gilleain

26 ms·

391.
by gilleain 3y ago
Possibly they are also mistaking the phrase 'in vogue' for the magazine called 'Vogue'.
392.
by gilleain 3y ago
Very interesting - describes how copper has got cheaper to extract over the centuries, yet requires more and more ore and power.
393.
by gilleain 3y ago
edit: my bad, i should yave read further - the suggestion is that the location on the Earth'a surface could influence the surface chirality. Well if you have a 'left handed' surface and a 'right handed' surface then
394.
by gilleain 3y ago
The summary is (as far as i understand) : * They have shown that magnetic surfaces can prefererentially crystalise one handed form of an RNA precursor * The mechanism involves electron spin interacting with the chirality of the molecule Wha
395.
by gilleain 3y ago
Oh, well he wrote a lot of other stuff! My favorite would be 'The Tin Men' set in a research institute. It has ethical robots, and universal headline language (UHL) among other ideas.
396.
by gilleain 3y ago
Is 'police' that universal? I know Irish have the Gardaí - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_S%C3%ADoch%C3%A1na . Yes, Icelandic has 'Lögreglu' and Greece has Αστυνομία ( https://en.wikip
397.
by gilleain 3y ago
That's amazing : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/t%C3%B6lva "A portmanteau word, coined by Sigurður Nordal in 1965 from tala (“number”) +‎ völva (“prophetess”)."
398.
by gilleain 3y ago
I always judge books by their covers - that's what covers are for! You look at the image they chose to use, read the blurb on the back, and decide whether you want to read it. (Yes, I know - the phrase means "Look past surface det
399.
by gilleain 3y ago
So I'm aware of aromatic interactions in proteins and DNA < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530875 > and electron holes - < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_hole
400.
by gilleain 3y ago
Ok maybe, but N++ has some great features. For example: - Line operations (sort, remove blank lines, etc) - Find/replace that can use either normal, {\n, \r, etc}, or regex - Right-click to highlight a word in one colour, and then anot
401.
by gilleain 3y ago
> Scott free It is 'scot-free' apparently, and interestingly has nothing to do with the Scottish, it seems: > Etymology From Middle English scotfre, from Old English scotfrēo (“scot-free; exempt from royal tax or imposts”),
402.
by gilleain 3y ago
Well from the way the linked article describes it, there is no 'story' to maths like Euclidian geometry. After all, what were the original motivations for compass and straightedge constructions? Ideas about perfection, symmetry, a
403.
by gilleain 3y ago
Was it this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36761655 (search : "tile", past year, sort by popular :) )
404.
by gilleain 3y ago
Hah, I had a super easy one in front of the National Gallery in London - 6.3 m off :) Amazingly, though I got the year correct as well (1973) - total guess!
405.
by gilleain 3y ago
> Avoiding crowds is of course also one of the best ways to avoid offline social interaction. Specifically, he's talking about avoiding the crowds in Edinburgh during the festival. Either you've seen this, and you know what he
406.
by gilleain 3y ago
Indeed. There were people earnestly discussing 'prediction markets' and their analysis/probabilities that this was real. I mean, given the condensed matter physicist in the video is essentially saying "I'm pretty su
407.
by gilleain 3y ago
Interesting quote: > Athens' prolific potters looked for new ways of manufacturing vessels in affordable clay to imitate metal wares – a process known as skeuomorphism ... [ jugs] even has discs on the handle to mimic rivets necess
408.
by gilleain 3y ago
Reminds me of how Data in Star Trek would say things like "There is a 79.85 probability of success". I mean, maybe it is possible to assign probabilities to future events that you have never seen before, but somehow I doubt it (wi
409.
by gilleain 3y ago
Yes it is terrible to be 'scammed by diarrhea of mental hipsterism' - isn't it just so _tiresome_ and simply _too much_.
410.
by gilleain 3y ago
Recently got into reading Waugh, and really loved 'Handful of Ashes' - some of the interactions between the characters feel very modern somehow. Also his ability to write characters is amazing. Anyway, enough of the terrible liter
411.
by gilleain 3y ago
How would you construct such a knowledge barrier? Another prediction market? Also, suggesting that there is such a thing as 'smart' money - presumably due to having more of it? - is amusing. As pointed out elsewhere in this discus
412.
by gilleain 3y ago
It's not well explained in the version I linked (apologies, I should have looked for a clearer version). The point of the story when I originally heard it is that no one has SEEN the Emperor's nose. So any statistical function (li
413.
by gilleain 3y ago
Have you heard the one about the Emperor of China's nose? https://imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm Basically, making an average of a large number of estimates of an unknown value will (of course) fail if most&#x2F
414.
by gilleain 3y ago
It means properties of teams that are preserved under continuous deformations? Or does it just mean 'some structure over a set'? That could really cover anything ... While it is certainly useful to consider how you structure your
415.
by gilleain 3y ago
"The eigenvalue is off" was a nice one. Nothing will beat NCIS though - for example where they 'enhanced' a picture where a reflection in an eyeball.
416.
by gilleain 3y ago
Also covered by Mathologer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04x4ZdLpN-0
417.
by gilleain 3y ago
What?
418.
by gilleain 3y ago
Likely 'ezion' below, given various references to 'information' which is often a focus of Intelligent Design advocates. Also it's an odd coincidence, but there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E
419.
by gilleain 3y ago
Given the start of this thread was about N, C, X etc ... We could even say "2017 > 1999", giving an ordering over these numbers.
420.
by gilleain 3y ago
Some of these (the wavy lines ones) remind me of Barbro Bäckström's work: https://www.artsy.net/artist/barbro-backstrom My family has one of these on the wall (quite dusty - as it's from the 1970s :) ), and t

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