FD4280
4mo ago
Maximally offensive version: StarCraft-style base trade. They capture Mecca and/or Medina.
Slightly less contentious version: they plop down in a no-man’s land somewhere between the Donbas and the Dnieper to act as a buffer between two countries that both hate them less than they do each other.
Maximally lazy version: they capture a chunk of Cyprus. It’s close by, and if Turkey can do it, why not them?
FD4280
5mo ago
Replying here only to avoid unnecessary duplication.
I'm a doctoral student in pure math. The reason I have a hard time believing it is that there was computation in the same courses described. A few that come to mind:
Ring theory: primary decomposition of ideals. Of course it's defined abstractly, but pretty much any concrete exercise would involve ideals of finitely generated polynomial rings and required computation.
Differentiable manifolds: Early on, we worked out a formula for stereographic projection and its inverse. Lots of other examples in low-dimensional spaces.
FD4280
5mo ago
At the risk of preempting Ilforte, if he's still around:
В Академии наук
Заседает князь Дундук.
Говорят, не подобает
Дундуку такая честь;
Почему ж он заседает?
Потому что жопа есть.
Roughly, in English:
"In the Academy of Sciences
Sits Prince Dunduk.
People say that it's unfitting -
Not a place he should possess;
Why, then, is the fellow sitting?
It's because he has an ass."
IOW, anecdotal evidence of a broader casting couch.
FD4280
5mo ago
Chess. Vanilla if everyone’s skills are comparable, duck chess for the novelty if there is a big skill gap.
FD4280
6mo ago
Probably the absence of low-flow design downstream of environmental regulations.
FD4280
6mo ago
Romance of the College Instructor: Fifty Shades of Grades. See things that the human mind was not meant to see: sin(x)/x = sin. Or 1 (without a limit as x->0). Repeat ad infinitum. Eventually become a cultist of Cthulhu.
FD4280
6mo ago
You could get several thousand refugees settled in your neck of the woods.
FD4280
6mo ago
I agree, though my absolute favorite scene so far involved Nicomedes questioning why ‘mentula’ and ‘cunnus’ are misgendered in Latin. (I had the exact same question about half a book before this, and just howled when it came up in the story).
FD4280
6mo ago
Book 5 of McCullough’s Rome series. Still lots of fun, though I am a bit bummed about Caesar’s first five years in Gaul getting skipped over. (Ditto for Sulla’s campaign against Mithridates between books 2 and 3). I guess it’s time to pick up Caesar’s own account thereof.
FD4280
6mo ago
Only if they bring back Sexual Harassment Pander, err Panda, and make Token a straight white guy.
FD4280
6mo ago
How well do communication skills transfer across languages? I have always been impressed with Ilforte’s writing, and a few days ago, saw Anatoly Vorobey (whose Russian blog I follow - I suspect Hebrew is his strongest language, but I cannot read it) post in very precise and clear English here.
(I would not be surprised if there are many other such posters here, but I can’t read their native languages. I’m not a very effective communicator in either language, though writing verse is way easier in Russian).
FD4280
7mo ago
“esprit de corpse” is an excellent typo. Almost up there with “locust of control.”
Lesbos, obviously.
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