Category: Uncategorized
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The best empires 500 BCE – Present, according to me
I was inspired by all the previous whiteboard takeovers to create my own, with a historical twist. This is my version of the list. Inkhaven’s edited version, and my comments, will be tomorrow.
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Review: Surreal Numbers
This is a review of two things: the mathematical system of surreal numbers, and Surreal Numbers by Donald Knuth, a book which describes them. Surreal Numbers is a strange book. You could describe it as a hybrid of a novella and a textbook, but its goal is pretty different than either of those. The plot,…
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The dying idealism of Peacecore
When I was writing my Olympics post, I noticed a particular strain of Utopianism present among the founders of the modern Olympic movement, especially Pierre de Coubertin. I decided to team up with a fellow Inkhaven resident, Mahmoud, to explore deeper. We identified this Utopian aesthetic and philosophy – typified by the UN, the Olympics,…
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A deep dive into the Earth
Earth has layers. This is something kids get taught in science class, and it’s true. The Earth has a solid metal inner core, a liquid metal outer core, a semi-solid rocky mantle, and an approximately-solid rocky crust. But like a lot of science class, this picture is highly simplified.
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Fiction: A leap of logic
The cell is spotless, as always. I watch the fluorescent light flicker on as the cloying, synthetic voice makes its usual morning announcement over the loudspeaker. I ignore it – anyone would know it by heart, by now. It’s all lies anyway. I roll out of bed and zip on my orange jumpsuit. 84 seconds…
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Designing a Mechanical Calculator
Nearly two years ago, I decided to 3D print a mechanical calculator. This project is extremely in character for me. I love old technology, and especially mixing old and new technology (like sending digital data via ham radio). When you want to 3D print something, there are different levels of how sane you can be.…
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Genghis Khan Day
Today is Genghis Khan day in Mongolia. Mongolia has an annual national holiday celebrating Genghis Khan. I am not the first non-Mongolian person on the internet to notice this. The History YouTube channel Premodernist made a video to commemorate the day in 2022, and a follow up video diving deeper into the topic. I want…
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Judging 4D shapes
In my previous post, I decided to be judgmental about various 2D and 3D geometric shapes. This post, we’re extending this to 4D geometric shapes. As before, we are judging these shapes emotionally, aesthetically, and morally. But, how can you judge a 4D shape if you can’t make one in our universe of 3 spatial…
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Being judgmental about geometric shapes
I love geometric shapes. There are shapes you learn about in kindergarten (square, circle, triangle), but there are way more shapes out there. You have Klein bottles and tesseracts and truncated icosidoedecahedra – oh my! Recently I was rereading my college thesis on geometry, and I thought that it sounded really judgmental of certain shapes.…
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Universities are Venture Capital for Prestige
Collisteru (another Inkhaven resident) recently published a post on admissions to elite schools. His main argument is that good students who are not absolutely exceptional need to avoid “wasting time, energy, and mental effort on schools that don’t care about them.” Collisteru shared a draft of the post with me for feedback, which I was…