July 24, 2015

explodingbat replied to your post: Unspoken

loved that, kinda UBIK

:D

That is exactly the sort of vibe I was going for.

(”Ubik” was an early screenname of mine, actually.)

1:09am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qKQtf6
(Notes: 1)
  
July 24, 2015

Comments on this story?

I can’t tell if the conceit/plot is too heavy-handed or way too subtle.

I also wrote it in less than an hour, with zero editing, so parts are probably really disjointed or repetitive.

I want to say something about the plot and themes, but not until I have some idea of whether the story is doing that on its own.

1:05am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qKPrzl
(Notes: 2)
  
July 24, 2015
Unspoken

We’re in a beat-up but functional red Jeep, myself in the driver’s seat – dark green jacket, nervous (not the right word) eyes looking back at me as I adjust the mirror and keep my eyes away from the windows. My mentor (DEFINITELY not the right word) Jack is lounging in the passenger seat, unkempt graying tufts of hair around a sarcastic grin. The car idles in a slow, deliberate rhythm.

“Ready?”
“No.”

A moment passes. I peer at the dashboard. My… predecessor… peers at the dark black forebodings gathering out there in the desert night.

“How ‘bout now?”
“Fine.”

Jack punches a button on the dash. I stomp the gas pedal. Something awful and familiar brushes the back of my awareness as evil rolls in from every direction and brightness races out ahead and we are flying

“WATCH THE ROAD”

I jolt back to Jeep, steering wheel, green jacket sleeve, headlights.

“There’s no road, Jack.”
“Fascinating, tell me more.”
I scowl. “There is an endless expanse of incredibly nondescript sand.”
“What’s above the sand?”
“Fuck you.”

Jack laughs. I shake my head clear and look just above the horizon, at the slow-boiling river of wrongness…

“It’s… turbulent. Like the water in a waterfall, but with less directionality.”
“That’s a bit close to a metaphor for my liking.”
“Oh, calm down. Fuck!“

I weave around an obstacle, then duck between two more. Driving becomes steadily more difficult. Panic sets in – what happens when we’re inevitably forced to slow down…

“Hey kid. What’s on the sand?”
“…Obstacles?”
“You can do better.”

I focus on the shapes first. Short, pointed. Round cross-section…

“Like traffic cones, but carved out of rock? Sandstone. The ground is sandstone, too.”
“Good.”

I can see the pattern, now. I relax into it, let it become automatic. It’s a bit like skiing…

“IDIOT”
“Shit! Sorry.”

I duck past a mogul. The Jeep disappears behind and above us, tilted into a snowbank. Jack mumbles something and pulls a pair of goggles over his head.

“Make a second pair?”
“Make your own, kid. Parts. Whole.”

I name the parts – tinted lenses, green plastic frame – name the whole, reach Out and pull back a slightly unstable pair of goggles.

“Nice sunglasses!”
“Go to hell, Jack.” I toss the sunglasses aside. They’re a pair of binoculars before they hit the ground.

The trail narrows and the world darkens. Anger and fear crowd the edges of our path. Claustrophobia joins the party.

“Now would be a good time to WATCH THE ROAD.”

I have time to think “tree” and even “evergreen” before I lose it completely.


I flee, blind and incoherent, trapped in the gaze of something huge and distant. My movements are sluggish, insufficient. Far far above me, vicious weapons hang, held in place by the Something that eyes me hungrily. Danger closes in at fifty miles an hour.

Jack’s voice cuts in, loud but calm. “HUNTER. PREDATOR. BIRD. RAPTOR… OSPREY.”

I would thank him, if fish had lungs. Instead I dive, cursing my incompetence. Then everything dissolves.

Back in the Jeep, Jack coughs up salt water and shakes his head slowly. I decide not to say anything.

“Not your fault. Blech. Should’ve started slow…” He carefully removes a strand of seaweed from his hair. It looks a few shades lighter, but I could be imagining it.

“I let my emotions get in the way.”
“Emotions nothing. You let the scene get away from you. If you don’t pin it down, put a name to it, They can hit you with whatever connotations they like.”
“And apparently they like… ospreys.”
He shakes his head. “That came from your head. Or mine, maybe. You free-associated to some sort of prey mindset, lost all the details. They don’t know what an osprey is, that’s way too specific.”

I stare at the comforting glow of the dashboard lights.

“Let’s go home, Jack.”

He starts to reply, then starts coughing again. Something hangs heavily in the air, the unspoken lesson of the day’s events:

If I’m the best our generation can offer, we are well and truly fucked.

12:57am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qKNhqu
(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: fiction 
July 23, 2015
longestpathsearch:  matthen: Pick a number between 1 and 99, write it as a word, then count the letters to get a new number. Write the new number as a word, and count its letters- repeat.  This curiosity was tweeted by @IanMathmogician, and if you try it you’ll find you get stuck at the number 4- the only number equal to its letter-count.  This image shows the network of what  your possible routes to 4 could be. It shows you’ll always get there after 5 steps. [code] [French version] [full size image] It’s quite nice that if you take any number and do this, you will always end in the number four. To see this, note that every number greater than four with the operation applied will yield a decreasing sequence and every number under four always tends to a number higher than itself. Since 1, 2, 3 are the only other numbers we need to check, and these all end in 4 after a few operations, 4 is the only attractor point. It works for negative and non-integral numbers – even complex numbers – as well!

longestpathsearch:

 matthen:

Pick a number between 1 and 99, write it as a word, then count the letters to get a new number. Write the new number as a word, and count its letters- repeat.  This curiosity was tweeted by @IanMathmogician, and if you try it you’ll find you get stuck at the number 4- the only number equal to its letter-count.  This image shows the network of what  your possible routes to 4 could be. It shows you’ll always get there after 5 steps. [code] [French version] [full size image]

It’s quite nice that if you take any number and do this, you will always end in the number four. To see this, note that every number greater than four with the operation applied will yield a decreasing sequence and every number under four always tends to a number higher than itself. Since 1, 2, 3 are the only other numbers we need to check, and these all end in 4 after a few operations, 4 is the only attractor point.

It works for negative and non-integral numbers – even complex numbers – as well!

(Source: matthen)

11:34pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qK0Q9C
(Notes: 365)
  
July 23, 2015
clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead: fun w bumper stickers: rearranging that annoying sticker abt kids needing both parents to say more important things.  behind the clinic desk at Outside In.  anybody else remember the Captain Underpants books

clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead:

fun w bumper stickers: rearranging that annoying sticker abt kids needing both parents to say more important things. 

behind the clinic desk at Outside In. 

anybody else remember the Captain Underpants books

(via nostalgebraist)

11:28pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qJ_fuC
(Notes: 180)
  
July 23, 2015

bartlebyshop:

“But bartlebyshop, shouldn’t physicists be friends with computer scientists so we can cross-pollinate and enrich both fields? Won’t the exchange of ideas and information be of mutual benefit? It seems like you were taking from your CS friends and giving nothing back.”

Of course, young one, that’s what we tell the CS majors. But as our dark scheme grows nearer and nearer to completion, I’m able to discuss it in public for the first time. It’s too late for them to stop us.

We promised them faster hardware, newer deformations of silicon to test their 20 year old machine learning algorithms on for the first time, and we delivered. They griped a bit about paying tax to support our blue-sky schemes but they knew it was worth it in the end. We did what we promised. We are still doing it.

But we’ve gone further, with their assent. They wanted something faster, beyond the old paradigms. We said, yes, we can build it for you. A new machine for a new age, running on bits with a q in front. They’re so excited. Just delighted at the idea of exponential speedups. It’s sweet.

We’ll make them their so-called “quantum” computer. It will do what we promised. But as anyone who’s ever watched senior CS majors try to handle Dirac notation knows, they won’t understand the full extent of its power. That’s where we’ll strike. We’ll insert secret instructions, whispers hidden in subleading corrections to the area law, so that when the machine detects a CS major trying to use it, it will print,

“Conway’s Game of Life already existed and it’s called the Ising model, nerds.”

everybody follow bartlebyshop

11:24pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qJzaAU
(Notes: 29)
  
Filed under: this this is the sort of quality content I want on my dash my inner Scott Aaronson twitched at exponential speedup though 
July 23, 2015
Rehabilitating Phlogiston

su3su2u1:

I was linked to this sequence post by someone in another context, and I was annoyed immediately.  

The post opens with a hit job on phlosgiston as a quintessential example of “fake causality” and a “fake explanation,” but lets take a look at the actual theory- 

Phlogiston was proposed by Johann Becher, who was an interesting character in his own right (he was one of the founders of what eventually became public administration and he thought if he had the right mix of minerals he could make himself invisible).  The theory of phlogiston was that objects burn and rust because they lose an element called phlogiston to the air.  

Oh man, those silly ancient proto-chemists!  Imagine such a silly explanations!  Obviously we know today that objects really burn and rust because they gain an element called oxygen… wait… that sounds, almost the same?  

Indeed, so similar that when Priestly successfully isolated oxygen he originally thought what he had done was dephlogisticated air- allowing objects to rust/burn more because it had a greater capacity for absorbing phlogiston.  

As we became more capable of careful measurements (around Priestly’s time) we began to learn that mass increased rather than decreased.  Some tried to patch it by suggesting phlogiston was lighter than air, but the great Lavosier’s careful work lead him to the correct theory of oxidation.  

So Johann Becher,through careful observation of nature, successfully unified the phenomena of rusting and burning (oxidation), and predicted a new element fully 100 fucking years before anyone was capable of verifying his predictions.  And we are supposed to disparage him because he got the fucking sign wrong? 

this is a good post, but the typical physicist attitude towards sign errors is the best part

(via nostalgebraist)

11:19pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qJyGo9
(Notes: 48)
  
July 23, 2015

argumate:

severnayazemlya:

what’s the history of the nuclear family? when/where did it originate?

emmanuel todd says it predates modernity: he thinks family structure influenced the development and speed-of-uptake of modernity, and for anyone whose name isn’t an australian seaworld park, causal relations can only travel in one direction in time.

this says it’s been around in at least part of europe for as far back as anyone can tell.

uh isn’t Australian seaworld park called “seaworld”?

on second thought let’s not….

(Source: seansoo)

11:18pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qJxoNC
(Notes: 379,483)
  
July 23, 2015

explodingbat:

The thing which annoyed me about Anathem (in retrospect) is that, if i’d bothered to read the appendices, i’d’ve met configuration space and the principle of stationary action five years sooner – i read all that financial securities nonsense in the Baroque Cycle, but actually interesting ideas come up and he buries them outside the main text? Arg!

OTOH it had Science Monks and i’m sort of collecting those so it’s all good.

Please share your collection of Science Monks with me.

4:23pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qIEkAO
(Notes: 10)
  
Filed under: sentences nobody has ever said before probably 
July 23, 2015
me: *finds pre-print*
me: *opens tab*
paper: *isn't in latex*
me: *closes tab on obvious nonsense and lies*
4:06pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBj2ek1qIAGFt
(Notes: 9)
  
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