The h Bar

ACuriousMind

17:00

@danielunderwood That's nothing, just pray that the other person doesn't know he married his cousin :P

enumaris

You think you're Einstein?

"Why...yes I am"

John Rennie

Einstein also worked on hydrodynamics. I've cited his work on the vicosity of dispersions.

And on stirring tea.

(I haven't cited that)

Semiclassical

I'd make a pithy comment about tea stirring, but

I'm American. so my knowledge of tea is basically "I know that I don't know how to make it right"

John Rennie

42

A: What forces are at work causing sand to migrate to the centre of a spinning bucket of water?

The problem was solved by a certain Albert Einstein, who is probably not unknown to users of this web site. Actually he also calculated the viscosity of particle dispersions (Einstein (1906). A. Ann. Phys. 19: 289 - not on the net!). Presumably he only did special relativity after getting bored w...

enumaris

3 down 4 to go...

Manu de Hanoi

17:13

@user1732 no, but I often pass by

danielunderwood

I like to think that I know how to make tea properly, but I may be a joke if I went elsewhere

enumaris

u ever participate in a tea ceremony?

I watched one in China, was pretty cool

good tea

danielunderwood

17:29

I've heard of them, but never had a chance to participate or see one in person. I think it would be neat

enumaris

pretty neat

danielunderwood

I've actually never had tea out of a teapot now that I think of it. I've only had single brews...guess I'm not a real tea guy

enumaris

o.o

Get some quality tea

really does make a difference

(hard to go back tot he cheap stuff after getting used to the quality stuff though)

danielunderwood

I mean I think I have quality tea, I just use a single cup infuser. Well I don't know if it's qualitea, but it's better than lipton or something

I did get some pu'er a while back and thought it was quite strange. I've heard of people getting whole tea bricks, but I'm not in quite that deep

Emilio Pisanty

@ACuriousMind the good thing about the Lemaître-Hubble affair is that it is finally going to get fixed by decree

@JohnRennie Is that like the Buckingham Pi Theorem?

enumaris

17:41

High end Tie-guan-yin tea is so good

danielunderwood

Yeah I'm definitely not at the level of different varieties of tea. I've liked some teas better than others, but don't really know the difference

I will say that I love jasmine tea. Don't know if that makes me a tea casual or not

enumaris

hmmm...

there's the different levels at the level of Jasmine vs Chrysanthemum, Oolong, etc...

and then there's different levels at the level of within Oolong there's subcategories like Tie-Guan-Yin

I think most people are at that first level of difference...and so am I generally speaking, but I do like myself a good cup of Tie-guan-yin

danielunderwood

17:57

Hmmm chrysanthemum tea sounds interesting

I also love earl grey, though I know that's just a flavor on top and has nothing to do with the actual tea

enumaris

Chrysanthemum tea is quite good, but it's almost not a tea since it's a flower tea

doesn't really have a tea taste

danielunderwood

Is jasmine the same way typically? The tea that I have now is actually some sort of green tea with jasmine, though I don't know if that's normal

enumaris

Jasmine is another flower tea, but its so ubiquitous that I feel like it has a "tea taste"

a good jasmine should be very aromatic

smell the tea leaves

You should be able to smell the jasmine

In the olden days Chinese people would sew tea leaves into their pillows for mild aromatherapy :D

danielunderwood

They're certainly aromatic and different from a typical tea, but I don't know that I've ever smelled a jasmine flower to compare with

A tea pillow sounds interesting

I also recently tried fir tip tea. It indeed tasted like a tree

Semiclassical

18:16

just the tip, eh

danielunderwood

heh

On another topic, evidently twitter is either filled with bots/user farms or it's the premier political forum of today. I started pulling in a bunch of tweets to mess with and at a rough look, around half of them seem to be related to politics in some way

Though I was specifically looking for people complaining about things, so maybe that skewed the results

enumaris

Half of all tweets are from The Don?

danielunderwood

he is twitter

Though last night seemed to mostly be regarding the supreme court nomination. A lot of the ones coming in were just retweets, which was mildly annoying

enumaris

Brett Kavanaugh is either a dirty liar or the last hope for an unbiased judiciary I'm guessing

danielunderwood

Pretty much all the tweets I saw suggested dirty liar

enumaris

18:29

So your tweets are biased liberal?

Or

is Twitter biased liberal?

Or

Is Brett Kavanaugh indeed a dirty liar

danielunderwood

Well a lot of that thought came from 2 or so tweets that just kept getting retweeted. I remember seeing a few tweets on the conservative side, but they were way off on another topic. I was just glancing at them as they came in, but I'll probably try to throw some actual analysis at them tonight

enumaris

heh

danielunderwood

18:49

And it seems like half of the non-political tweets were a retweet of "Y’all ever cried over a math problem? That’s a different type of hurt right there"

People seem to have politics and math as their biggest problems

enumaris

lol

do some NLP on that

danielunderwood

That's the plan! I couldn't find much of anything for twitter datasets and wanted more up to date stuff anyway, so I threw something together last night to pull in their stream

Well part of their stream. My computer would be on fire if I managed to pull in the whole thing

hey it looks like the one coming in now aren't about politics as much

enumaris

predict stock prices based on tweets!

danielunderwood

That's actually the idea a friend and I had in college, but we never really went through with it. Made all sorts of plans, but never really carried them out

On the other hand, it's not like either of us really had money to buy stocks with at that point anyway

bolbteppa

19:04

(Brett Kavanaugh's Vince Foster behavior/obsession is all you need to know to know how insane it is this guy got the nomination)

danielunderwood

I find it kind of odd that the president can nominate someone for a lifetime appointment while being under investigation. Though I suppose if that wasn't the case, someone would try to start an investigation to try to block an appointment

Semiclassical

@bolbteppa from an NYT op-ed on that: "Mr. Kavanaugh apparently took a special interest in Hillary Clinton’s bruited affair with Mr. Foster, a popular rumor in the fever swamps of the right. As he reported, his investigators “asked numerous people about it,” before he decided to ask Mrs. Clinton herself."

ugh

danielunderwood

Sounds a bit like going after small-town gossip

Or high school rumors really

Semiclassical

@danielunderwood the fact that the Supreme Court is a (potentially) lifetime appointment is why his influence on America will last long beyond his administration

the people he's appointed will be there a long time

which, if you're a conservative, is a great thing. if you're a liberal...not so much

danielunderwood

Yeah I suppose it shouldn't matter in principle either since judges are supposed to be neutral. But no one can really be completely neutral and I'd personally doubt that he'd even attempt to nominate someone that's neutral

bolbteppa

19:10

Three years ago it seemed the Republican party would never win an election again going the way they were, now they have managed to affect an entire generation with these SC appointments alone

Semiclassical

@bolbteppa yep. Yet another reminder of why elections matter

bolbteppa

Fever swamp is the right way to put it, the Trump era existed in the fever swamps well before the modern era

Semiclassical

yeah. though that starts to get into the question of "how on earth did he get elected"

which is some mix of "some people really like the fever swamp" and "not enough people liked Clinton" imo

danielunderwood

I think some people voted for him as a joke as well, which is just sad

bolbteppa

(Bernie would've won)

haha

danielunderwood

19:15

I dunno. I feel Clinton was more acceptable for moderates to vote for than Bernie

Semiclassical

yeah, well

bolbteppa

We know how that thinking turned out, and one had to deny evidence like polling to justify it etc

Semiclassical

would you have expected Trump to be more acceptable to moderates than Clinton?

(I'm not sure he was in general, come to think of it. but in places like Pennsylvania/Michigan/Wisconsin...)

danielunderwood

Absolutely not. I always saw Clinton as kind of a picture of moderate politics

enumaris

o.o

Semiclassical

19:17

I think talking up "Clinton was more appealing to moderates" misses how strong the anti-establishment mood of the country was

I don't think that's what motivated all Trump voters, to be clear: A lot of it was driven by brute nativism, and a lot of it was how much work people had put into poisoning the well as far as Clinton went.

bolbteppa

The whole 'for every liberal we lose we pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs' plan was spectacularly and irrefutably invalidated in 2016

danielunderwood

I honestly still don't see the pro-Trump side of things. Like I can understand people being conservative/Republican, but Trump is off in another land imo

I also know people that really don't like Trump, but say they would vote for him again because they're Republican. I don't really get that either

bolbteppa

Authoritarianism (in the psychological sense), can't find another explanation

Semiclassical

@danielunderwood well, let's be fair: Trump won and has so far delivered them two SC seats, along with a lot of other appointments

So if one views the fight for the Supreme Court (e.g. Roe v. Wade) as the driving concern, then he's succeeded as far as that goes

bolbteppa

I think they would say anything to make what they did socially acceptable, it's all just rationalization for something more primitive/latent, those SC picks are natural consequences of the actions they took

danielunderwood

19:24

That's kind of like saying your team has won a game, but politics isn't a sport

bolbteppa

Yeah it's literally that primitive, team vs team

Right-wing authoritarianism

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality and ideological variable studied in political, social and personality psychology. Right-wing authoritarians are people who have a high degree of willingness to submit to authorities they perceive as established and legitimate, who adhere to societal conventions and norms and who are hostile and punitive in their attitudes towards people who do not adhere to them. They value uniformity and are in favour of using group authority, including coercion, to achieve it. == History == The concept of right-wing authoritarianism was introduced in 1981 by...

Semiclassical

my point is just that, if you're already in a mindset where winning the Supreme Court for conservatives is your driving concern, then the jump to tolerating Trump really isn't a big one.

I don't agree with the premise, but the logic from that premise is consistent enough

(That's not to say that there isn't tribalism at play; there's a lot of it. But there are voters for whom supporting Trump does make ideological sense, and that hard base isn't going to shift.)

danielunderwood

But there are still people who seem to praise him for being the best president ever. Maybe they just had too much kool-aid

bolbteppa

In RWA language, Trump is an 'authoritarian leader' who demonstrated this from the get go in going after McCain, Mexicans, Jeb!, Fox, etc... and the 'authoritarian followers' knew exactly what to do, Trump literally paid people to take notes from insane right wing radio in 2014 so he basically spoon fed the followers what they wanted to hear, the problem is the fever swamps

Semiclassical

@danielunderwood yeah. that's a whole other realm of crazy than what I'm talking about

bolbteppa

19:33

Guy who originated that theory wrote about his poll numbers staying the same about 2 weeks ago

theauthoritarians.org/…

"Many people, including I, have labeled Donald Trump an authoritarian leader. But they are honestly baffled by the loyalty of his followers. The decades of research on authoritarian followers provide some answers."

Semiclassical

I can understand tolerating Trump on pragmatic grounds, at least to a point; I can't understand thinking he's this paragon of leadership.

bolbteppa

"Compared to most people, studies have shown that authoritarian followers get their beliefs and opinions from the authorities in their lives, and hardly at all by making up their own minds. They memorize rather than reason."

Doesn't matter how contradictory things get, Trump became an authority and that's all that matters

danielunderwood

I could definitely see them doing that

One scary thing is that it seems like there's a similar cult on the far left that just happen to be invisible at the moment

bolbteppa

I don't think one can compare this behavior to anything even semi-normal, it's beyond the pale

Semiclassical

If it were a TV show, it'd be either be seen as a masterpiece of absurdism or simply too crazy to suspend disbelief

but it isn't a TV show

bolbteppa

19:41

It's like an Ancient Greek play

danielunderwood

I mean there have been all sort of cults in the past. Maybe this is the same and just fueled by being spread on the internet?

Semiclassical

The internet is definitely a big part of it

enumaris

20:00

oh

my

Did The Don literally tweet "17 years since September 11th!" as his 9/11 remembrance tweet...

danielunderwood

oh boy

enumaris

with the exclamation point too... like..."12 years since our baby boy was born!"

"5 years since we got married!"

"17 years since September 11th!"

rob

@enumaris Apparently yes. Wow.

enumaris

fist pump?

bolbteppa

At least he also went after, spending more time on, Strzok and the rest

This is Mad King territory

enumaris

20:05

somebody post the picture of the guy face palming through his whole head

Help me out a lil

bolbteppa

Scroll down on that tweet, my god

enumaris

People are also bringing up his bragging about how now he has the tallest building in NY right after the 9/11 attacks...is that...legit...

Semiclassical

seems like they've got audio of it, so probably

bolbteppa

audio independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/…

He was asked about it directly kind of, and apparently he was wrong about it huffingtonpost.com/entry/…

Novalium Company

Good evening everybody.

enumaris

20:15

I cry for our future

Semiclassical

tbh I save my wtf for the terrible stuff he says now

Novalium Company

@enumaris @Semiclassical How are you?

enumaris

Hello @NovaliumCompany I'm doing well, thanks :)

Semiclassical

alright, just commiserating

danielunderwood

Don't worry guys, he just said something offensive this one time...I'm sure it won't happen again

Semiclassical

20:17

lol

insofar as every event is unique, he won't do it again

Novalium Company

I'm reading a really good book on Francis Crick and James Watson on the Discovery of the DNA.

Semiclassical

he'll just do new things which are equally awful

danielunderwood

Uh oh. Tweets have just started getting more political than they were an hour or so ago. Maybe I just happened to be collecting political tweets at the peak yesterday?

bolbteppa

20:33

Forgot about him making money off this twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1039522199374192640

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero When I say "I also know people to whom this happened" I mean "I am a coauthor of that paper".

thankfully not the first author, and I wasn't the lead on that project so the consequences for me weren't as damaging, but still. 0/5, would not recommend.

enumaris

what paper

Emilio Pisanty

that's... probably too much information to put down on a public forum with named attribution

tic, toc

enumaris

o.o

alrighty

Semiclassical

21:02

Question for myself: Why is $\langle m|e^{-i\beta S_y}|m'\rangle =\langle m'|e^{i\beta S_y}|m\rangle $ for any spin-s system, where $|m\rangle$ is the usual $S_z$ basis?

Emilio Pisanty

Question for myself: Why do some people find the spin-s system so entrancing?

Semiclassical

Question for others: Why is the third-person voice so appealing?

Emilio Pisanty

@Semiclassical it's not.

Semiclassical

it isn't? dang.

Emilio Pisanty

@Semiclassical sorry to be the beaver of bad news

Semiclassical

21:07

bad news beaver

how cruel you are

Emilio Pisanty

hmmmm

I was hoping there'd be better memes for that

apparently not

Semiclassical

can't meme 'em all

Emilio Pisanty

I mean, that's pretty damn boring

Semiclassical

eh, the beaver is charming

Emilio Pisanty

you could at least have a beaver carrying the words Bad News or som'n

ZeroTheHero

21:10

@EmilioPisanty oh man... In fact my friend Alice was spent some time at institution X, and forgot to close the door of his office for a (long) coffee break. Strange coincidence: Bob (permanently based at institution X), whose office happened to be right by Alice's, basically submitted Alice's work 6 weeks after Alice had left (Alice had not submitted by then).

Emilio Pisanty

also, it's "the", not "a" beaver.

Semiclassical

@ZeroTheHero ...were they collaborating on this?

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero you have remarkable friends.

I don't know many male Alices.

ZeroTheHero

there were NOT collaborating on this.

Alice Cooper for one.

Semiclassical

Huh.

That seems like it could have...reprecussions

Emilio Pisanty

21:12

@ZeroTheHero but yeah, that sounds pretty bad.

@Semiclassical ~~could~~ should

but then again science is what it is, innit

ZeroTheHero

also I know of student Charlie and postdoc David who had finished a draft manuscript. Postdoc David sends the draft to his former thesis director, who "scoops" Charlie and David by submitting to a quick turnaround journal.

Semiclassical

:S

ZeroTheHero

(without any references to the manuscript of Charlie and David)

Semiclassical

I mean, with the Alice and Bob story there's at least some level of deniability

hard to see any of that in this case

ZeroTheHero

I saw the handwritten notes of Alice...

and the manuscript (now published of Bob).

Emilio Pisanty

21:13

ZeroTheHero

There can be no deniability...

Semiclassical

yuck

ZeroTheHero

@EmilioPisanty and that's not even at the level of a seminar/conference presentation.

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero yeah

heck, in our case, Lead Postdoc gave a presentation, took some questions at the end of the talk from Other PI, and then spent a half hour after the talk talking about the material with Other PI

ZeroTheHero

Thankfully such cases are rare but when they happen to people you know it stings... especially student Charlie who left academia in part because of this terrible experience.

Semiclassical

21:16

oof

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero yeah, that's pretty bad

ZeroTheHero

if your first paper as a student gets scooped in this way it leaves a very bad taste.

Emilio Pisanty

yeah, that's terrible

Semiclassical

I'd hope that there were consequences for the former thesis director

But uh

Emilio Pisanty

and heck, it's not even something you can really take up the chain, unless Postdoc David is really secure in his position or ready to blow it to smithereens

ZeroTheHero

21:17

and the worse part of this specific story is that the thesis director of Charlie found out because he was asked to referee this manuscript...

Semiclassical

Yeah

@ZeroTheHero ffff

ZeroTheHero

yeah.

real shitstorm.

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero so? did he tell the editor?

I mean, at that point it's still fixable

for one, that's the very spot at which you submit to the arXiv

ZeroTheHero

I think he phoned postdoc David's former boss and said back off.

Semiclassical

Charlie's thesis director did?

ZeroTheHero

21:19

no arxiv on those days.

yup.

anyways...

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero and did he?

danielunderwood

Academia seems to sound worse every time someone talks about it

Semiclassical

Did Charlie & David ultimately get to publish the paper?

ZeroTheHero

some changes were made and an acknowledgement was added.

Semiclassical

@danielunderwood well, it's not as though office politics don't occur in other professions

but the old adage applies: the politics are so fierce, because the stakes are so low

ZeroTheHero

21:21

although strictly speaking speaking Charlie and David did not publish the first paper on this.

Emilio Pisanty

ZeroTheHero

I understand there is actually a famous case in HEP theory similar to this.

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero I swear there's an applicable smbc, but I'm having trouble finding it

it does sound like Charlie and David were suffering from a bad case of 1980itis

ZeroTheHero

it did happen in the 90s.

Emilio Pisanty

there was already arXiv in the 90s

Semiclassical

21:26

eh, the 1990s came out of the 1980s. still counts :P

arXiv was launched in 1991, jeeze

ZeroTheHero

arXiv "took off" in the last 90s.

well... the 2nd half...

Semiclassical

I wonder how long it took for various disciplines to get into the habit of using arXiv

ZeroTheHero

of the 90s and it was not so universally used at first.

one reason why it's not so popular in life sciences (read: medicine) is precisely because of the fear of being scooped.

Emilio Pisanty

@ZeroTheHero I want to bash the nineties as archaic, but I grew up during those, so my range of action there is limited.

ZeroTheHero

in those days you still submitted actual paper manuscript to journals (2 or 3 copies, depending on the number of referees).

Emilio Pisanty

21:32

the great thing about this one

If you're 15 or younger, then just remember that it's nevertheless probably too late to be a child prodigy.

is that it has joined its own canon

oh ffs

Semiclassical

I never actually saw Home Alone in theatres

so that's a bit lost on me

oh, wait. that was 2011

Emilio Pisanty

@Semiclassical point

Semiclassical

eh. nor did the matrix make much of an impact on me

ZeroTheHero

I can say I saw Disney's Aladin more than once in theaters.

danielunderwood

wasn't alive when Home Alone was in theaters

ZeroTheHero

21:34

given the range of audience it's just a lower bound on mine really.

Emilio Pisanty

@Semiclassical ah, c'mon. how old are you?

ZeroTheHero

:D

Emilio Pisanty

:46689840 nah. Given that he responded to Home Alone, I suspect 31-32 is the range to go to

puts it in the range of 'Return Of The King came out in the first half of your life', maybe

also The Incredibles is fifteen years old

Semiclassical

21:50

@EmilioPisanty 31, yeah

But I missed The Matrix somehow

LOTR is on point tho

Emilio Pisanty

@danielunderwood no, seriously, though. The "real world" is just as bad. Heck, there's even an SE site for how "real world" office politics is worse than academia.

@Semiclassical you probably don't want to think too deeply about just how old the Star Wars prequels are

Semiclassical

Nope

Tho I only saw the first prequel in theaters

I didn’t see a lot of movies

enumaris

22:06

Stop making me feel old

I'll ban you all

I think my brain has melted from taking all the required employee education courses...

I don't feel like doing anything more today...

bolbteppa

22:24

Time to revise renormalization in terms of path integrals obviously so

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCV4JAwbNay1xWhb0rPsdR6lv4zGPCeLy

enumaris

brain meltyyy

simply connected

danielunderwood

22:48

@EmilioPisanty I guess I have it lucky that I don't really have office politics. I do sometimes have "release a product or perish" though

Wow the school I went to is pretty much shutting down for the rest of the week due to the hurricane. I don't think anything like that happened while I was there

enumaris

o.o

danielunderwood

23:03

People where I live have an interesting way of dealing with weather. Bad weather doesn't seem to happen enough that people know how to handle it. People really seem to lose their minds when it snows even though it happens about every year

Such as this great thing that happened a few years ago

oh wait you can't see images...that's sad

enumaris

23:14

I can see this one

for some reason

lol

danielunderwood

23:31

They decided to restore your image privileges after your image sensitivity training

bolbteppa

enumaris

nope, it only works for that one image

lol

I'm bored

entertain me

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