The h Bar

John Duffield

9:01 PM

@vzn : people also get their science news off media outlets that spread misinformation and hype.

Sir Cumference

Hey @heather

heather

hello =)

ACuriousMind

@heather how's it going?

John Duffield

@vzn : Woit is always going on about it.

heather

@ACuriousMind pretty good, how about for you?

I was just rereading random parts of Lord of the Rings and relaxing for a little bit =)

ACuriousMind

9:04 PM

@heather Very well, I really can't complain

Sir Cumference

Is Lord of the Rings worth reading as an adult?

heather

@SirCumference yes.

@ACuriousMind that's good =)

@SirCumference it's really not a children's book at all, I first read it when I was a teenager I think (maybe a little earlier) and I really am starting to fully enjoy it only now.

Balarka Sen

Lord of the Rings is a good mythology

heather

To expand on it, it's got an impressive depth of writing and it feels very much like history. If you're worried about level, I'd read it first and then if you enjoy it the hobbit next, which is definitely aimed lower.

ACuriousMind

I'd say no but I really dislike the LotR books. I've had to belabor this point rather often since when I say I'm into fantasy the first response is usually "Oh, like Lord of the Rings?" :P

heather

9:06 PM

and then if you still want more (I sure did) the silmarillion.

@ACuriousMind out of curiousity...why?

Balarka Sen

@heather Well it's really heavily influenced from Norwegian mythos, I think

heather

(for the record, there's a really nice post on reddit on the lotr subreddit on the order of reading and the different books you can read depending on what you want. covers both the posthumous stuff and everything else.)

ACuriousMind

@heather I find the writing style rather tedious and I dislike the black-and-white morality of it

vzn

@JohnDuffield there has been some anti-pop-sci sentiment in here in the past but those who have it, consider/ notice what the "alternative" might be.

heather

@BalarkaSen lol, yeah. Just read the Gylfaginning (look for the dwarf names) and then compare with the list and the list of dwarf names in the hobbit.

John Duffield

9:08 PM

I disliked Lord of the Rings because it's tedious, with 100 pages on Frodo, then 100 pages on Aragorn, et cetera. But I thought The Hobbit was great.

Sir Cumference

@heather I see. I may get down to reading it then

heather

@ACuriousMind i could see the tediousness of the writing style, but i didn't feel like the morality was heavy handed.

Balarka Sen

@heather Nice!! Thanks for that, I didn't actually search for concrete evidence

heather

@JohnDuffield hmm, tedious? interesting. I kind of thought the Hobbit was more likely to be considered tedious - it's a lot slower and a lot less happens.

ACuriousMind

@heather I mean stuff like "all orcs are inherently evil"

Sir Cumference

9:09 PM

@ACuriousMind Do you believe all humans are inherently evil?

I see potential philosophy here

ACuriousMind

I admire Tolkien's worldbuilding though - I just don't like his stories :P

Balarka Sen

@ACuriousMind I think the content of LoTR was not particularly suitable for belaboring the moral complexity as much as the geographical and mythological complexity

John Duffield

@heather : no probs. I loved it. I still love Smaug. What a character!

heather

@BalarkaSen i wasn't reading it to look for concrete evidence, but I did get a kick out of that. The Prose Edda (that's what the Gylfaginning's in) is pretty approachable. You can also look at (ex) the ring in the myth about Loki/Odin/mysterious companion accidentally killing a dude in the form of an otter and so forth. also for smaug/glauring there's the dragon (i'm forgetting all the names now) that sigurd kills.

Tuki

i had "This chat room is frozen" but when i refreshed it went away

Balarka Sen

9:11 PM

Tolkien was ultimately influenced by Romanticism

heather

and that's just norse mythology. in the silmarillion, turin turambar is clearly influenced by Kullervo in the Kalevala from Finnish myth, and also Oedipus Rex. welsh myth appears. it's fun seeing the connections =)

@JohnDuffield yeah, the dialogue between Smaug and Bilbo is one of my favorite parts of the Hobbit.

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference I believe that "good" and "evil" are not suitable categories to apply to sentient beings, but only to their actions.

heather

hmm, interesting.

Balarka Sen

@heather Wow you seem well-read on this. You'll have to tell me more some day

heather

@BalarkaSen i've become a bit of a tolkien nerd recently =) yeah, there's a lot too it. if you're interested i could recommend some books. i'll try not to clog up the chatroom with it though. you could also ask questions on the literature beta; i understand there's a guy there who did his grad thesis on The Hobbit, so he's a bit of a tolkien expert.

John Duffield

9:13 PM

@heather : I do wish Smaug had been saved for a rainy day.

Balarka Sen

@ACuriousMind Morality is rekt fam. It's the age of cyberpunk

heather

@JohnDuffield lol, like, in LotR, they've just defeated Sauron and Mordor is falling, and then Smaug flies in out of nowhere. "So that's where he got too!" That would've been completely out of character for the book but absolutely hilarious.

ACuriousMind

@BalarkaSen No, Cyberpunk is only every second Wednesday (that's when my Shadowrun group meets)

Balarka Sen

TUMB TUMB TUUUUM

John Duffield

@heather : Smaug should have struck the killer blow. Redemption.

Balarka Sen

9:16 PM

...these weights thicknesses sounds smells molecular whirlwinds chains nets and channels of analogies concurrences and synchronisms for my Futurist friends poets painters and musicians zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

ZANG-TUMB
TUMB-TUMB
TUUUUUM

ACuriousMind

@BalarkaSen Uhhh...what?

Balarka Sen

It's from the book I snapshotted the cover of

It's describing a war

Zang tumb tumb is sound of a bomb exploding

Fascinating shite

@heather I'd really like some recommendations, thanks! But maybe not anytime soon. I'm slumped with neverending exams

After the second week of May, let's say

That rhymed

heather

@BalarkaSen ech, i'm sorry. best of luck on your exams

Balarka Sen

I may end up being a rapper if math doesn't work out

heather

@BalarkaSen you're a regular dr. seuss

ACuriousMind

9:20 PM

@BalarkaSen Sounds like the exams are ending in May, though :P

heather

rapper/children's book writer

0celo7

balarka is probably mc ride

it's highly likely

Balarka Sen

Shrek Grips - Spread Eagle Cross The Swamp

►

SHREK GRIPS IS ONLINE

Sir Cumference

Quora blocked me for using a pseudonym

What a load of crap

Anonymous

Just change your name a bit. It will automatically get unblocked

Anonymous

9:23 PM

Till they again detect

Sir Cumference

@Blue I know, but that's just disgusting

John Duffield

:43547782 : I would encourage everybody to use their real names. It discourages people from being unpleasant.

Sir Cumference

@JohnDuffield It's an invasion of privacy

John Duffield

@SirCumference : I obviously beg to differ.

Sir Cumference

@JohnDuffield I mean yeah, you use your real name

ACuriousMind

9:24 PM

@SirCumference It's their site, they can make up whatever rules they like. If you don't like it, the obvious solution is to not participate there.

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind Indeed, but come on, let me vent a bit

Anonymous

@SirCumference You know, the user data is very valuable to companies like Quora. I have a strong feeling that Facebook is already selling their data to Quora, because of the recommendations like "Your Facebook XYZ friend is on Quora"

Sir Cumference

@Blue This

Anonymous

They get money by selling "you"

Anonymous

That's why the policy

0celo7

9:25 PM

@Blue careful there lenin

Balarka Sen

Lol

John Duffield

@SirCumference : and I am nice, because I'm always thinking this could be on record forever.

Sir Cumference

I remember Facebook recommending John Rennie as my friend

That's some creepy stuff

ACuriousMind

@Blue Sure they do. Once again - if you don't like it, don't participate. I think the best signal to send to these companies is to simply don't give them any business if you disagree with their model.

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind Yeah, but that's not practical. I have my friends on Quora

Anonymous

9:27 PM

I like companies which value privacy

0celo7

@ACuriousMind I still have a definite Yau error to prove and get famous with

Anonymous

It's sort of a forced compulsion

Balarka Sen

also what if my name is dicktingeler69

0celo7

I'm debating leaving it out of my thesis on the off chance someone who knows this stuff reads it and does it before me

Anonymous

@BalarkaSen You get BANNED!

0celo7

9:28 PM

well, Yau conjecture that he never proved but assumed was true

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 And I genuinely wish you all the best with that :)

John Duffield

@0celo7 : what conjecture?

0celo7

@JohnDuffield it's a secret

although you proving it would be quite incredible

Balarka Sen

John Duffield

@0celo7 : why bring it up then? If it's a secret?

0celo7

9:30 PM

@JohnDuffield Because I was talking to ACM about something related earlier

not eveything concerns you

Sir Cumference

Yikes

Let's just chill

ACuriousMind

@Blue Oh, I'm well aware of that problem (I'm on Facebook, after all :P).

John Duffield

We're chill.

Balarka Sen

Yau's conjecture

In differential geometry, Yau's conjecture from 1982, named after Fields Medalist Shing-Tung Yau, is an important mathematical conjecture which states that a closed Riemannian three-manifold has an infinite number of smooth closed immersed minimal surfaces. It was the first problem in the Minimal submanifolds section in Yau's list of open problems. The conjecture has recently been claimed by Kei Irie, Fernando Codá Marques, and André Neves in the generic case . == References == == Further reading == "Problem section" of Shing-Tung Yau's book Seminar on Differential Geometry....

Curb Your Enthusiasm Theme

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ACuriousMind

@BalarkaSen Oh dear, what have I done

Balarka Sen

9:32 PM

@ACuriousMind I have stolen the meme

By showing it to me you have only made me stronger

0celo7

@BalarkaSen no, something else

Balarka Sen

I remember Eric mentioning this one

and that Neves proved it

Sir Cumference

@JohnDuffield No one's forcing you to be nice. You be nice because you want to.

Enforcing common decency by requiring our real names is absurd

Cows

Just did laundry, cooking some chicken and rice. It should be a fairly decent day. I think I'd watch movies throughout the day, then do some work(programming) then study(math) at night

John Duffield

@SirCumference : IMHO people who are anonymous are more likely to behave badly than those who are not. As for wanting to be nice, it's a do unto others thing.

ACuriousMind

9:35 PM

Mar 9 at 16:29, by ACuriousMind

This is a chat, not a diary.

heather

well, i mean i guess i use half of my real name.

but on most other sites i use a nickname because privacy reasons.

but then again, i'm a teen, so that is a bit more of a concern than for an adult.

ACuriousMind

@heather No one will ever know you're Tom Heather.

heather

@ACuriousMind say what? is there a cultural reference here?

Sir Cumference

@JohnDuffield That's their right. Likewise, the site has the right to ban a misbehaving user.

ACuriousMind

@heather Just a joke about "half of my real name" not specifying which half ;)

heather

9:37 PM

oh, yeah =)

::mystery::

hopefully it's pretty clear which half.

John Duffield

@SirCumference : LOL. I was talking about the people who run the site.

Balarka Sen

I've been using my real name here since I was 13 or some shit.

John Duffield

@BalarkaSen : but what is it?

0celo7

Shing-Tung MC Ride Hatcher

Balarka Sen

Darude Sandstorm

@0celo7 got me

ACuriousMind

9:39 PM

@heather As clear as it is that your profile picture is a rocket and not a candle ;)

2

0celo7

@ACuriousMind wot

heather

@ACuriousMind lol, everytime i go in a new chat, people get confused.

every time

Lozansky

Oh it's a rocket

3

heather

i've thought about changing my profile picture, but the situation is funny enough that i just keep it.

Balarka Sen

@0celo7 Why do you conflate my personality with that of Yau's

I know no differential geometry

0celo7

9:41 PM

@BalarkaSen greatest mind of the 20th century

Balarka Sen

@Lozansky ::Elon Musk intensifies::

Sir Cumference

@Lozansky Wow, I always thought it was a candle

Balarka Sen

@0celo7 no u. that's Jacques Derrida

heather

@SirCumference you too? I thought we went over this once.

Balarka Sen

Sir Cumference

9:42 PM

@heather It would help if the actual rocket were more visible ;)

Balarka Sen

Disturbing imagery

John Duffield

@BalarkaSen : Elon Musk is a perfume by Givenchy.

heather

@SirCumference yeah, well. it's a rocket launch =)

ACuriousMind

@heather Don't mind him, he returns to thinking I'm a physics prof every two months or so ;P

Balarka Sen

@JohnDuffield Hah, that's a good one

heather

9:43 PM

@ACuriousMind you're not a physics professor? ;)

Sir Cumference

@heather He works in industry

0celo7

he's a BDSM club owner

heather

programmer in COBOL related language now, right?

John Duffield

@BalarkaSen : once you've heard it, it never goes out of your head.

heather

@0celo7 i'm not even gonna ask what that means.

Sir Cumference

9:44 PM

@heather Good decision

0celo7

How do you not know?

Lozansky

Club owner?

ACuriousMind

@heather Yup :)

Balarka Sen

@0celo7 there are kids here

heather

@0celo7 uh...i dunno without knowing what exactly it is and what category of my ignorance it falls into. =P

0celo7

9:44 PM

@BalarkaSen There's no kids on SE, by law.

Sir Cumference

@0celo7 < 18 := kid

We've been over this

0celo7

no

we've been over you being wrong, yes

ACuriousMind

Let's just say that BDSM is not a topic for this room to discuss further and move on :P

John Duffield

I'd quite like to get to know Elon Musk.

ACuriousMind

@heather Also, "COBOL related" really does modern ABAP injustice :P

dmckee

9:50 PM

@0celo7 There are no kids identified at the primary account holder. Adults (both responsible and otherwise) are free to set up an account for themselves and let their kid use it. Moreover, it doesn't take an account to read chat.

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind There was a SE site where it was on-topic (during beta). But got closed soon. I forgot the name

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