Meetup reminder: March the 7th, 06:00 PM ETS, so about week from now.

After getting positive poll responses, I'm drafting an elective course. One of those 'proof writing for not just math majors' you have in the US. So much for doing less paperwork, but this one at least doesn't feel purposeless.

Philosophy deserves every burn. Sorry. But only a little.

Eh, I'm being my usual exaggerated dismissive, but it's sad that the two most visible to me camps are essentially "it's only so unbiasedly rational of us to consider how many AGI could dance on the needle's head" and "mathless/IFLS quantum vibes" types. It's not even that I don't see the merits of those two, let alone philosophy at large, but that I have absolutely no fucking interest in either yet they keep talking at me like I'm a lobotomite for not caring.

And no, wasoxygen, I'm not calling you out specifically, it's just how you Yudkowsky-ites communicate. We're cool, I hope.

Not sure why you'd want a middleman, either.

Well, ML/whatever excels at finding patterns, even if it can't/won't explain them. Having a tool that goes "exploring these parameter spaces is most likely worthless" or even "isn't it funny how second order solitons only form when this parameter is divisible by 17?" may be invaluable to a right person who can find context to those observations. That's the "(or something)" in my previous comment.

Tying this to "making sure conclusions are correct-ish is going to be hard to replicate." <- that's the bottleneck as far as I can see. First you have to separate seeds from chaff, and then make sure those seeds aren't blighty or cleverly disguised angry bears. I wouldn't mind science becoming (even more) akin to computer-assisted chess, though. Tools are tools, experts use tools better, so that checks out too.

Losing shits and meetups

Wasn't singling you out here, though I hope you take care of yourself and wife. And it's not like I don't understand or lack the presence of mind to understand why people are so agitated. I simply can't keep dealing with it. It's been two goddamned years, and I can't even force myself to go to Ukraine anymore. I haven't seen the worst, and it's too much. Focusing on what I can affect has to be enough for me right now.

As to meetups: no worries, I can make another one in April or May. They're about as informal as flip-flops anyway.

I'm not arguing those problems won't go away, or that it's any more or less than a tool. You can give me that much I hope.

And you're right that I wouldn't pay a human for those, at least unless those would be recurring NPCs or something like that. I do commission background sets regularly because 1) the free/cheap/generated ones are usually on par with what I can make, 2) what I can make suffers a severe pizazz deficiency. Lotsa bang for a buck, too.

That friend interested in enlistment decided to postpone it, but volunteered for the month-long civil defence training. Then, the recruiter (different, more seasoned) looked at me like a wolf on sheep, which was funny. He didn't stop even after seeing my service category evaluated at D (A is best, E means you're either blind or on a wheelchair), so I gave him the equivalent of a girl just wanting to be friends by showing dual citizenship and institute ID. There's protection from conscription, and then there's having recruiter give up on trying. There's gotta be an achievement for that.

I have a lot of work to do, though. Found my stride at teaching and made repeated lessons less tedious by forcing myself not to re-use examples or analogies (but still gave all in downloadable slides), but overall don't think this is a good fit for me. There are also three papers I contribute/coordinate, and it's been a pain. I don't mind juggling multiple different topics if it's just me, but when others are involved shit becomes unmanageable. Then there's some bullshit commitee... no me gusta, as ancient memers said.

Always suspected that everything beyond plier-wrench is not only man-made, but unstable.

I believe you can still activate Duolingo for schools ('make classroom' or something like that) and get the benefits for free. By benefits I mean: no ads, unlimited re-tries, and no cost to final tests ('legendary' just sounds stupid).

That said, Duolingo is better at supplementing learning than teaching. It explains next to no grammar, so it's worth to look-up lessons on duome (already found you Spanish) or other sites. Personally, after finishing a couple languages there, I went from being a huge fan to seeing it as jumped-up flash cards.

Also, there are many, many stupid sentences inserted there solely because they're easily meme-able and act as free advertising. For instance, their Latin course consists mostly of sentences about drunken parrots. In day-to-day living language situations, Duo is more useful than "angry drunken parrot stole urbane young man's cookie" is to studying classics, but I wouldn't want to imply or suggest it's more usefull than taking an actual class.

Contrary to tradition, the only European countries older than the United States are like Spain and England.

And Denmark.

I don't want to fucking semaphore a computer screen and neither does anyone else.

I'm sure Minority Report fanboys are still a thing.

We all could use another SolarRoads/Juicero/SpinLaunch to riff on, though.

Thank you for everyone who came, and those who couldn't. Apologies, I know it was a short notice thing.

To next time!

I do this thing (pasted the text below), and have been doing it for a while. Dunno if it impacted me in any significant way, but it's an oddly satisfying way to cool down after workout.

Practice: Mindfulness of Breathing

1. Posture: Find a place where you can sit comfortably, perhaps on a chair with a firm seat, one that’s low enough for the feet to be flat on the floor. Place hands on the thighs. If possible, sit with the spine self-supporting, so you aren’t leaning on the backrest of the chair (unless you know you need extra support). You can close the eyes, or have them open, perhaps letting the gaze fall downwards, a few feet in front of the body.

2. Following the breath: Bring attention to breathing. Feel the breath moving in and out of the body—tuning in to its rhythm and flow. Feel the texture of the breath in the belly, and the movements of the abdominal wall with each inhalation and exhalation.

You don’t have to breathe deeply—just let the breath happen as it happens.

3. Working with wandering: You’ll probably notice the attention sometimes wanders to some other object. Or you might find yourself thinking about the breath, or analyzing the benefits of mindful breathing, or telling yourself you’re doing this well or badly, or wondering what’s going to happen next, or wanting to stop. Simply acknowledge that the wandering has happened, and gently bring attention back to breathing. You don’t need to berate yourself or see distraction as a problem or failure—each time you notice the mind has wandered, you’ve already come back to mindfulness. You might like to congratulate yourself when you notice the wandering, and choose to come back to the breath.

A Practice for Labelling Thoughts and Emotions

1. Find a comfortable posture. Allow the body to settle into a posture that supports the qualities of stillness, alertness, and relaxation. For most people this can be accomplished by sitting in a chair in a way that embodies dignity without tension. Take a moment now to find a feeling of uprightness in the spine, while at the same time relaxing the muscles in the face, neck, and shoulders. If you’re comfortable with it, allow the eyes to close gently. If not, or if you’re feeling sleepy, maintain a soft focus on the floor in front of you, letting the eyes take in light without seeking sensory input.

2. Turn your attention to the breath. Allow the out-breath to be even longer than the in-breath. After your third out-breath, let the breath find its own natural pace, relinquishing any control of the breath. Gently begin to gather your attention on the sensations in the belly as you breathe.

3. Bring kindness to your practice. As you direct your attention to the breath, see if you can bring kindness, patience, and humor to the wandering mind, especially at the beginning of the meditation practice. If you find it helpful, use the labeling technique to help steady the mind on the breath; rising for the in-breath, and falling for the out-breath. See if you can savor the experience of the breath as you might savor a gourmet meal. Each bite, each breath, unique and delicious. While maintaining the breath as an anchor or home base of your attention, expand your field of awareness to include thoughts as objects of attention.

4. Label your thoughts. Whenever you become aware of thinking, use a quiet label, or more specific labels like “planning” or “judging.” See if you can maintain awareness of the thought without trying to get rid of it, or getting lost in the story of that thought. Whether it’s a vague wisp of a thought or a strong storyline, simply note “thinking.”

5. Be with what comes up. If the thought fades or vanishes, return your attention to the breath. If a sensation or a sound becomes strong enough to call your attention away from the breath, allow it to become the new primary object of your awareness. Explore the experience with steady and kind curiosity, without any agenda to change or get rid of it. You might also notice that feeling’s tone (for example, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral) as feeling tones tend to be more apparent with sounds and sensations.

6. Let the breath continue to be your anchor or home base. Return your attention to the sensations of the in-breath and the out-breath, when thoughts and sensations aren’t strong enough to call your attention away. Use a soft mental label to note and acknowledge any thoughts, sounds, sensations, and the breath.

7. Now, expand your field of awareness even further to include emotions and mental states. These can be challenging to attend to with mindfulness because they can be both very subtle, and very strong. Emotions like anger or anxiety can be strong and uncomfortable, making it hard to sit still and be present for them. There are several ways to make this easier; first, rather than pursuing the story in the mind, notice the physical sensations that accompany that emotion. See if you can track the inner geography of anger or fear.

8. Label your emotions accurately. It can also be helpful to find an accurate label for that emotion. There are many flavors of anger, for example, such as annoyance, rage, resentment, and aggravation. Finding the right label can give you the same feeling as hitting a tennis ball on the sweet spot of your racket; it just clicks. Sometimes emotions can feel threatening and there may be a fear that they might swallow us up or overwhelm us. As real as this threat might feel, it’s usually irrational. For both strong and subtle emotions it can also be helpful to give yourself permission to peek behind the curtain for a moment to see what you are feeling. You don’t have to stay long or dig anything up. Just take a quick peek, perhaps feeling right into the center of your chest, and give yourself permission to return to the breath whenever you need to.

9. Let your attention move freely. For the remainder of the meditation, let your attention move freely to whatever experience is strong enough to call it away from the breath—This could be a thought, sound, sensation, image, or a mental state. See if you can stay connected to this experience with affectionate awareness while noting with curiosity and interest what happens to it upon observation, and when it’s no longer predominant. Return your attention to the breath from time to time.

10. Notice the quality of your attention. Make any adjustments necessary in order to balance your energy and help you be present and alert. You might also note and label more subtle background mental states such as calmness, boredom, doubt, or apprehension, again without needing to change them in any way.

11. Reflect on what matters to you. In the last few minutes of your meditation take a moment to reflect on what matters most to you. Without overthinking, editing, or slipping into rumination, reflect on what simple value or quality bubbles up to the surface of your mind. It might be kindness, generosity, or authenticity. Set an intention, like charting a course for a boat, to invite more moments of this quality into your life for the remainder of the day.

Personal note: I'd like to point out that even trying is a 180 turn for me. Back in 2016 mindfulness meditation was something apparently every other person did but nobody could explain (but buy this app! buy our Mindfullon NZT Forte, 120 caps!), and later if faded away like any other pointless fad. It took a while for me to change opinion, though remain sceptical over any claim beyond "some people with ADD/ASD said it helped them focus on specific task X for durations up to T minutes."

Seriously though I fucking love space. I have no mind for numbers, so pursuing anything with the cosmos as a career was out for me, but fuck I could read about this shit all day.

You didn't ask, but are you aware of Ask an Astronomer site? 'Cause it sounds right up your alley.

I'm firmly in the "maths = yey!" camp, but remember having fun reading The Story of Astronomy by L. Motz and J.H. Weave for an essay assignment in science education. It's been a couple years, but IIRC, they spend about half a page discussing the ellipse equation and go back to discussing hows and whys of humans probing space for data.

Dude how long do you think it takes to ride an ejected pilot's chair with parachute down from 70k+ feet? That's gotta be like something around 30 minutes.

For human-ish blob (edit: on a parachute) weighing 100 kg dropping from 20 km, I got around 14 minutes under the simple equation of motion, with drag proportional to speed squared. It'd probably be closer to 10 minutes for stratified atmosphere, but I can't be arsed to calculate it that precisely. :P

Honestly, your reservations notwithstanding, between broad know-your-shit skills and overall aptitude for people, for a long time you sounded better-suited for managing than most folks. Plus, you are the kind of enviable person who'd come to a new place, and within a week have talked with everyone, get the gist of goings-on, and have a better idea about everything than I'd have in a year. It's an invaluable quality.

Party like it's 1399 ab urbe condita.

The link says DMT, yet they advertise meth. Don't reward their lack of commitment or confidence in product.

Phantoms are observed in the troposphere at distances up to 10 - 12 km. We estimate their size from 3 to 12 meters and speeds up to 15 km/s.

15 km/s.

That's 54000 km/hr.

That's almost Mach 44.

in the troposphere

If it was there, you'd hear it.

It certainly takes prompts into account.

In the pizza box model, the inner door opens with vacuum on both sides, while the outer one would have to open inward with the help of inflowing air or outward against the atmospheric pressure and inflowing air. We can do better.

I think that's all:

After Roe, abortion bans will take their toll

Jul 19th 2022 | Washington, DC

The young woman’s waters broke when she was 19 weeks pregnant. The doctors told her the baby stood no chance of surviving, but that if the pregnancy continued the woman risked an infection, which might lead to sepsis and kill her. They could not perform an abortion, though. Months earlier Texas, where she lived, had passed a law banning terminations after detection of a fetal heartbeat unless there was danger “of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function”. This wording worried the doctors: if they did an abortion while she still appeared healthy and the baby had a heartbeat, they could be prosecuted. They suggested she fly to Colorado instead.

Listen to this story.

Audio

So she did: booking a seat, as advised, near the toilets in case she went into labour. She reached the clinic in time and is now healthy. But things could have turned out differently, if she had not had the cash for a plane ticket, say, or if no clinic had been able to give her an appointment. “It is barbaric to put a woman in distress on a plane to another state,” says Carole Joffe, a professor at the Bixby Centre for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco. “It is not how you do medicine in a civilised country.”

America has the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialised world. With the overturning of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that abortion was a constitutional right, it will probably rise. International comparisons are imperfect but in 2018, while in the Netherlands and Norway there were no more than three maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, in America there were 17. Most states that now ban abortion, or soon will, allow exceptions if a woman’s life is in danger. But abortion providers and obstetrician-gynecologists (ob-gyns) say laws tend to be so vaguely worded that they often do not know if they are breaking them.

Nisha Verma, an ob-gyn who performs abortions in Georgia, where they will soon be illegal after six weeks, says such laws are not written by medical experts—and it shows. They fail to recognise that a woman can develop a condition that may not put her in immediate danger but that, without an abortion, could nonetheless kill her. Waters breaking before a fetus is viable is one such condition; cancer that necessitates chemotherapy (which may hurt the fetus) is another. The list goes on: high blood pressure, cardiomyopathy and renal disease are all conditions that can arise or worsen during pregnancy. Reports have already surfaced of women denied crucial medical care to complete a miscarriage or end an ectopic pregnancy for fear it could be construed as aiding an abortion.

Doctors should not have to weigh up whether following their training and instinct will put them in legal jeopardy. Besides the personal toll, it raises the possibility of conflicts that have no place in medicine. “The dystopia I fear is a situation in which pro-life doctors are saying, she has a 50% chance of living, while pro-choice doctors and lawyers are saying she has a 50% chance of dying,” says Ms Joffe. “And while they argue, the woman dies.”

Bans mean abortions are routinely delayed, exacerbating medical problems in pregnancy. Shelly Tien, a doctor at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, says that soon after Texas’s “heartbeat bill” took effect last September she saw a woman who sought an abortion at seven weeks but did not get to Florida until 21 weeks—a common scenario, she says. She expects to see many more such patients among those now “flooding into Florida” from nearby states, including Alabama (where is abortion is illegal) and Tennessee (where it soon will be).

Dr Tien warns too of a “terrible snowballing effect” when the time it takes for a woman to raise funds for an abortion, and the necessary travel, means her pregnancy progresses so far that the cost of the procedure rises. She then delays again while she raises more funds. This will worsen, Dr Tien says, as clinics become busier.

The states in which pregnant women are probably in greater danger are those that have long had high maternal mortality rates. Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee score worst (with over 30 deaths per 100,000 live births). They have also long had restrictive abortion regulations and, following the end of Roe, have either banned abortion or plan to. There is no proven link, but it seems likely that some women have died when they needed abortions but had been unable to get them.

Yet there are other causes, too. States with high maternal mortality rates tend to share three other features: large black populations, high levels of poverty and poor access to health care. In Mississippi, which provided the case that the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe, Medicaid is cut off 60 days after a woman gives birth, yet many problems arise after this time. Black women (who made up the majority of patients in the state’s last clinic before it closed for good on July 6th) are nearly three times likelier than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications.

Another reason why America’s maternal mortality rate has long been high, say doctors, is a lack of ob-gyns across the country. This too may worsen without Roe. If doctors fear their expertise will clash with badly written laws, putting them at risk of imprisonment, fewer people may want to specialise in the field. Those who do, in states in which abortion is illegal, may miss a crucial part of their training. Where access to health care is already poor, the harms will be particularly grievous. And so the tragedy piles up. The states with higher rates of pregnancy-related deaths are also among those in which more babies die before they turn one. ■

For exclusive insight and reading recommendations from our correspondents in America, sign up to Checks and Balance, our weekly newsletter.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Mortal danger for mothers"

Quantum entanglement is quantum entanglement. We have the mathematics that allow us to describe the relatively complex system of two entangled atoms, and we have obviously designed an experimental setup and procedure that allows us to do it.

That seems like the sanest way of approaching it as physicists, but talking about underlying causes is hardly an idle topic. Not linking anything because I am sorely behind on literature, but I'd like to have this topic going.

I used to not understand why physicists defaulted to the Copenhagen interpretation and moved on with their lives, instead of exploring the metaphysical ramifications of quantum mechanics.

Hah! They hardly did that, a fact more apparent the deeper you go. The dispute is ongoing, and I can link you some recent pissing matches between physicists disagreeing (I have heaps more, most come to me via GoogleScholar Alerts), to my knowledge/interest, mainly regarding "what happens when wavefunction collapses" or "what causes wf collapse?" It may seem like that isn't the case because what's talked about is pretty much: 1) string theory and assorted GUT/ToE candidates, 2) quantum information/computing (with a dash of informational/mathematical universe), and the rest is stuff even Quanta/PBS Space Time can't make digestible. And, as with any intellectual pursuit, the dispute ranges from good exploratory effort to... well, you decide.

I think the consensus on Copenhagen Interpretation is simply it being the most robust mental model with the least non-obvious kinks, though like any such thing, it is best to be kept at arm's length. Doing maths and observation take precedence over conformity to any interpretation, but that's just the nature of actually doing physics. Doesn't mean a conversation can't be had.

Whether an anti-person living in a possible anti-matter sector of the universe would experience time flowing backwards or decreasing entropy relative to our "forward moving" perspective is unknown, I think.

Potentially (heh), that's a different class of problems, man. TL;DR: I honestly haven't read enough on the subject, but if time would be a consequence of curvature/gravity, then I don't think dominant matter type would have much to say on time direction, perceived or otherwise.

Tagging Devac, totally absolutely just for the unicode oddity, he hates physics (plz correct me if I'm mistaken).

Damn straight! I only became a physicist because matadors require a full-color vision.

I went to a 'Bollywood' dancing class, which means a mish-mash of a whole bunch of styles I can barely pronounce, to check it out. Fun, even more skewed m:f ratio than in ballroom places (1:20 instead of 1:7), and holy-shit intense. The pros must have an average stamina somewhere between SEALs and a literal horse.

Defense next week.

Gardens of Adonis?

Very quickly. Apparently you can pass out in under 30 seconds, and be gone in a couple of minutes.

Yup. That's also why liquid nitrogen tanks ride alone on the elevators -- you won't feel it if it leaks, and it only takes a couple seconds to displace air with evaporating N2.

I'm sorry for your loss.

But in the same place and situation, so there's pattern recognition on top of language acquisition.

Inner ear infections suck, or constant vertigo: the musical. For the first ten days, I didn't, and couldn't, do much beyond catching up on reading and sleeping. It did allow for some neat discoveries, though. Case in point: there's a service in Poland that gives free access to texts and audiobooks of school canon and beyond, and (so far) their renditions kick all kinds of ass. Very unlike Polish corners on LibriVox in that regard, or at least compared to the last time checked.

All but our original three guests got to Germany safely, but we're staying in touch. I spent some sick time helping with admin, and we found a way to hire two refugees, refit a company delivery van for people transport, and take turns running supplies and driving. We have a lot of trusted names and put them to good use, and it's arguably more sustainable and productive than doing it in my spare time.

Got IELTS results (general and academic) and positive thesis reviews. Now, defense details are in the hands of bureaucracy.

Looking forward to it.

Bestie has been "about to get a guitar and learn how to play it" for like two fucking years, now.

This seldom changes, especially if it's the same bestie who derails writing sessions into GTA. And, I get it, deciding between delayed pleasure vs having some mindless fun out with a friend isn't exactly a puzzler.

If I may offer some unsolicited advice, the important thing is to get something rolling. Overcoming stagnation is not just about gaining momentum, it's exploiting inertia and realising that, once going, you're harder to stop. Do one thing, whatever it'd be, and keep charging. You might even get others rolling along.

(We can even patent it as kinetic induction and branch KNsys out into human management. Just sayin'.)

The last couple of days I've been aggressively pestered by head-hunters, and it's all for the kinds of work I could have handled around 3rd or 4th year while being helluva lot more motivated by the whole "meds, rent, food -- pick up to two" scholarship lifestyle. I guess the desirable "good fitting" people left, so that's them scraping the bottom of the barrel, but, unfortunately, I had enough time in health and comfort to develop ambition, sense of dignity, and standards. Same with the people/supposedly friends who went from years of blanking my existence to positively insisting I come by, catch up, meet their boss or some other C-level shitbag who four years ago would faint at the thought of sharing room with a plebe like me.

Hard pass on both. It's likely not rational or optimal, and I'm willfully losing the points in game of life here, but if I ever was in a headspace for empty relationships and pretending at networking, it certainly ain't now. Between work, study and doing stuff around the house, I get to spend time m̶e̶r̶c̶i̶l̶e̶s̶s̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶b̶l̶i̶t̶e̶r̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ playing chess and boardgames with my brother and his circle loving every second of it.