So I Do Wonder How Many Children Growing Up During This Pandemic Are Going To End Up With Like Six Thousand

impostor syndrome is a common problem in academia. For example my colleagues keep putting me in the airlock and ejecting me into space

PROMETHEUS Opening Sequence [Iceland]

So I was looking up a certain kind of cellular automata on Wikipedia out of curiosity, and then I ended up seeing a link for something called “billiard ball computers”.

So basically it’s a theoretical construction to show nature has results that can be reversible or something. You do have to let the billiards be frictionless, though. So it’s not like you could implement this in real lif-

Um…

This guy???

Wait,, just look at the pictures they have though. The captions refer to crab groups as “swarm balls”, which is a very endearing term IMO.

Unfortunately, these gates take up a lot of space, so to do big computations you’d need lots of crabs and several hundred feet of cardboard.

typewriter!

Star systems follow a standard blueprint that keeps their orbits stable.  They are organized in a hierarchical setup. What that means is that each set of orbits is on a different size scale.  The sizes of stars’ orbits do not go 1-2-3, they go 1-10-100. Any one star is only really close to one other star.  After that, other stars are much farther away.

Here is a cartoon of a hierarchical 8-star system:

This system is hierarchical because each close pair of stars (stars a and b, b and c, etc) is much closer to each other than any other stars (or pairs of stars).  The separation between stars a and b is much smaller than the separation between stars a+b and c+d, which is much smaller than the separation between stars a+b+c+d and e+f+g+h.  Let’s say that the separation between the closest binaries is 0.1 Astronomical Units, the separation between each pair of close binaries is 1 Astronomical Unit, and the separation between clumps of 4 stars is 10 Astronomical Units.

dataandphilosophy replied to your post “I just wanted to get on and read some rationalist posts on tumblr and…”

But Kelsey, how can I solve my problem of not having read the Silmarillion by converting to Orthodox Judaism?

Now that you’re observant of Shabbat and don’t use technology from sundown Friday-Saturday, you have a lot of free time, which like any sensible person you spend catching up on all the books you want to read. Thrilled at the prospect of ensnaring someone in two of my interests at once, I send you a pocket Siddur and a pocket Silmarillion, and you end up reading them at the same time, having strange dreams, and writing a long, revolutionary essay on the compatibility of Beresheit with Middle-earth’s revised cosmology. The Christians get mad at us for cultural appropriation. 

Too bad the prophet Cassandra never met Odysseus

A GUIDE FOR YOUNG LADIES ENTERING THE SERVICE OF THE FAIRIES, by Rosamund Hodge

I.

This is the lie they will use to break you: no one else has ever loved this way before.

II.

Choose wisely which court you serve. Light or Dark, Summer or Winter, Seelie or Unseelie: they have many names, but the pith of the choice is this: a poisoned flower or a knife in the dark?

(The difference is less and more than you might think.)

Of course, this is only if you go to them for the granting of a wish: to save your father, sister, lover, dearest friend. If you go to get someone back from them, or—most foolish of all—because you fell in love with one of them, you will have no choice at all. You must go to the ones that chose you.

III.

Be kind to the creature that guards your door. Do not mock its broken, bleeding face.

It will never help you in return. But I assure you, someday you will be glad to know that you were kind to something once.

IV.

Do not be surprised how many other mortal girls are there within the halls. The world is full of wishing and of wanting, and the fairies love to play with human hearts.

You will meet all kinds: the terrified ones, who used all their courage just getting there. The hopeful ones, who think that love or cleverness is enough to get them home. The angry ones, who see only one way out. The cold ones, who are already half-fairy.

I would tell you, Do not try to make friends with any of them, but you will anyway.

V.

Sooner or later (if you serve well, if you do not open the forbidden door and let the monster eat you), they will tell you about the game.

Summer battles Winter, Light battles Dark. This is the law of the world. And on the chessboard of the fairies, White battles Black.

In the glory of this battle, the pieces that are brave and strong may win their heart’s desire.

VI.

You already have forgotten how the mortal sun felt upon your face. You already know the bargain that brought you here was a lie.

If you came to save your sick mother, you fear she is dead already. If you came to free your captive sister, your fear she will be sent to Hell for the next tithe. If you came for love of an elf-knight, you are broken with wanting him, and yet he does not seem to know you.

Say yes.

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Demonstration Of Constant Velocity With A Moving Trampoline