I’ll never not post this when people talk about Kirk this way: Freshly Remember’d: Kirk Drift

No, by our current understanding there is no length smaller than a Planck length, and any distance must therefore be divisible by an integer. That is, the length is made up of discrete quanta. Pi, or any other irrational number, is by definition not divisible by an integer, or it would be a ratio, making it rational. This has nothing to do with the accuracy or precision of our measures.

Plus, if you have two people with legit access, you can pretty easily figure out what’s going on and defeat it.

My only guess as to what this could mean is that since quantum mechanics is quantum, i.e. discrete, the universe therefore cannot be continuous as the reals are. But this is a category error. Just because you could never find an object that is, say, exactly pi meters long, does not mean that the definition of pi is threatened. There’s nothing infinite that we can observe, but infinity is still a useful concept. And it works both ways; just because quantum mechanics is our best model of the universe doesn’t mean the universe is therefore quantum. 150 years ago everyone believed the universe was like a big clockwork mechanism, perfectly deterministic, because Newtonian physics are deterministic. And who knows, maybe they were right, and we just don’t have the framework to understand it so we have a nondeterministic approximation!

So because quantum mechanics is well modeled by imaginary numbers, the existence of quantum particles threatens the definition of irrational numbers? That doesn’t make any sense.

No thanks I’ll stick with privacy preserving digital adblocking

Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool

A billionaire who is 61 is very likely to outlive 75, even if they’re fat.

They would say anything they think helps them get power.

Caption for the visually disabled: A pair of kids arguing, with a woman saying: “now, kids / if ya cant say / somethin that reinforces my paper thin understanding of the world around me / then dont say anything at all” over US patrotic imagery

I legit hope that happened. She should get to keep at least some of that money.

Not all heroes wear capes

In March, the former president won enough primary races to secure the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election.

However, according to a survey of 1,003 Americans by Canadian polling firm Leger, Trump does not command the full support of his base and 33 percent of this demographic would have preferred another politician.

Another way of writing that 33 percent prefer another politician is that 67 percent prefer Trump. Last I checked, 67 percent support is enough to secure the Republican nomination.

Meanwhile, this proportion is higher (47 percent) among Republican voters aged 18 to 34 years old.

Again, another way of writing this is that 53 percent of Republican voters aged 18 to 34 years old support Trump. I’ll double check my arithmetic, but even this seems to be enough to win primaries.

With a title like “One in three Republicans now think Donald Trump was wrong candidate choice,” I would expect to see a poll which showed that fewer than “One in three Republicans” used to “think Donald Trump was wrong candidate choice.” That seems like a straightforward way to make the point this article is trying to make. Yet none is provided. Instead we are treated to some general electorate polling showing some minor fluctuation and some republicans who were already critical of Trump continuing to be critical of Trump.

The centrist will to make the Republicans look better than they are is so powerful.

Well obviously presidential felony convictions aren’t. But election fraud? Sure, republicans have been claiming that to some degree or other for a long time. See for example the false claims that Trump would have won the popular vote if it weren’t for undocumented immigrants voting en masse.

In any case, the specific claim I was making was that calls for civil war on social media are routine. Maybe they’re more serious this time! But maybe look for concrete plans rather than vague threats.

One thing to note is that Republicans have been talking like this for years. Minion Death Cult (tagline “The World Is Ending. Your Uncle’s Facebook Feed Is Responsible. We’re Documenting it.”) have coined “Minion’s Law”, which is that right-wing comments on a news story will have at least one person calling for civil war.

Does this mean we are at zero risk for a second civil war? Of course not. But finding people online calling for civil war isn’t sufficient cause to be worried; there needs to be at least some evidence of mobilization, as there was leading up to January 6th (for instance).

“Tankies” tend to use the term liberal in the classical sense, which lumps conservatives in with progressives.

Why is this news?

They’re just a Russian asset bot who wants Trump to win.

My man did both though

It could actually be both; the equity group bought it, sold the land to itself (a subsidiary), used rent to extract money from the business as it was going down. Then they sold the business to a Thai company that sourced their shrimp, with Red Lobster buying at a loss. Once the financials got too bad, they had Red Lobster file chapter 11 so its debts were written off, but the equity group & Thai company get to hold on to the money they got through the process. I can’t verify this is exactly what happened, though, take what I’m saying with a grain of salt.