Nov 11

No Bolting

Please don’t believe this.

I’ve always felt a spiritual connection with grizzly bears. They’re slow, chunky and have an overwhelming affection for peanut butter–just like I do.

The “slow” part, I mean. A grizzly bear can run at 35mph. Usain Bolt’s top speed is around 28mph. And here’s some news: you aren’t Usain Bolt.

People also think bison are slow because they are large; another fatal mistake. They can also run at 35mph.

Nov 11

Setup

This is amazing.

I have never seen this show but now I will watch it. I don’t know why they filmed it this way but even if it’s just for some sizzle reel it is a joy to watch. Witnessing true experts do something is such a different experience; it’s as close as we get to the superhuman.

Nov 11

Faster

I haven’t eaten anything for 18 hours and I’ve worked out twice today (different muscle groups). According to Tumblrites, I am in starvation mode and definitely on the verge of death.

I feel fine because the FA/Tumblrite idea of how bodies function is just not true.

Going to eat in a few minutes but two medium to hard workouts and no food and somehow I am still standing. Imagine that.

Nov 11

Algofunction

I watch women’s tennis on YouTube sometimes. Men’s, too, but more often women’s because the game is better there.

And from that, YouTube inferred that I want to look at the “world’s sexiest athletes” and some such as that. I wish I could tell the idiotic algorithm to give me videos of what I’d been watching, which is women’s tennis. I never watch anything like the algo suggested on YouTube or anywhere else.

But the algorithm knows best. It’s not the algorithm that is wrong, Google engineers will no doubt tell you; it’s you.

I’d watch tennis on YouTube a lot more if it’d suggest to me things I actually want to see.

Nov 11

Ochre

For the first point, I don’t really care about the moral status of the artist. This changes too much over time and one day, we’ll all be judged immoral if not utterly monstrous. Why people are so concerned with this I cannot figure out. A form of virtue signaling, I guess.

For the second point, I’ve never had that problem so I can’t really answer the question.

Nov 11

Proof

I understand why physicists and mathematicians get tired of crackpots and such. Heck, I get tired of them because when I’m researching subjects they are all over the place.

No, motherfucker, you can’t disprove Cantor’s diagonal argument or relativity in your basement using two shot glasses and a laser pointer. And that you “feel like” bijection doesn’t work or that the irrational numbers aren’t uncountably infinite doesn’t mean jack shit because these are firmly proved. There is not a room for debate here. There is nothing to discover or argue about. This is simply how the universe is and that’s it.

Sure, I’d feel more comfortable too if the rational numbers weren’t utterly swamped (to a degree that is impossible to comprehend) by a vast and endless sea of uncomputable irrationals. That makes me uncomfortable because it implies something about the universe that I don’t quite understand. Nevertheless, it is what is true. There is not a basis for dispute here. It’s not like arguing about what your favorite soft drink is.

When I can see the obvious wrong logic and assumptions in your “proof” that the rational and irrationals are equal in measure, then damn, you have truly failed.

Nov 11

Left It

Why is it so hard for the left to understand that having one’s culture changed and/or obliterated is a valid human fear? It seems like some sort of ideology and mental malfunction. Yet they also talk about gentrification which is the same thing.

No ideology is self-consistent (it can’t be), but I just wish the left’s made any sort of sense because the right’s is no alternative.

Nov 11

Measured

If you pick a random real number from 0 to 1, there is 0% chance of it being a rational number. Essentially, simplifying greatly, this is true because there are uncountably infinite irrational numbers but the rational ones are countably infinite.

If you want to understand more about this, take a look at measure theory and Cantor’s diagonal argument.

Yes, I am bad at math but I like understanding the math that actually matters and that can’t be done by some stupid brainless calculator.

About the above, I only sort of understand the formal proof, but imagine that there is our universe. Than imagine that there is an infinity of universes like ours. Then imagine that in that infinity of universes there is one gem hidden that you must find.

How long will you have to look for that gem? Well, infinitely long because there are infinite universes.

That gem is all of the rational numbers. You can never find even one of them because the search time required is infinite in duration.

That’s a fair summation of the proof.

(And if you think the above is just irrelevant academic points, this matters a great deal to how computers work and what we can and cannot do with them, among other things.)

Nov 10

Not My Relative

No. Relativity applies always, but it might not need to be figured into calculations depending on the application and precision needed.

GPS makes use of the general theory or relativity while radar, particle accelerators for medical use and other applications depend on the special. Additionally, electromagnetism wouldn’t even work if special relativity weren’t true. I don’t feel like typing out why now (as it’s not very easy to understand) but Google will get you the answer to this at least.

This reminds me of Hertz, who discovered electromagnetic waves, but asserted that they were useless. (Hint for the smartphone people: it’s how your smartphone works.)

People can believe the most absurd things. And do.