I think they also missed that the values in the corners,
<x1,y1> + <x1,y4> + <x4,y1> + <x4,y4> also add to 33 (1+4+13+15)
In addition the center square values,
<x2,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y2> + <x3,y3> also add to 33 (7+6+10+10)
I think they also missed that the paired parallel short diagonals,
<x1,y2> + <x2,y1> + <x3,y4> + <x4,y3> also add to 33. (14+11+5+3)
<x1,y3> + <x2,y4> + <x3,y1> + <x4,y2> also add to 33. (14+9+8+2)
The paired parallel diagonals with three values are a tougher nut but it appears that the symmetry of the matrix allows them to be related as follows:
<x2,y1> + <x3,y2> + <x4,y3> do not add to 33. (11+10+3) adds to 24.
<x1,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y4> do not add to 33. (14+6+5) adds to 25.
Neither of them gets us to the magic number until...
...we look across the matrix and add the last value (or first value) of the row as seen here:
<x2,y1> + <x3,y2> + <x4,y3> + <x2,y4> now adds to 33. (11+10+3+9).
For the other pair we see:
<x1,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y4> + <x3.y1> now adds to 33. (14+6+5+8).
Looking diagonally orthogonal to this, the other paired three-value diagonals break this pattern.
<x3,y1> + <x2,y2> + <x1,y3> do not add to 33. (8+7+14) adds to 29.
<x4,y2> + <x3,y3> + <x2,y4> do not add to 33. (2+10+9) adds to 21.
When we look across as we have done for the other 3-value diagonals we don't quite get there.
<x3,y1> + <x2,y2> + <x1,y3> + <x3,y4> now adds to 34. (8+7+14+5).
<x4,y2> + <x3,y3> + <x2,y4> + <x2,y1> now adds to 32. (2+10+9+11).
Taken together their average is 33. I guess that's something.
The last thing I have for you also involves those 3-value diagonals.
If you sum the two parallels you do not get 33 nor do you get something that immediately suggests a relationship. It is only when you sum all four of the 3-value diagonals that you get to something related to 33. Let's walk through this together since I already did the math.
<x2,y1> + <x3,y2> + <x4,y3> do not add to 33. (11+10+3) adds to 24.
<x1,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y4> do not add to 33. (14+6+5) adds to 25.
<x3,y1> + <x2,y2> + <x1,y3> do not add to 33. (8+7+14) adds to 29.
<x4,y2> + <x3,y3> + <x2,y4> do not add to 33. (2+10+9) adds to 21.
However, if we sum the totals of these 3-value diagonals we will find our relationship:
I was looking at the lake water level tracker and reminiscing. I worked up at Heber City, Utah back around 1983-1984 doing seismic work. The snow and rainfall and snow-melt were creating floods all over the region. The lake was filling rapidly to historic levels.
When we moved the crew to Oregon to do a bit of work around Roseburg we drove through SLC. The runoff from some of the creeks was so high that there were sandbagged creeks flowing downhill along some of the streets directly into the lake. As we made it to the interstate to swing around the south side of the lake there was a massive effort underway to raise the Union Pacific railroad tracks above the water and to prevent the water from flooding the interstate. From memory, which may be a bit rotted over the long time period, the railroad tracks were running along what was functioning as a huge levee being constructed on the north side of the interstate. Earthmovers were scrambling everywhere. The interstate was approximately 40 feet (~12.2 m) lower than the top of the levee where the tracks were being raised. Traffic was moving carefully along this stretch. It was pretty spectacular.
I think I have some photos I took of the massive levee as I drove along that stretch and I may have some of the ballroom, the Great Saltair, which was inaccessible at the time, completely surrounded by water with only the top part of the building above water.
If anyone who was living in SLC at the time could chime in to let me know how badly my memory has served me I would appreciate it.
Once we got out of Utah we continued across Nevada and, since the entire western US was experiencing massive flooding, we had to take a long detour through a large ranch and around an isolated mountain range because an overpass over a river had washed out somewhere west of Wells, NV between there and Winnemucca. It was fantastically beautiful country. The road was unpaved and may have been a BLM road for part of the way until we connected with a paved road highway that took us back to the interstate. This detour cost us hours but the scenery made up for all of that.
I say paved only in the Lousyana sense because it was a two-lane asphalt pavement with no shoulder and minimal guardrails that snaked up the side of a large plateau. There were numerous dips and potholes in the pavement that forced you to pay attention to the road instead of enjoying the view. In Lousyana they don't bother to spend federal highway funds on interstate highway maintenance, they just buy another highway sign that says "Rough Roads Next 20 miles" and let that pass for maintenance.
About a third of the way from the top just over the crest of one of the short downhill stretches across the slope, there was a huge hole in the pavement that I hit doing about 70 in my Bronco. The jolt as my Bronco tried to jump the gap blew out both rear shocks, forcing me to replace them once I made it to Roseburg. Luckily it was a one lane wide, single hole perpendicular to the direction of travel so it didn't force a steering correction or I might've found myself needing flying lessons since the drop-off was quite sudden on one side.
That trip was pretty epic. At Denio Junction, NV, I bought gas at the small store since it was one of the last places you could gas up before crossing into Oregon. At the time and for years afterward that was the most expensive gasoline that I had ever purchased. I probably still have the trip log and receipts from that trip but I think I remember it being $3/gallon ($0.79/l), in 1983-1984. Ridiculous. I finally paid more than that for gasoline at the station on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon about 30 years later where it cost $5/gallon ($1.32/l).
YW. I got stuck for a bit there reading some of those articles. Very fun. Good writing about things that I need to know more about. Like you I love the sense that they are trying to have fun with their writing.
I really enjoyed that article. Documenting the entire process helps me understand what the final product should taste like. I love the smell of barley and had never considered roasting any. The fact that it apparently smells a bit like popcorn is pretty exciting.
I am growing buckwheat right now and have a small test plot of rice. I am hoping to be able to get meaningful yields after this first-year proof of concept dry run. I have already harvested enough buckwheat for a nice, steaming bowl of buckwheat. My rice is producing kernels now though I only have a few dozen plants. I am pretty excited about this.
I love how toasting something transforms the flavor profile and use that to enhance flavors of soups and other dishes. I toast pecans, walnuts, almonds, and some garden spices lightly and add them to spice mixes after grinding.
Thanks for this article.
There is also another article linked at the bottom about someone who drank a bottle of barley tea that had been left outside for months.
I had to chuckle a week or so ago when I was bumbling across the internet and landed on an article that had a link to a nutjob page where the title was something like: "CERN found something so disturbing they had to shut down immediately".
The nutjob article (yes, I did read it, LOL) suggested that they had found some universal truth maybe about God or aliens or something, and it scared them so much they just noped out of the science business to prepare themselves for the inevitable revealing of the "truth".
It is truly no wonder that so much of society is so fundamentally fucking stupid when their trusted information sources are so full of obviously false bullshit.
I can't wait until the LHC is back online zipping tiny things around the ring again in a cosmic demolition derby to find the smallest specs of our reality and give them all whimsical names.
If Klaus Knopper or his wife Adriane finds this thread I want to say thank you for all the useful tools that you included in Knoppix. I learned so much and it was greatly simplified by the ease of operation of the live boot CD with its auto-detection of hardware. I really appreciate all the hard work that y'all have put into Knoppix over the years. I downloaded the latest version less than a month ago from knopper.net so that I can muck around on a new mini-pc and show an elderly relative how easy some of this stuff really is. Still an excellent toolset. Thanks!
This is true. Some people can let this slide and go back to buying products from companies that have clearly demonstrated where their own priorities lie. Allowing Blue Bell back into the market was a mistake in my opinion and it is the reason that we do not buy any Blue Bell products. There are so many other products available from so many different companies, none of which has the history that Blue Bell chose. When we buy ice cream or similar frozen items we buy other brands.
In my own mind, second chances are context dependent. They clearly knew about the problem and the potential health consequences for customers, and they chose to continue operations. Some people became sick and others died. There are no second chances in that situation. All of the people at Blue Bell in the chain who decided to keep running should be in prison and their assets confiscated.
I'm glad that we were not big ice cream eaters while this was a problem because Blue Bell was one of our trusted brands.
HEB carries Blue Bell but I don't have to buy it since they also carry quite a few other brands.
My beef is in fact with the government and the voters and those who use their wealth to destroy something that others have paid a substantial part of their own incomes to go out and enjoy. The first time I rafted and kayaked that river there was one dirt road that ran along the river for a few miles past the put-in and miles further down the canyon there was one high-tension power line. You were miles into the Snake River before you saw homes from the river. Over the decades I ran that same stretch several times and each time encroachment was worse. Rich cocksuckers who build homes that they only use for a week at a time are the equivalent of cockroaches that drop their egg cases and move on. One egg case causes the whole area to become infested with others in a few short years.
The attraction of the river was the silence and the grand views, paddling the rapids at different flow levels and learning to read the water, watching wildlife come up to the river, admiring the geologic story told by the rocks exposed on the canyon walls, the dark night skies. Once you add a structure, with the supporting access roads, powerlines, etc into the mix you have destroyed something that was worth saving for future generations. I don't expect everyone to understand that since too many people spend their lives caught up in the bullshit pursuit of money or recognition.
I don't give a shit whether that family still owns or runs the grocery business or did when they built that place. The fact that they built there, right on the river and built a ramp to launch their jet-boat on what had been one of the quietest stretches of the river makes them my enemy and worthy of my contempt. The fact that they decided to build the ramp and just pay the annual fines is an artifact of a broken system where penalties and sanctions do not match the gravity of the infraction. Wealthy people do whatever they want, trashing things everywhere they go. It could be true that this will never change. I'm hoping that it will though and working to help it along.
I'm not gonna argue the quality of HEB BBQ since it obviously stands on its own merits among Texas shoppers. The meat that I smoke at home is better than any that I have bought at a BBQ joint or stand in the country outside of this one stand in Greenville, Mississippi. While working there, I made sure that I stocked up on meats every day. That man had it down. I've been eating BBQ since I was a small child and I'm on the downhill side of life right now.
I understand how this works with the wife. I "graze" the store when I go by myself though I do carry a list of things to pick up. The local store has a wide selection of Texas native plants at good prices. Some of these plants I had never heard of and I am in the process of restoration of my own property so it was good to see something at HEB and pull up the NPSoT (Native Plant Society of Texas) data on it to find that it used to be common in the region before development. Their garden products are also competitively priced - wood chips and mulch, garden soils, etc.
The Butts are some good people. When I was a kid in Central Texas my family shopped at their stores. It was a real drag to move to a part of Texas outside their operating range and spend so many years there so their recent expansion across the state is the one welcome thing about Texas.
HEB and their upscale Central Market are the only grocery stores that we visit. We do drop by World Market occasionally for oddball things but if we don't grow it and HEB/CM doesn't sell it we probably aren't eating it.
I think one of the best things about the new HEBs is the attached BBQ store. Dependably good BBQ options with a Central Texas BBQ flavor that beat all of the fast food options locally. We have a wide selection of fast foods since this region is in a massive growth stage absorbing all the FtW refugees. HEB BBQ and the other fresh meals available inside that take little or no prep are dependable, flavorful, options for quick meals and picnics.
Locally we have Walmart, Target, Albertsons, Brookshires, Winn Dixie(?), Aldi, and maybe a couple other smaller ones including some Dollar (G/T) stores for groceries. Walmart is the only one that offers similar options but the quality of their fresh stuff can't measure up. Albertsons was the go-to for years if we had to swing into town for groceries and didn't feel like adding the extra commute to FtW Central Market. We stopped going there after we took a rafting trip down the Salmon in Idaho and rounded a curve in the river and found a large vacation home built right up on the bank complete with a concrete boat ramp. The river guide told us the house was a vacation home owned by the Albertsons grocery store family and that it was vacant most of the year. The concrete ramp is not allowed on any stretch of the river since it is in a Wild and Scenic area but it was built anyway because the sanction for building the ramp was a simple annual fine, easily affordable for billionaire grocers. We had rafted that river several times over the years and the encroachment of second homes and vacation homes on all the high spots up there really degrades the wilderness feel.
I'm not going too far down that trail today since that is too far OT.
If you're in Texas, HEB is the grocery store. The others suck balls.
Probably a sign that it is past time to tightly regulate all AI-aligned companies and their products to set up guard rails to prevent this level of corruption. I am a person who lives in a state where it is totally legal for lobbyists to walk the floor of the state legislature handing out envelopes of cash to any representative who will line up behind their proposed legislation. Bribery buys state laws here and it buys pretty much anything else that those with deep pockets desire.
One day people in this state will wake up and burn it all down by electing representatives who serve the people, not the corporate entities that desire a low drag place to do business. There are active anti-AI and data center groups now in the state. Once they get enough traction this bullshit will end.
Anyone at any of these AI companies that attempts to influence elections should be held accountable and should suffer the harshest consequences including confiscation of all personal assets. Multi-generational enforced poverty should be their reward.
>A lot of US high schools and US colleges have Olympic pools.
Especially for high schools it's also true that a lot of them don't. In the case of high schools I think an Olympic sized swimming pool is likely in mid to large cities or there may be one available locally. Swim teams at high school level are probably city school features instead of rural school features. I think there are more rural high schools than city high schools.
I don't know though.
Colleges. Hmmm. I suspect that all state colleges have pools. I am not sure about smaller colleges though. That's an interesting question. I'm sure the data is out there though.
I like the idea of the Slate. I think the ability to transform from truck to SUV mode in your driveway is pretty great. It reminds me of my Broncos where I can remove the top and the rear seat and have a truck. I love the idea of individualized wraps as there are far too many white, black, silver, and grey vehicles on the road. We need some color.
I love that it is a bare-bones basic vehicle that can made to be whatever you need it to be and that it does not have all the factory owner tracking bullshit in new cars today.
I can see this being useful to my wife and I both as a small truck and as an SUV. For the things that we do every week this vehicle would work fine and would replace our Ford Ranger. It might be able to replace our 90's F150 too.
I do most of my own maintenance so a vehicle that comes with factory manuals at no cost is far superior to any other that I have owned. I have bought factory manuals for all of our vehicles so that I can minimize downtime when doing maintenance. I would also take advantage of a service network in the event that I had more projects than time, which is increasingly the normal case at my house. With that network I could spend my time on things that have the highest impact.
The vehicle's range works fine for my wife and I. As a vehicle for our kids off at college it is not as attractive. The distance from our house to campus is just under the stated range of the Slate so anything that prevented the vehicle from hitting maximum target mileage would cause it to fall short and I would need to tow or trailer it the rest of the way home. That would be a drag (haha, I made a pun). Adding the ability to run from an external battery would be a huge plus since that would eliminate range issues.
I wonder how difficult it would be to add connections and charge circuitry for an EcoFlow or Jackery battery bank so that it could be carried in the cargo compartment and serve as a backup.
I would also probably use solar panels to keep it topped off while in my driveway. I think the existing EV chargers manage that well today.
I agree. It is common to see those used as area and volume examples. I think it is far less common for the audience to have a clear mental picture of the two terms though. It's easier for a football field to serve as a reference because more people have exposure to football fields. It is more difficult for an Olympic sized swimming pool to serve as a reference because there are fewer people who have seen one in person.
I think it is a bit comical to use swimming pools as a volumetric reference when most people's experience with swimming pools has been in a back yard setting or on visits to community pools, which may be any convenient size.
I agree even though I use ginormous in normal conversation. In the right context it is fine, I just don't think this is the right context.
I also find it hard to take an article seriously when its volume comparison employs "Olympic-sized swimming pools". I think the fraction of people who have a clear enough mental idea of the dimensions or volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool is pretty small relative to the articles readership, which I hope they measure realistically under the assumption that the number of readers will always be close to half the number of eyeballs on the page. Otherwise they would be inflating readership and that would be misleading.
I think it is a bad idea to allow Meta to participate in nuclear reactor operations. Nuclear reactors and other power infrastructure should be utility-owned and managed under clear regulations designed to eliminate the possibility of control by outside interests who might, or would, be tempted to unload byproducts suitable for production of weapons to anyone who had the money to buy them. They should be prohibited from spinning off any part of their operations into weapons development and prohibited from investing in any entity that is involved in weapons production.
I like the idea of a network of thorium reactors. I don't want to see any part of that network owned or controlled by people that we already know place their own selfish interests above everything else.
Therefore I guess I am suggesting that high net worth individuals should be prohibited from all investments in or operations involving weapons production.
Maybe I just don't trust that guy and think that he would gladly offload the responsibility of waste disposal or processing on anyone in a backroom deal that we don't learn about until he has been providing materials to refine and construct weapons to individuals who will gladly employ them in attacks.
I wonder whether the AI generated password that you allow to be created on your iPhone in the Passwords app can be recovered and added to whatever password manager you might be using on Windows or Linux desktop.
It seems like this is a great way to lock oneself out of access to an account on some of the devices that they own that do not have access to the Passwords data storage.
I can see where this can be a benefit in helping users secure their accounts with stronger passwords but I think that there is a lot of potential for this to become a real problem.
>On the Passion façade there is a magic square in which the sum of all rows, columns and diagonals is 33.
I did the math since my caffeine load is currently ramping up.
It is simple to deduce that the rows and columns each add to 33.
The main diagonals each add to 33 (1+7+10+15) and (13+10+6+4)
Construct the matrix such that you have <rows,columns> be <x,y> as follows:
<x1,y1> = 1; <x1,y2> = 14; <x1,y3> = 14; <x1,y4> = 4
<x2,y1> = 11; <x2,y2> = 7; <x2,y3> = 6; <x2,y4> = 9
<x3,y1> = 8; <x3,y2> = 10; <x3,y3> = 10; <x3,y4> = 5
<x4,y1> = 13; <x4,y2> = 2; <x4,y3> = 3; <x4,y4> = 15
I think they also missed that the values in the corners,
<x1,y1> + <x1,y4> + <x4,y1> + <x4,y4> also add to 33 (1+4+13+15)
In addition the center square values,
<x2,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y2> + <x3,y3> also add to 33 (7+6+10+10)
I think they also missed that the paired parallel short diagonals,
<x1,y2> + <x2,y1> + <x3,y4> + <x4,y3> also add to 33. (14+11+5+3)
<x1,y3> + <x2,y4> + <x3,y1> + <x4,y2> also add to 33. (14+9+8+2)
The paired parallel diagonals with three values are a tougher nut but it appears that the symmetry of the matrix allows them to be related as follows:
<x2,y1> + <x3,y2> + <x4,y3> do not add to 33. (11+10+3) adds to 24.
<x1,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y4> do not add to 33. (14+6+5) adds to 25.
Neither of them gets us to the magic number until...
...we look across the matrix and add the last value (or first value) of the row as seen here:
<x2,y1> + <x3,y2> + <x4,y3> + <x2,y4> now adds to 33. (11+10+3+9).
For the other pair we see:
<x1,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y4> + <x3.y1> now adds to 33. (14+6+5+8).
Looking diagonally orthogonal to this, the other paired three-value diagonals break this pattern.
<x3,y1> + <x2,y2> + <x1,y3> do not add to 33. (8+7+14) adds to 29.
<x4,y2> + <x3,y3> + <x2,y4> do not add to 33. (2+10+9) adds to 21.
When we look across as we have done for the other 3-value diagonals we don't quite get there.
<x3,y1> + <x2,y2> + <x1,y3> + <x3,y4> now adds to 34. (8+7+14+5).
<x4,y2> + <x3,y3> + <x2,y4> + <x2,y1> now adds to 32. (2+10+9+11).
Taken together their average is 33. I guess that's something.
The last thing I have for you also involves those 3-value diagonals.
If you sum the two parallels you do not get 33 nor do you get something that immediately suggests a relationship. It is only when you sum all four of the 3-value diagonals that you get to something related to 33. Let's walk through this together since I already did the math.
<x2,y1> + <x3,y2> + <x4,y3> do not add to 33. (11+10+3) adds to 24.
<x1,y2> + <x2,y3> + <x3,y4> do not add to 33. (14+6+5) adds to 25.
<x3,y1> + <x2,y2> + <x1,y3> do not add to 33. (8+7+14) adds to 29.
<x4,y2> + <x3,y3> + <x2,y4> do not add to 33. (2+10+9) adds to 21.
However, if we sum the totals of these 3-value diagonals we will find our relationship:
(24+25+29+21) = 99 = 33 * 3
That's all I have for you today.