2025-01-30

[bg] Още мъничко по половият въпрос

Много е казано и изписано за това кой от какъв пол се усеща.
Мисля обаче, че може съвсем кратко да се каже кое е същественото относно усещането.

Първо, как и колко боли, когато те ритнат между краката.
Всички ги боли, но по различен начин.

Второ, жените си знаят как се усещат веднъж месечно и какво им е.

А важни качества като душевна твърдост и издържливост и сила на волята са съвсем независими от наличието на хромозоми XX или XY.
Има изобилие от примери, които доказват това, както положителни, така и отрицателни.

2025-01-26

[bg;EN] Малко политическа терминология *** A Tad of Political Terminology

Олигархия е управление на малцина.
Управление на богати е плутокрация.

Каноничен пример за плутократ е Джон Д. Рокфелер, собственикът на Стандард Ойл.
Биографията му е много поучителна, включително последните му години.
(Доколко ли ги познават някои от сегашните плутократи¿)

П.П. Фактическата употреба на всяка от тези две думи, олигархия и плутокрация, често подразбира голяма част от значението и на другата.
После, трудно би било да си представим плутокрация, която не е олигархия, защото достатъчно богатите са малко на брой.
(Обратното може, например болшевиките са били малко на брой и не са били богати.)
_________
Поговорка:
Който плаща, поръчва музиката.
_________
Плутон, бог на подземният свят, е наречен така явно поради това, че богатствата от полезни изкопаеми са в неговото царство.

***

Oligarchy is rule by the few.
Rule by the wealthy is plutocracy.

A canonical example of a plutocrat is John D. Rockefeller, the owner of Standard Oil.
His biography is very instructive, including his final years.
(To what extent do some of today's plutocrats know them¿)

P.S. Actual usage of each of these two words, oligarchy and plutocracy, often implies a large part of the meaning of the other one.
Furthermore, it would be hard to imagine a plutocracy that isn't an oligarchy, because those who are sufficiently wealthy are few.
(The opposite is possible: for example, the Bolsheviks were few in number and weren't wealthy.)
_________
A proverb:
Those who pay the orchestra are the ones who order the music.
_________
Pluto (Plouton), god of the underworld, is apparently so named for his domain being the location of mineral wealth.

2025-01-23

[EN] AI Winter II?

If another AI winter comes soon, it will be colder than the previous one.

Naturally, predicting an AI winter is non-trivial, but some signs seem to be present.

While today's LLMs have not exhausted their usefulness, their capabilities are limited and no further significant advance is visible yet (maybe one exists as a very well kept secret, but that is hard to believe, because such secrets are big and their numerous parts tend to become known).
Previous such advances have taken many years to materialize.

Besides, it is not a good sign that current AI technology requires so much brute force.
For example, the power consumption of a typical data center running AI is on the order of 100 MW (100,000,000 watts, while the power consumption of the human mind is on the order of 20 watts).

However, there are great expectations now, both by politicians and the general public.

And there is an abundance of hype.

2025-01-21

[EN] First Time, Tragedy; Second Time, Farce?

Photograph: John Heartfield, 1932.

So, Karl, is it a farce this time around?
The millions are there now, in both senses...

Of course, Donald is no Vladimir, no Benito, no Joseph, and no Adolf.

_________
Adolf's own words in two speeches:

On 1931-11-13, "heute, mit 42 Jahren stehen Millionen hinter mir" ("today, at the age of 42, millions stand behind me").

On 1932-05-25, "13 Millionen Menschen hinter mir stehen" ("13 million people stand behind me"), referring to election results from 1932-04-10.

_________
References
Photograph:
About the quotes:

2025-01-20

[bg/ru;EN] Повеля не само от приказките *** A Command Not Only from the Fairy Tales

В някои приказки повеляват на героят:
Отиди там — не знам къде.
Намери това — не знам кое.
И в софтуерното инженерство понякога е така...

Да не говорим, че последното е и като в огледалният свят, където трябва много да тичаш, за да се задържиш на едно място...
_________
«Пойди туда — не знаю куда.
Найди то — не знаю что.»

***

In some fairy tales the hero is given a command:
"Go there—I don't know where.
Find that—I don't know what."
It is sometimes the same in software engineering...

Not to mention that the latter is also like the looking-glass world, where you have to run a lot to keep in the same place...

2025-01-19

[EN] Two "Numerical" Adages

"A double blessing is a double grace."
(William S.)
So:
A float blessing is a float grace.
(William K., in the domain of)

_________
Notes.

K., Kahan.

Float, short for floating point, is an important and much used representation of fractional numbers in computers.
Double, short for double precision, is a specific case of this representation used to reduce approximation errors in calculations.
William Kahan is a very prominent expert in the field of numerical analysis and calculations with computers in general.

Leaving as an exercise the well-known rule of the card game of bridge, "a redouble doubles the doubled value".

2025-01-18

[EN] Heavenly Bodies by IAU's Book, or Pluto Is No Planet

Diagram via Facebook group At the Controls.

How astronomers see what they observe.

_________
(Mutating Arthur Conan Doyle's "You see, Watson, but you do not observe." while switching the meaning of "see".)

2025-01-17

[EN] (Not) Calling an Excavation Instrument an Excavation Instrument

In today's news, "experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly" is simply an euphemism for "broke up into pieces and failed".
Sapir-Whorf territory, rather than rocket science.
_________
This was prompted by today's test of a rocket made by the cosmic flavor of the antepenultimate letter of the alphabet.

2025-01-05

[EN] The Importance of Being... Precise

What do some people take?
The path of least resistance.
The path of least immediate resistance.
The path of least immediate perceived resistance.
_________
Yes, Oscar Wilde was precise.
He had other good qualities, too.

2025-01-03

[EN] Slicing and Dicing the Whole 2025 Yards

Picture source: Facebook
Furthermore, it is now Anno Mundi 7533 by the Byzantine calendar and the factorization of this number is 3×3×3×3×3×31.
The new Anno Mundi 7534 will begin on September 1 and that number has just two prime factors, 2×3767.

[EN] A Curio about the Digits of Pi

;;;; pi-digits.cl -*- mode: lisp; -*- ;;; Illustrate a curio about the first 40 (decimal) digits of π. ;;; Time-stamp: <2025-07-22 16:52...