The h Bar

12:48 AM

1

Proposed Q&A site for professional researchers and lab experimenters in the field of Plasma Cosmology, as well as enthusiasts looking for more information about Plasma Cosmology theories.

Currently in definition.

Interesting. A whole SE proposal about a non-standard cosmology

ACuriousMind

That...explains the non-mainstream discussion a few hours ago, I guess :P

Kyle Kanos

Some of those questions might be on-topic, I think

They'd have to be worded correctly though

0celo7

211

Mythology

Proposed Q&A site for enthusiasts and scholars of mythology.

Currently in commitment.

Some of these are really good.

Others are bad. I'd like to see Sofia's take on that one.

ACuriousMind

Ohhh...that one would be a true nightmare to moderate, I imagine

Lol..."avid enthusiast" is an interesting description of the people who commit :D

0celo7

"I stuck my d ck in a blender, what do I do?" -- "Ice it. Trust me, I'm a doctor."

Damn stars.

@ACuriousMind for mod area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/75409/latin-language

@JamalS I had a Cuban sandwich at the Cheesecake Factory today. Pretty darn good.

ACuriousMind

1:07 AM

@0celo7 I like that one, but my Latin is probably too rusty to usefully participate.

Kyle Kanos

> Now, his answer is accepted, he got a bounty, and it is completely intolerably wrong about this.

Sums up Ron's taking the internet too seriously

0celo7

@KyleKanos Ron Maimon? Where'd you find that?

Kyle Kanos

In a message to me

0celo7

Regarding what, if you're willing to share?

Kyle Kanos

start here and on down

0celo7

1:14 AM

Oh boy

I agree with Ron. If SE is supposed to be a collection of questions and answers, we shouldn't put green checks next to wrong answers.

Kyle Kanos

While I certainly agree that the deletion of comments pointing out the error of the (now accepted) answer is not a good idea, I cannot fathom him doing it in a polite manner. Meaning that it was deleted because of the insults, rather than the context.

@0celo7 False, green checks are the answers that helped the OP the most and does not guarantee correctness

0celo7

@KyleKanos I don't think this should be the case.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Well.. we don't put the check mark there. What we do is up- and downvote, and because OPs can't be trusted to select the best answer, that's why voting is important

Kyle Kanos

@0celo7 It's side-wide

And what he said ^

701

Q: How does accepting an answer work?

How does accepting an answer work? When should I do it? Why can't I accept my own answers right away? Which answer should I accept? For more information, see "What should I do when someone answers my question?" in the Help Center. Return to FAQ index

> The bottom line is that you should accept the answer that you found to be the most helpful to you, personally.

0celo7

@KyleKanos I get what SE intends the check to mean -- doesn't mean I have to agree.

@ACuriousMind Dusting off an old Skyrim save file. You ever get into Skyrim?

222

Stack Overflow (in German)

Proposed Q&A site for q&A site for German-speaking programming community (Fragen&Antworten Seite für deutschsprachige Programmierergesellschaft).

Currently in commitment.

ACuriousMind

1:22 AM

@0celo7 You could say so ;)

0celo7

246...amateur.

Kyle Kanos

Ooo, mine's still at 0

0celo7

I'm a console scrub, so I have to go on a journey through menus to find my playtime. One sec.

I have 76 hours on my current save.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Yeah, while I like Skyrim, I've also lots of other games to play, I don't sink as much time into a single game as I did some years ago. I think I've sunk about 1000 hours into Morrowind, though

0celo7

150 on my orc.

30 on some random high elf.

Kyle Kanos

1:26 AM

I beat Morrowind proper, then got all the extra DLs that make you too OP

0celo7

200 on a god high elf.

I can't find my vampire character, oh well. Never liked that one anyway.

Oh, 52 on my vampire character.

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos Well, Morrowind was never about balance to begin with ;) The expansions had nice stories, though

0celo7

@ACuriousMind What should I do with my high elf mage (named Cartan)?

Kyle Kanos

I've played the opening to FF5 about 3 times, getting to Siren (3rd boss) done in about 50 minutes (WR pace is about 38 min)

That was just a few nights ago

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 What one does with all characters: Wander into a random direction and mess stuff up ;)

Kyle Kanos

1:29 AM

It felt good to play a real game again.

0celo7

I had over 500 hours on my Pokemon Ruby save. I decided to delete it because I wanted a Groudon with nice stats, but lost interest after two days of soft resets.

@ACuriousMind I need to get rid of Serana. "Yes, what did you need" is going to kill me.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 all the followers get on my nerves :P

Kyle Kanos

Interesting. Ghostery blocks gravatar

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Those with little dialogue make for good pack mules.

Crap, I have to do the Soul Cairn quest to get rid of her.

Icosahedron

Are you talking about games?

Count me in.

0celo7

1:33 AM

I guess I can get the ghost horse -- can't recall his name.

@Icosahedron You have physics to read.

Icosahedron

;(

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Shadowmere, I think

0celo7

@ACuriousMind No, the ghost one you summon.

I already have Shadowmere.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Ohhh...don't recall that one either

Kyle Kanos

I probably spent something like 500+ hours on Final Fantasy 7

0celo7

1:34 AM

elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Arvak

user54412

Kyle Kanos

I've had at least 3 saves go over 99:99:59, plus many others in the 30-60 range

@ChrisWhite Effing Lacrosse players & their free time

ACuriousMind

My most played Steam game is XCOM, surprisingly

531 hours

0celo7

You people with your decent computers that can play games.

Icosahedron

What about Cave Story?

I have about 300 hours in that.

0celo7

1:37 AM

My laptop now does this thing where it stops running, somehow gets 6GB of data and puts 2GB of it into virtual RAM, causing everything to lag by 2 minutes.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 It's pretty much the only thing I spend money on that's not food, drinks or books

Icosahedron

Nobody here played Cave Story?

ACuriousMind

@Icosahedron Never heard of it

user54412

@0celo7 Well, a working laptop should be able to handle most games out there. After all, these are the days of phones and consoles.

user54412

@Icosahedron Nope. Sorry.

0celo7

1:40 AM

@ChrisWhite My laptop is going on 5 years now.

Icosahedron

@ACuriousMind It's the most popular indie game that exists.

It's only 900kb and it's free.

0celo7

I have 500 MB RAM effectively. I can't figure out what the other 3.5GB are going.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 The task manager should be able to show you that

user54412

@0celo7 Clean out the dust and wipe the OS -- good as new then.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind If only.

@ACuriousMind I summed up all of the things it says use RAM, it adds up to less than 1 GB.

ACuriousMind

1:42 AM

Well, that is weird

Kyle Kanos

Windows?

0celo7

OSX

Kyle Kanos

Conky tells me I'm using 1.5 GB of 8 GB. No idea how that 1.5 accumulated :/

user54412

Honestly, I never could decipher OSX's memory terminology

0celo7

I'm using 6GB right now.

I have 4GB.

FML

Kyle Kanos

1:43 AM

OSX is dumb anyway

Get a real OS: Free BSD

0celo7

2GB "virtual RAM"

user54412

web browser? they all could easily leak 6 GB

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos Obligatory XKCD

0celo7

Shouldn't that appear under "all processes"?

Kyle Kanos

Firefox is claiming 7.5% of my RAM, which just mindboggling that it does that

0celo7

1:44 AM

Unless it's a virus, of course.

Chrome is using...>500 MB.

4 tabs.

Kyle Kanos

Chat is probably consuming a lot

0celo7

It's YouTube that's hogging 230 MB.

user54412

@0celo7 There are many ways a program could forget about memory in such a way that the OS can't even regain access to it after the program exits.

0celo7

Chat is about 200.

Chat ruins my phone battery too.

I go in here during my free period and physics to bother @ACuriousMind and it drains 30+% of my battery.

Icosahedron

I don't have a phone. ;(

Kyle Kanos

1:56 AM

Too young?

user54412

Too sensible?

Icosahedron

I just decided not to have one.

Kyle Kanos

I realize now that that 2nd question was probably a little inappropriate

Icosahedron

Not having a phone gives you more time to think. I guess.

Though you miss out on a lot by choosing not to have one.

0celo7

@KyleKanos No such thing as unicorns.

user54412

1:59 AM

The only real reason I have a phone is to make sure I read emails from work the moment they are sent, and also to browse the arxiv on the way to work. I'm not sure this is a healthy thing.

Kyle Kanos

@0celo7 There is

@ChrisWhite Well you are a grad student.

0celo7

@KyleKanos :o holy crap where

Icosahedron

heh

user54412

@KyleKanos Also not a healthy thing.

Kyle Kanos

Well played

@ChrisWhite I lost ~20 lbs (of mostly fat) since Christmas, I think that's healthy

Of course, now I'm done so I am not sure that I can still rightfully make fun of grad students

I think I can, but I always hated PhD Comics b/c the author graduated from grad school like 10+ years ago

ACuriousMind

2:01 AM

@ChrisWhite Uh...don't you think a phone is useful for communicating with your friends?

Kyle Kanos

So it'd seem hypocritical of me

ACuriousMind

(Assuming you have some :P)

user54412

@ACuriousMind with who?

Icosahedron

@ChrisWhite Your friends at the h bar of course.

ACuriousMind

I see

0celo7

2:02 AM

I can never find the ingredients for the Soul Cairn portal.

user1667423

What is the time derivative of the polarization density (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization_density)?

Kyle Kanos

@user1667423 Well if it's proportional to the electric field E, wouldn't it be related to Maxwell's 4th?

user54412

@0celo7 that's what UESP is for

user1667423

The thing I'm having trouble with is that Maxwell's two curl equations contain four quantities, so two more equations seem to be needed to solve the system.

0celo7

@ChrisWhite I got it. It's that finely ground bone meal that I can never find.

user1667423

2:12 AM

I know you can set B = mu * H and D = epsilon * E

But this doesn't seem to hold in general.

More accurately D = E + P and B = H + M.

One could let P = X_eE and M = X_mH, but this is not true in general either (AFAIK)

user54412

2:55 AM

Random question for any Europeans: From everything I've heard, automatic transmissions are almost unheard of there. Is this true? And why exactly is this?

user54412

Is driving stick seen as more fun? More masculine? Less American?

Kyle Kanos

Maybe less lazy?

user54412

I also wonder if manual cars stall. I mean, my parents tell me about the bad old days, when everything was manual and cars stalled if you looked at them the wrong way, but maybe modern manuals work just as well as modern automatics?

Kyle Kanos

I've not had a stick in about 10 years, but I don't recollect a difference between the 1990 Sentra (had no power anything) and the 2001 Protege (power everything)

NeuroFuzzy

3:26 AM

@Icosahedron Played it! Worthy of praise, but idk if it's worthy of a cult following

(like the one that it has)

it's definitely awesome though.

Icosahedron

yeah!

NeuroFuzzy

@Icosahedron I'm mostly just following project zomboid right now ^^

that's like the extent of my video game related activities...

this quarter*

oh and mount and blade!

Icosahedron

The only game I play is cave story.

NeuroFuzzy

Huh? for me it was a beat once and stop game/

Kyle Kanos

The guy's at it again:

-3

A: Where would the dark matter particle fit inside a picture of the standard model?

Talk of a dark matter particle is pure speculation. 'DARK ENERGY/DARK MASS: THE SILENT TRUTH' https://tienzengong.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/dark-energydark-mass-the-silent-truth/ "That is, all that we are certain about [is] the dark mass, not dark matter, let alone to say about the dark ‘particl...

Icosahedron

3:34 AM

@NeuroFuzzy Did you get the best ending?

NeuroFuzzy

@Icosahedron hehe probably not

Icosahedron

@NeuroFuzzy Did you save curly brace?

NeuroFuzzy

oh. I don't recall buuuuut it sounds familiar... sneaking around with the water pumps after a boss fight?

user54412

@KyleKanos You know, I've come to believe there's a certain linguistic pattern to crackpot posts. A certain... scatteredness. I wonder if text comparison software could identify such posts without even looking at content.

user54412

Also, I like the arxiv-style comment

Icosahedron

3:41 AM

@NeuroFuzzy You have to drain the water out of her then restore her lost memory.

If you don't remember doing that then you most likely did not, it's not entirely obvious to do.

NeuroFuzzy

@ChrisWhite Hmm, high numbers of links to easy-to-make weblogs, and count the number of " and ' marks.

and caps.

i wonder if that's a good heuristic or not...

@Icosahedron I definitely did, because I remember I didn't leave and I remember it was reallyannoying to figure out what to do.

Icosahedron

@NeuroFuzzy What was your ending then?

NeuroFuzzy

@Icosahedron I just don't remember :/

Icosahedron

Did it look like this?

NeuroFuzzy

3:56 AM

@Icosahedron :O no

Icosahedron

Did you battle this?

NeuroFuzzy

OH. YES I DID.

i remember because of the annoying ground stomps.

Icosahedron

Then you had the best ending.

Assuming you defeated it.

NeuroFuzzy

yay!

Icosahedron

I prefer the other ending though.

That final cave and battle took about the same time to complete as it did to get there.

The first time I tried it, that is.

Jimmy360

5:55 AM

Ugggggh! Another could dark matter be question.

alarge

10:41 AM

@ChrisWhite It's my understanding that the fuel efficiency is better with manual transmission, and that they need less maintenance and are cheaper to repair. I've been told that automatics a couple of decades ago did not handle cold weather very well. You also obviously get more control over the car with a stick, for example you can use the gears to slow down instead of hitting the breaks. I've driven plenty of both, and I don't really have a preference.

dmckee

3:33 PM

@alarge The issue of fuel economy was true for a long time, but start ing the early 1980s (with luxury cars) and continuing into the late 1990s automotic transmissions improved in design and control system until you had to be a very attentive manual driver to beat them for fuel economy. Maintenance has also improved for automatics: they are still very expensive to repair, but they don't breakdown as often any more. The ice and snow traction issue I'm less familiar with.

Anonymous

@vzn No it's not - there was a temporary period of dryness around the time you posted that comment, but it's pretty much fine now. It's a small community, but stable, productive, and satisfied.

vzn

4:12 PM

@Dimensio1n0 ok actually good to hear a contrary pov. think diversity in different online social/ scientific communities is defn a good thing, to be encouraged & se culture is sometimes too constraining & approaching a "monoculture". ppl on se sometimes forget that its a human constructed system and involves design choices/ emphases, sometimes verging on biases or blind spots. youre a mod on physicsoverflow right? maybe state that in your se profile.

Icosahedron

5:17 PM

@Dimensio1n0 Will PO ever join the SE network?

0celo7

6:45 PM

@ACuriousMind Relevant to string theory.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Heh.

0celo7

ACuriousMind

Ah, Dilbert. One of the comics I haven't memorized but one day probably will ;)

0celo7

:o you should learn GR instead

ACuriousMind

:P

0celo7

7:00 PM

Actually, learn string theory before Dilbert

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 That...doesn't look like the stuff you usually read

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Reading a /sci/ humor thread.

ACuriousMind

After that edit, I don't know what to believe :D

0celo7

@ACuriousMind boards.4chan.org/sci/thread/7206835/…

Some are internal references.

ACuriousMind

I am not clicking on a link that says "no SMBC"

0celo7

7:12 PM

It's because they've all memorized it and don't want newfags posting it.

Physics Meta

7:35 PM

0

Q: Formulas are flickering in the preview as I type

When I typing my post MathJax re-render the preview after each key press, leading to an annoying flicker in the preview area as I'm typing. When there are lots of formulas it also slows down the entire thing making my characters appear in the editing window with a noticeable delay as it renders. ...

feature-request mathjax

dmckee

8:05 PM

I should have known better, but I am ever the optimist.

0celo7

8:21 PM

@ACuriousMind A year-old question in the close queue?

@ACuriousMind Is your comment on this serious? It seemed pretty simple to me.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Yeah, it's serious because I don't get what the user is asking - Lagrangian->Hamiltonian is not a one-way street, so I would not call that a sequence, you might as well go momentum->velocity.

@0celo7 Well, why not? :P

0celo7

@ACuriousMind What he means is this: We have a position. From this position calculus gets us a velocity. We can get the momentum by taking the velocity derivative of the Lagrangian. Suppose we have an angle. Calculus gets us the angular velocity. We can get the angular momentum by taking the angular velocity derivative of the Lagrangian. The third case is left to the reader.

@ACuriousMind physics.stackexchange.com/questions/18950/… Watch 6 YouTube videos about some random crackpot theory and help me debunk it

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Then I still don't get the question because...these are the definitions of these things?

0celo7

@ACuriousMind I think...he's asking about the definitions.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Yeah, I was a bit puzzled that that was still open, too

0celo7

8:31 PM

@ACuriousMind Pet peeve: you don't need two thats in that sentence.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Well, but they're not wrong, are they?

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Not even wrong ;)

ACuriousMind

Heh, touché

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Are you the other close vote physics.stackexchange.com/questions/178526/…? I know you want me to answer questions on SE, but all of these GR questions suck.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Not all of them. Just most :P

And yes, when you see a comment of mine saying "I don't know what you want", you can bet that the unclear vote is from me ;)

0celo7

8:39 PM

@ACuriousMind "I am working in GR" Good for him, doesn't help us any.

I think the more interesting question there is "how does gauge theory depend on the geometrical and topological structure of the manifold"

Or not, I don't know

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Well, there are topological obstructions to choosing a gauge globally (Gribov obstructions), but I'm not sure if that's what is question is supposed to be about. It seems more to be about "admissible" gauges.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Ah, I knew of that, just not specifics. Anything I should know specifics about?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 I'm not sure if there's anything specific to know, we usually ignore these ambiguities :P

0celo7

@ACuriousMind The magical waving hand saves the day again

ACuriousMind

I think it's just something one should be aware of - if your attempt at gauge-fixing gives back weird stuff, you probably ran into a Gribov obstruction, but it doesn't mean your theory is doomed^^

0celo7

8:46 PM

@ACuriousMind Is it wrong to say that "relativistic mass" is outdated? physics.stackexchange.com/questions/178553/…

@ACuriousMind 0celo7's Theorem: string theory has no Gribov obstructions. Yay, nothing to worry about now.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 No, I think we have enough answers on this site to say that it is indeed outdated

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Note the one commenter saying otherwise.

(Not me!)

ACuriousMind

Well, inches are an outdated measurement unit from all but an American viewpoint :P

0celo7

I think that "confusing and no longer used in academia" means outdated.

@ACuriousMind I will fight you Rooskies to death if you try to take my inches.

ACuriousMind

There's an inappropriate joke in there somewhere.

@0celo7 Yeah, you could say that

0celo7

8:54 PM

@ACuriousMind RM is outdated because it is an incorrect interpretation of the equations which leads to a very poor semi-Newtonian understanding of the theory.

From Yahoo answers.

@dmckee High school teachers talk about relativity? My Princeton educated physics teacher couldn't tell you the first thing about special relativity.

dmckee

@0celo7 They did in my high school.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Did they talk about relativity in the Gymnasium?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Nope. Not really, at least. We had a weird "field trip" where we were supposed to spend the weekend learning a bit aboutit, but, well, it was a trip, soooooo...not much learning going on :P

Richard

9:32 PM

Hello all. Anyone about?

ACuriousMind

@Richard Hi there

Richard

@ACuriousMind - Quick question, probably more within the realms of Electrical Engineering, but how conductive is a glass tube filled with water? Is it more or less conductive than, say copper?

Or aluminium wire?

ACuriousMind

@Richard Uh...I'd say it's less conductive, but I don't know

Kyle Kanos

Definitely less conductive

Icosahedron

duh

Kyle Kanos

9:39 PM

Copper & Aluminium have conductivities in the 1e7 range

Glass & water are 1e-2 and less

dmckee

It actually matters a lot how how clean the water is. If it is at all salty it becomes quite a good conductor, while high purity water is rather poor.

Still not as good as copper, but several orders of magnitude better than distilled water.

alemi

You know the conductivity of salty water must be less than copper, or else the telegraph wires they laid on the bottom of the atlantic would have been pretty pointless.

Richard

10:25 PM

So my question is, can I make an electrical circuit using water-filled glass pipes?

alemi

@Richard, certainly. Just like you can get shocked in the bathtub. You're completing a circuit from the wall to ground through the bathwater and yourself.

Richard

@alemi - I should be clearer. Can I make the entire circuit out of water and non-metallic elements?

alemi

@Richard where do you plan on getting your emf? Or creating nontrivial circuit elements? You could fairly straightforwardly replace all of the wires in a standard electrical circuit with glass tubes filled with salty water, and just pay the cost of increased resistance

Richard

@alemi - Well, that's the question. I'd also quite like to use my electricity to create light.

ACuriousMind

@Richard Y'know, this kinda sounds like a question for worldbuilding.SE

Richard

10:41 PM

@ACuriousMind - I was planning to ask it on electrical.

ACuriousMind

I guess it might fit there too

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Locality implies no branch cuts in correlators? Is this a general result of QFT that I foolishly skimmed over way back when?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 I have no idea :/

0celo7

@ACuriousMind :/

Richard

Cheers guys.

0

Q: Lighting circuit without metal

I'm planning to incarcerate a supervillain who has the ability to attract and control metal. As a minimum, I'd quite like to light his cell but obviously putting even small amounts of metal into his proximity (100+ metres) is extremely dangerous. Is there a way of creating an electrical lighting...

water metal

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