tristramb

7 ms·

61.
by tristramb 2y ago
My grandfather fought the Bolsheviks as part in the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War. In 1919 he was on a gunboat in the Caspian Sea. He kept a diary of that time. It is now in the Imperial War Museum.
62.
by tristramb 2y ago
If you lived under an oppressive government, you'd probably end up doing things you would later regret.
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by tristramb 2y ago
Philosophy can be safely ignored until you start making philosophical mistakes.
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by tristramb 2y ago
It guarantees correctness relative to a given requirement. The real value of formal proofs lies in forcing you to think deeply about the requirement and your implementation of it and to make your assumptions about it explicit. I have only e
65.
by tristramb 2y ago
Another of Hans Glaser's pictures shows knights fighting on the clouds over Schloss Waldeck on 24 July 1554: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Glaser#/media/File:Hans_G...
66.
by tristramb 2y ago
Text is in a sense universal. At least within a particular language. It is not tied to a particular app or operating system. You can interpret it using the same mechanism that you use to interpret a book, the label of a bottle of wine, or
67.
by tristramb 2y ago
"We need to run through hundreds of candidates per position, not a half dozen" But you don't! You only need to find the first person who is good enough to do the job. You do not need to find the best person.
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by tristramb 2y ago
You need to sprain both knees or ankles at the same time and then use one as the control.
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by tristramb 2y ago
The history of very wealthy people bringing down democracies goes back to Julia Caesar and Pompey bringing down the Roman Republic, and probably even further. The question is, how to make democracy stable against interference by very wealt
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by tristramb 2y ago
In August 1980 I was working as a lab technician in a secondary school and was spending my spare time observing variable starts with binoculars and analysing the results with my brother's pocket calculator. I used to regularly drop in
71.
by tristramb 2y ago
From article: "Here, in the Battle of Issus, Alexander's army of 75,000 Greeks faced Darius' vastly superior force of approximately 600,000 Persian troops." From Wikipedia: "Modern historians find Arrian's coun
72.
by tristramb 2y ago
I've been using this to do quick source code diffs for years. I started back on the days of printouts.
73.
by tristramb 2y ago
If you want to explain a particular type of animal behaviour you should probably familiarize yourself with Tinbergen's Four Questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NRU6iH5lzs
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by tristramb 2y ago
This is similar to the four types of software documentation: https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/
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by tristramb 2y ago
The Royal Society is important because it is where the UK government go when they need good advice on scientific issues. Many people in the US might think that their government doesn't need good advice on scientific issues but, as the
76.
by tristramb 2y ago
Back when I was 11 or 12, in the early '70s, one of my father's friends who was training for medical school left a box of Scientific Americans in our loft. I discovered them and would spent hours and hours poring over them trying
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by tristramb 2y ago
1. e4 e5 2. d4 Bc5??
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by tristramb 2y ago
Not now that AIs can generate music that sounds like any composer.
79.
by tristramb 2y ago
Another excuse for Michael Palin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz1JWzyvv8A
80.
by tristramb 2y ago
In Alastair Reynolds' "House of Suns", the Gentian Line of spacefarers construct "stardams" around stars to prevent their supernova outbursts from harming nearby civilizations.
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by tristramb 2y ago
It could be survivorship bias. All the fake shrouds with botched images were recognised as fakes and thrown out long ago. Only this one which happens to look vaguely realistic has been kept.
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by tristramb 2y ago
I know that you probably mean "chartjunk", but I do like the idea of "chatjunk".
83.
by tristramb 2y ago
"severely isolated by 20mph speed limits" Really?
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by tristramb 2y ago
"The German Military didn't want to end WW1." Not true. Following the breaking of the Hindenberg line on 1918-09-29 Ludendorff realised that further resistance would likely lead to communist revolution in Germany. On 1918-10
85.
by tristramb 2y ago
From Wikipedia: "The Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman lists 149,193 persons from Okinawa – approximately one quarter of the civilian population – were either killed or committed suicide during the Battle of Oki
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by tristramb 2y ago
The outline of the submerged Roman port is visible on Google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8286245,14.0999983,1769m/dat...
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by tristramb 2y ago
"Evolution is smarter than you are" - Francis Crick
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by tristramb 2y ago
Museum of Soviet Calculators: https://elektronika.su/en/all/
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by tristramb 2y ago
Try Tor browser
90.
by tristramb 2y ago
Try Finland.

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