to mean without - again - knowing Latin
now imagine if instead of “idempotent” we said “change-once”. as in, a change-once operator. it still doesn’t get the exact meaning across but it’s drastically better than “idempotent”, and it’s much easier to memorize too!
obviously what I’m implicitly saying is that academic words should be in English by default, instead of Latin or Greek, and I don’t like that (I wish we were speaking Esperanto or an even better conlang than that) but I think it’s the pragmatic choice because it’s the most-spoken language in the world
and speaking of writing in Latin so that only other nobles can understand, isn’t it interesting how academic language almost exclusively uses Greek and Latin roots? I wouldn’t be surprised at all if speaking in plain/vernacular English was shamed as “unprofessional” or “uneducated” in academic circles, and I think it comes back to this same mechanism for excluding the working class
anyway yeah I suspect that this “secret language” thing is a widespread problem in all branches of academia - not just math
this is also how I feel about math notation because math notation is:
it reminds me of how Medieval nobles would speak and write in Latin so that they could only be understood by other nobles, as a form of social exclusion. because no one else had access to the leisure time and money for tutoring costs that it would take to learn a skill like that
so yeah kas’s hot take of the day is that math notation is a classist secret language and knowledge of math is deliberately inaccessible to the working class
in minecraft functional programming magic mod trickster we just finished making a spell that will scan a region and consume any grown sugarcane into mana
the argument passing into subcircles is a mess,,
anyways we put this spell into a spell construct, gave it a diamond knot, and that knot is now being charged up with mana whenever a new sugarcane grows in the dedicated farm we built :3
some things involved in the making of this spell:
we all know the classic thought experiment, what would you do if you were given a million dollars. it’s not very interesting these days
here’s one I find more interesting: what would you do with a hundred million dollars, when you’re only allowed to keep up to 1% of it for personal use?
so, assuming you keep that 1% for whatever you personally need or want, you have $99,000,000 left to use on things that don’t benefit you directly. you can’t be a capitalist about it and buy a company or invest it all or anything like that, you need to spend the money on the world around you
compared to the other version of this game, the goal shifts from selfishness to selflessness. you could just donate it all to various nonprofits, or you could get more creative and try to build your own thing with the money. the game is about trying to figure out how to make the largest possible lasting difference with the money
every once in a while, I find myself thinking about this kind of thing for one reason or another, and my answer shifts a little based on whatever I’m feeling at the time. lately, foster care and elder care have been on the mind more than usual
I think it would be neat to build out a whole campus to house foster care, elder care, a dedicated hospital and school (both with actually helpful mental health services), and plenty of park space. set up an interest bearing trust to keep the place funded as a nonprofit without having to rely primarily on government subsidies and grants. if there’s enough money left over, add an apartment complex or two to the campus and house the homeless there. of course, nobody living there would have to pay anything, though they could donate if they wanted to, and all donations (from residents or otherwise) just go straight into the trust. the biggest challenge of running the place (aside from the politics of it) would definitely be ensuring that the people working there don’t abuse anybody, and that if they do, there is a way for the victims to report that safely and confidently, and sufficient trust in the system that they would actually do it
it’s a nice fantasy
my doctor will get a $50 tip on their copay if they can perform the visit in fucking esperanto
I hate the academic style of writing that seems to value concision over clarity. because it ends up so terse and choked with jargon, with no clarifications or examples, that it’s basically unreadable to me. I bet even serious academics have trouble reading this style of writing
like for example I tried reading the standard for the Scheme language, which was very interesting in the places that I could understand, but it was also filled with phrases like “lexical syntax” – without any context to infer what that means
before approving a follow request I look at that being’s profile and get a feel for their personality by looking at their posts. I only reject requests if:
mostly I just want to make sure that I’m not being followed by beings who are going to be toxic at me in some way. if you tried to follow me and I rejected it, it’s probably just because your account is new or you’ve been boosting a lot and haven’t posted in a while
I miss the 2006 era internet. when userscripts worked, user-styles were easy to make, and there were only like 3 troubleshooting steps if a page broke
YouTube just broke for me in such a way that:
how does that even happen? this isn’t the first time either
@bea
Hail satan.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cjum5aHsE
Feels like many of my followers could use these images in some wonderful memes. Or in flirting. Or you can just be happy knowing that the Deaf community tends to be very queer-positive and that even "mainstream" apps teach LGBTQ+ terms, etc.
But also, yeah, I know some of you -- even hearies -- are gonna be dropping these screenshots in non-ASL conversations, heh. 🤟
In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away: In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. [...] the economic unit is "we" rather than "I", as all flourishing is mutual.
-- Robin Wall Kimmerer "The Serviceberry"
5/7
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Digital planned obsolescence (of video games) must end!