Primes and Squares

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2:13 AM

Today I somehow managed to search some obscure-enough words that one of the top google results was just a dictionary-word-list text file.

El'endia Starman

Very nice. What was the word? (And then this chat transcript becomes the top result.)

Or is it in the Black Tongue and you dare not utter it here?

PhiNotPi

"Carpophagous canon #4" where carpophagous = fruit-eating. It's a piece of experimental music (like, really experimental, uses rectangles and triangles instead of normal music notes).

El'endia Starman

Huh, interesting.

On a different note, I accidentally just now discovered that you can determine if an integer x is a bitwise subset of y by calculating (Python) x ^ y == ~x & y and I dunno why it works.

PhiNotPi

what do you mean by bitwise subset? As in, 3 is a subset of 5 because 11 is contained in 101?

El'endia Starman

Think of it more like an index subset, so to speak. 3 is not a subset of 5, but 1 and 4 are.

PhiNotPi

2:24 AM

X is a subset of Y iff (X bitwise-and Y == X)?

El'endia Starman

......yes, and that's much simpler. [facepalm]

4 hours later…

Nathan Merrill

6:06 AM

@ASCII-only I think that rarity is simply a requirement for a currency, and doesn't actually have a meaningful impact on it's value. In simpler terms: There's a finite amount of "stuff" the world needs to trade. If you are on the gold standard, that gold simply gets divvied up between the stuff. If gold was rarer, the only reason it would be more valuable is because it would represent more "stuff" to trade

ASCII-only

@NathanMerrill Ah. Fair enough

Nathan Merrill

gold was also used because it was easy to melt, bend (to test for forgery), and didn't really react to other stuff

ASCII-only

I guess the real reason then is that elements like gold are very close to impossible to create/destroy?

Nathan Merrill

actually, I'm kind of surprised we can't create gold nowadays

now that I think about it

ASCII-only

@NathanMerrill well i think we can, it's just that there's not really much point

it's just a bunch of energy wasted for basically no purpose

Nathan Merrill

6:10 AM

I mean, there's still money to be made

but it must be more expensive than the output

"Buddy, you trying to pull something? I can't buy this gold--all the electrons are missing. I could face serious charges!"

ASCII-only

plus decreasing returns

~~and the fact that you'll be risking destroying the world's economy if you manage to produce enough gold~~ actually depending on the cost efficiency this could be one of the ~~deadliest~~ most powerful weapons known to humanity

Nathan Merrill

going back to your rarity comment though: I'd be really interested to see how much the price of an item goes up when it is perceived to be rare

like, there are some really interesting examples of this occurring (beanie babies as a notable one)

ASCII-only

@NathanMerrill hmm. i wonder if this experiment is possible to perform properly in real life

Nathan Merrill

I feel like electronics might be a good realm

ASCII-only

oh yes

Nathan Merrill

6:15 AM

there's limited edition stuff there all the time

ASCII-only

like maybe you could have two gemstones with the exact same quality but advertise one as lower quality

Nathan Merrill

lower rarity you mean?

ASCII-only

yeah

Nathan Merrill

Hmmm...thinking about this: there are basically two markets we often split up in economics: The luxury market, and the "standard" market

I think that rarity only matters for the luxury market

luxury is often the market where part of the advertising is the price tag

(e.g. Apple products is a great example)

so, if tomorrow, apple released a limited-edition anything, the price tag would be super high. If Dell released a limited-edition laptop, I don't know if you'd really see a blip

"I need to rush to the store to buy my limited-edition flour"

(the funny thing is: I could see this being said if a whole-foods market had some limited-edition sunflower-seed extra fine flour being sold)

ASCII-only

but lower quality usually means lower rarity anyway

when i googled diamonds a few days ago a website said the 4 C's of diamonds of diamond quality are indistinguishable at higher levels

(also sorry, internet cut out for a while)

@NathanMerrill oh yeah. apparently the fine art market is basically a scam (source: random youtube video)

@NathanMerrill yep. e.g. Huawei's Porsche Design phones, where have lower specs than the Pro versions (IIRC) but are much more expensive

@NathanMerrill ~~organic~~

6 hours later…

El'endia Starman

12:50 PM

Happened to see this video in my recommendations and went "woah, I never thought about that!".

Why Are There No Mosquitoes at Disney World?

►

One of the things I value highly about living in upstate New York is the near lack of mosquitoes because I've lived in North Carolina and Kentucky, both of which had plenty of mosquitoes during the spring and summer, but would certainly not rival Florida.

Nathan Merrill

1:26 PM

@El'endiaStarman yet another example of google putting us in the same bucket :)

1 hour later…

Feeds

2:50 PM

Brazil's Geography Problem

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2 hours later…

DJMcMayhem

4:31 PM

Alright, I know this is pretty out of the ordinary for the normal topics of this room, but what kind of weather could cause clouds like these? And what are they called?

Last night, the sky was just covered in these kinds of clouds after a thunderstorm, and it was breathtaking. I've never seen cloud patterns like these before

El'endia Starman

Mammatus clouds!

Mammatus cloud

Mammatus (mamma or mammatocumulus), meaning "mammary cloud", is a cellular pattern of pouches hanging underneath the base of a cloud, typically cumulonimbus rainclouds, although they may be attached to other classes of parent clouds. The name mammatus is derived from the Latin mamma (meaning "udder" or "breast"). According to the WMO International Cloud Atlas, mamma is a cloud supplementary feature rather than a genus, species or variety of cloud. They are formed by cold air sinking down to form the pockets contrary to the puffs of clouds rising through the convection of warm air. These formations...

DJMcMayhem

Ah, cool. Thank you!

> Mammatus are often indicative of a particularly strong storm or maybe even a tornadic storm (in the United States).

Sounds about right

The weather was so bad yesterday, I watched a car hydroplane and start spinning down the highway at 70 mph before flying into a ditch and hitting a fence. :/

It was terrifying

El'endia Starman

4:47 PM

I can imagine. :(

El'endia Starman

5:04 PM

That's why you drive according to the conditions!

2 hours later…

flawr

6:59 PM

@DJMcMayhem check out /r/stormfront =P

DJMcMayhem

And now there's a tornado warning for my area

flawr

@DJMcMayhem I hope you're ready for the most important thing: send us pictures:)

How severe is it actually?

El'endia Starman

Tornado alert = there may be a tornado. Tornado warning = there probably will be a tornado (somewhere in this area).

flawr

So it is similar to the distinction of Error and Exception :)

El'endia Starman

7:14 PM

That's a good way to put it!

(For people who know what that means.)

Another way to put it is that if there's a tornado warning, there's a good chance of tornado destruction being on the news later.

DJMcMayhem

@flawr Not that bad right. I can still see blue skies. I'm sure this evening will get a lot more stormy

I'll get you pictures if I can

@El'endiaStarman Apparently right now it's just a tornado watch.

El'endia Starman

Oh, that's the word I meant instead of "alert".

DJMcMayhem

Oh. Apparently there's also a flash flood watch

El'endia Starman

Hopefully you're on a hill...?

DJMcMayhem

Not particularly, but not in a valley either

Here's a funny thought: during a tornado, you're supposed to go to the basement. During a flood, you should get up high. What do you do if there's both?

El'endia Starman

7:19 PM

Pray.

In all seriousness, the center of the house above ground level.

Or whichever direction is less deadly at the moment.

But in any case, if Mother Nature wants to screw you over badly enough, you ain't got a chance.

DJMcMayhem

Oh wait, I read it wrong. The flash flood watch is near(ish), but not my county

So basement it is :P

flawr

Just wondered what a flash flood is, there are some pretty nice videos on youtube!

DJMcMayhem