Today I Learned

[Swamp Thing]

This confuses the reader... because of emotional connotations

This reminds me of an online test I once saw where you have to click on the screen in response to a color. But often, e.g. the word "green" will appear in red, just to make it really hard.

That suggests the idea of writing a manual where danger warnings and minor footnotes are color coded green and red, and are called blue items and black items respectively.

 

[fresh_42]

This reminds me of an online test I once saw where you have to click on the screen in response to a color. But often, e.g. the word "green" will appear in red, just to make it really hard.

That suggests the idea of writing a manual where warnings and notifications are color coded green and red, and are called blue items and black items respectively.

It reminds me on a discussion about the meaning of indices. I strongly defend that a matrix should be noted $(a_{ij})$ and not $(a_{ji})$, although this is technically equivalent. But $(a_{ji})$ is the transpose and any other use is only mean.

 

[fresh_42]

3D printed at Leiden. Cool!
(https://www.pcgamer.com/micro-3d-printed-starship-voyager/)

 

[epenguin]

Because it's not English. He was French.

But I think the origin of the name is not French, or not French French really, it's Savoyard or Piedmontese or something like that.

 

[fresh_42]

But I think the origin of the name is not French, or not French French really, it's Savoyard or Piedmontese or something like that.

Broglie [ˈbrɔj] is the name of a family from Piedmont (NW Italy), naturalized in France since 1656 (originally Broglio or Broglia), ...

 

[Swamp Thing]

originally Broglio or Broglia...

Nice to know he was one of The Family.

 

[Demystifier]

Today I learned that I am not allowed to share this video on facebook because other people on Facebook have reported it as abusive!

 

[strangerep]

Today I learned that I am not allowed to share this video on facebook because other people on Facebook have reported it as abusive!

"Abusive"? Or just (allegedly) violating copyright?

I doubt either of us could "de-mystify" that.

There's been some weird stuff happening on Facebook regarding automatic censoring of content. On a chess channel I watch, the presenter had one discussion censored because (in discussion about a particular game) he said something like "...here, white is better than black...". The Facebook algorithms had no clue that he was talking about chess, not race politics (sigh).

I wonder how long it will take for automated political correctness to ban chess completely.

(Aside: I also wonder whether one could bring Facebook down by designing a distributed bot that would select random posts and report them as offensive, i.e., generate complaints seeming to come from all over the world.)

 

[Keith_McClary]

(Aside: I wonder if one could bring Facebook down by designing a distributed bot that would select random posts and report them as offensive, i.e., generate complaints seeming to come from all over the world.)

I've heard that on youtube anyone can claim to be a copyright holder (with no repercussion if they lie) and take down someone elses video.

 

[mfb]

I wonder how long it will take for automated political correctness to ban chess completely.

Black makes the first move half of the time?
We'll also need Asian figures?

 

[strangerep]

Black makes the first move half of the time?
We'll also need Asian figures?

Heck, on many chess sets white is not actually white, but rather cream or beige. And black is not black but dark brown, or even dark red.

Just shoot me now.

 

[fresh_42]

I wonder how long it will take for automated political correctness to ban chess completely.

... or people start to select matches they want to commentate whether the last line reads 0-1.

 

[epenguin]

We'll also need Asian figures?

They have been around a long time. Very long and quite common in fact. As you would expect considering where the game came from. My very first game was with an ivory set clearly Chinese which I still have, bought by my father in Aden sometime about 1934.

There used to to be several patterns, one was called the 'French', another 'English'. However there were all sorts of other fantasies. I found them fascinating and I used aged 16 or so to wish I could afford to buy examples. It passed but I did later buy a 'Waterloo' lead soldiers set, with Napoleon and Wellington as Kings, etc., but it was stolen.

When in the nineteenth century chess became formalised with players with world reputations who met each other in matches with a following (before the nineteenth century I think there were chess books, e.g. by one Philidor* but few recorded games) then there was a need for standardisation, of the rules and the peices, and the standard 'Staunton' pattern was settled on and later specified by the official international rulebook. Staunton was the leading player of the 1840's, and a prime mover in starting institutionalised championships. Today I learned he was not the designer of the standard familiar pieces named after him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staunton_chess_set
Despite a fascination of other patterns I think at the end of the day the Staunton has a kind of perfection. Somehow, especially with nice polished wood, harmonious, balanced, relaxing, not distracting from the actual game, which is in the head. I think if you want an illustration of what the word 'hieractic' means, they are it.

* He is remembered for a particular checkmate called 'Philidor's legacy' which I have occasionally been able to bring off by a knight against a smothered King, usually involving a Queen sacrifice.

 

[fresh_42]

We'll also need Asian figures?

I remember, once in Florence, I saw an awesome wooden chess board. The figures were about 8-10 cm high, presumably hand made and not for sale. One set of figures were Indians with tipis as pawns and the other were the US cavalry, with forts as rooks and so on. It was absolutely beautiful. I guess that would have been highly non pc in the states.

 

[Tom.G]

Today I learned that I am not allowed to share this video on facebook because other people on Facebook have reported it as abusive!

Interesting. Clicking on it, I get a " ! Video unavailable" messsage. If I copy and past the URL it plays fine on youtube, BUT the "Autoplay" button is missing!

Too bad the echo was turned up so high that I couldn't understand much of the lyrics.

 

[Demystifier]

Or just (allegedly) violating copyright?

If it was violating copyright, youtube would remove the video entirely.

Anyway, the video/audio is beautiful on so many levels ...

 

[Demystifier]

I wonder how long it will take for automated political correctness to ban chess completely.

 

[Keith_McClary]

"Video unavailable" ... plays fine on youtube

There are numerous questions about this or similar issues.

 

[BillTre]

TIL that you can get a waterproof endoscope that plugs into your cell phone for under $12!
See here.

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that you can get a waterproof endoscope that plugs into your cell phone for under $12!
See here.

No, I do not want to imagine what it is intended for ...

 

[BillTre]

No, I do not want to imagine what it is intended for ...

It can be used on car engines too.

 

[fresh_42]

It can be used on car engines too.

Did you recently look under the hood of a modern car? The times when you could repair a v-belt with a pair of nylons are long gone.

 

[BillTre]

Last car I worked on had a carburetor.

 

[berkeman]

TIL that you can get a waterproof endoscope that plugs into your cell phone for under $12!
See here.

Nice! I'm going to see if Amazon has them as well...

 

[BillTre]

I recently got my daughter (a budding field biologist) a wireless microscope take connect with her phone.
It was something like $30 or $40.
Very handy in the field.
Others in her lab group decided to get similar things also.

Another thought I had for the endoscope was looking into animal burrows.
Maybe getting a snake to bite one.

 

[waternohitter]

I recently got my daughter (a budding field biologist) a wireless microscope take connect with her phone.
It was something like $30 or $40.
Very handy in the field.
Others in her lab group decided to get similar things also.

Another thought I had for the endoscope was looking into animal burrows.
Maybe getting a snake to bite one.

Interesting! Where have you bought that thing? I think I need to buy one for me

 

[BillTre]

Interesting! Where have you bought that thing? I think I need to buy one for me

Amazon probably. I'm sure their on ebay too.

 

[WWGD]

I learned that to remove the n right-most (leftmost) characters in an Excel (Workbook) file, where data is stored in column C, we can use:

Edit: LEFT( C:C, LEN(C:C)-N)

For example, to remove the 6 right-most characters ( which is what I did) from column B in a workbook, we use:

LEFT( B:B, LEN(B:B)-6)

Sounds counterintuitive to use LEFT here, but I assume it means the last n characters starting left.

At any rate, I used it to remove units from a file in order to analyze the data; so that the workbook contained only numbers.

Also , learned the leftmost r' used in the pd.read_ function is used to escape the slashes in strings.

Hopefully also finally internalized, after so many years and mistakes, that the 4extension for my files is .xlsx and not .xlsx. Computers are "autistic" .

 

[mfb]

Is that really an "=", not a "-"?

"LEFT" takes the first x characters from the left, if you take LEN(...)-6 characters you get rid of the rightmost 6 characters.

 

[WWGD]

Is that really an "=", not a "-"?

"LEFT" takes the first x characters from the left, if you take LEN(...)-6 characters you get rid of the rightmost 6 characters.

Ah, yes, it is a - , not an =. Let me edit.