IJBMer Updates

Stormtroper

I first found about it over a decade ago on TV Tropes, it was annoying that it took more than it should have to find out whether it's a book or a video game or what. I thought it was interesting, but you'd have to pay me to read through the research-flavor jargon to get to the meat of the articles. The side works people do are interesting, tho.
In what may be related, I'm growing an interesting in X-Com again.
On math stuff, this time it's about number theory. When some lay math intetrnet discussion starts getting philosophical about whether math is "true" or what, someone will bring up modular arithmetic as a different "mathematical system" and something like "2+2=0" (in modulo 4) as a result that contradicts the 2+2=4 that we're used to, but...
1. The basis for modular arithmetic is the same math we're used to, only that it overloads the = symbol (when not using the mod ≡ thing) for a different equivalence relation about whether this divides this other thing. It's called "congruence" after all.
2. 2+2=4 mod k for any k, it's not any more a contradiction to 2+2=4 than "2+2=3+1" is.

lrdgck

Heh, in terms of math I can do up to a simple differential equation, some geometry if it's not abstract, and perhaps basic probability. If it can't be expressed as a plain 1D equation I'm gonna lose my head sooner rather than later.

Also, for all your D&D needs there's a company producing a Beast of Wadowice model. In case your game had not enough Pope The Pole-themed monsters.

Stormtroper

I tried to do one of those rocket-homing-on-target problems from calculus 3 and couldn't.
I think I can still do systems of ordinary lineal differential equations, and I think the stuff I self-studied (discrete math, data structures and algorithms) is recent enough that I think I can pick it back up, but clearly if I don't practice that stuff I'll lose it. We all know I won't get back into it though, if I do then I won't have the time/dedication to get back into all the stuff I should be getting back into.

glennmagusharvey

I forgot how to do more advanced differential equations stuff

lrdgck wrote: »

Also, for all your D&D needs there's a company producing a Beast of Wadowice model. In case your game had not enough Pope The Pole-themed monsters.

wtf

Stormtroper

You know what's worse than feeling miserable because you wasted your free time in banal stuff that amounts to nothing? Spending your time on self-improvement and productive matters and still feel miserable.

lrdgck

There's also that feeling that you've apparently maxed out the relevant skill many years ago and can't catch up ever since.

As a pastime, once in a while I like to grab a piece of paper and a pen and try to solve some simple mathematical problem. Sort of like doodling, but with math. And then I feel stupid for being unable to solve it. Sometimes I give up and search for a solution online. It hurts a bit less when the solution turns out to be some specific named function made up for purpose of there being a solution to the problem.

glennmagusharvey

lrdgck wrote: »

It hurts a bit less when the solution turns out to be some specific named function made up for purpose of there being a solution to the problem.

What problem was this? haha

Related: I eventually learned that there's a solution to the integral of (e to the (x squared)). But it's not actually algebraic; it's literally just a special function defined as the solution to that, which just turns out to be useful for other applications.

Well, okay, not exactly that. But the error function is just a constant times said integral.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_function

Stormtroper

f(x) = e^x^2 was how I learned about non-analytic functions, specifically as counterexamples to that thing where if at one point you know what a smooth function and all its derivatives evaluate to, you can figure the entirety of that function... except apparently I learned it wrong because I just looked it up and it's an analytic function, I probably mixed it up with e^(-1/x) which is non-analytic.
I'll never not find surprising that the error function, being (almost) the integral of something as ubiquitous as a standard gaussian distribution is something that gets defined into existence.
Also, I think one could use subscripts and superscripts on IJBM before, did something change?

lrdgck

What problem was this?

Eh, in general? It's usually something related to celestial or basic quantum mechanics. You know, as long as there's a simple equation I can tinker with for fun. As far as I can say, when I stuff it into WolframAlpha the result has either "Legendre" or "elliptical" in its name.

Also, I've had a cold of some sort of another since, like, two months? Guess that's the price of being alive after thirty. At this point I don't even feel like doing anything with it anymore.

Stormtroper

I learned that a bunch of works have been entering the public domain these past years, Steamboat Willie is nearly there and it doesn't seem like the US copyright limits will get extended again.
Also this.

lrdgck

I'm honestly surprised Disney didn't scramble lawyers this time. Perhaps they're saving them for Mickey Mouse.

And I imagine you were thinking of that:

Stormtroper

I've been watching los of meme Chess videos lately, again.
On relates news, I've begun playing online chess (on chess.com). Man, I'm so rusty, I think my Elo will sit at somewhere in the 400s, my only victory was with the Scholar's Mate. Also, I can't spend more than ~20 seconds on a turno without feeling like I'm wasting my time, so I've only played Blitz Chess so far.

Stormtroper

The hairy ball theorem just came up for me as a practical matter instead of lolz funny dirty math name, I was trying out some vector mapping things in Blender and thanks to it I stopped myself from wasting time trying to make It looks nice on a sphere.
I've sometimes wondered what's the name of the area of math for the things that come Up all the time while working with materials in 3DCG, sounds like it'd be useful. Geometry and linear algebra are obviously relevant but insufficient, and topology is not quite like It.

lrdgck

I've sometimes wondered what's the name of the area of math

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, seems like you wouldn't go wrong if you called it "applied".

Tangentially related to chess, recently I've been browsing through some M:tG cards online. For a while I felt picking it up again, but I don't have enough free time on my hands to plan ahead an online game. (Also known as the "Mooom, I can't 'just pause it'!" problem.) My old buddies are planning a meet-up, so I might bring in my old deck, just in case.

Stormtroper

I've sometimes wondered what's the name of the area of math for the things that come Up all the time while working with materials in 3DCG, sounds like it'd be useful. Geometry and linear algebra are obviously relevant but insufficient, and topology is not quite like It.

Got It, it's called discrete differential geometry. From a Google search you'd think 3DCG is all it's good for. Also for some reason most of the online resources I find come from a single professor. Regardless, I've begun learning it.
My previous knowledge on (not necessarily discrete) differential geometry comes from this.

lrdgck

You know, it's a bit of a missed opportunity that of all these viking movies, feels like, not a single one had the viking protagonist visit Constantinople. It was like a gap year backpacking tour for these folks.

Stormtroper

Man, I'm running into serious issues with this course, with reading material, lectures and assignments not being in sync, meaning rather than learning one thing at a time I have to mentally juggle several things simultaneously and figure out how it all fits together (other courses use different terminology/notation so their usefulness is limited too). I'll keep at it but I feel at some point I'll give up due to frustration.
I now know what Hitler meant when he said that topology had too many definitions.
Also I forgot much of what I learned in vector calculus classes that is now coming up, stuff involving differentials (I thought mathematicians disliked treating dx and such as variables, but differential geometry is full of them, hence the name I guess).

lrdgck

TIL Hitler was into topology

glennmagusharvey

I want to say something but I recognize that I am not leet enough at lath to know whether what I say will be kosher in the context of differential geometry, since the furthest I got was 3D calc.

Stormtroper

If it helps mather, there's a good chance I'm not leet enough to know that either.
^^ FWIW it was a reference to this.
Speaking of German things, apparently there are huge gaps in what I know of it, because I only recently learned that West Berlin was an exclave in Eastern Germany.

glennmagusharvey

I just now realized I typed "lath" instead of "math".

glennmagusharvey

Stormtroper wrote: »

Speaking of German things, apparently there are huge gaps in what I know of it, because I only recently learned that West Berlin was an exclave in Eastern Germany.

I always thought that was weird too.

lrdgck

Come to think of it, I've felt I know a precious little about Germany for a while already. Not "there was an East Germany?" level of little, but still, less you'd expect from a neighbouring country.

fourteenwings

Stormtroper wrote: »

It occurs to me that even for big teams with huge budgets, mascot costumes aren't as well-manufactured as fursuits.

lrdgck wrote: »

The secret ingredient is love.

Sorry guys this is hilarious.

I have many updates but I'd like to go into detail on each and I have absolutely no idea where to start and some stuff happened ages ago so I don't even feel like talking about it anymore.

I guess most importantly I got a promotion at work a few weeks ago (a month now?) so now I have like 3 seconds of free time a day (funnily enough you guys were the first people I wanted to tell which was quite odd).

Also there was once this guy called Jack Murphy and the internet was not his friend (tl;dr, he was like last month's Andrew Tate except he was also very into making adult content with his girlfriend and this was discovered and it was super, super embarrassing).

lrdgck

I guess most importantly I got a promotion at work a few weeks ago (a month now?) so now I have like 3 seconds of free time a day

Woah. Congrats!

(funnily enough you guys were the first people I wanted to tell which was quite odd).

a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one

(edit: also, I have missed the story of who this whole Andrew Tate guy is, at this point I have at best a vague impression of what it's about, and I feel like actively searching for it would be like giving undue importance to some internet-famous moron. I mean, I wouldn't mind if somebody gave me the short version, but to actively search for it now feels aaawkwaaard.)

fourteenwings

Andrew Tate was a manosphere-adjacent guy (who actively hated the manosphere since he was a "cool kid") who dated, somehow, Mikhaila Peterson (of the Canadian Petersons ie Jordan's daughter) who for some reason was super into how Andrew had a "demon" inside him named something dumb (Igor?).

Anyways he went around just talking in a vaguely PUA and like... the way you aren't allowed to talk any more in public company in general but he became super big on TikTok and so the regular TikTok/YouTube/etc crowd got him banned from everywhere. Anyways he didn't matter to anybody not a teenage boy until last week so I mean now that he's gone not much has changed.

Also (also? he ran what was essentially an e-brothel out of some Eastern European country which may be how he got the money and stuff he was showing off in his videos and at least two of the girls accused him of kidnapping but these allegations seem to be unfounded.

lrdgck

So... yeah, not the kind of guy anyone would like to see near their daughter. (Except for Peterson, seems like.)

Stormtroper

From what I've seen he's the latest incarnation of grifting of socially rejected young men, with a message like that of the incel community but with less self-loathing (so perhaps more like The Red Pill), even more other-loathing and in personal form, plus multi-level marketing.

fourteenwings

There is always MLM, it's amazing and terrifying how many "programs" are out there. Tate's was called Hustler's University or something and I'm assuming it mostly involved him lecturing at you even more than he does on TikTok.

(Except for Peterson, seems like.)

Despite listening to somebody who holds Peterson in high regard for a long time (how embarrassing), I just never really got into his stuff and didn't buy his books or anything like that. Coincidentally whenever I hear him speak he seems to be going off on how some Disney movie is a moral allegory about something (Frozen, Pinocchio, Frozen again).

I was going to say "However Mikhaila was in Europe and Jordan wasn't" but he was actually in Europe at the time (2019?) for a tour and frankly if my daughter posted this on Instagram I'd high-tail it to wherever and separate them immediately. Apparently though their relationship died of natural causes, and from what I saw of some podcast with her dad and brother it seems like Jordan loves Mikhaila more than he does her brother Julian so their relationship is uh... fine?

Relatedly, Jordan does have Soviet Era artwork all over the Peterson family house because he wants it to remind him of something or was effective so I guess Mikhaila either rebelled or Jordan accidentally programmed "hot dudes and communism" into her psyche.

There is a lot more about these people that I know basically via osmosis and hit-pieces but that feels like enough for now. Though I find it relevant to point out that Jordan's wife didn't take his last name and though he's not like the hyper-trads you'll come across on the internet that's still pretty weird.

Also I have no idea what happened between that instagram post and Mikhaila marrying a whole different person and yet having only one child.

lrdgck

Thought of the day:

I think Buddhists are so much pussies they're not appealing to vampires anyway

No, I'm not gonna give you any context.