Eq0

joined 1 year ago
[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 7 points 1 month ago

Another far fetched change I would like to see in our society: shorter work days. I don’t think there is any real reason why we settled on 8h work days, and with the growth of productivity I see no reason why we should stay there. A shorter work day (at same pay) would allow the worker to have more time to enjoy life - and the family they chose to create.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 2 points 2 months ago

He is learning to speak, and the latest discovery is letting me know the process of bunping into stuff (a second ago, in front of me, usually without hurting himself). He comes to me, tells me “boom” pointing at where he fell, then “aua” with the saddest face, pointing at what he supposedly hurt. Sometimes it’s even the correct spot! He often then patiently waits for a kiss on it.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s a bit confusing: the big number is not the index but the world wide ranking if the country. It’s made extra confusing because a big index is good, but a bug ranking is not…

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Fossil fuel based solutions are significantly worse for climate change than nuclear. Saying that the other renewables are better is matter of discussion, but renewables without nuclear are not going to make the cut. Using both renewables and nuclear is best to cut emissions.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m overthinking this.

If everyone gets the full mark, it’s not a random variable anymore, you would have a collapse of the probability distribution, that would tend to a Dirac delta function. In this case, the very definition of “quartiles” would fail. So, yeah, there would be no one there because it wouldn’t exist.

 

Politically, Napoleon divides the history of Europe in “before” and “after”. He grabbed the power in France after the Revolution with such skills that he had virtually no opposition. From there he conquered everything, from Egypt, to Russia and Spain. His fall was equally momentous. And then he did it again, leaving everyone confused and the political board of Europe forever reshuffled.

Victor Hugo is a man of that time, trying to make sense of all of this turmoil while mainly talking about people and their inner worlds. In Les Misérables he concentrated on the lowest of the low, poor people making bad choices.

At the time, it was believed that crimes had to be punished, but there was no hope for the criminal to be reinstated into society as a fully functioning member. Hugo makes the opposite claim: criminals are just good people in bad situations. And he talks about them.

While the length can scare readers off, I would encourage anyone to start it. Every page is a little masterpiece of human perception and empathy, with an author taking his time to fully build up not only stages but also souls.

 

By this I mean, a book you had to brace yourself to read, and you feel proud for having read. Did you enjoy the process of reading it?

 

I read Plainsong by Haruf some two years ago, and I was immediately enamored with it. All characters are so easily relatable and the whole story unfolds along a sweet melody. While bad and sad things happen, you still feel lulled by the background song and you know things are going to get solved. For any fan of “slice of life” and small stories.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 1 points 1 year ago

I personally had a bigger problem with the science... I am a scientist and I worked on chaos and the three body problem, there are many elements in there that just killed my immersion by being wrong. One of them was the mathematician that was computing the solution to the three body problem. No sane person would consider that worthwhile! Chaos means sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Between other things, that means that any error you are making is going to be exponentially magnified in finite time. So if you only considered 3 digits of accuracy in your solution, you can just throw your solution away after a couple of time steps. But if you considered 30 digits of accuracy? well... you only get one or two extra time steps in which you solution still makes a little bit of sense! Check out this youtube video on the double pendulum, another well-known chaotic system, to get a feeling: https://youtu.be/ldnEHycw40E
Still talking about math, when the "the baby problem" planet is kicked away from the two-stars system, likely it would not be able to ever come back. Assuming the planet never actually leaves the solar system is quite a large assumption.