What mindset? That people should follow the law?

If I setup a picnic table on the sidewalk but it’s too long and blocks 3/4ths of a lane of traffic, how seriously do you think people would take it?

Do you think someone might yell at me? Call the cops? They can just drive around, or take a different route. No problem, right?

If you’re not sure, put it in a savings or stable short term investment account , like a money market account or a short term CD account. That way the money is doing something while you make sure you’re doing what you want, there’s no real risk, and you can pull the money out whenever you want. You might lose some interest if you pull out of the CD early.

You mentioned wanting to learn the piano for love of it, rather than for professional reasons. If you’re looking at a school the semesters might line line up with a CDs investment cycle, which means you might be able to avoid loosing out on interest. A proper credit union will likely have an account specialist who can help you get things sequenced. They won’t give you financial advice, but they can help you get things timed and setup right.

It’s super important to do what you love. The point of money is, in part, to help you do what you love. Sometimes that’s by providing security, and sometimes by creating opportunity.

If it’s the love that’s driving you it might be worth it to look if you can audit then classes, or follow a different path that costs less money. You don’t get the degree but you might be able to get the same education.

I feel like that’s very similar to what I said, including the bit about being routine in most other regards.

People who spend a lot of time thinking are prone to having thoughts, and sometimes those thoughts are less common.
The more abstract the topic you’re working with, the more accustomed you’ll be to hearing things that don’t make sense at first.

Might just be me, but in general the more educated people I’ve met have been more likely to qualify as odd ducks, and the mathy folks tend towards the upper edge.

I had hoped I was making it very clear that it’s not a case that all mathematicians are weirdos or even difficult to talk to, because they’re not.
Thinking about complicated things all the time results in complicated conclusions, so you’ll end up talking to people with very detailed thoughts if you’re talking about work. Probably perfectly normal thoughts on cooking beyond a bias towards using their analytical ability where others might not.
My point was not that they’re all weird, but that the bar is higher because you deal with more people who have thought about something much more than you have.

My point with the paper wasn’t that it’s weird to have fun, or that the title was bad. It’s that it was complicated and an example of the field requiring you to deal with profoundly unfamiliar ideas and terminology, potentially quite regularly. To some people “that sounded like gibberish” is a sign you dismiss it. In this case, it means you need to do more research to catch up to the terminology.

The two that I was thinking of were erdos and diffie. I’ll concede to featuring some of the more notable characters because their stories are more fun.

The idea being described was a paraphrase of platonic realism and structuralism taken to an extreme to match simulation theory. If the universe is a simulation it means there is, “somewhere”, an equation or algorithm describing our physical reality. Needing that equation to be evaluated to give rise to our universe is an odd perspective since the existence of the equation would be sufficient. An equation describing the motion of a point in a circle doesn’t need to be evaluated to describe that, nor does it need to be written down.

It’s a notion that I thought fit well with my point of “agree or disagree, it’s not delusional, and it’s not obvious”

Oh, every single one of those is legal except paying anyone else, like UPS, to do it.

I don’t want them to do that one in specific because it gives them actual, as opposed to pretextual, justification to send postal marshals to raid and seize mail in ballots.
Sueing a secretary of state is fine, but an excuse to legally seize ballots would have immediate consequences on the election beyond what a lawsuit would.

While it’s not true that intelligence is correlated with mental problems, advanced mathematics tends to attract or create odd ducks.

There are multiple mathematicians in the modern era who are well regarded, technically homeless and just showed up at people’s houses to collaborate on some math. One, who coined the phrase “another roof, another proof”, was a staunch proponent of mixing amphetamines, coffee, and 70’s antidepressants.
People didn’t notice John Nash devolved into a deep schizophrenic break for a long time because it’s not weird for advanced mathematicians to be talking about very complex unintelligible ideas. Scary Wheels and Super Shrubs is an example of a good title and not-transparent description.

Another was the uni-bomber.

There’s plenty of perfectly well balanced mathematicians. You just can’t help but get some weird ideas when your life’s work is to think outside the box about very complicated things all the time.

If you go deep into math work, you’ll meet people who think the universe is a simulation. You’ll meet others who think that’s silly, because the universe is clearly actually an abstract embodiment of the platonic ideal of mathematics. 7, blue, and cat are all equally real or not real, and we don’t need a simulation as the equation defining structure is sufficient to give rise to what we experience, and requiring it to be written or executed is just an odd affectation.
You’ll just nod and concede the appeal because it’s not the first time someone has shared that idea with you.

So when the mathematicians start saying the ideas are getting odd, you know it’s not just “I don’t understand therefore it’s weird”.

They’re not time sensitive in the sense that the first class monopoly law means.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/39/320.6

The delivery window needs to be measured in hours for it to qualify.

As for the postmark requirement, that would entirely depend on the state. Usually the law is written in such a way that it’s dropbox, hand it to clerk, or received by postal service. The postmark requirement is because it’s usually not permitted to give the ballot to someone outside of your home, but the postal service is an exception because they’re part of the government. There’s no provision in the law for accepting the word of a parcel service for when they got a ballot.

States could change that but they’d run into the first class mail restriction.
The best bet would be to permit a “moving drop box” where a municipal clerk could bring the box to your house. Make it like an ice cream truck playing patriotic music.

If we look at the law, ballots don’t qualify as anything other than 1st class mail, which the USPS has a legal monopoly on.

It’s one of the handful of things that can actually get you in trouble with the postal marshals. They raided the credit reporting agencies at one point for sending credit reports via scheduled courier when they were neither time sensitive, heavy , expensive or short notice.

The airplane thing is a bit off. The requirements of a bomber haven’t changed in more than 50 years.
It’s not like the US doesn’t have the ability to use drones.
They’re different tools for different jobs. Drones are currently most useful for asymmetrical fighting. If you’re trying to blow up a piece of infrastructure a bomber is more efficient if you have the ability to field one.

It’s criticizing using a jackhammer when electric box cutters exist. There are places you wouldn’t use either if given the choice.

They’re plenty of places in the US working on m battery technology as well. Car companies keep working to make existing product lines more efficient, in no small part because the people in charge of the government just decided to make it harder for people to use different vehicles and get off gasoline.
Battery research isn’t just car companies.

A cultural sense of momentum around a state of affairs that’s lasted several generations is one thing, but it’s not like we’re all running around in the 1800s.

We don’t actually have much of a model for that type of disaster.
The biggest issue are civic services, and employment.

The area damaged by Katrina was roughly the size of the UK. This wasn’t all total detestation, but it was the area declared a disaster zone.
Now imagine your daily commute was from central London to Brighton if traveling by car, or Manchester if by train, with an average of the drive time to cockfosters or Greenwich. (I’m fully aware no one actually lives in central London , and traffic would be a big issue. I’m only going by the map software since I don’t have a sense for drive times in the UK) Now put about ~50% of the m25 loop underwater for two weeks. Deepest about 6 meters.
All the water infrastructure is gone, and there is no power or sewer, and no food. The nearest unaffected location is belfast, and most people are evacuating to Dublin or Glasgow.
It’s been a month and you have not been paid. You have been living off of charity, FEMA rations, and canned water from Budweiser (actually a really good charitable act they do: they have trucks and the ability to put enough liquid in cans and get them to a disaster area by the kiloton).
Greenwich is basically gone. Cockfosters still has two feet of water. Your employer is dead and the business will never reopen. They think they got most of the bodies out of the Thames but the authorities are still concerned about a cholera outbreak.
The government has phased out the emergency food and is now giving you vouchers you can use to buy food at stores. This will last another two months.
You have no healthcare. The military medic who gave you a once over and vaccine booster for tetanus and hepatitis is the first doctor appointment you’ve had in two years.
Your car is gone, and so is your home and everything you’re not carrying. Your insurance company is denying they owe you anything because your home was damaged by water before it was blown away. You might get resolution in ten years.

So how do you get food? Water? How do you get your trailer in to live in? How do you make money to pay your mortgage, taxes or for medical care and the aforementioned food?
You might not even be able to sell the land given that no one wants it. You will likely declare bankruptcy and give it to the bank.

I believe that’s basically the basis of the American size scheme. It’s just the size of the paper the paper maker would give you. Records seem to indicate it was based on the sizes of paper used for bookmaking, where a standard sheet would be folded once, twice, or three times to make book page inserts.

Some plastics will melt even on the top rack. Some older plastics will actively breakdown and release junk in the dishwasher.

Some metal corrodes quickly with hot water, soap, and hot air. It also offends your ancestral spirits.

On the plus side, it’s pretty straightforward that it can either be cleaned in the dishwasher or in the oven.

Yup. Where it gets fuzzy is with this type of AI being integrated into a search engine.

I honestly feel like if Google had waited, made their solution a good interface for searching as opposed to something which tells you answers and then finds references as best it can that it would have been a lot better. “We trained our model on the same data that our search engine looks at” is a lot more palatable than where things are now.

The tedious part of research for me is figuring out the keywords I need to get to meaningful information.
Something that can say “what you described is called ‘ball and socket modular hose’, here are some good starting points:” would actually be useful. (I just went through that rigamarole trying to find those rigid little flexible water or air nozzles that can snap together, so it’s fresh in my mind)

Shame. I thought the Hudson Bay and Chilean aspect ratio bit was pretty good.

Your comment had six words, and none of the significant ones seemed particularly related to the comment you referenced. You’ll have to forgive people if they can’t sus out you meaning from six words.

Is it that you think Canada and Chile do live a more authentic human experience? Ooh, as a twist do you think they do manage to be poor, unsuccessful, and also morally worse than Americans?
That’d be an interesting twist compared to the asinine pedantry that hinges on being weird about one or two words im looking forward to.

So please, maybe make it a bakers dozen, and have some of the words actually reference the subject or object of your ire.

Or I’ll just take you literally. “Not fond of the province layout”, “Hudson Bay is hard to get to”, “bad aspect ratio”, and “entirely consisting of mountains makes a cohesive transportation network of any type really hard”. That’s what’s really wrong with Canada and Chile.

If we were to close our eyes and pretend that the conversation around AI hadn’t happened the way it did, and the training had only involved things people generally agreed were fair game, one could imagine a world where we largely used them as “that person who can tell you what to search for” or clarifies your understanding.

It’s not intelligent in the way anyone means, but it’s theoretically capable of being a better interface for a search engine.

Edit: it’s whole thing is language manipulation. I forgot that I’ve written technical documents and had it summarize or explain them back to me. Anything it gets wrong is something I can bet a lazy or rushed human would also get caught by, so I clarify that point. Not proofreading, since I’m not asking for feedback. Just “did the words convey the information well enough for a statistical model to properly contextualize”.

Oh, I see. You think it’s ambiguous when people call the only country with America in its name, that people frequently call America, America.

Do you likewise think it was a good idea to rename the gulf? It is, after all, much more the gulf of America than the Gulf of Mexico, right?
Although, considering it’s mostly bordered by the United States of America, and the United Mexican States I suppose it would also make sense to call it the Gulf of the United States.

Or you could just recognize that it’s normal to shorten a name to the most distinctive word if the name is long.

Mostly no, but the mostly is because most vegetables aren’t as high in protein. If you eat protein rich vegetables the effect holds.
Some starches and fiber also have the effect, since metabolism is complicated. I believe potato is quite high on the satiety index, as are apples.

Basically it’s that your body just absorbs sugar and doesn’t spend time on it, so it doesn’t satisfy you. Carbs are pretty quick, but depending on the fiber content it can more than make up for it. Your body cherishes fat so it tries to get you to drink it. Protein is useful calories that take a lot of work to rip up, and they occupy space.

An apple and a bowl of lentil curry will fill you up.

Nah, you just need art direction. Show someone waiting for the test. They look anxious. Show their stereotyped hourglass timer finish counting, they pick up the test, read the unshown result, close their eyes and give a “not anxious anymore” smile while they take a deep breath, the camera panning up and over towards a sunny window just as their reaction expression hints at showing.

You’re not selling pregnant or not pregnant. You’re selling not worrying or knowing. So you don’t need to convey the emotion of the result, just the emotion of “no longer anxious to find out”.

If they have a drink or a multivitamin afterwards is aside from what you’re selling.

It’s cataloging differences. The EU number is by outcome, and the US is by how the report started.

The US is saying there were 400k times someone was concerned about not knowing where a kid was for any reason. For the same “stereotyped kidnapping” category the US is roughly the same, with 50-400 per year depending on how you count them.

More than ideal but not a public policy crisis.