Mathematics - 2017-07-16 (page 1 of 3)

Akiva Weinberger

00:04

I guess it's the intersection of the three lines

Eric Silva

hi chat

@Daminark personally i dont understand IBL

Akiva Weinberger

@BalarkaSen If you care, the last few chapters of 17776 were uploaded today

Akiva Weinberger

00:22

Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win maths' Fields Medal, dies RIP

> The 40-year-old Iranian, a professor at Stanford University, had breast cancer which had spread to her bones.
Nicknamed the "Nobel Prize for Mathematics", the Fields Medal is only awarded every four years to between two and four mathematicians under 40.
It was given to Prof Mirzakhani in 2014 for her work on complex geometry and dynamical systems.

Eric Silva

I have been deeply saddened by this news

Daminark

@EricSilva don't get in what sense?

Eric Silva

like the point

I helped a friend with it all the time in my first year and it just seemed so slow

Ted Shifrin

it is, Eric

Daminark

Yeah, I think they didn't get to uniform convergence and power series in IBL

Ted Shifrin

00:36

well, plenty of standard lecture courses don't cover the syllabus, either

Daminark

Though it's partially because of the route they took, like they spent half the year on "the continuum". I think some professors were faster on the whole but I dunno

Eric Silva

plus i feel like early on it's pretty important to have the guidance of a teacher who presents math to you rather than letting students figure that out by themselves

oh yeah all i ever heard ibl people talk about was "the continuum"

Ted Shifrin

good teacher

Eric Silva

yeah that's an important caveat

Daminark

I didn't really get that continuum stuff much either. I know what they were trying to do but like, it's odd.

Ted Shifrin

00:40

sorta like you, Demonark

Daminark

The fact that Sally liked IBL so much really explains his book actually

Huh? @Ted, I thought I was even

Eric Silva

Sally was also a questionable teacher from what i've been told

Daminark

Yeah, Stella sat in on your class last year to actually learn measure theory :P

Though that was his last year, like I think he was fully blind and that likely hit his performance hard

Eric Silva

Schlag's words regarding teaching some undergrads analysis the summer after Sally's class: "They came to me having spent a year learning nothing"

Ted Shifrin

Now you know why I retired early ....

Daminark

00:46

They probably got good at p-adics and Banach-Stone

If nothing else

Eric Silva

not even though

not even jack sempliner could answer the banach stone problem and he's like operating on a different cognitive level practically

he apparently got close tho from what ive heard

Daminark

Dayum. Well then just p-adics

Soug actually made a similar joke as well

Ted Shifrin

Very sad. And I don't mean Trump-sad.

Eric Silva

@Daminark i know a bunch of people who took sally's class who learned nothing abt p-adics lol

tbh idek what Trump-sad means

Daminark

Wait if they didn't even get that much how did they not fail?

Ted Shifrin

00:51

he uses the word "sad" a lot ...

Eric Silva

yeah but it's almost like devoid of meaning

tbh most of what he says is garbled half-thought

Ted Shifrin

Paul Sally many years ago had a reputation for being a fantastic teacher ... this is what happens when people don't retire when they should.

Eric Silva

@Daminark you don't have ot understand what you're doing to get a good grade in a class

Ted Shifrin

I meant that I was sincerely sad ... for Paul and for the students.

Grades are often a total joke. I had students in my diff geo class who had gotten C's or better in everything up to that and they were totally incompetent — couldn't even do basic one-variable chain rule reliably, let alone multivariable chain rule.

Eric Silva

yeah

Akiva Weinberger

00:53

While Googling what the difference between Moore method and IBL is, I found this

Is that the class you're talking about?

(Also, I think they're essentially the same thing)

Ted Shifrin

interesting, DogAteMy ... Mike Shulman is a logician who is on the faculty at a university about 2 miles from where I live now.

Eric Silva

@Akiva I think Moore method is the same thing as IBL

but I'm glad they don't call it Moore method bc he was like suuuuuper racist

Akiva Weinberger

Oh, really?

Ted Shifrin

I'd forgotten that

Eric Silva

Yeah he would deny black students places in classes and lower their grades arbitrarily if they enrolled

Akiva Weinberger

00:56

Oh wow

Eric Silva

and on wikipedia i think it says he once walked out of a lecture when he saw the lecturer was black

Akiva Weinberger

When did this guy live

Ted Shifrin

in the middle of the 20th century

Eric Silva

he died in the 70s iirc

Akiva Weinberger

> Robert Lee Moore (November 14, 1882 – October 4, 1974) was an American mathematician who taught for many years at the University of Texas. He is known for his work in general topology, for the Moore method of teaching university mathematics, and for his poor treatment of African-American mathematics students.

Ted Shifrin

00:58

glad I don't have a wiki entry :P

Semiclassical

...when it's in the second sentence of the Wikipedia article, you know he was pretty racist.

Daminark

That's pretty fucked

I don't get why people are like that

Semiclassical

Upbringing has a lot to do with it, usually.

Eric Silva

i mean it's built into societal norms and conventions

Semiclassical

The example I always think of someone who was surprisingly prejudiced even for the time is Lovecraft

Eric Silva

00:59

half of his horror is about how terrifying racial mixing was to him

Semiclassical

pretty much, yeah.

Akiva Weinberger

@EricSilva What do you mean?

Ted Shifrin

Look at a good percentage of the US right now ... empowered by Trump's hatred and bigotry. Seriously?

Demonark, they're all around you.

Akiva Weinberger

I heard he was racist but I don't know any details

Ted Shifrin

Not to mention anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-anything but dumb white.

Eric Silva

01:00

@Daminark our school is like a hub of liberal elite and it's still full of racist stuff happening all the time

@Akiva what do I mean by what comment

Semiclassical

eh, that implies he wouldn't have been prejudiced against lower-class whites.

Ted Shifrin

They can "pass," Semiclassic.

Eric Silva

I'd like to comment that racism and prejudice aren't the same thing

Akiva Weinberger

@EricSilva By the comment that said of Lovecraft's writing was about the horror of racial mixing

Semiclassical

ehhh. my point is that Lovecraft wasn't "whites are the best" so much as "everything that isn't New England Protestant is horrifying"

Tim The Enchanter

01:02

Hey Everyone.

Semiclassical

there's a distinction to be made, though not one that really helps him much.

Ted Shifrin

Hi TimThe

Akiva Weinberger

Ench

Eric Silva

There's one story that was literally about some dude coming to a horrible realization that his ancestor was like from africa or something

Semiclassical

yeah.

Akiva Weinberger

01:03

Seriously?

Eric Silva

yup

Daminark

Jfc

Eric Silva

@Daminark seriously don't follow the news of what's going on in greek life on campus bc it's like constant racist nonsense

Akiva Weinberger

I imagine that would be physically painful to read (re: the Lovecraft thing)

Semiclassical

The Wiki blurb on Lovecraft's prejudices is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Eric Silva

01:06

when I read it I actually got very angry

I was in like middle school or something

Semiclassical

it's pretty bad.

oh, man. the title of this blog post: barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/…

Akiva Weinberger

> The Enduring Legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, Genre’s Crazy Racist Uncle

Eric Silva

it's pretty accurate

Semiclassical

Yeah.

Ted Shifrin

and just think ... Demonark started this all with IBL.

Eric Silva

01:10

What's crazy is that it wasn't even a big jump

IBL -> Racism -> Lovecraft is like a pretty coherent train of thought

Semiclassical

Well, the Moore connection is a pretty big one.

Eric Silva

yeah exactly

Ted Shifrin

<--- disconnected

Eric Silva

@Daminark do people who do IBL do honors analysis ever

I feel like they'd be so behind

although tbf i have no idea what they do third quarter so idk if they catch up

Semiclassical

The one I'm more sensitive to than Lovecraft when it comes to charges of prejudice is Eliot.

Ted Shifrin

01:12

Remember that one can be a perfectly wonderful math major and not be on the elite fast track that you guys are ... geez.

Semiclassical

And unfortunately, while I think he's a lot less problematic than Lovecraft...well, there's some not great stuff.

Especially in his early unpublished poetry.

Eric Silva

@Ted I don't doubt that, despite having taken it I actually think it's like a bad institution the way it exists currently

@Semi I like Tolkien but I'm also extremely anti-colonialist and these things are like basically incompatible

Semiclassical

Yeah.

Eric Silva

It's hard to find old but unproblematic things

Akiva Weinberger

Genius is entirely orthogonal to morality.

Semiclassical

01:16

oh, man. that reminds me of this old Cracked piece (not a list, for once): cracked.com/blog/…

Ted Shifrin

I don't buy that, DogAteMy.

Akiva Weinberger

What about the Unabomber, for example?

Semiclassical

The name which always comes to mind when it comes to genius vs. morality is Teichmuller.

Akiva Weinberger

Well, maybe it's too strong to say "entirely" orthogonal

Ted Shifrin

"Entirely" needs a proof, not an example.

I can give definite counterexamples.

Akiva Weinberger

01:18

Yeah, fair. I retract the statement.

Semiclassical

Brilliant mathematician, ardent Nazi.

Eric Silva

@Semi I was gonna give that example earlier

Akiva Weinberger

Though there was something my brother was telling me about a while ago

He read something that argued that the reason the "antihero" trope exists is that there are things we consider to be virtues that don't necessarily imply morality

Semiclassical

Teichmuller is unfortunately relevant since Teichmuller theory was one of Mirzakhani's research areas.

Akiva Weinberger

The example he gave at the time was the quality of being hardworking

Eric Silva

01:20

I think it's probably more likely that you would be recognized asa genius if your morals were conventional

Ted Shifrin

I don't know — I think that in science and art one tends to ignore personal facts and concentrate on the talent. I don't say that's good or bad.

Daminark

Hey I'm back

@Eric it often happens, I think our year was one of the few ones were traditional 160s kids outnumbered IBL going in

Akiva Weinberger

(to drag the conversation back a bit)

Eric Silva

Interesting

Daminark

I think in face of professors like Soug, doing the normal 160s is probably a good bit better

Semiclassical

01:22

I think the example of Lovecraft is a bit particular in this conversation simply because what we remember from Lovecraft was precisely his horror. Teichmuller theory has nothing to do with Nazi-ism, despite Teichmuller's own allegience.

It's harder to decouple the horror that Lovecraft evokes from the horror that was invoked in him.

Daminark

Like, when Sally and Boller taught it, it'd be almost better for IBL students, since they're more used to having less to lean on, instead having to more or less figure out the theory

But then if Soug does it, you really can't afford to operate at the IBL pacing

Eric Silva

Yeah well in math the work you do has none of your moral beliefs embedded in the end product so it's easier to just accept this stuff @Semi

Semiclassical

Right.

Akiva Weinberger

Speaking of IBL, I might as well share this link for whoever's curious

math.toronto.edu/~alfonso/MC/MC.html

Semiclassical

Mathematical genius and morality really do have little to do with one another.

Akiva Weinberger

01:26

Notes from some IBL classes taught by Alfonso at Mathcamp ^

Eric Silva

I still have a problem accepting it personally but I'm a minority whose group has a history of oppression in the Americas so I don't tend to just be willing to overlook that stuff

Semiclassical

Right. Whereas I'm a white guy from a middle-class Minnesota background.

Akiva Weinberger

The Topology problem set begins with an introduction that gives more details on the teaching method

Semiclassical

To the extent that my politics tend to be lefty, it's probably a lot to do with my parents being quite solidly anti-Republican.

Eric Silva

I'm a pretty hard leftist. Very sad that right now BOTH the countries I have citizenship in are doing very problematic things under crazy right wing administration's

Thought tbf the us does horrible things under a Dem administration too

Semiclassical

01:32

Yeah.

Daminark

@Akiva That looks neat

IBL Calc uses these scripts: math.uchicago.edu/~boller/IBL

Eric Silva

and the brazilian situation is basically attributable to american interference in the brazilian media

it's p bad

@Daminark Oh man I remember helping my housemates with these sheets

Semiclassical

America subverting Latin American politics? What a shock. /s

Eric Silva

literally the entire history of US policy in Latin America is sooooo bad

Semiclassical

Yeah.

Akiva Weinberger

01:34

We don't get taught about it all that much

Semiclassical

I mean, pick an era and you'll find something horrid.

Pre Civil War? US invasion of Mexico.

Eric Silva

I was in a Latin American economic history class and a lot of people tried to make very bad ahistorical arguments about how neoliberalism actually helped people in e.g. Chile

and me and other Latin Americans in the class were like uhm

Akiva Weinberger

I have a fairly large gap in my knowledge of stuff that happened in my teachers' lifetimes but not in mine

Semiclassical

I have to ask: How many of those in the pro-neoliberalism camp actually referred to it as such?

Eric Silva

sounds like a lot of people who don't know anything about what goes on in Latin American nations but ok

@Semi a lot

Semiclassical

01:37

Huh.

Akiva Weinberger

Like I didn't even know what Columbine was until fairly recently

I have only the faintest idea of what happened in 1993 with the World Trade Center

Semiclassical

It's hard not to know about it in the US.

I remember the Oklahoma City bombing a lot more than the WTC bombing, though.

Akiva Weinberger

Yeah but it happened seven or eight months before I was born so

Eric Silva

i will say it seems like very hard to understand Latin American nations when you don't have a strong personal connection to their politics and history

Semiclassical

Probably for one because of how much visual media there was for Oklahoma City versus WTC

Eric Silva

01:39

which is a problem considering how much of America's success can be attributed to specifically screwing over latin american economies and people

Semiclassical

The pictures from the latter are really hard to forget.

Akiva Weinberger

googles Oklahoma City bombing

Semiclassical

It was a specific building that got bombed.

I forget which one, though I remember it was a Federal building.

Daminark

Yeah I didn't know about either one

Semiclassical

with the WTC bombing...well, 9/11 sorta displaces public memory of that.

Eric Silva

01:41

I knew about both but idr if it's cause I heard about them in classes or just cause I read a lot of things in this vein

Semiclassical

The other big one which comes to mind (and I was definitely too young for it) was Waco.

Akiva Weinberger

Is that a city or a name

Semiclassical

Waco siege

The Waco siege was a siege of a compound belonging to the group Branch Davidians by American federal and Texas state law enforcement and US military between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians, a sect that separated in 1955 from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was led by David Koresh and lived at Mount Carmel Center ranch in the community of Elk, Texas, nine miles (14 kilometers) east-northeast of Waco. The group was suspected of weapons violations, causing a search and arrest warrant to be obtained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The incident...

Waco is a city in Texas.

Eric Silva

wasnt waco one of the reasons for the oklahoma city bombing

Semiclassical

@EricSilva Yeah, I think so.

Right-wing militia stuff.

Eric Silva

01:42

yeah

Semiclassical

I'll be honest, one thing I was paranoid about when the election happened was what kind of stuff would go on with right-wing militias if Trump lost.

Eric Silva

Also if anyone is interested in the vein of things I was talking about earlier: Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano is like an extremely important book to read

@Semi me too honestly

Akiva Weinberger

Oh, when was the IRA a thing

Irish terrorist group or something

Semiclassical

It's been a while since then.

Though Irish politics are certainly still a thing

Eric Silva

like 70s to the late 90s

Semiclassical

01:44

(It's a small but not unimportant part of what made the whole British election recently so complicated)

Eric Silva

although it like was the continuation of a similar organization that had existed since the 20s or something

don't quote me on that I could be wrong on my dates

Semiclassical

It's strange how long ago that feels, when it really wasn't.

Eric Silva

The IRA wasn't officially disarmed until like

04 or 05

Semiclassical

I mean, one of U2's big songs was "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (1983)

and that's got a definite Irish context.

Eric Silva

there was a time where the word terrorism wasn't associated with islam in the American consciousness

and it was fairly recent

Semiclassical

01:47

Hell, there was a time when Afghanistan wasn't associated with American military activities.

Rohit

HII

Semiclassical

prior to 9/11 it was the USSR which had been bogged down there.

Rohit

I have a quick question can i ask here?

Akiva Weinberger

@Semiclassical What, the 20s?

Semiclassical

Sure, go ahead.

Akiva Weinberger

01:48

Hm, negative three years, wow

Semiclassical

@akiva uh, nooo

Akiva Weinberger

(/s on both)

Eric Silva

will people call the 2020s the 20s

Semiclassical

ah.

Eric Silva

that's weird

Akiva Weinberger

01:48

@EricSilva When will now be then

Soon

Semiclassical

@akiva en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War

Eric Silva

i like how for most of the twenties ill be in my twenties

similarly was true of the teens

although it's slightly askew

Akiva Weinberger

For me I only have one month a year where it's off

'cause I was born Dec. 1, 1999

Eric Silva

i have like 3 full years so that sucks

Akiva Weinberger

so exactly one month before the new millennium

Rohit

01:50

I asked a question but its not showing in my account is shwoing like user39493 question what show i do i know offtopic plz help

Tim The Enchanter

I was born in Feb 2000

so I'm like one month off as well.

Akiva Weinberger

@Rohit What question

Rohit

in dsp.stack exahnge i asked

2

Q: Fourier series coefficients

Question: The fourier series coefficients is given as: $$c_k= \begin{cases} 1 \qquad & k \ \text{ even} \\ 2 \qquad & k \ \text{ odd} \\ \end{cases}$$ the period of the signal is $T=4$, what is signal $x(t)$? Attempt: when i am trying to find the signal by applying the general formula at th...

fourier-series

@TimTheEnchanter

plz help me

Tim The Enchanter

@Rohit I think that until you reach a certain reputation your username is not displayed.

But I'm no expert.

Rohit

are u sure?

Tim The Enchanter

01:53

@Rohit I said I'm not an expert, so no.

Rohit

Okay then thankz alot@TimTheEnchanter

Akiva Weinberger

Hm I have no idea

Rohit

anyone have any idea please help

Akiva Weinberger

@EricSilva You know, it's been over seven years since it ended and I think we still have no idea what to call the 2000-2009 decade

Eric Silva

the aughts

Akiva Weinberger

01:56

Maybe we should go with "the 2000s, the decade,"

Eric Silva

@Akiva en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aughts

Daminark

I think Runescape is a good characterization of 2000-2009

Or at least a good block of it

Eric Silva

ppl still play runescape man

there's a math major who streams it on the reg

Daminark

Okay that's actually cool

I remember it being a thing in like, 5th grade, and then just vanishing after that

I tried it a bit but shrug

Eric Silva

nah ppl pretty consistently played it

I just played WoW so i never played runescape

Tim The Enchanter

01:59

@EricSilva doing the lord's work.

Daminark

I mean I might actually try Runescape again

That part of my life is one where my parents sorta disapproved of games in general

Akiva Weinberger

Runes are pretty cool

if only for the angle-y aesthetic

Eric Silva

mine too, I offset it by reading a ridiculous amount of books for most of my life so they were ok with it

@Akiva germanic runes?

Akiva Weinberger

Norse

Eric Silva

I love the rune reading puzzles

Akiva Weinberger

02:00

Futhark and stuff

Eric Silva

those would also being germanic runes

Akiva Weinberger

Fun fact: In German, the words for "Germanic" and "German" are unrelated

Daminark

Lol I was a reader only for a little while, somehow literature hadn't appealed to me for quite a long time

I was only into non-fiction

Akiva Weinberger

They're "Germanische" and "Deutsche," I think

Eric Silva

i like rune deciphering puzzles

@Daminark i really liked slow games that I could read while I played: Hence WoW, my mom was a huge reader so she kept a lot of books and so I like read a book a day pretty much

@Akiva that's pretty weird

I wonder when we started calling english by it's current name

it happened during the old english period definitely

but early on it was weastsaxona-theode

Daminark

02:04

Around 5th grade, I found Percy Jackson, which I read for a while, along with other stuff, and then I had this Bakugan phase at which point I also ended up reading a lot less literature and history, shifted mostly to physics

Eric Silva

and some later post christian conversion stuff uses angelishe or something

Akiva Weinberger

Wikipedia says Old English was called Ænglisc, Anglisc, or Englisc

Eric Silva

that's it

but yeah it was called various different things

while it existed

bc naming for things was not consistent at all

It mightve also been called different things by different old english speaking kingdoms

it's very muddled if you wanna know what happened before the christian conversion

Akiva Weinberger

> Pronunciation: [ˈæŋliʃ]

That's the "trap" vowel and the "fleece" vowel

Angleesh

Eric Silva

yeah

Akiva Weinberger

02:08

(The apostrophe means stress is on the first syllable)

Eric Silva

I took an old english class and we had to read everything out loud

it astounds me that we have some idea of how it might've sounded too

Akiva Weinberger

Yeah, I was just looking at the phonology section of the Wikipedia page

The consonants seem pretty similar to modern (with a few notable differences), but this is all pre-Great Vowel Shift so

the vowels are pretty different

Eric Silva

I'm glad we do cause I've found being able to live recite beowulf in the original old english is a cool party trick

yeah also the diphthongs are weird to a modern english speaker

Akiva Weinberger

Though if you went back in time and met with a real speaker I bet they'd be able to notice a modern American accent

Eric Silva

oh definitely

Akiva Weinberger

02:13

or whatever accent, I'm not sure where you're from

Eric Silva

I have a modern american accent

Akiva Weinberger

Oh, OK

Eric Silva

raised in the part of south florida that's filled with new yorkers

Akiva Weinberger

I know it's pretty far removed but the YouTube channel Nativlang has a great video on Shakespeare's accent

Eric Silva

I don't know if we have any idea what common folk would've sounded like pre-norman conquest

Akiva Weinberger

02:15

which I mention because it's late enough in the Great Vowel Shift that it sounds almost modern but not quite

Eric Silva

since like basically all we have is some pre-christian poetry and christian prose

Akiva Weinberger

We have Beowulf as well

Eric Silva

that being pre-christian poetry

Akiva Weinberger

Ah

You'd think someone from back then would have the idea to try to analyze phonological sounds or something

and then they could tell us that they used a "close back rounded vowel" in such and such word

Eric Silva

although it was written like after christianisation i think

Akiva Weinberger

02:18

It's strange that that was such a recent invention

Eric Silva

at least the oldest extent texts we have come generations after but retain like a "memory" of the heroic germanic culture

Akiva Weinberger

Well, actually, I don't know. Maybe something like that existed somewhere

Eric Silva

It might've but they didn't write stuff down early on

Akiva Weinberger

Writing's another thing like that

Eric Silva

and mostly reserved writing to things like riddles and translations of latin works

riddles are like impossible to translate too

they're way harder than other kinds of poetry or prose

Akiva Weinberger

02:20

The histories of entire civilizations have been lost because nobody had the idea of writing stuff down

I know that's probably unfair to them, but still

Eric Silva

tbf the idea of writing stuff down is kind of weird unless you're using hindsight

I took a class on the evolution of cuneiform and it's pretty interesting to see how it happened

early on it was pretty rough

Akiva Weinberger

I think writing got started because kings wanted future generations to know of their works or something

I don't know how accurate that is

Eric Silva

well at least in Mesopotamia it got started bc people needed to keep track of things

most early writings are inventory lists

Akiva Weinberger

Oh, makes sense

Picture of cow, tally marks saying how much cattle

That sort of thing?

Eric Silva

yeah

and slaves and grain and stuff

Akiva Weinberger

02:25

This all would be on clay or something

Eric Silva

yes

Akiva Weinberger

clay being pretty easy to make

Eric Silva

and as a result, very well preserved

i also audited a class on mathematics in cuneiform

very cool

Akiva Weinberger

Yeah. On a related note - howcome our main method of storing information, at least until recently, was flammable?

And water damage-able

It seems like somewhere along the line someone should have invented a better version

Eric Silva

the older versions are easier to preserve honestly

but paper is cheap

Akiva Weinberger

02:27

Like everything in the library of Alexandria was lost just because paper is flammable

@EricSilva Hm, that's probably why

And clay is bulky

Eric Silva

also parchment is way easier to preserve than modern paper

there's a period in medieval history where we just have nothing because it's early enough that when people made the switch to paper it all got ruined

so we have old stuff and close to modern stuff

but there's this period where we don't have as much stuff

Akiva Weinberger

Wait so why did they switch to paper then?

Just cost?

Eric Silva

cheaper than parchment

like waaaaay cheaper

Akiva Weinberger

Important stuff should be preserved on parchment, at least

Eric Silva

it was made from animal i think

Akiva Weinberger

02:29

Oh, actually, Torah scrolls are made of parchment

Eric Silva

for a while people used paper that got reinforced wtih parchment

Akiva Weinberger

Like I think they have to be made from cow skin or else they're not kosher

Eric Silva

ive seen a few early english texts in one of the collections here at Chicago

very cool

super expensive though, you can't touch them without special gloves

Akiva Weinberger

I wonder if anyone was crazy enough to make a copy of the Bible on clay

I wonder how much space that'd take up

or how much it'd way

Eric Silva

oh god that would probably take up so much space

i hope someone has done it

but yeah anyway I was in a room once in front of a table full of old medieval texts and the librarian was like yeah this room has 10 million dollars worth of books in it if you touch them with your bare hands we will ban you forever

it was very scary

Akiva Weinberger

02:33

(How would you measure the efficiency of clay? In bits per kilogram?)

@EricSilva Cool

Eric Silva

one cool thing about clay is that erasing is very easy

Akiva Weinberger

https://www.quora.com/Data-Storage-How-much-would-1GB-worth-of-clay-tablets-wei‌gh

(Estimated 53,000kg/GB, then)

A bible is like 4 megabytes

That works out to like 200kg or 400lb

So like the weight of two or three people

Eric Silva

that's not that bad

Akiva Weinberger

'Bout the volume of a bathtub

Leaky Nun

03:14

@Secret two things about dream that I just experienced:
1. the fact in the dreams can change over time and you can know that it has changed (I remembered both the "before" and the "after")
2. somehow writing down the dream included a keyword that triggered me to remember more of the dream

@AkivaWeinberger it should really be [ˈæŋgliʃ], but whatever

@AkivaWeinberger @EricSilva fun fact: our Latin alphabet (as well as Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, etc.) can be traced back... to hieroglyphics.

Akiva Weinberger

03:31

Yeah, A comes from the hieroglyphic of an ox head, B from a house, etc

The A was upside-down

Leaky Nun

and then I suppose the hieroglyphics was a rebus that was invented

one more fun fact: "England" is the result of a haplology: it came from "Englaland" = "Engle" + "land" (the land of the Angles), and the duplicated "la" got deleted. This, of course, resulted in "English" rather than "Englalish", even though there is no duplicated "la" anymore.

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$Mathematics$ Mathematics