@SFFBlog ... huh. That was unexpected.

YES POETRY!

Who is @lastironstar?

Lol

I just killed a boss in the "Ironstar Cave" of my current ORPG

#itsallrelated

I wonder if it's referring to some particular SF/F story, or just imagination running wild.

@SQB I know that was upvoted, doesn’t mean it’s ridiculous and we can sometimes use a bit of common sense before blindly following everything. Common sense is good, should be used more often.

Surprised TLC didn’t butt in to say i’d Know

Speak of the devil...

What did I do or not do now?

Isn't that an idiom?

"Speak of the devil, and he shall appear"

"Speak of the devil and you step on his tail."

At least, that's the English translation of the Dutch version.

The French one isn't far

"Quand on parle du loup, on en voit la queue" => "Speak of the wolf, and you shall see its tail"

There's an alternative with "Quand on parle du loup, il sort du bois" => "Speak of the wolf, and he shall get out of the woods"

Well anyway, Ed mentions TLC and TLC pops up

@Edlothiad Indeed ;-)

I’m always appearing :P

@Rand satisfied with the meta answer now? ;)

@TheLethalCarrot I usually just upload two versions of the image through the post edit imgur interface in that case, a smaller version for inline view and a larger version for click-through, then I decide exactly how to crop and whatever. Sometimes only the inline version has a red hand-drawn circle or similar annotations, and the linked image is the unannotated screencap or scan.

You know if you add an m at the end of the imgur link before the extension it makes the image smaller for you?

Or an s or l but they’re generally not as useful

I mean you can’t edit to exactly what you want but it’s easier

@TheLethalCarrot Yes, that's what you said above. But that won't make the image the size I want or the crop I want. It's easier to just make the image exactly what I want. I have several image editors that I can use for cropping and resizing and similar.

@TheLethalCarrot Well, I voted on it :-)

@TheLethalCarrot Here's an example that I messed up slightly: alcohol.stackexchange.com/a/7037/7187

the photo of each liquor bottle links to the source where I got that image from, for quick crediting,

scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/192153/… .

Shoo

Spoilers

and I tried to resize the bottles so they just fit in one column, but I messed up because SE has this annoying property that the post is just slightly wider while editing than while viewing, and I forgot about that.

Get that out

"batting a thousand on proper minion support" may be one of my favorite all time phrases

@Jenayah aah sorry

@Jenayah fixed :-)

Sorry @heather, mod abuse.

Thanks ^^

@Randal'Thor no problem, shoulda thought of that

so uh...warning on infinity war spoilers if you click that link ;)

If you need basic help in the image editing tools for these simple edits, I can give you some pointers.

My eyes are now accoutumed to jump away when I see "Infinity" here

I'm not really a professional, they're over there on graphicdesign.stackexchange.com , but I have worked with digital images a bit.

Even when they're in my hidden tags they showed up in the damn reviews xD

(And on photo.stackexchange.com )

@Jenayah Infinity is the concept of a quantity larger than any real number. Georg Cantor proved that there are infinitely many different types of Infinity which are all of different 'sizes'.

Pro tip: don't join the Mathematics chat ;-)

Speaking of which, @b_jonas any thoughts on the new Fields Medallists?

@Randal'Thor I don't think I would ever have, even with a gun at my head

@Randal'Thor I'm not generally at home at those high levels of research maths, so I generally can't comment. You'll probably find posts on blogs of mathematicians about the fields medalists though.

I've actually met two of them.

If you don't know enough mathematician blogs, scottaaronson.com/blog can be a good start, because not only it is a nice blog (although obviously that's partly because he occasionally writes about things I understand), but also links to a lot of mathematics blogs with huge variety at the "blogroll" section of the page.

terrytao.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/… Terry Tao's blog has an entry about the Fields medalists, as expected.

Figalli and Scholze were much rumoured about beforehand, but Birkar seemed to come out of left field as far as I can tell. Not sure about Venkatesh; the name is familiar, but I don't remember if I'd heard about him in the context of FM rumours or something else.

Oh no, that won't work.

@Randal'Thor replying to you so people can follow the chain to my original message, and I meant “isn’t ridiculous” because it is ridiculous...

He says "This time, though, I happened to be a member of the Fields Medal selection committee, and as such had access to a large number of confidential letters [...]. Because of this, I will unfortunately not be able to express much of a comment or opinion on the candidates or the process as an individual (as opposed to a joint statement of the committee)."

That means his blog post won't be as good as usual, although you can still rely on it being probably very accurate and detailed.

@Edlothiad You're getting as bad as @Skooba ;-)

@b_jonas Accurate, sure. Detailed, not really. He's not able to say much, because of all the confidential stuff he's been part of - seems to be leaving the discussion to others this time.

Yup, damn.

We'll have to wait for other blog posts. Also, if you want to continue this, you might want to move it to a different chat room. Perhaps I shouldn't have answered here.

You may have to wait a few days for more blog posts though.

Yeah, sorry @Jenayah. At least we were talking about maths gossip rather than actual mathematics :-P

Don't worry ;)

Just that four years of higher education (not sure of the translation) maths made me realize I understood things I did not want tp understand

@Jenayah what...

Stupid mobile interface won’t let me make two lines... stupid

do you mean understand things about mathematics, or understand things about how mathematics is done and research grants and universities and research institutes and committees and other soft stuff?

and teaching, too

@b_jonas things about mathematics (if we're talking about the same thing)

not the behind-the-scenes

because I can't imagine understanding anything in mathematics and finding out after the fact that I don't want to understand it

there are things I think in advance that I don't want to spend time to understand

but once the understanding is there, it never seems wrong to have it

the only bad part is that the more you learn, the more you find out about other things you don't know and perhaps should, but you can never learn everything

First please note I did not say I understood everything that some teachers threw at me :)

@Jenayah that's natural

I don't understand half of what my degree claims I have studied

and I forgot a lot too, but there was a lot I never understood

Then, the thing is that it kinda comes from a very specific educational French system

@b_jonas I can: algebraic geometry :-P

Which doesn't go by the way of "eat that and spit it out on the exam day"

which is good, mind you

@Randal'Thor ok. I know almost nothing about algebraic geometry, and probably want to keep it that way, so maybe that's possible. I know it has applications, but still.

Learning to understand and learning to learn is always helpful

@b_jonas I'm half joking. I disliked algebraic geometry, but then maybe if I'd understood it better I wouldn't have done.

@Randal'Thor that was pretty good

But while I kinda liked algebraic geometry, and absolutely love graph theory (only math field for which I ever checked books out out of the library, I think), but understanding analysis (that's the English word right?) was just awful. In the sense that what's behind it just makes me want to puke, and not because I spent countless hours studying that

@Randal'Thor I dislike stochastic calculus, despite that many of the people studying at the same place seem to like it, so I learned very few of it for that reason. I walked away happily with the lowest passing grade on the written exam, declining to take an oral exam where I could have attained a better grade.

Pity, the two years after that were all about analysis.

@Jenayah Both "analysis" and "calculus" are used in English, they mean about the same alone

Ok I'll go with calculus, sounds better

@Jenayah Yeah, but you have to understand both words, sadly.

@Jenayah Ha, you and I have exact opposite tastes in maths! Analysis is my field, and graph theory / combinatorics is the only part of pure maths that I didn't take at least up to final-year undergrad level, while algebraic geometry I did take further but regretted it.

Luckily it's one of the very rare cases when mathematical English has two words for the same thing.

@b_jonas I'll live without calculus, that's why my pals who like it are for :D

@Randal'Thor well let the civil war begin then ;D

Well, except in graph theory, in which terminology is confused and everyone has different definitions for the same thing.

@b_jonas funny thing is, I realized that with SE badges

but....calculus is so cool

i guess i really haven't done "formal" calculus or analysis.

@Jenayah Did you ever study complex analysis?

@Randal'Thor If you have a better definition for that, so that I'm sure we're talking about the same thing :)

thanks for that answer @heather, that's what i was looking for

@Randal'Thor I would guess he did, if he studied for four years. Although he didn't tell for what kind of degree he studied.

But it sounds like he studied four years of mathematics.

Wait, is Jenayah a she? Her avatar shows a face that looks female.

@Mithrandir np - i wanted to add quotes, but i don't have the books where i'm at right now...back in a different state =)

I'm a she, yes ;)

but no problem, I was putting that on the "Hungarian doesn't have genders" thingy :)

@heather I could probably dig some up from my Kindle version of The Son of Neptune, if I can figure out which you're referencing

In this case it's not that. You don't explicitly state your gender in the SE profile, and a female-looking avatar on sci-fi SE isn't very indicative, we have lots of people with avatars showing a fictional person of different gender than the user is.

As for my studies, maths were a part of it, not the "only" subject - as I said, a very particular French system

@Mithrandir:

Plus it's kind of hard to tell from a tiny a cartoon face.

for #2 the quote is from the beginning-ish of the book, with the feast of tuna joke that percy makes.

reyna says she knows things are going to explode around that time.

@b_jonas yeah sure, but as I said no problem :)

Playing a lot of MMORPGs I'm faced with the situation a lot ahah

But sadly sometimes there are users who care about what gender they are and want others to address them as such, but still don't write it on their SE profile.

for #6 the quote is toward the end of book 5 (not son of neptune, can't remember the name) when reyna/nico/coach are transporting statue of athena to camp half-blood and the murderer that octavian recruits comes to kill them and nico explodes w/ power and kills him.

(The Blood of Olympus)

yes, that's it.

uh, whathisname, bryce

that dude, yeah.

i was thinking bruce, but i associate that too strongly with finding nemo.

@b_jonas yeah, that's not very consistent, but hey, their problem if they don't indicate it in a clear way :/

if you want quotes for #5 (which I don't think needs them) - the crush thing is dealt with in book...hmm. it'd be when percy/nico encounter eros/zephyros and nico is forced to admit he has had a crush on percy when they're searching for the sceptre. and then nico uses the sceptre in pompeii...i'm guessing that's blood of olympus too.

As far as I'm concerned, you can use he or she for me, I don't care actually

can't remember where hades ordering nico to watch the camps is stated - if i had to guess, end of son of neptune.

@Jenayah Analysis in the complex plane. Holomorphic/analytic functions from C to C. Cauchy's theorem, residue theorem, all that stuff.

@heather I'll poke around and see what I find. Been a while since I read HoO, though... or any of that universe, actually.

@Randal'Thor Eeeww

That thing

@Mithrandir been a bit for me to. guess i need to reread it all, especially because the new trials of apollo book came out and i haven't read it =/

Right. And the important corollary that if a C->C function is differentiable on an open set, then it's also infinitely differentiable.

neither have I, I didn't make it past The Hidden Oracle

interesting corollary of having read the Percy Jackson books - they help a ridiculous amount with quiz bowl.

@Jenayah It's the best. So incredibly elegant and powerful, once you get it.

I have to admit, though, that the first course(s) I took in it really didn't turn me on at all. You have to see past the calculations and complicated proofs to the underlying simplicity and elegance.

@heather now my grandmother sends me random mythology Jeopardy questions and is disappointed if it takes me longer than a minute to get it :D

@b_jonas Yes, and so many other properties too.

@Randal'Thor must say, the quanta bios seem pretty good to me

@Randal'Thor Elegant and powerful often hides the ugliness inside. Don't you read Game of Thrones? :p

@Jenayah No, it's only our proofs that are ugly.

@Jenayah With maths it's the other way round :-D

And our applications. It has real applications.

The actual theory is beautiful.

Oh I'm not denying the applications

@Mithrandir you know in the greek gods book there's that story about Demeter, Erik[something] and sacred groves?

@heather vaguely, only read it once

Quiz bowl question went "this god forced Erik[something]..." and i buzzed and answered. everyone looks at me weird now.

it's kinda funny.

I'm just kindly leaving that stuff to the mad unusual people who enjoy it :)

:D

it's actually a running joke on our team now - wanna learn mythology? read percy jackson!

=P

yeah, and now i take an interest in mythology in general

you should try some finnish myth.

Kalevala is interesting. also gave me a new fun insult: "milk-bearded scamp".

@heather Hapax legomenon!

Celtic one's worth it too

@Randal'Thor ?

oh...

word that only occurs once within a context

Never mind.

Quiz show reference.

oh, it's an actual reference. not just a cool phrase. got it.

(i feel like this sort of thing happens to me far too often ;)

No worries - probably only nerdy Brits would get that reference :-P

@Edlothiad thought that was what you meant.

actually @Mithrandir I'm putting together another Percy Jackson answer for you...i'm kinda on a roll today, feels like

your Fox movie rights question.

oh good

Beware the dreaded repcap ;D

...i probably could answer more of my own questions, but, you know, i'm lazy

wait...

i'm stupid

i hit the rep cap earlier today.

hehe

i could still answer, but if i'm trying to get review privileges...

[insert hems and haws]

@heather Write up an answer and post it in a couple of hours?

@heather Yes it is. I brought it up a few times in the other chats (the Mythology one or the Literature one).

@Randal'Thor yeah, i'll probably just do that...i was just about to hit the post button when i caught myself =P

@b_jonas There's a topic challenge proposal for the Kalevala on Literature.

It's so interesting and I'm so spoiled that I'll have to try reading some of the other two modern translations, because I'm not entirely satisfied with the Rácz István translation.

@Randal'Thor There's not much I could ask about it though.

The only question I have is one about what the correct version of certain mistakes in this Rácz Béla translation, the mistake being that a half-line has nine syllables when it should always have eight, so is probably misprinted, but firstly Lit is not the right site to ask this, secondly my best chance to answer is to check out the older printing myself.

Plus I could ask which one of the three modern translations is the best, but that's very subjective and at this point it's best to try to find out myself.

@Randal'Thor yup, i suggested it =)

I know :-D

oh hey, that's nice

the profile rep graph got fixed

no longer looks like it's overlapping with the progress bar.

@heather Nice. You could suggest it for Mythology SE too if you want, since it has these challenges sometimes.

There's not enough interest to have one each month, but still, occasionally we do such events.

@b_jonas I might. I feel bad suggesting there, because i tried to revive the topic challenges once and then didn't ask a question about the topic i suggested =/

@heather Ah.