Search found 21650 matches
- Thu Mar 29, 2018 5:11 pm UTC
- Forum: Fictional Science
- Topic: Integrating Superpowers into Society
- Replies: 5
- Views: 492
- Tue Mar 27, 2018 11:02 pm UTC
- Forum: Individual XKCD Comic Threads
- Topic: 1971: "Personal Data"
- Replies: 50
- Views: 2503
Re: 1971: "Personal Data"
We're talking about "most people". If something applies to 2/3 of the population or 1/4 is kind of an important distinction. But first you asked for a better estimate and now that you have one you're arguing that the difference (of up to 120 million people) is irrelevant and pedantic, so I...
- Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:01 pm UTC
- Forum: Individual XKCD Comic Threads
- Topic: 1971: "Personal Data"
- Replies: 50
- Views: 2503
Re: 1971: "Personal Data"
↶ 64% of occupied dwellings are occupied by an owner. That's not the same thing. If you have a better estimate, then I'd be happy to hear it and will start to use that number instead. If you don't have a better estimate then I'd be very interested to hear how you feel this fact contributes in any w...
- Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:50 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Police misbehavior thread
- Replies: 5955
- Views: 820827
Re: Police misbehavior thread
They are "armed" with all the equipment necessary for euthanasia, though, so you kinda just disproved your own claim.
- Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:48 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: The Thread To Remind Me We're Living In The Future
- Replies: 1742
- Views: 250370
Re: The Thread To Remind Me We're Living In The Future
I think you're off by a couple orders of magnitude there.
- Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:36 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Police misbehavior thread
- Replies: 5955
- Views: 820827
Re: Police misbehavior thread
I challenge you to find a paramedic who hasn't had (repeated) experience with aggressive, agitated patients who wish to do them harm.
- Tue Mar 27, 2018 3:03 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Police misbehavior thread
- Replies: 5955
- Views: 820827
Re: Police misbehavior thread
There's also the fact that other professions who similarly see some of the worst of the worst don't go around shooting a thousand people a year.
- Mon Mar 26, 2018 5:01 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: The Thread To Remind Me We're Living In The Future
- Replies: 1742
- Views: 250370
Re: The Thread To Remind Me We're Living In The Future
No, they don't. It's just a reframing of the question.jewish_scientist wrote:It is completely reasonable to think that a human driver could have done better than the car*, yet they directly state that we should dismiss this as a possibility.
- Mon Mar 26, 2018 2:38 am UTC
- Forum: Individual XKCD Comic Threads
- Topic: 1971: "Personal Data"
- Replies: 50
- Views: 2503
Re: 1971: "Personal Data"
↶ At the same time, I believe it is the responsibility of every citizen in a democracy to become informed on important issues. Democracy only works with an educated electorate, and we should never be complacent with shortcomings in our own knowledge (of which we all have, btw). You mean on issues Y...
- Sun Mar 25, 2018 2:30 pm UTC
- Forum: Fictional Science
- Topic: Magitech society needs a heat engine
- Replies: 41
- Views: 2556
Re: Magitech society needs a heat engine
Someone might eventually invent a refrigerator, but but it's a lot more complex than simply applying a cold spell to food. Unless you're suggesting a change to the underlying worldbuilding.
- Sat Mar 24, 2018 1:05 pm UTC
- Forum: Individual XKCD Comic Threads
- Topic: 1971: "Personal Data"
- Replies: 50
- Views: 2503
Re: 1971: "Personal Data"
As someone who knows a little about economics, I don't like this association of the stock market with "the economy." The stock market is its own thing. If the stock market goes down a lot, that may mean something is macroeconomically very wrong. But if the stock market goes up a lot, that...
- Sat Mar 24, 2018 2:36 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: The Darker Side of the News
- Replies: 3653
- Views: 442172
Re: The Darker Side of the News
(That'd be an acronym.)
- Fri Mar 23, 2018 7:04 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Free floating "gas dwarf"?
- Replies: 8
- Views: 637
Re: Free floating "gas dwarf"?
The Roche limit isn't going to play any part in this, if you're talking about something 1 AU from the Sun.jewish_scientist wrote:↶
You should look into the Roche Limit, which is how close a body held together only by gravity can get to a given body without being torn apart by the given body's gravity.
- Fri Mar 23, 2018 6:12 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Police misbehavior thread
- Replies: 5955
- Views: 820827
Re: Police misbehavior thread
Yeah in 7% of cases the victims were so obviously unarmed that even the cops were forced to admit it.
- Fri Mar 23, 2018 3:51 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Police misbehavior thread
- Replies: 5955
- Views: 820827
Re: Police misbehavior thread
We all knew what the intent was, because we can all read the first post.
It was a shitty intent and shitty execution of said intent, and your continuing to defend it is pretty shitty too.
It was a shitty intent and shitty execution of said intent, and your continuing to defend it is pretty shitty too.
- Fri Mar 23, 2018 2:56 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: The Darker Side of the News
- Replies: 3653
- Views: 442172
Re: The Darker Side of the News
So anyway it's sure interesting how mainstream media is mostly trying to humanize that terrorist suicide bomber. I wonder what factor could possibly play a role in how different that coverage is from the coverage of every other suicide bomber...
- Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:38 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Free floating "gas dwarf"?
- Replies: 8
- Views: 637
Re: Free floating "gas dwarf"?
Considering that the surface of Venus is already far too hot and pressurized for habitation, I don't think habitability questions really depend on whether there's a solid core or not. The habitable zone is going to be up somewhere near the top of the atmosphere regardless.
- Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:23 pm UTC
- Forum: Individual XKCD Comic Threads
- Topic: 1969: "Not Available"
- Replies: 38
- Views: 2496
Re: 1969: "Not Available"
Whether or not it's true, I guarantee Nazdar doesn't know.
- Wed Mar 21, 2018 4:36 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Quantum Question
- Replies: 110
- Views: 5832
Re: Quantum Question
Treating entropy as a measure of disorder is a pretty typical convention in physics. A maximal entropy system is "uniform" only at a macroscopic (anthropic) level. If every particle has a random position and velocity, that's not very ordered at all on a microscopic level.
- Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:45 am UTC
- Forum: Mathematics
- Topic: A probability question
- Replies: 5
- Views: 989
Re: A probability question
It's a partition of the real line, including everything above the highest mi in one interval and everything below the lowest in the other.
- Mon Mar 19, 2018 4:49 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Quantum Question
- Replies: 110
- Views: 5832
Re: Quantum Question
The language might have been sloppy, but it seems pretty clear that tomandlu was asking whether the properties of one particle can carry information about the entropy of the whole universe.
- Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:13 pm UTC
- Forum: Mathematics
- Topic: My take on Godel's incompleteness theorems
- Replies: 42
- Views: 3242
Re: My take on Godel's incompleteness theorems
I definitely checked when I saw where this thread was going. (It doesn't seem to be.)
- Sun Mar 18, 2018 1:38 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Radioactive Decay
- Replies: 27
- Views: 3351
Re: Radioactive Decay
Please don't post three times in a row. You can edit your most recent post to add more if you want to.
P.S. Everything is also a wave.
P.S. Everything is also a wave.
- Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:37 am UTC
- Forum: Mathematics
- Topic: Ordering a real interval with countable predecessors - possible?
- Replies: 3
- Views: 564
Re: Ordering a real interval with countable predecessors - possible?
↶ If you take all the ordinals with at most ℵ 0 predecessors, you have ℵ 1 of them (the next larger cardinal). This was the unintuitive part for me. Here's a proof I tried to put together, although I've never worked with ordinal numbers before. Suppose the cardinality of the set X of all ordinals w...
- Sat Mar 17, 2018 12:40 am UTC
- Forum: Mathematics
- Topic: Ordering a real interval with countable predecessors - possible?
- Replies: 3
- Views: 564
Re: Ordering a real interval with countable predecessors - possible?
If you take all the ordinals with finitely many predecessors, you end up with ℵ 0 of them. (That is, all integers have finitely many predecessors, but there are infinitely many integers.) If you take all the ordinals with at most ℵ 0 predecessors, you have ℵ 1 of them (the next larger cardinal). If ...
- Fri Mar 16, 2018 5:26 pm UTC
- Forum: Individual XKCD Comic Threads
- Topic: 1968: "Robot Future"
- Replies: 31
- Views: 2234
Re: 1968: "Robot Future"
kiochi wrote:*whom
*whomst've
- Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:48 am UTC
- Forum: Mathematics
- Topic: My take on Godel's incompleteness theorems
- Replies: 42
- Views: 3242
Re: My take on Godel's incompleteness theorems
Yeah the alternative to a universe we can describe with math is a universe that is internally inconsistent and inherently unpredictable. We assume it's not like that for the sake of being able to do anything at all. If it's predictable, then we can use math to figure out how to make predictions abou...
- Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:57 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Delicious Martian Salt
- Replies: 10
- Views: 739
Re: Delicious Martian Salt
I mean there is a soil composition graph right up there.
- Fri Mar 16, 2018 2:06 am UTC
- Forum: Individual XKCD Comic Threads
- Topic: 1964: "Spatial Orientation"
- Replies: 77
- Views: 4042
- Thu Mar 15, 2018 12:06 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Delicious Martian Salt
- Replies: 10
- Views: 739
Re: Delicious Martian Salt
I would assume raw materials because if you're bringing stuff just bring salt.
- Thu Mar 15, 2018 11:54 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Quantum Question
- Replies: 110
- Views: 5832
Re: Quantum Question
I think sending a message back in time qualifies as spooky in the same sense.
- Thu Mar 15, 2018 11:52 am UTC
- Forum: Fictional Science
- Topic: Yet another FTL question...
- Replies: 21
- Views: 1980
Re: Yet another FTL question...
More like the other way around. SR says spacetime behaves a certain way and from that you can derive what happens with space and what happens with time.
- Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:01 am UTC
- Forum: Forum Games
- Topic: Thread Necromancy: Mexican Standoff Edition!
- Replies: 77
- Views: 10091
- Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:00 am UTC
- Forum: Forum Games
- Topic: Every hour, on the hour
- Replies: 13802
- Views: 915015
Re: Every hour, on the hour
another because that messed up my on-hour ratio
- Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:00 am UTC
- Forum: Forum Games
- Topic: Every hour, on the hour
- Replies: 13802
- Views: 915015
Re: Every hour, on the hour
or this one
- Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:59 am UTC
- Forum: Forum Games
- Topic: Every hour, on the hour
- Replies: 13802
- Views: 915015
- Wed Mar 14, 2018 8:32 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Physics and Photography
- Replies: 4
- Views: 462
Re: Physics and Photography
It's presumably entirely knowable by the camera, but I don't believe it's typically stored in image metadata.
- Wed Mar 14, 2018 8:16 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Physics and Photography
- Replies: 4
- Views: 462
Re: Physics and Photography
In particular, the problem is that the focal length is related to the actual distances by the equation 1/s 1 + 1/s 2 = 1/f, where s 1 is the distance (from the front nodal point) to the in-focus object and s 2 is the distance (from the rear nodal point) to the film or sensor. If f = 50mm and s 2 = 5...
- Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:52 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: The Darker Side of the News
- Replies: 3653
- Views: 442172
Re: The Darker Side of the News
↶ Of course, this ain't exactly a hill I intend to die on, so if you have any suggestions as to how I should alter the numbers I plug in... You're counting from all (non-drug-related) murders, but how many of those 6k murders every year are done with bombs? How many terrorism-related murders are do...
- Tue Mar 13, 2018 4:03 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: The Darker Side of the News
- Replies: 3653
- Views: 442172
Re: The Darker Side of the News
↶ I'm not sure a couple of bombings is enough to draw conclusions about motives from. Being black isn't particularly uncommon; if 3 men were killed most wouldn't assume it was the work of a mysandrist. Being black is more uncommon than being male, and unlike misandrist terrorism, anti-minority terr...