Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
the numerators and denominators of the approximating fractions
I think we might be using different algorithms. I generally use the "long division method" — though I admit that for later digits it mostly reduces to increasing amounts of tedious multiplication and subtraction. Do you use Heron's method?
How the fuck do you notice that?
Well, first I factored the denominator into 234=2*9*13. The tests you mention quickly ruled out 2 and 3 as divisors of the numerator, so that leaves trying 13.
Now, in this case, a used a particular divisibility rule that works for numbers with 4-6 digits, which is based on the fact that 1001=7*11*13 is a multiple of 13. Thus, if you "split" the number into its last three digits — in this case, 423 — and the preceding 1-3 digits before that — in this case, 332 — and take their difference, then the original number is divisible by 13 if and only if this resulting difference is also a multiple of 13. In this case 423-332=91=7*13, so it's divisible by 13; a bit of mental long division gives 332423= 25571*13.
(To explain in slightly more mathematical detail, I'm essentially taking 332423 and subtracting 332*1001=332332 to get 91, and since 332332 is a multiple of 13, 332423 and 332423-332332 are thus equivalent modulo 13.)
I also know divisibility tests for 7 and 11; the latter is particularly simple: add the two sets of alternating digits, then take the difference of those two sums; if that is also a multiple of 11 (including 0), then so is the original number.
Ex. 120681: 1+0+8=9, 2+6+1=9, 9-9=0=11*0, so it's divisible by 11 (note we also see at the same time that the digits all sum to 9+9=18=9*2, so 120681 is also divisible by 9). Much as the "sum up the digits" test for divisibility by 3 and 9 derives from 10^n ≡ 1 mod 9 (and thus also mod 3), this test for divisibility by 11 derives from 10 ≡ -1 mod 11, and thus 10^n ≡ (-1)^n mod 11.
Edit: fixed asterisks used for multiplication signs.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
This goes right back to Marx and "false consciousness"
Actually, I'd argue the idea goes even further back, at least to Rousseau — his ideas of "negative education" and the amour de soi/amour-propre distinction.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
I dearly hope that anyone who encounters 332423/234 in their professional life
Actually, this isn't too hard if you note that both the numerator and denominator are multiples of 13, and so it reduces to 25571/18, which (if you need it as a mixed number) is much easier to compute as being 1420 and 11/18 — or 1420.6111…
Then again, I'm someone who has a habit of trying to mentally decompose various integers I encounter into their prime factorizations, basically for fun, so…
(I'll also compute square roots by hand from time to time, just to keep my skills sharp.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Except to say that I'm not sure I have seen that, no. Perhaps someone will demonstrate it at some point, in which case I'll likely adopt the position and also be upset about the matter.
Jiro did it upthread right here:
Everyone here (minus the lizardman constant) thinks vaccines work
See, either you think "vaccines" work — *all vaccines, from the polio vaccine to mRNA Covid shots — or you think vaccines don't work, not a one of them.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Everyone here (minus the lizardman constant) thinks vaccines work.
I'd note that this kind of demonstrates one of OP's points — the lumping together of "all vaccines into one monolithic product and doctrine." That you either believe "vaccines work" — all things that we choose to label a "vaccine," regardless of how novel the technology — as a whole, or you want to bring back polio. That anyone who so much as doubts the mRNA shot must be a scientifically-illiterate moron who thinks Edward Jenner was a fraud and the MMR shot causes autism.
Plus, it's also consensus-building.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Thus, HBD-believing fertility-rates-concerned rationalists' thinking goes that lower IQs might be selected for and boost short-term reproductive fitness in the short term, while preventing us from solving AI alignment or colonizing Mars or any of that good stuff, and thus drastically reducing Homo sapiens's chances of long-term survival.
Look, I still remember how popular the opening bit of Idiocracy was with a lot of left-wingers all those decades back, well before "HBD-believing fertility-rates-concerned rationalists" were a thing. For that matter, I remember classmates from Caltech talking about how we needed "parenting licenses" out of mid-20th century sci-fi to keep the dumb, Bible-thumping rednecks from breeding too many future Republican voters, before we end up another moron like Bush the younger in the White House. (They also had either one of two explanations as to why this wasn't eugenics.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
First, it seems like some people are kind of not-friends with the United States. How many Chinese spies are here on Student Visa? How many future ISIS agents are we educating right now? Even without deliberate malice, different norms might lead to people smuggling dangerous fungi and genetically modified roundworms without safeguards, for instance.
You're assuming the people who want to keep the colleges and their enrollment numbers propped up care about this.
But with the demographic collapse we're talking about, eventually we'll run out of rich kids and start needing poor kids. Are they going to be receiving unbacked loans to go to American schools? When they can just fuck off back to some jungle and laugh in the face of debt collectors?
Yes, and yes, because the "unbacked loans" will mostly be from the government, so it'll be the citizenry eating the costs of the defaults — either through taxes, or more likely via inflation, since the money will just be printed. In short, it'll provide a scheme for the government to keep these institutions afloat at taxpayer expense without just doing so directly, while also furthering demographic replacement.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Random Chadian peasants will not be going to American universities, or anywhere else more than five miles from their mud huts.
Why not? Just create a program to recruit them, ship them over, and waive admissions requirements.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Is anything stopping you from moving to the contiguous US?
All my family and friends are here, my entire support network; and the last time I tried living elsewhere, I wound up in the psych ward 3 times in less than 6 months.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
In practice, a lot of right wingers square the circle by claiming that any ruling ideology (any ideology that has authoritarian tendencies and a vision for a 'better' society) is Marxist by fiat but I don't find that convincing, in part because I don't see a mutual throughline and in part because the differences seem large enough to be meaningful (as opposed to People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front).
I agree, though I might not draw the line in the same place you do. In particular, I see the key difference as somewhere between pre-modern state projects like, say, King Zhao of Qin ordering the construction of the Dūjiāngyàn irrigation and flood control project (around 256 BC, and still in use today!), and the sort of "High Modernist" technocratic projects discussed in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. Something like "ivory-tower Scientific Expertise" versus "ground-level metis."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
But even foreign demographics will collapse eventually.
Certain parts of Sub-Saharan Africa look like they're holding up for now, and if their demographics do eventually collapse, it probably won't be any time this century.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
For now, that outcome has been staved off with immigration.
And why can't that continue for many, many years to come? People use hyperbolic talk about recent immigration with terms like "flood," but we, particularly in America, have not seen anything like what an actual flood of immigrants would look like.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
10 years from now, are we seeing a new sub-class of horrifically incompetent 30 year olds? If so, how does that change policy outcomes.
Yes, and the likely effects on outcomes are:
- things get more dysfunctional
- left-wing "bioleninist" patronage expands, over and above the demographic trends, further cementing the left's total lock on power
- the remaining smart, functional people get squeezed harder to support this; and to prevent them from withdrawing or underperforming, the coercion applied will be greatly increased
- unrest will rise, legitimizing the increasing use (in a politically-biased manner) or improving technologies of surveillance and oppression
- the "Global American Empire" will increase its attempts to both expand the periphery, and further loot it, in hopes of directing as much of total global productivity as possible to keeping this system propped up, even as they "eat" more and more civilizational "seed corn" at home
- and humanity hurtles further toward the inevitable and irreversible collapse of industrial civilization.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
First, who or what is "JLF"? Second, everything I see on the ERE forums depends on being able to accumulate savings and/or investments. Third, you might be missing that I live in Alaska; everything is more expensive here (due to shipping costs), and so the cost of living is something like 17% higher than the national average.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Thanks, that does sound better. (And it may come in handy with my new therapist in the future.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
because I didn't get that in the original post.
Sure; I suppose it's just that I've posted here often enough about my situation — disabled, unemployable, living entirely off government handouts — that I took a certain familiarity with it for granted.
maybe you need to look at MMM or ERE to get help in how to navigate with poor income.
Not doable with Social Security's restrictions on savings: I'm not allowed to have total financial assets exceeding $2000.
What is your actual income level?
Not counting the rent subsidy or what Medicaid pays for my prescriptions, and just the money I (or rather, my representative payee) receive from the Federal and Alaskan governments? Approximately $1300/mo.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Is there such a thing as "distributed emotional blackmail," and if so, is there an established term for it?
I mean, instead of Alice saying to Bob, "You need to do X for me; because think of how it'll hurt my feelings if you don't; you owe it to me," or something like that, Alice instead says "You need to do X for Carol; because think of how it'll hurt her feelings if you don't; you owe it to her."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Since you are in for winters in a temperate/snowy place, why not suffer for 1 month (or 1 week minimum) in some sunny tropical place, just taking in the sun. No other goal, no need for tourism, no need to do something or achieve something. Complete free, unorganized, wandering. Pick a simple (cheap) B&B kind of place and go out all day - come back in night - sleep - repeat (go in to the markets, beach, anything).
I get that most people on the motte are upper-class enough not to really understand what "poor" means, but what part of "I'm dirt poor" is not getting through?
I can't afford any of this. After rent, utilities, and food, I have maybe $100 left for everything else. Soap and hygiene. Cleaning products. Foil/plastic wrap/etc. Toilet paper. Facial tissue. Laundry. Clothing. Transportation.
(And it looks like I'll be screwed by 2026, if not earlier, because when the rent subsidy goes? I'm homeless.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Regarding the future years, float with the current. You are not going to reach anywhere in the end
There is no fun. I enjoy nothing. My existence is suffering, whether I struggle or I "float with the current." My suffering will only end with my death. The only reason to keep living and not kill myself is if there's some purpose to be achieved in doing so.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Okay, here’s the part you might not like. The only free version of this that I personally know of is church.
Yeah, people keep recommending that to me, despite my being a lifelong atheist who's never attended before. Though mostly from different reasons than what you seem to be pushing. Because I don't see the point of just sitting and neither listening to the sermons nor interacting with anyone.
You don’t want a megachurch
I don't think we have any big enough in Anchorage to fit that description
I would say you want to ID every church in a distance you think is achievable in winter time, then go check them all out.
I've kind of looked at them, and none seem like good fits.
Find one that has about 75-100 people in the pews
That sounds bigger than most of the churches around here, from what I've seen.
Bring an audiobook or something, put in an earbud
Isn't this both rude, and get in the way of the point of going, which is to meet and interact with new people? Because I don't see any point to just being around a bunch of people.
and just get used to being around a number of other people
You say that like I have a problem with "being around a number of other people."
If anyone says anything to you, just make the usual mouth noises
Having never attended a church, and being an unbeliever, I have no idea what those are.
Please don’t join a cult.
That rules out the closest church, because it's part of a Mexican cult. The "no whites allowed" Samoan church moved elsewhere. So that just leaves the black Baptist church that advertises local Democrat politicians, or the Lutheran church with the woman pastor whose LinkedIn page has the usual rainbow flags.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
It's about what the State is trying to encourage/discourage. Think about the example I gave; see if you can come up with an idea for what it is that they're trying to do.
Speak fucking plainly. No, I'm not going to guess "what it is that they were trying to do" (note the past tense). You tell me exactly what you think the early 21st Century American government (with no-fault divorce, and civil rights and anti-discrimination law for LGB) was "trying to encourage/discourage"; why it's legitimate for them to encourage/discourage; how not legalizing gay marriage both works toward the end goal of that encouragement/discouragement, and is a constitutionally and legally valid means (because in American constitutional law, the US government is limited in the means it may use to secure even good and valid ends, with a number of judicial "tests" and levels of restriction depending on the importance of the ends and the nature of the means) of doing so.
Your continued mix of obtuseness, vaguery, and missing-the-point in this thread have been so frustrating, they've got me defending a position and argument I don't even believe myself here. There's a reason the sorts of arguments you're vaguely-gesturing-toward-but-not-actually-making lost the fight.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
If I may ask, how is it that you are able to find these older posts you link to so readily? (Or, more specifically, that Reddit post? I've always found it a pain to search.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
This does not make their arguments somehow more "valid" in a political context than people of faith.
According to much 1st Amendment jurisprudence, and the popular understanding thereof, it absolutely does.
If that were the case, we'd have a weird situation where everyone would be in a rush to prove how atheist they are while also borrowing heavily from moral theology. It's actually kind of comical to think about - "Look at how excellent my purely rational reasoning is. DON'T LOOK AT THE GOD SHAPED HOLE"
As I see it, this perfectly describes the post-Puritan offshoot that is Wokism the Ideology That Will Not Let Itself Be Named, and how it rose to prominence. America, as a predominantly-Protestant country, developed a legal tradition of treating "religion" as being defined first and foremost by one's beliefs about God(s) and the supernatural, and in the doctrines derived therefrom; and so developed "antibodies" against religious "establishment" along these lines. Thus, the first dogmatic, crusading faith to ditch all that, make all their metaphysical priors as implicit and unspoken as possible, (yes, even with the glaring "God-shaped hole") was able to to get it's moral doctrines established without tripping the metaphorical immune response (like a virus mutating to shed a critical antigen), and become our unofficial official religion.
How about believing that one "vaccine" doesn't work, independently of all the others that do?
I get it, you want to smear anyone who has concerns about the mRNA "vaccine" as a brain-dead "science-denier" who wants to bring back measles and mumps, but quite a few people — including most people I know IRL — accept that all the many real vaccines do work… but not the "clot shot" bioweapon.
More options
Context Copy link