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From Rest of What I Know
- 00:17, 15 November 2024 Blog/2024-11-14/GM Plants (hist | edit) [2,426 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "[[File:{{#setmainimage:USDA Chart of Indian Cotton Production (1990-2015).png}}|thumb|India got Bt Cotton in 2002]]One of the things that amazed me when I moved to America is the anti-GMO movement here. I was born in 1988 so I was about 14 years old when Bt Cotton was introduced to India. About this time I was obsessed with reading the news (I'd finish the newspaper every day in the morning) and the back page of one of the supplements to The Hindu...")
- 22:34, 13 November 2024 Pregnancy (hist | edit) [14,501 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Initial post)
- 19:56, 13 November 2024 Purity Is Sin (hist | edit) [1,147 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Reality has fractal complexity, descending into depths as ones tools to inspect it increase in resolution. Models are facsimiles of reality that are useful to predict or describe this complexity. Their usefulness therefore comes from their simplicity. But necessarily, this means that they elide the minor harmonics. This, in turn, means that strict adherence to the model is pointless since you only use the model to attempt to run a simulation further...")
- 18:23, 13 November 2024 Observation Dharma (hist | edit) [935 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Observation Dharma is the idea of one's purpose being to act as a lens and recorder into existence through experiencing it. Even failure at one's proximate objectives meet observation dharma, though ideally such failures are visible for intelligent beings to search the universe. At least one kind of participant in Multicellular Mankind has observation dharma explicitly: explorers. But all actions that one can take could be this since all actions explore the spac...")
- 03:42, 11 November 2024 Blog/2024-11-10/A Stranger In The Night (hist | edit) [3,872 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "We had quite a bit of fun this Saturday. We played an escape room at the Palace of Fine Arts, stuffed ourselves on a pizza tasting menu at Tony's, and then played some board games. thumb|The Caltrain station, mostly normal, and the scene of the night's unexpected entertainment == The Attraction == [https://palace-games.com/the-attraction/ The Attraction] is one of the escape rooms at the Palace Games in the...")
- 18:29, 8 November 2024 Blog/2024-11-08/Brown M&Ms (hist | edit) [8,516 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Van Halen famously had a rider in their 53-page contract that said: {{Blockquote | quote=M&Ms (Warning: Absolutely no brown ones) | source=Van Halen event rider<ref name="mm-truth"> {{Cite web |url=https://www.metaltalk.net/chris-dale-myth-busting-the-van-halen-brown-mm-story.php |title=Myth-busting the Van Halen M&M story |last=Dale |first=Chris |date=Oct 1, 2020 |website=Metal Talk |access-date=Nov 8, 2024 }} </ref> }} The idea, supposedly, is that adherence...")
- 20:22, 4 November 2024 Multigenerational Optimization (hist | edit) [1,437 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Multigenerational Optimization is the idea of aiming for success in your family ''across'' generations. It is in contrast to the idea of being the solo protagonist, a view that is commonly espoused today: {{Quote box | quote = I can relate. 41F, PhD, academic, breadwinner. Great with kids but opted out cuz I want to remain protagonist of my own life. The logic in your post sounds a lot like mine. | author = Eldiadia | source = /r/fireuk<ref name="reddit_source">[...")
- 19:44, 4 November 2024 Blog/2024-11-04/Victory in Death (hist | edit) [1,440 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "I'm a near-religious believer in Multicellular Mankind. Looking back at my childhood, I think this was (and is) more innate or early axiomatic than it is a reasoned position. Like many children I once believed that ghosts or other such beings inhabited the dark. And I've definitely hit the lights and jumped into bed to dodge them (the bed being safe, especially under the covers, of course). The part that relates to this, though, is that at some point I'd decided tha...")
- 06:09, 4 November 2024 Mac OS Troubleshooting (hist | edit) [914 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "I use MacOS primarily to develop and do things on (though my desktops are Linux/Windows dual boots). Because of the way I use MacOS sometimes I end up with things that don't happen to many other people. == USB Accessory Popup Disappears == File:Screenshot MacOS Allow USB Accessory to Connect.png|thumb|center|alt=A screenshot of the USB Accessory "Allow to Connect" box from MacOS.|This thing will sometimes pop up and immediately disappear. That's because of multiple u...")
- 05:15, 4 November 2024 Nexgrill 720-1012 3 Burner Gas Grill (hist | edit) [1,334 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|The order status page is kingI have one of these since it was small enough to fit on our apartment fire escape at one of our old places and comfortably fits on our balcony now. Eventually I had to replace the grates and it wasn't obvious what to do since Home Depot no longer lists the product. Fortunately, they do list it in some places. If you've ordered through Home Depot, you can still check your order st...")
- 00:52, 4 November 2024 Blog/2024-11-03/Unconvincing Threats (hist | edit) [3,992 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "A common threat email I receive these days purports to claim that it has secret videos of me watching things I shouldn't be watching: porn. Here's the exact text I've gotten from the spammer. It's obviously bullshit, but just in case it isn't clear to anyone else who Googles the text and wants information: I have ignored these requests for months now with nothing having happened. {{Blockquote |text=Roshan George, '''I know that calling $phone_number or visiting $insert...")
- 00:45, 4 November 2024 TP-Link Kasa Smart Switches (hist | edit) [1,338 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "I have the TP-Link Kasa HS103 Smart Switches and they're inexpensive ways of making many things turn on when one button is pressed or when you want to verbally have things come on in the home. We've got a rental, so modifications aren't too easy so we use this stuff to make it more convenient. == Unable to Connect to Device WiFi == When I first set up the device, I couldn't get my iPhone to connect to the WiFi network the smart switch starts after being turned on. But...")
- 18:34, 29 October 2024 Jamboard (hist | edit) [2,608 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|The stand is surprisingly stable for how close the legs are. We had an old Jamboard from the Twitter liquidation. You can get them for about $300 a pop these days because Google has EOL'd them and they're kind of useless. They do work as TVs but the default stand is awful for this since it takes a lot of space, and the software on the thing isn't very good for this. == Stand == We bought [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ7X2W4B?...")
- 20:09, 28 October 2024 High Engagement Bullshit Techniques (hist | edit) [2,052 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "On social media websites like Twitter, people practice high-engagement bullshittery in pursuit of virality. Some of these techniques are quite interesting. I usually block people when I encounter them, but sometimes I fall for them and try to reply before I realize what they're doing. == Specialization of General Categories == This is where someone takes a line that has a universal category reference and then specializes it to an e...")
- 19:49, 28 October 2024 Bookmarklets (hist | edit) [1,237 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Bookmarklets in general are a bit out of fashion, but they're still quite useful. I'll add ones I like here. == Convert a Tweet into Wikitext Template == <syntaxhighlight lang=js> javascript:void(function(){const e=document.querySelector('article[tabindex="-1"]');if(!e){console.log('No tweet found on this page');return}const t=e.querySelector('[data-testid="User-Name"]'),n=t.getElementsByTagName('span'),a=n[0]?.textContent||%27%27,r=t.querySelector(%27div[dir="ltr"]%27...")
- 01:14, 24 October 2024 Multicellular Mankind (hist | edit) [5,612 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Multicellular Mankind is the notion that individual human beings are like cells in the human body. Each acts locally with little or no conception of the whole. The whole itself is a being, viewed at various levels of organization: family, nation, religion, or ethnicity. {{Tweet | username = arjie | name = Roshan George | date = Oct 16, 2024 | text = Sure, in the same sense that eating sweet stuff feels good. Humanity as an organism does better when some fraction...")
- 19:08, 23 October 2024 Outrage is the Universal Parasite (hist | edit) [3,075 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "There are some people in the world who you must conclude are smart: e.g. Elon Musk, who is the greatest industrialist of our generation; or Bill Ackman, who is a billionaire hedge fund manager. But no matter how smart someone is, one thing always makes them stupid. Here's an example of a Bill Ackman tweet that exhibits the kind of gullibility most held by a first time tourist to NYC. The cab drivers there are notorious scamsters, and while it might benefit one to exagge...")
- 17:19, 23 October 2024 Blog/2024-10-23/Some Say The World Will End In Fire (hist | edit) [3,069 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{Quote box |quote=Some say the world will end in fire,<br /> Some say in ice.<br /> From what I’ve tasted of desire<br /> I hold with those who favor fire.<br /> But if it had to perish twice,<br /> I think I know enough of hate<br /> To say that for destruction ice<br /> Is also great<br /> And would suffice. |author=Robert Frost |title=Fire and Ice }} A common fear many people have is the end of the world. I think most people agree with Robert Frost in that destruct...")
- 15:29, 23 October 2024 Gradients Dominate Points (hist | edit) [846 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Very few things allow precise aim, and almost all of those things are engineering problems. Things that are coordination-dominated are sloppy and imprecise and consequently, you can only apply thrust towards a target or away from the target, with little control over the minimum thrust. You'll see this in many places: * Companies are either growing or shrinking - they don't stay constant * Nations are either improving or failing - the latter especially so for those who...")
- 22:49, 22 October 2024 Hypocrisy is the Worst Crime (hist | edit) [1,447 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "A frequent thing you'll hear from people is that they respect someone that does what they say, even if it's not what they want done. The person who says one thing and does another is beloved to few, unless they're explicitly in on the con. Often this means that people are purists about subjects and will subscribe to the strongest interpretation of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. Now, wikipedia:Homo economicus|a ra...")
- 20:11, 22 October 2024 Beware The Cuckoo (hist | edit) [4,945 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|One of these is not like the others, but good enough to blend in Security professionals are inherently aware that every backdoor in software intended for "the good guys" becomes a backdoor for "the bad guys". This is part of why Hypocrisy is the Worst Crime. == Why Cuckoos Can Exist == For most interactions we need to apply heuristics to determine what is okay and what is not okay. And depending on the co...")
- 22:21, 17 October 2024 Blog/2024-10-17/Path Dependence in History (hist | edit) [3,335 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{Tweet | name = Wylfċen | username = wylfcen | text = Fun fact: I’m banned from Wikipedia for translating Hvítramannaland as “White People Land.” | date = Sep 9, 2024 | ID = 1833164191114403864 | left = true }} I saw a tweet the other day that was talking about Hvítramannaland and that said that insisting on translating it to "White People Land" got them banned from Wikipedia. In my experience, getting banned from Wikipedia requires...")
- 18:07, 17 October 2024 Transferring Google Fi to Another Account (hist | edit) [9,245 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "For a while I have had Google Fi as my phone provider. This is pretty good since I travel quite a bit and Google Fi provides international roaming at no extra cost with international calling at a low cost. One mistake I made was signing up for Fi with my Google Workspace account. Google Fi offers a lot of features: * Google One * Youtube Premium for 6 months * Gemini Advanced for 6 months Those are nice and I inevitably end up using my normal Google account for them, a...")
- 20:32, 16 October 2024 Blog/2024-10-16/Watch Out For Purists (hist | edit) [2,469 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Once again, someone has found out that high-purity communities are their closest allies' enemies. [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/winamp-really-whips-open-source-coders-into-frenzy-with-its-source-release/ Winamp tried to open-source their code] only to be met with a frenzy of vitriol from lunatics who barely write any code. In general, it's a pretty good idea to not try to serve those who require purity since their prime purpose is often the purity itself and n...")
- 20:36, 14 October 2024 Conversational Singularity (hist | edit) [368 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Someone's 'singularity' is the topic that all conversations with them always tend towards. No matter what you start out talking about, Eliezer Yudkowsky will start talking about AGI risks, Elon Musk will start talking about Mars, and I will start talking about organ donation. Coined by my buddy [https://x.com/charlesgardens Charles Giardina] Category:Concepts")
- 20:55, 9 October 2024 Ancient Neologisms (hist | edit) [2,526 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Some neologisms seem like they've been around forever. Some people even believe that they've been around and describe their grandparents using them and so on, in some kind of Mandela Effect but they are nonetheless neologisms. I don't have a comprehensive list, obviously, but here are a couple. == Sweet Summer Child == Most commonly in "Oh you sweet summer child". The use of it to disparagingly mean "innocent and naïve" is decidedly from...")
- 20:42, 9 October 2024 The Prisoner, Mary Scrimzeour Whitaker (hist | edit) [4,810 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "''The Prisoner'' by Mary Scrimzeour Whitaker is a frequently-cited source of the use of the phrase "sweet summer's child". It is from the collection of poems ''The Creole''<ref>Mary Scrimzeour Furman Whitaker, ''Poems'', J.B. Nixon, printer, 1850, 296 pages, digitized December 5, 2007, from Harvard University. [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Poems/mGQSAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 Google Books]</ref> <blockquote> Within a prison, pent, he stood, <br/> Dread Gulio,—that...")
- 20:24, 9 October 2024 The West Wind, James Staunton Babcock (hist | edit) [1,875 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The West Wind by James Staunton Babcock<ref>James Staunton Babcock, ''Visions and Voices'', American Antiquarian Society Collections, 1849. [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Visions_and_Voices/1xA_AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1 Google Books]</ref> is a poem frequently cited for its first use of the phrase "sweet summer child": <blockquote> Thou comest, summer breeze,<br/> With life and music on the air;<br/> I trace thee thro' those tossing trees,<br/> But where's thy dwelli...")
- 22:23, 24 September 2024 Lexicognosis Syndrome (hist | edit) [470 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Lexicognosis Syndrome is a condition whose sufferers accord higher importance than required to concepts or phenomena that have a name. As an example, a person suffering from this would not react if a coconut fell from a tree. However, if the a coconut falling from a tree were named Cocoballistic Syndrome, the person would find themselves experiences some measure of hysteria - primarily expressed by their attempting to warn other people about this phenomenon.")
- 20:47, 24 September 2024 Ottobock Ankle Splint (hist | edit) [2,102 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|alt=A photo of an Ottobock splint worn by someone with a basketball shoe|To the Germans, my 9.5 US size is "Small" but it be what it be I have this Ottobock [https://www.ottobock.com/en-us/product/50S3 splint for my ankle] that I twisted playing basketball. My dad's an orthopaedic surgeon and suggested this particular make and model and it's honestly a lot better than the normal ankle strap you get from Walg...")
- 05:32, 24 September 2024 Blog/2024-09-23/Internet Exaggeration (hist | edit) [2,379 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Why does everyone on the Internet exaggerate so much? If you were to listen to Twitter you'd expect that: * One time using fentanyl would instantly addict you for life * One time using LSD would break your mind open forever * A single dose of shrooms is going to make you lose your sense of self These are all objectively untrue. I know this because I have experienced all of these things: fentanyl in a hospital, LSD a few times at music festivals,...")
- 07:50, 21 September 2024 Ablative Error (hist | edit) [867 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "An Ablative Error is something you intentionally introduce so that it can be fixed by a process or person who needs to fix things irrespective of whether they need fixes. By providing a simple and weak target, you allow them to fulfill their inner urge while not damaging the thing that needs to be built. People with authority do not have to employ this technique since they can simply reject 'fixes'. People without are frequently governed in large organizations by th...")
- 06:38, 15 September 2024 Blog/2024-09-14/Politics (hist | edit) [4,624 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "I'm not American, so I can't really vote in US Politics, but it does affect my life quite a bit, both proximately and ultimately, since I live in the US and I'm married to an American and because my children (if everything goes well) will probably be American too. Given all this, I try to pay attention. And about the biggest surprise for me this time has been that the Republicans are actually making most of the sense. Democratic Party policies seem patently insane - eit...")
- 06:07, 6 September 2024 The Emperor's Tailor (hist | edit) [3,007 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The Emperor's Tailor is a story about how ideas can escape from the context in which they are expressed, leading to adverse consequences. Sometimes, when the smart play at being stupid, the foolish listen and think that what they're doing is wise. <blockquote> Once upon a time, in a far off kingdom, there was an Emperor. This Emperor loved clothes, and would frequently have his tailors design new and extravagant designs for him to walk around the city in. One day,...")
- 05:43, 4 September 2024 Blog/2024-09-03/Getting A French Visa (hist | edit) [4,595 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Since I'm an Indian citizen, getting a visa is a common activity for me. Going practically anywhere is an exercise in paperwork. Some places are easy, like Hong Kong (which just needs an instant online application), some places are easy if you've got a US visa (like most of South America), and some places are hard (like the Schengen zone). For much of my life I've had a Schengen visa since either my parents applied for me to visit as a child...")
- 19:45, 29 August 2024 The Decline of Empire (hist | edit) [3,779 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Empires decline, and over time become backwaters, but the memory of the past remains long after the empire has lost what it can do. One thing that rapidly degrades as an empire declines is its state power, in its introverted sense. Lee Kuan Yew visited London in October 1946 and saw an empire still in power<ref>Yew, L. "Britain revisited". ''Asia Europe Journal'' '''1''', 311–313 (2003). doi:10.1007/s10308-003-0027-y [https://wiki.roshangeor...")
- 00:19, 29 August 2024 Big O Magnitude Notation (hist | edit) [513 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Like Big O Unit Notation, Big O Magnitude Notation refers to a notation used to express orders of magnitude. == Formal Definition for Functions == A function <math>f(n) = O(10^k)</math> if <math>\exists n_0 \in \mathbb{R+}</math> such that <math>\forall n \geq n_0 : 10^k \leq f(n) < 10^{k+1}</math> == Formal Definition for Random Variables == Colloquially, one can say a random variable <math>X = O(10^k)</math> if its probability distribution function has meas...")
- 22:31, 28 August 2024 Unknown Nobility (hist | edit) [1,002 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|Loggers are Environmentalists A common trope on the Internet goes like <blockquote> Spend any time among X and talk to them and you'll find that they're the kindest people you know and care the most about Y. </blockquote> It'll usually be someone totally bogus who is usually much-maligned for some particularly characteristic. If loggers are not considered environmentally friendly, then if we spend ti...")
- 23:39, 27 August 2024 Blog/2024-08-27/Comprehension is Enough (hist | edit) [1,617 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "When I was a child, I remember reading a lot of books about "the supernatural". Ghosts and stuff like that. And to some extent I believed in their existence. There was no evidence of their existence, of course, which made them all the more alluring. If I could prove that they existed, I would have won a big battle for us all. A key discovery would have been made. So, even though I was scared running into a room as a 11-year-old I would have the "there's a ghost here" li...")
- 19:23, 27 August 2024 Big O Unit Notation (hist | edit) [1,373 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Big O Unit Notation is a variant of Big O notation that is used when you want to express a notion of order of magnitude. You can usually differentiate these two concepts by the fact that Big O Notation is expressed in terms of functions whereas Big O Unit Notation is expressed in terms of units. One writes that some process or action takes <math>O(milliseconds)</math> or is of length <math>O(kilometre...")
- 06:56, 21 August 2024 Blog/2024-08-20/Addiction (hist | edit) [2,918 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Addiction is a strange thing. People talk about addictive things like they're an immutable property of the world. Cigarettes are addictive. Opioids are addictive. But clearly this cannot be that simple. [https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/opioid-use-disorder#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20American%20Medical,develop%20an%20addiction%20to%20them.&text=People%20misusing%20opioids%20may%20try,it%20is%20more%20easily%20available. The percentage of people who use op...")
- 18:09, 19 August 2024 Rage Sniping (hist | edit) [988 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|A typical story To rage-snipe someone is to post something intended to cause outrage so that they'll participate in a discussion instead of doing whatever they were originally doing. thumb|And the real story It's like [https://xkcd.com/356/ nerd sniping] except completely unfulfilling for the victim for the few seconds before they're hit by the bus. A classic example is for...")
