silent_water [she/her]

yeah, I was lucky to have already taken Classical Mechanics prior to Quantum Mechanics (it wasn’t a prereq so most of my classmates jumped straight into QM), so the math was all perfectly sensible. but the second any prof started trying to use English to interpret the math, I started having these moments where I’d have to sit back and think about the words coming out of their mouths, and sitting with how it was all actually gibberish. Feynman’s “shut up and calculate” started to feel incredibly valid really fast, whereas prior to QM, I was under the impression that physics was natural philosophy. it’s not and QM was the breaking point, at least for me, personally.

they don’t actually spin but they’re little bar magnets as if they do. if you charge a sphere and spin it, you’ll generate exactly the same kind of bar magnet, but they don’t actually spin. and just like bar magnets, like repels like. but they’re neither bar magnets nor spinning. why don’t they spin? because they’re point masses, which don’t have any extent. but actually, you can’t really observe them as point masses because they’re waves.

^^ this was the exact point at which I said quantum mechanics wasn’t for me and I’m done with physics, after completing most of a degree. it sort of all makes sense but at the same time it completely doesn’t. it all makes sense as pure math but the second you try to make sense of the math, sense goes out the window.

there are exactly 4 division algebras (over the field of real numbers): the real numbers, the complex numbers, the quaternions, and the octonians. you can’t add any more complex parts because you lost associativity with the octonians. I’m not entirely sure how the first domino leads to the last, though.

China also appears to be improving on this in real time, though official policy still lags behind e.g. Cuba.

unfortunately other data is not encouraging , the number of servers is both down since the exodus and in the recent month.

this is normal. we’ll go through a lot of similar waves. people start servers, realize they’re a lot of work, and then abandon them. servers that foster a healthy community will survive. hexbear’s worst cycle involved losing the entire administrative team just weeks after a large percentage of the website left. don’t sweat the growing pains - work together to learn, grow, and change.

the British took over Palestine from the Ottomans, suppressed decolonization movements, then partitioned it to form Israel. during the formation of the Israeli state, Palestinians were slaughtered and driven out of their homes in an event known as the Nakba - which translates as “The Catastrophe”. since then, there have been a series of wars resulting in the slow but steady encroachment of the Israeli state - look ip maps of the region over the decades - and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. in such an atmosphere, nothing but mutual hate is possible.

nothing shitty about it. controlling nukes ends the occupation. Palestine is the greatest concentration camp on earth. there is no price too high to pay to end that. it must end.

unironically, nothing would end Israel’s belligerence faster

https://hexbear.net/comment/4080366

so to be clear, when Israel bombs schools and hospitals, when they cut off food, water, and electricity, those things should be done to Israel?

FOSS hacks the copyright system to build a software commons independent of corporation, guaranteeing the freedoms of users and developers - what part of that statement isn’t political?

how can privacy ever be stripped of political content? it’s inherently about social forces - ie politics.

what’s the remainder of pi after division by 3 and 3^2? notice how the remainder is the same – i.e. there’s no 3s digit needed. and the same will be true for all higher powers of 3. this is because pi is <3^n for all n > 1. but we failed to express the fractional part of pi. if we extend to the p-adic rationals, we can express it as an infinite expansion but that’s not allowed for p-adics – they can only have a finite number of digits in the part to the right of the radix.

yeah, the remainder of pi after p^2 for p>2 will always be the same as the remainder after division by p (p^2 if p=2), so it truncates to the left of the radix, and p-adic rationals can’t go off infinitely to the right of the radix. also, more trivially, pi isn’t algebraic so it’s not the solution to any polynomial with rational coefficients, so it’s also not the solution to any polynomial mod p^n.

it’s definitely 5-adicly rational

I mean it will wind up warmer than Siberia is now.

vegan archbishop also sounds pretty cool but then people are gonna assume you’re catholic

there’s a balance. arming up and prepping without organizations is pointless - the paramilitaries will crush a lone homesteader. community defense requires a whole community.

it’s a cycle that keeps escalating so long as profits get squeezed tighter and tighter. at some point the whole system breaks and the only question is who seizes power when that happens. if we have orgs and can channel popular discontent, it will be us. if not, we’ll be posting from the camps. the future is not yet written - projecting the present forward into the future is good at telling you what will happen next week but it’s a shitty approximation before you even get out to a year.

acting like you were there and know what happened when you actually sat at home on your ass so you could post about it is peak whiteness.