qjkxbmwvz
@qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
- Comment on uhhh overleaf you say 2 days ago:
I was writing up my problem set answers once, and it involved the (complex analysis) residue. I wasn’t sure if there was a shortcut (as opposed to
\mathrm); googlinglatex residuedid not produce the search results I was hoping for… - Comment on Least extreme biophysics phd 1 week ago:
This is obvious though — currently, you might test a drug on mice, then on primates, and finally on humans (as an example). It would be faster to skip the early bits and go straight to human testing.
…but that is very, very, very wrong. Science of course doesn’t care about right and wrong, nor does it care if you “believe” in it, which is the beautiful thing about science — so a scientifically sound experiment is a scientifically sound experiment regardless of ethical considerations. (Which does not mean we should be doing it of course!)
Now, taking a step back, maybe you’re right that, in the long run, throwing ethics out the window would actually slow things down, as it would (rightfully) cause backlash. But that’s getting into a whole “sociology of science” discussion.
- Comment on see the joke is that someone else does the work 1 week ago:
This is all based, most likely, on Griffiths’ textbook. Quoting here from this post reddit.com/…/magnetic_fields_do_no_work_but_magne… :
The statement “magnetic fields do no work” is incorrect. Griffiths has mislead a generation of physics students on this. A correct version of the statement is that “magnetic fields do no work on objects with no magnetic moments” which is rather trivial. One could also correctly make the same statement about electric fields. However, electric monopoles are very common, so a situation in which there are no electric moments never occurs in normal circumstances.
- Comment on Anon is smarter than a genius 2 weeks ago:
Jobs created toxic work environments.
…and so did Linus Torvalds* — he’s certainly not the embodiment of capitalism. But I absolutely have a huge amount of respect for Torvalds, even if I don’t approve of his way of his interpersonal/professional style.
(I used to run Arch btw [but I run Debian now].)
*He’s supposedly taken steps in the right direction here and has made improvements.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, without being a policy junkie I think a reasonable step would be to have Prop 13 only happy to primary residence — investment real estate would be subject to a “wealth tax,” but folks wouldn’t get priced out of their primary home due to gentrification.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 3 weeks ago:
Right, that’s a huge downside for sure.
Property tax is on the one hand a wealth tax, which sounds like a great idea; but on the other hand, it’s a wealth tax that disproportionately affects people with the bulk of their assets tied up in real estate — which often means middle class homeowners.
So while you can certainly look at prop 13 as “good” in that folks don’t get priced out of their existing homes, it of course gets used to the advantage of rent seekers, etc.
It’s…complicated.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 3 weeks ago:
California disagrees: …wikipedia.org/…/1978_California_Proposition_13
Property tax is assessed when there’s a sale, and otherwise changes very slowly. It’s a controversial measure.
- Comment on This is also when I conveniently forget you called, making your preferred method of communication incredibly slow compared to texting. 3 weeks ago:
Seriously, it is the lowest-latency and highest-bandwidth communication method we have, when used appropriately.
- Comment on Found these in a cabinet at work. Boss told me to make them disappear. 3 weeks ago:
They were thinking of making a Minority Report adaptation (with Arnold, not Cruise) as the sequel to Total Recall, with the mutant Martians as the precogs. Could have been a fun one!
- Comment on Anon plays a prank 3 weeks ago:
If it’s a campus bus it’s almost certainly free, and probably timed to class schedules. If you only have 10m or so between classes it makes sense.
- Comment on I have an entire cabinet currently storing empty jars... 4 weeks ago:
Some bulk food stores let you bring your own. You put a sticker on them with the bulk item # and also the dry weight, so it’s a little more work, but then you can put your jars to use!
- Comment on Murica 4 weeks ago:
You can ride your bike on many highways in the USA at least. Generally you cannot on the freeway, but there are some exceptions — in California there are requirements about bike accessibility which means that certain segments of a freeway may be bike accessible.
If you live far from a store then groceries are a problem unless you use a trailer, but if you live in a city it’s totally reasonable to use a bike (or walk) for your weekly groceries.
And you can get a new Trek FX for under $600, and that’s just from a quick search. Yes of you want Ultegra or better and a carbon frame, the sky is the limit.
- Comment on Measles Outbreak Hits Town in Texas 1 month ago:
We breathed a huge sigh of relief when our kid got vaccinated (first dose at ~1yr old). I just can’t fathom voluntarily not doing that.
- Comment on Sadge 1 month ago:
Sounds like it was a 2 petawatt pulsed lase, with picosecond pulses, so 2kJ/pulse. Staggering amount of power for a pulsed laser!
Note that it’s not CW, so the average power will be much, much, much less than the pulsed power. Too lazy to find the rep rate to see average power.
- Comment on Anon cheats through college 1 month ago:
“Necessary, but not sufficient” sums up the role of a degree for a lot of jobs.
- Comment on Sinners!!! 1 month ago:
Remind me again, what color was Obama’s scandalous suit?
- Comment on Boss Mode 1 month ago:
No, that’s not really a useful way of modeling it for the case of light traveling through a linear medium.
The absorption/re-emission model implicitly localizes the photons, which is problematic — think about it in an uncertainty principle (or diffraction limit) picture: it implies that the momentum is highly uncertain, which means that the light would get absorbed but re-emitted in every direction, which doesn’t happen. So instead you can make arguments about it being a delocalized photon and being absorbed and re-emitted coherently across the material, but this isn’t really the same thing as the “ping pong balls stopping and starting again” model.
Another problem is to ask why the light doesn’t change color in a (linear) medium — because if it’s getting absorbed and re-emitted, and is not hitting a nice absorption line, why wouldn’t it change energy by exchanging with the environment/other degrees of freedom? (The answer is it does do this — it’s called Raman scattering, but that is generally a very weak effect.)
The absorption/emission picture does work for things like fluorescence. But Maxwell’s equations, the Schrödinger equation, QED — these are wave equations.
- Comment on Boss Mode 2 months ago:
Dispersion and nonlinearities would like to have a word ;)
- Comment on Boss Mode 2 months ago:
*in vacuo
- Comment on It's a good group! 2 months ago:
I’d like to know more.
In all seriousness though, I thought it had some aspects of good, which was odd given that it’s satirical commentary on fascism. For instance, gender didn’t really matter and women were promoted, and while the shower scene was meant to show how fascism castrates the masses (or something like that, iirc), I thought it was a relatively wholesome scene, all things considered.
- Comment on Vibes based cooking 2 months ago:
Baking is chemistry, cooking is jazz.
- Comment on What happened to techbros from the 90s to now? 2 months ago:
Pick your favorite tech company, pick a small team with a “nerdy” engineering mandate, and I’m confident you’ll find the academic, geeky science and engineering types you’re talking about.
They probably aren’t very vocal though, because 1) there’s a huge PR/marketing budget which is responsible for being the face of the company, and 2) well…these are nerdy STEM folks who probably like their job because they get very well compensated to be nerdy STEM types, and not because they’re fanboys/girls.
- Comment on Improve your Wi-Fi with this one trick 3 months ago:
Not at all in this case though! Or rather, it depends on your perspective.
“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a good question, if you know nothing about electricity.
“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a little stupid, if you know a little about electricity.
“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a great question if you know a bit more about electricity (because it does leak out, it’s just that 50/60Hz doesn’t couple to freespace well unless you have a colossal antenna).
As to this question, light in a moving media: preprints.opticaopen.org/articles/…/25441108?file…
- Comment on Best Abstract Ever 3 months ago:
You can!
Getting it published is another matter though…
- Comment on And black gloves of course 3 months ago:
…using chopsticks of course, so you don’t get your mechanical keyboard dirty.
- Comment on Anon goes to the doctor 3 months ago:
from many years ago. Post says 9/29/24…
- Comment on Took me by surprise 3 months ago:
It’s completely context dependent; you’re right that using male/female is appropriate for humans in certain contexts, e.g., medical usage (“Patient, a 47yo female, presented with…”). But it is — for cultural and historical reasons — generally considered inappropriate to refer to our fellow humans that way in conversation.
Re: mutt, fair enough. Bitch/stud are examples of how animal terms, when applied to humans, take on very different meanings. Purebred is afaik not specific to species, but it is wildly inappropriate to refer to people as such.
At the end of the day, the logic behind what is and is not appropriate has history behind it; animal terms have been used extensively to refer to subjugated peoples; it may be scientifically accurate but that doesn’t mean that it’s inoffensive.
- Comment on Took me by surprise 3 months ago:
Of course we’re animals, but let’s use some common sense wrt cultural norms here. A dog of mixed lineage is mutt, but it’s completely inappropriate to refer to a multiracial person as such. A female dog is a bitch, a male is a stud; the sexism is pretty obvious when applied to humans. It’s fine to talk about owning a dog; it’s not ok to talk about owning another human (except perhaps children, in certain contexts).
Yes, we are animals too, but that doesn’t mean we should talk about each other in the same way. (And I say this as a vegetarian who thinks we should treat all animals with significantly more respect than we currently do.)
- Comment on Took me by surprise 3 months ago:
Unless we want to use group pronouns like we do with animals.
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly why referring to women as “females” is problematic — using male/female as nouns is fine for animals. Humans, not so much…
- Comment on Parents when their kid brings them home a half-eaten candy necklace 3 months ago:
Anyway, how’s your sex life?