Knowledge for its own sake is great, but it's worth noting that many "useless" fields of mathematics turned out to be very practical in the long run.
Number theory was long thought to have no practical application, but now it's the backbone of cryptography. Boolean algebra was developed in the 19th century (George Boole died in 1864), decades before it was used to build computers.
Those "useless" theorems being proved today may turn out to unlock a world-changing technology centuries from now. When the breakthrough comes we'll be grateful for the people who laid the foundations.
The president of the European Commission is “elected” through a thin pretence of democracy that the people of Europe have effectively no control over, and mostly pay no attention to. If you think she’s there because the greater public decided she’s the best person for the job then you don’t know how the EU works.
Also most of the EU population don’t know her for anything at all. I’d be surprised if more than 50% of Europeans could name her.
Maybe an ESL thing? "Potatoes" are literally called "earth apples" in some languages (e.g. pommes de terre in French; Erdäpfel in some German dialects.)
Max Planck published the same paper in multiple journals in the 1940s, which was common practice at the time. He also published a second unrelated paper that happened to have the same title as the paper it was a response to. In 2011 both papers were retracted from their journals' archives, most likely because a bot incorrectly flagged them for plagiarism.
For the curious, the "banned" books are (it's a short list):
- Call of the Wild - Jack London
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
- Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence
In the UK, employers pay a stealth tax of 15% (recently increased from 13.8%) on top of the quoted salary minus the first £5k (recently decreased from £9,100.)
So your "£50k" salary actually costs your employer £56,750, and that's before all the other expenses mentioned elsewhere in this thread such as hardware, office rent etc.
Number theory was long thought to have no practical application, but now it's the backbone of cryptography. Boolean algebra was developed in the 19th century (George Boole died in 1864), decades before it was used to build computers.
Those "useless" theorems being proved today may turn out to unlock a world-changing technology centuries from now. When the breakthrough comes we'll be grateful for the people who laid the foundations.