AbouBenAdhem

Obligatory Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

My understanding of quantum algorithms is that they set up parallel computations in such a way that incorrect solutions cancel out and correct ones reinforce each other. They indicate the existence of multiple universes to the same extent that the double slit experiment does.

All information was passed down orally by people specially-trained to serve as “oral repositories”—in various cultures they were called bards, makars, aoidos, and various other terms. Important information was often set in verse to aid memorization.

There was a transitional period when writing and printing were used, and an even briefer period when these were supplemented by encyclopedias on CD-ROM before the birth of Wikipedia.

There are lots of kinds of “leftisms” with lots of different attitudes toward landlords—but to take Georgism as a concrete example that exclusively focuses on land ownership:

Georgists would say that the portion of the rent equal to the market rent of the unimproved lot—including the value generated by the presence of the surrounding community and infrastructure—should go back to the community rather than the landlord, but the portion of the rent contributed solely by the presence of buildings and other improvements should go to the owner of the improvements.

My uncle fell for this scam and bought some “prime agricultural land” in the middle of a flood plain—he had to come up with this whole technique he calls “geometry” just to find it again each spring.

If it’s a public forum and a topic of general interest, I bear in mind that every commenter likely represents a number of lurkers and later readers with a similar point of view—and those others deserve a decent response, even if the commenter currently expressing their viewpoint doesn’t.

In the British Empire, ancient Egyptian cat mummies were sold as fertilizer.

I met some gibbons once—they were suspiciously lacking in social skills.

Iain M. Banks’s Culture series—the prototypical example of “fully-automated luxury gay space communism”.

So if I have a net loss for the year, I’ll get paid to commit crimes?

To paraphrase Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: the better you know a property, the more ignorant you must be of its conjugate property.

I heard he was wearing a ~~white and gold~~ blue and black coat.