Interest based loans. It’s completely legal to use debt to kick the poor deeper into the gutter so that they can never stand up again.

Using seconds as the base unit of time would work in various situations, but not all. For example, kiloseconds (ks) would be handy for measuring the runtime of a movie or the length of a workday. In that regard, it’s just a matter of getting used to it. However the length of a solar day is about 86.4 ks and a year is about 31.54 Ms, which would be annoying numbers to memorize. Then again, remembering numbers like 60, 24, 52, 365 is about as annoying too, so that’s a problem for another day.

Yeah, I think the union thing and the latest nazi salute form exactly the kind of combination Sweden won’t forgive easily. Tesla’s reputation is completely gone.

Also known as a sidereal day. Check the animation. It’s pretty cool.

This topic also touches upon the concept of reference frames. When people say that the earth takes 24 h to make a full revolution, it’s in relation to the sun. From a universal perspective, the heliocentric reference frame moves and rotates. From the heliocentric perspective, the usual earth based reference frame also moves and rotates. Nothing is truly stationary, and measuring revolutions is impossible unless you define your frame of reference.

If you say a full revolution takes 24 h, it’s not wrong, but it’s only true in one reference frame.

Ethiopians are clearly very smart people. Take that white supremacists!

Ancient Romans just loved convoluted systems, which were later inherited by the rest of Europe. The French revolution fixed most of that mess by simplifying it and getting rid of the quirky designs. They also tried to fix time units and the calendar, but that just didn’t stick for some reason. Meanwhile, Ethiopians were already using a sensible calendar that has a good way to mitigate the messy properties of Earth.

I approve of this system. It should make calendars nice and simple for the most part. For example, salaries would be pretty simple since the period wouldn’t fluctuate wildly.

It’s just that not all things respect global holidays, so calculating energy production, water consumption and other things like that would still have to deal with weird inconsistencies. Regardless, this would still be far superior to our current train wreck of a calendar.

Now that’s the kind of thinking we need more of! Mathematical precision is the way we run things around here. Screw whatever nature had intended for orbits and such. It’s our planet.

Best of all, that funny fraction isn’t even constant. The earth is a bit wonky.

That addresses the calendar problem, which is another pet peeve of mine. Oh, where do I even begin. The calendar system is just the next level of curses and barrels of rotting worms.

At least time units have fixed, but inconvenient conversion multipliers. Months and years involve numbers that aren’t even constants!

Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, someone reminds you about time zones. That’s just pure cosmic horror.

It’s a miracle we don’t trigger a nuclear meltdown every week while using a system like this.

Time units are just as cursed as American units.

Conversion between days, hours, minutes and seconds is a total mess. If you never have to do anything with those numbers, you don’t need to worry about it. The moment you need to do calculations or compare devices you run into completely unnecessary problems that would have been easy to avoid. Just think of pumps and fans with units given in l/min or m^3/h.

Just pick the standard time unit and stick with it. Use prefixes to deal with big or small numbers.

There are countries you don’t want to visit, because you could lose your life, organs, and/or money (not necessarily in that order). There are also some places, where you’ll also get thrown in jail for strange reasons, or no reason at all. Nowadays, when people think of countries to avoid, they also group USA with places like North Korea, Mali, Russia, China, Syria, Afghanistan etc.

Why did I watch that documentary about the central park of New York, just when it became clear I won’t be traveling there. Might as well get even more hyped by watching documentaries about the amazing cities of ancient Babylon or the legendary library of Damascus. Good luck trying to have a vacation in those places.

Recently came across the terms “grandiose narcissism” and “vulnerable narcissism”. The way I understand it, a grandiose narcissist knows they are the best and gets angry if anyone dares to challenge this idea. A vulnerable narcissist knows that they have flaws but they work really hard to maintain a perfect facade.

Do you think that your father would be either one of those types?

It’s actually happening then. Reading 1930s history keeps on getting more and more relevant each day.

Those are some pretty interesting conditions. Sounds like in order to make this work, you shouldn’t enter through an official land border crossing. Instead, you should enter through other means (plane, ship, rocket), but you should also just chill out as a tourist for two weeks before making a refugee claim. Makes me wonder what’s the rationale behind this.

Occasionally, I watch some queer videos on YT, just to see how they see the world from their perspective. Recently, the tone has shifted and some are even advising other people to go back into the closet. Especially gender minorities appear to be afraid of what’s going on these days. Maybe someone in that category could convincingly claim that their life is in danger. I wonder if it also applies to gay people.

Many Germans were wondering the same thing nearly a hundred years ago.

Some of them decided to move while they still had the chance. You could say it’s traditional to move across the ocean if your country becomes a totalitarian dictatorship. The other options aren’t that nice though. Once the system falls apart you could be judged for just going with the flow.

I haven’t been able to come up with a good explanation yet. Previously, I thought it was just plain stupidity and ignorance. Now, I think it might have something to do with the way media manipulates the masses. Still not satisfied with my own explanation though. Is it the culture? Modern tribalism? Cognitive biases? Who knows.

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 39% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency; a CNN/SSRS poll found that 41% of Americans approve; and a NBC News Stay Tuned Poll found that 45% of U.S. adults approve.

Source

Turns out, Trump is more popular than Musk, but all of these numbers are still amazingly high.

The visualizations made be 3blue1brown make so much sense, and they also look cool.

It’s also about motivation. During the first years, you just study all the boring stuff nobody cares about. It takes years to get to the cool stuff, but by that time most students are already completely fed up with maths.

The problems in the books were extra dry, so I prefered to come up with my own problems and solutions. Like, one day I was wondering how long it would take for a super fast train to go from one side of the planet to another. What if you accelerated half the way at 1 g, and then decelerated at -1g. How long would it take? What would be the maximum velocity? I had so many questions, and that’s why I had plenty of motivation to figure it all out. That’s how I learn weird and random stuff.

What if you had a powerful laser that was able to evaporate stone? Let’s say you wanted to use it to drill a hole through stone, but you need to do it with the same rate as with a regular drill? Would you need a nuclear reactor just to power your super laser? My head is full of bizarre questions like this, so learning never stops.