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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I had good luck with these at my wedding. Instead of disposable cameras, I put cheap digital cameras. It didn’t take long for guests to realise that the pictures were appearing on a large tv, in a sideshow. People got a lot more creative when they realised they would be seen quickly, not weeks later.

    I managed to get them working without proprietary software, too. The onboard script logged into WiFi and uploaded the photos over ftp.

    Given their size and the level of tech at the time, it was pretty impressive.


  • The difference is about 0.5%. A mass weighing 100kg at the north pole would only weigh 99.5kg at the equator. Most of the difference is the centerfugal force of the earth’s rotation.

    I’ve not checked the numbers, but apparently it’s detectable in Olympic sports. More height records get broken at equatorial latitudes that higher ones.


  • Ultimately, physics follows the maths, everything else is interpretation to comprehend what the maths is telling us.

    In relativity, gravity is a smooth, continuous distortion of spacetime. In QM, gravity is just another force, mediated by the graviton. Both theories are consistent with the known maths. The fact that they don’t agree shows the large hole we have in the maths.

    In short, we don’t know what gravity is. Then again, we don’t know what most things are, once we did deep enough. We just have maths, with interpretations that let our monkey brains make sense of them.

    My favourite example ample of this is the “dark sucker theory”. Envision a universe where light producing objects don’t produce light, but suck up dark. We can make the model work for our universe. The reason we don’t use it is due to it being harder to work with than the light emitter model. Another one is the rabit hole of what relativity says about the existence of light (hint light doesn’t exist, from light’s point of view).


  • The forces, to be a useful modelling tool, need a medium to interact with matter. E.g. an equivalent of charge would always be zero, if matter didn’t have the ability to have charge. At that point, it effectively doesn’t exist.

    Interestingly, the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces are also aspects of the same force. They unify at high enough energy levels. They only appear different. The exception is gravity. It doesn’t fit the mould. Basically we don’t currently have 4 forces, but only 2. Scientists suspect it’s actually only 1, but can’t yet unify gravity into a theory of everything via a theory of quantum gravity.





  • I personally support this plan. Smoking in the UK has already plummeted. A lot of smokers have moved to vaping. Unfortunately, those left are often the ruder ones. Limiting where they cam smoke, or reduce expire for everyone else is a big dead for me.

    Additionally, it’s not banning nicotine, it’s banning cigarettes. Vapes have changes the balance on that one. They are less damaging, and cause far less issues with passive smoking. This acts as a pressure relief valve, rather than a blanket nicotine ban. Also, at no point will an existing (legal) smoker go from legal to illegal.

    The vape issue definitely needs fixing. A number have found advertising to younger users is a good money maker. Limiting the options here l, without an outright ban would help reduce the harm to children. It wouldn’t significantly affect ex smokers who moved to vaping.








  • That requires the symptoms to be entered correctly, and significant effort from (already overworked) doctors. A fuzzy logic system that can process standard medical notes, as well as medical research papers would be far more useful.

    Basically, a quick click, and the paperwork is scanned. If it’s a match for the “bongo dancing virus” or something else obscure, it can flag it up. The doctor can now invest some effort into looking up “bongo dancing virus” to see if it’s a viable match.

    It could also do it’s own pattern matching. E.g. if a particular set of symptoms is often followed 18-24 hours later by a sudden cardiac arrest. Flagging this up could be completely false. However, it could key doctors in on something more serious happening, before it gets critical.

    An 80% false positive is still quite useful, so long as the 20% helps and the rest is easy for a human to filter.


  • Ironically, that is possibly one of the few legit uses.

    Doctors can’t learn about every obscure condition and illness. This means they can miss the symptoms of them for a long time. An AI that can check for potential matches to the symptoms involved could be extremely useful.

    The provisio is that it is NOT a replacement for a doctor. It’s a supplement that they can be trained to make efficient use of.


  • My minion is still too young for that. I plan to wind them up mercilessly however. Right now, dad jokes are the height of humour to them.

    • “I’m hungry”
    • “Hi hungry, I’m dad!”
    • “Nooooooo, I’m not called hungry!”
    • “So why did you tell me your name was hungry?”

    I’ll be a little sad when it finally gets old.


  • I know a few teachers, the “cringy and bad” is the goal, not a mistake. It’s apparently quite therapeutic watching the “cool kids” squirm. How bad can you make them, but not make it obvious what you’re doing?

    The fact that it also helps a lot of kids remember it is almost just a bonus.