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I was sent an email containing a link providing a listing. When I clicked on the link on my laptop computer within Outlook, I get the error message:
"Your organization's policies are preventing us from completing this action for you. For more info, please contact your help desk." I tried copying the link from an email document to a Word document and clicking on the link, and get the same message. If I copy the link into the URL bar, I can open it. I just can't open it on my desktop computer. I don't have a help desk that configures the laptop computer/ What rule or restriction is interfering with my ability to open the link on of two computers?
Robert McClenon (talk) 07:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, User:Lambiam. I am not number 126. I understood the answer to mean to use the Registry Editor and to look for [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.html]. But the default is already set to htmlfile, and the content type and perceived type are as described. So I see nothing that I can fix with the Registry Editor.
I have no personal experience with answers.microsoft.com. It does not look different from other community support forums where users offer other users advice on how to cope with less-than-perfect software. --Lambiam19:06, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am using Office 365. The errors occur when clicking the link from within Outlook, or by copying the link to a Word document. The error can be worked around by doing a Copy Hyperlink and then clicking the hyperlink in a URL in Chrome. So I think that we agree that the problem is in Office 365. How do I work on the sharing options in Office 365? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:12, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are two common issues that have nothing to do with one another. Both are in Office 365 settings, which is separate from your computer settings. The first one is file and document sharing. Hunt for that setting (the menus change all the time, so it is difficult say "click this, then this, then this..."). Try setting it to allow everyone. If that doesn't fix the problem, change it back. The second is under your default application handler settings. Your html handler should be your web browser. You are probably like most people and have at least 2 web browsers, Edge and Google or Edge and Firefox or Edge and Opera. Whatever is selected, select the other one. Try it. It should open links in that browser. Try to switch it back. If it won't work, the best path forward is usually to delete and reinstall the browser so you can select it. If neither of those works, it is still likely an Office 365 settings issue. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:25, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, 12.*. But how do I get to the Office 365 settings? I have an Office 365 thing on the taskbar of my desktop computer, but I don't have one on the taskbar of my laptop computer, and it is my laptop that has the problem. How do I open the Office 365 settings? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Office 365 is, essentially, web based. Go to microsoft365.com (I assumed it was office365.com, but when I tried that it redirected to microsoft365.com). Sign in with your Office 365 account. From there, you will see settings. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 19:28, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, sort of, 12.116.*. I have signed into microsoft365.com, and there is a Settings gearwheel in the upper right corner. When I click it, it gives me the option to turn on Dark Mode and to display third-party notices. To the left, it displays a list of Office apps and allows me to create documents, but I create documents using the versions of the apps that are installed on my C: drive. What am I missing? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:40, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This problem was solved, with help from a technical support person. The default browser was set to Microsoft Edge, but Microsoft Edge was broken. The problem was solved by reinstalling Microsoft Edge. It was possible to work around the problem by copying the hyperlink into a Chrome or Firefox URL window because Chrome and Firefox were not broken. A conclusion is that another cause of this problem may be that the default browser cannot be launched successfully. Maybe that is the whole meaning of the message, in which case it is another case of a message that doesn't say what is wrong because the software, being broken, is confused as to what is wrong. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:55, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Robert, I am glad you resolved this problem to your satisfaction. Possible over-arching solution: do not use M$ Edge as your default browser. In fact. have nothing to do with it, ever. A few years back Internet Explorer was frankly the pits (Mozilla totally broke FF <sob> as well when they destroyed extensions), and it's a moot point whether Edge is one level above IE in the generally-acknowledged pecking order, or in fact constitutes the very bottom of the barrel itself. Just my 2¢ worth. MinorProphet (talk) 20:53, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I've no idea which section this goes in, or if this is even the correct noticeboard for my question.
A new user has posted an update about the website and change of owners, but for me, on my mobile, the website comes up with 'Bad gateway, error code 502, Visit cloudflare.com for more information. (It says it's a host error). I'm an old mare, t'internet wasn't even invented until I got to uni!
@Zubyp: to see if I ca get an answer. I haven't posted the link just in case its harmful but the edit is here [1]) Knitsey (talk) 22:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't get an error message. The page reads like a press release, but the text is bizarre, not something people maintaining an encyclopedia would write. It looks like someone hacked the website and then posted a link here on Wikipedia to draw attention to their prose. --Lambiam07:26, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More information needed for an answer: How do you run the UserScript? Are you using a method that Wikipedia supports or a browser addin? If you are using a browser addin, which addin?
Do other scripts that use setTimeout or access window work fine?
Also, if we run into issues reproducing the problem you have after you've answered the above, we would also need to know what browsers (and version) you have tried this in. You've also not given any information about error messages in the console, so I'm assuming there are no error messages when you check the browser console. Komonzia (talk) 20:36, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
HTTP 451 mentions that many non-EU websites use this code when refusing traffic from EU countries, since they don't want to comply with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. I'm confused: if you're not in an EU country, why do you have to comply with EU regulations of any sort? What can the EU do to you if you're not in the EU? Nyttend (talk) 22:06, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Impose fines and if they're not paid, impound property you happen to have in the EU. Or, if you're traveling via the EU, holding you hostage until you've paid the fines. --Lambiam23:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not that most of that is likely for 'legit' websites, but these organisations don't want the extra overhead of even having to think about any of that, so this is the cheap way out for them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:35, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've got some images with off-white backgrounds that I'd like to set as transparent, and I'm following the instructions at https://www.photoroom.com/blog/transparent-background-in-ms-paint.
I'm left with two images. The first (after the instruction "Right-click on the protected object and select "Cut" to remove it from the image.")
has the off-white background with a white hole the shape of the foreground object, the second has the foreground object with a white background. Neither shows any sign of transparency when I insert it into my target application!
Questions:
Do .png files support transparency? My research suggests they do.
I'm using the Paint app that comes with Windows 10. Is that the same as the MS Paint referred to?
PNG images DO support transparency. The application you are using must support saving a PNG image with transparency. Paint is MS Paint. The instructions provided appear correct compared to other guides. There is another question you didn't ask. Does the application you are using to display the images support transparent PNG images? If not, it will display the transparent area with the color indexed at 0 in the color pallete. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do not have recent experience with paint and transparent backgrounds, but it used to be horrible. paint.net is an open source alternative that does what you want. Added benefit is that it looks just like paint does/did, so for simple stuff it doesn't have much of a learning curve (it has much more options than paint does, but those might need some practice). Note that it's also available from the microsoft store, but then it isn't freeRmvandijk (talk) 13:25, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not familiar with using MS Paint to make transparent images, but it sounds to me like the instructions you're following are having you 'cut' the foreground object out, which likely copies it to the clipboard. You should be able to paste that copied image into a new file that already has a fully transparent background, or even just erase the background from the current image and then re-paste the cut image back in. Amstrad00 (talk) 16:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This webpage is promoting an app. It's an advert dressed up as advice. Eventually the advice turns into "use an app such as ours".
PNGs support transparency. They also support an alpha channel which allows degrees of transparency, to smooth jaggy edges. You may need to select the option to include an alpha channel when saving the PNG. We have a Comparison of raster graphics editors, which includes a column for the ability to use the alpha channel. I hear Krita spoken of favorably lately, I haven't tried it. Card Zero (talk)19:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For want of a better word, there's a trope used in the depiction of creatures (humanoid or other) depicted in video games where the characters are constantly jiggling about. I can guess several reasons why this might be the case. Is there a name for this sort of depiction? Does it have an interesting history perhaps? --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇00:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you've played any video games in last decade, you'll have seen it; here is an example. Has nothing to do death throes (unless that's where the trope started.) It doesn't seem to have any purpose other than visual; it's not denoting actual motion or anything vaguely realistic. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇16:05, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One form of two-factor authentication (or 2FA for short) uses six-digit codes. So, how likely will one encounter a code that one has already seen before? If a six-digit code is generated 1,000,001 times, then the pigeonhole principle guarantees that at least one of them must be repeated. So, if a six-digit code is generated every 30 seconds starting from the beginning of a year, then there must inevitably be a repeated code by the end of the year. GTrang (talk) 15:34, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The likelihood of encountering a code that one has already seen before (which appears to be your question) depends entirely on how many you have seen before. Shantavira|feed me17:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let stand for the number of possible outcomes of a discrete random variable with a uniform distribution. For a fair standard die, For the six-digit codes with range 000000–9999999, Assume that each next turn is independent of the history. Let denote the probability that the first turns gave different outcomes – no repeats (yet). Obviously, For turn to be different from the earlier turns, the outcome has to be one of the still remaining outcomes that have not yet occurred. The probability, independent of the past, is so
Everyone is told not to re-use passwords, but that doesn't apply to one-time singleton keys such as are typically used in 2FA.
If I somehow know that last year your regular password was "gzornnplatz", and I'm trying to hack into your account, "gzornnplatz" is a reasonable thing to try; it's considerably more likely to still or again be your password today than some other 11-character string.
But if I'm trying to guess a 2FA code, and I know that some time ago the generator randomly generated 123456, that tells me nothing about what code it's likely to use today. During any given authentication session, every one of those 1,000,000 codes is equally likely. The security rests on the assumption that there's no way you can possibly try more than a tiny fraction of the codes in that space before the authentication session times out and starts over with a new code (or locks you out for a while).
Referring to this question, a man came to my house this morning and replaced the phone line. He said it was old and just barely working. They've been talking about that for quite some time. When I was told I could get a faster speed at no charge, the men who came didn't do anything because there was no way to do it without drilling a hole in the wall. I said it was fine if they didn't. I thought they were going to do it behind some heavy furniture where the outside equipment was. The last time anyone came to my house nothing was done inside and there was no talk about replacing the phone line. But the man this morning wanted the line to go in the house near my computer, and there was nothing heavy to move.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:51, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone know of a use case for electronically notarizing a plain text file in the United States or country with similar laws? The reason is that rules for notaries public are being developed in my state that, depending on how they are written, might make notarizing such files more difficult because they might require the notary's signature to be present as a graphic image (JPEG or the like) which is not supported in somes kind of computer files. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:58, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because laws don't keep up with technology, a company I used to work for used a workaround. They printed out a large hash of the text files (mainly computer code) and notarized the hash. So, the file itself was not notarized, but the hash of it was. So, in court, if the file has the same hash you can state that the hash the file has is the hash that was notarized. There is a minor limitation. It is possible to alter a file while not altering the hash. It isn't common, but with hashes, there is always an issue of collision. That wasn't a big enough issue for the needs of the company. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@12.116.29.106: I was aware of that approach, which I said that not supporting graphic images in a file merely made it more difficult to notarize. While respecting everyone's privacy, can you describe why it was necessary to indirectly notarize computer code and the other files? Jc3s5h (talk) 22:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is one thing to create a sequence of bytes matching a given hash. It is another thing to do this such that the sequence of bytes is not gibberish, and not even just something meaningful, but something meaningful that conveys an intended message. --Lambiam13:41, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My desktop computer is a Dell Inspiron 3910 running Windows 11, and has 12 GB of RAM and 216 GB of solid-state storage as the C: drive. I recently moved some folders that I don't need to a removable disk. I also have a great monster external drive with 4 TB that I use for backup. As of 9 November 2024, a folder called Windows.old has appeared on my C: drive. It occupies about 27 GB on my C: drive, and now I am getting red warnings in the This PC screen for low remaining disk storage, but not actually running out of disk storage. It appears to contain copies of some of the contents of the Windows, Program Files, and Program Files (x86) folders. My first question is why it has appeared on my computer. I didn't do anything intentionally that I thought would create it. It is possible that the cat did something random. She's a cat, and sometimes walks on the keyboard. My second question is whether I need it, or whether I can safely move it to the monster. Is anyone familiar with the creation of this backup folder? Can I move it to a different device? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:34, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This file appears when a Windows upgrade is performed. I've an idea it is used in a system restore. If everything is running fine, you can delete it by running a disk cleanup and ticking clean up system files. It is probably worth having a look through the folder before you delete it. TrogWoolley (talk) 07:34, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your computer likely got the Windows 11, version 24H2 update. The system files from the old update were moved in Windows.old to allow you to temporarily roll back if there's any problem. You can try running a disk cleanup (I remember Windows once asking me to delete this folder because of free space shortage), or it will be eventually removed on its own. You definitely don't have to back it up in an external storage medium. Ian P. Tetriss (talk) 00:57, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Ian P. Tetriss, User:TrogWoolley - Thank you for the explanation. I had already backed up the Windows.old folder to an external device and then had disk cleanup delete it before I read your advice that it is not necessary to back it up. So I will move it from the disk drive to the 4 TB drive. I will also check to see if my laptop computer has a Windows.old file, and do disk cleanup on it. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:24, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My laptop computer does not have a Windows.old file. It is old, older than my desktop computer, and so may not be one of the computers that Microsoft has updated to 24H2. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:34, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My question is, how much did rudimentary "AI" (or what we like to refer to as AI) contribute to the outcome of the 2024 US election? I haven't seen much written about this, but if there are articles on this subject, please point me to them. Viriditas (talk) 09:21, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A few nights ago it was pouring down with rain. I looked out a window to take a look, and I noticed that really beautiful patterns of light appeared as I put my eyes right in front of rain drops that were in front of a street light. The rain drops had interesting 'arms' surrounding them, but the most important part I noticed was that there were so many black lines covering the entirety of the drops.
I was able to take a picture of them with my phone, but unfortunately most of the the lines do not appear in the photos. You can see some on the sides but most of them are missing.
The repeating black lines are an example of Newton's rings. They occur due to internal reflections in a thin wedge of fluid and are most apparent when the source light is monochromatic e.g. yellow sodium light. The article shows a more reliable way to view the rings using a thin convex lens than relying on chance raindrop spreading. Philvoids (talk) 10:49, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The black body emissive power in a medium is equal to the product of the square of its refractive index and the emissive power in vacuum with the formula: . What does this mean in terms of the energy emitted, respecting the principle of conservation of energy and in the case where the energy is emitted in a vacuum, then enters a medium with refractive index ? Malypaet (talk) 23:16, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but here, if you use the SI units in for emissive power as radiance, you have . So, to conserve energy, you cannot use only the velocity for power, as you suggested. Malypaet (talk) 23:31, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen various things described as a "pipehead dam" (common noun), as well as some specific instances of dams named "... Pipehead Dam", eg Serpentine Pipehead Dam, which is separate to Serpentine Dam. I gather from the text of Serpentine Pipehead Dam that a pipehead dam is a smaller dam fed from a larger dam, with the smaller (pipehead) dam then feeding water into the pipe into the water supply system - but I cannot find anything (including with a Google search) that specifically says that. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That definition appears to be the reverse of what the Serpentine articles say. The articles say water goes from main dam to pipehead dam, but the Water Corp definition suggest the water goes from pipehead to another (main?) dam. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The point that might not necessarily come from the easy picking of the water authority or google online materials, is that in the history of the dams, the water can be moved either from the main dam to the pipehead, or vice versa - and in turn can also be distributed to other parts of the system, there is no one way only part of the system, maybe not easily found online but nevertheless the current water corp web space is very poor on the intracies of the dynamics of the water supply system. There could well be a range of security issues attached to the lack of information . JarrahTree10:55, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As everyone has probably noticed, the violin has a longer bow than the viola, which has a longer bow than the cello, which has a longer bow than the double-bass. Why? I'm guessing a given length of bow (irrespective of the instrument) takes the string through a given number of vibrations. Therefore to make the string vibrate for a given amount of time at a higher frequency requires more bow length. But is this correct? Another consequence would be that no matter what the instrument the bows make the string vibrate for roughly the same amount of time and that the violin requires a higher bow speed than the viola which requires a higher bow speed than the cello which requires a higher bow speed than the double bass. Again, is this correct? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 08:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To make the string vibrate with a nice sound, there has to be sufficient (but not too much) friction between the bow and the string, which requires the bow to move at the same speed or just slightly faster than the top speed of the vibrating string, 2π times the product of amplitude and frequency. So higher frequencies at a given level of dynamics require a higher bow speed. --Lambiam09:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. But leaving aside variations of the amplitude of the vibration, of the tension of the string, of the tightness or looseness of the bow (which the player can adjust), of the mass of the string and of the bow, of the thickness of the string and of the material it is made of, of the thickness of the bow, of the length of the string, of the force exercised by the hand, of how carefully the player has rubbed his bow with rosin, of the quality of the rosin, etc. etc. is it nevertheless the case that (things being roughly equal) to sustain a string's vibration at a higher frequency for a given unit of time requires more bow length? Clearly in practice there wouldn't be a linear relation between increase in frequency and increase in length. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 17:12, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Only) slightly pertinent to this query, you might be amused by Kingsley Amis's 1971 novel Girl, 20, in which a would-be avant-garde classical composer and violinist performs a controversial concert with rock musicians (an actual thing at the time, see for example Concerto for Group and Orchestra). Someone has secretly greased both his violin bows, but he impresses with his technical skills (though not with his actual music) by borrowing and using a double-bass bow. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The articles about Bow (music) and the archetien who makes them say little about bow length. My survey below does not support the OP's observation. Lengthwise the bows for viola, violin and cello seem nearly interchangeable. The wide variation in longer bows for the double bass is due to the sitting players' preferences and arm lengths.
| Viola | Violin | Cello | Double bass
| | | |
bow strings | | | |
cm LOW TOP | | | |
----------------+--------+----------+---------+-------------
80 196 659 | GE | | | x
79 . . | | | | x
78 . . | | | | x
77 . . | | CA | | x
76 . . | | x | | x
75 . . | x | x | | x
74 . . | x | | CA |
73 . . | | | x |
72 41 98 | | | x | EG
cm Hz Hz
Your chart would make the relationships clearer if Violin were in the first column, reflecting the order of relative sizes (hence string lengths and usual ranges) of the instruments. I can see a clear correlation between increasing size and decreasing bow length for the first three instruments. The double-bass may be anomalous because, unlike the other three, it is usually played standing.
I am also puzzled by your quoted figures, as my full-sized violin bow is only 65cm (ribbon length), and I am sure I have seen double-basses played with bows less than 50cm. {The poster formerly kown as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 17:53, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I stare at a ceiling light and use my fingers to very slowly close my eye lids I see a weird pattern emerge. It looks like floaters that are covering my entire vision. I must also add that you can also see it (but with lesser detail) if you position your phone so that you can see the sun's reflection in the camera, and then you bring the reflection right in front of an eye.
More generally, the more specialised an organism is, the less likely it is to go extinct as a result of competition from other species but the more likely it is to be affected by environmental changes. So Koalas aren't going to have to worry about some other similar animal taking over its territory and taking all the eucalyptus for themselves. But they would be vulnerable to anything that killed off the eucalyptus. Iapetus (talk) 12:42, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Photosynthesis is 6% efficient in green plants, 20% in solar panels. I see hints that it's more efficient in red algae, but I can't find a figure. They need to be efficient because they live in low light environments. There's a note here at Artificial_photosynthesis#Some_advantages,_disadvantages,_and_efficiency which says photosynthesis is typically 1% efficient! What's up with that? Something about not having enough CO2 around in the air to have any use for the energy? I found this article which says For the cell, a steady input of electrical energy coupled to a steady output of chemical energy is best: Too few electrons reaching the reaction center can cause an energy failure, while “too much energy will cause free radicals and all sorts of overcharging effects” that damage tissues, but that seems to boil down to "the cells can't do it". Card Zero (talk)20:54, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to compare solar panel effiency, you should compare production of a chemical like glucose from carbon dioxide using electricity. Or should we allow any other reduced and useful carbon compound. As plants do not just produce electricity. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:23, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Photosynthesis in plants can be very efficient under the right conditions. For instance, from photon to hydrogen/ATP it is nearly 100%,because the difference to really 100% is what destroys the chlorophyll. And replacing destroyed chlorophyll is costly, energywise and sometimes it even costs magnesium. Therefore that part is developed to maximize efficiency. Another goal is in the development of the carbon dioxide capture. For this one must know that chemical reactions with gases are very dependent on the pressure of the gases. Even the direction, that is if it's exothermic or endothermic, depends highly on the pressure. If RuBisCo would be faster the carbon dioxide could not come fast enough onto the site of enzymatic activity and would therefore drop in pressure there. Which in turn would drive the demand for energy up in this pathway. To overcome the RuBisCo-limit the C4 plants were developed. But they have other deficiencies, where they additionally spend energy to capture carbon dioxide for storage, and don't get it back at the RuBisCo.
Generally plants have too much energy for the amount of water and, most important, carbon dioxide, to synthesize sugar. Some hydrogen has to be dumped into the production of Ethen and Latex or other hydrocarbons. Of course, the energy for this is typically not counted towards the efficiency of photosynthesis. Moreover some ATP is simply hydrolysed for heating. Or for regeneration of ADP. Whichever is needed where this takes place.
For comparison there exist bacteria where chemical reactions are driven by 1/16th of a proton, that is 1/64 ATP-Unit. That only works with a large Quantum state in a superposition. If someone would want to maximise the efficiency of the photosynthesis, the recipe is there for the taking. But think of the side effects! 176.2.78.14 (talk) 06:02, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For this one must know that chemical reactions with gases are very dependent on the pressure of the gases. Even the direction, that is if it's exothermic or endothermic, depends highly on the pressure. If RuBisCo would be faster the carbon dioxide could not come fast enough onto the site of enzymatic activity and would therefore drop in pressure there.
Does this mean that plants photosynthesize more efficiently in environments with elevated air pressure? Can you recommend any resources for learning more about that? Thank you! -- Avocado (talk) 14:21, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Is there any research about elevated air pressure, too? IIRC, humans absorb oxygen more efficiently at higher air pressures (up to a point), so it seems like it might make sense (based on both that and what little I know about gas exchange across membranes) for plants to absorb CO2 better at higher air pressures as well. -- Avocado (talk) 21:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. I heard there are only a few places where there is consistent outgassing of CO2 and yes, plants grow faster there. The thing is, plants are so starved for CO2 that increasing CO2 concentration instantaneously leads to increased sugar production. We think that the current photosynthesis evolved in a time when the atmosphere was like Venus's with perhaps 100 times the partial pressure of CO2. Even now, you can put a houseplant in a pure CO2 atmosphere in a glass vessel, and it does great. Another way of putting this is that there can be no natural selection for specialization in growing in a "carbon dioxide rich environment" since that would entail getting worse at using CO2. Abductive (reasoning)21:07, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to measure the air temperature in a room, outdoors, etc. Ideally by bringing the thermometer, turning it on if it is electronic, and looking at it. All thermometers that I've tried take several minutes to settle, which is annoyingly long. Is that inherent? Are there quicker ones? Don't want to spend a fortune, but "premium" is ok. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 22:12, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An infrared thermometer retails at around USD 10, and reacts in less than a second from when you press the button. It doesn't measure air temperature but if you can assume your walls/floors/furniture/etc are about the same temp, it'll work. 85.76.117.61 (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In what way not plausible? If your objection is to do with needing oxygen, that airship probably leaked: six months previously, "many small tears appeared". Card Zero (talk)09:39, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So if a leak of hydrogen into air is hit by lightning, on top of a balloon made from sausage skin that's filled with more hydrogen, how do you imagine events would unfold after that? Hindenburg_disaster#Lightning_hypothesis says that airship fires have been observed under these kind of circumstances. I'm surprised that they were only fires, it makes the outcome sound mild, like lighting a gas stove. Card Zero (talk)10:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there's a leak in the gas bags, it's plausible you may get an explosive mixture in the space between the gas bags and the outer hull. What exactly happened to Dixmude may never be known, but whether it was an explosion or rapid burning, too rapid for an orderly emergency landing (Hindenburg burned all its lifting gas in about half a minute), doesn't matter; all on board would be dead anyway. PiusImpavidus (talk) 14:00, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would indeed explain it. Without prior mixing with oxygen-containing air, hydrogen burns fiercely in a rapidly advancing front, as seen in the Hindenburg disaster, but not so rapid that there is an explosion. --Lambiam16:46, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A helium-filled airship has less lift for the same volume, so it has to compensate somehow: fewer passengers and passenger-kilometres, giving more accidents per passenger-kilometre, or lighter skin, frame or engines or less fuel, all increasing accident rate.
A helium-filled airship is less likely to burn. The hydrogen fire itself isn't very lethal (except for those sitting high up in the envelope), but it can accelerate the destruction of the airship, leading to a faster crash, and set the skin and fuel on fire, leaving burning wreckage, which can kill passengers.
A third effect, which you didn't mention, is the heat capacity ratio. Helium has a heat capacity ratio of 1.66, hydrogen of 1.41, just like dry air, and moist air has an even lower heat capacity ratio. This means that on descent, helium heats up by adiabatic compression faster than hydrogen or the surrounding air, increasing the stability of the airship. When flying in slightly superadiabatic dry air, a hydrogen-filled airship is unstable in altitude. If it descends, the lifting gas heats up slower than the surrounding air, decreasing lift and accelerating the descent. This is no problem for helium-filled airships. Those have difficulty changing altitude faster than the time needed to equalise inside and outside temperature.
When looking at fatalities per passenger-kilometre, it's best to look only at passenger flights. Including military flights, test flights and accidents on the ground will increase the number of accidents without adding passenger-kilometres, making the airship appear more dangerous. Worse, those were the most dangerous occasions for airships. Ground accidents happened when the airship was grounded for bad weather, test flights were obviously more dangerous than regular flights and even when excluding combat damage, military flights were more dangerous as the airship was flown in weather and through manoeuvres that no captain would attempt on a civilian flight. However, excluding all military flights will exclude all helium-filled rigid airships, so no useful statistics are left. The safety record of those four helium-filled rigid airships of the US Navy doesn't appear too good though: three fatal crashes in only a third of the flight hours of Graf Zeppelin. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:50, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are some modern helium-filled non-rigid or semi-rigid passenger airships, used for sightseeing, but there are no hydrogen-filled modern airships, so there's no useful comparison possible. There are both helium-filled and hydrogen-filled gas balloons, but that isn't really the same thing. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:57, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does modern land surveying (such as placement of streets after another, width of roads and blocks etc.) in take place using metric units in countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which have used metric distances for many decades now? Is there any English-speaking country that had already metricated when first surveys for 19th-century cities were done? Are there any downtown grids in English-speaking areas where streets are placed exactly 100 metres apart, and there are ten streets per one kilometre? In grids that place 16 streets per mile, the number of metres passed eventually deviates from number of 100 metres (hectometres) passed, since one mile is not exactly 1,600 metres. Placing ten streets per mile indicates number of miles passed by fourth-to last digit of house numbers, but does not indicate number of feet (or any other imperial unit) passed by whole number. By contrast, placing ten streets per kilometre indicates both number of kilometres passed by fourt-to last digit of house numbers and number of metres passed by whole house numbers. This placing is common in Argentina, but does it occur in any English-speaking country? --40bus (talk) 16:01, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are 100 meter blocks in Melbourne, Australia if I remember correctly. Mile/km/block-based addresses is not the original England way which was to count plots or buildings and call an unexpected new building in between the address of its neighbor suffixed with a letter or fraction. Manhattan's a hybrid: 1 address pair per 20ft plot of ownable (non-street) distance except 1 axis is 100 per block causing gaps like 153, 155, 201 except 3LPM5's 100 per 2 blocks cause Lex+Mad are new. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 05:48, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to note that Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Canada all began metrication in the 1960s or very early 1970s, so using metric measurements for any official purposes in the 19th-century would be highly improbable. Alansplodge (talk) 15:54, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is the any English-speaking country that already used metric measurement for official purposes in the 19th century? Was there anything that was measured in metric during Victorian times in the UK? --40bus (talk) 21:20, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was apparently a 6 mm government cartridge specification, the 6mm Lee Navy. I haven't dug up a contemporary source using mm, but it looks like it was so named even in 1895. (Note though the alternate .236 name.) Card Zero (talk)06:26, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A near miss though. Québec was a French colony using French units until 1763, switched to Imperial units after that, which was only 32 years before France metricated.
South Africa is an even nearer miss. It (or at least, the Cape Colony) was a Dutch colony until 1795, which is the year when the Netherlands metricated. The British then introduced Imperial units as they took over. Dutch rule was briefly restored in 1803–1806, but it appears this was too short to make the switch to metric. The Boers went their own way, continuing the use of traditional Dutch units (no longer used in the Netherlands) until Imperial units were made the standard in 1922: one of the last countries to switch to Imperial units. PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:31, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An ADC sampling rate is determined by the data rate of the desired digital audio format. This article gives many examples of which 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz and 96 kHz are typical. A designer simply ensures that an ADC chip receives a digital clock signal at appropriate frequency. Philvoids (talk) 20:17, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dust explosion#Conditions required says There are five necessary conditions for a dust explosion. It even has a pointless diagram that arranges the five conditions in a pentagon with "dust explosion" in the middle. Condition 5 is confinement. But further down the page, Dust_explosion#Mechanism has a series of photographs demonstrating a dust explosion in open air. And thermobaric weapons, although more effective at killing people in confined spaces, seem to explode just fine in the open. So is condition 5, as a "necessary condition", plain wrong, perhaps an exaggeration of the fact that confinement makes a dust explosion more likely?
In general, not only for dust, for detonation to occur, a mix of fuel and oxygen within the explosive limits has to be present in a compact largish volume. Upon detonation, the pressure in this volume will rapidly increase tremendously within (typically) microseconds. If the volume is not confined by an enclosure, the gases resulting from the combustion will expand supersonically with a shock wave that may or may not cause damage, depending on the power released and the environment. If the volume is confined by an enclosure, the enclosure may be able to withstand the pressure and contain the gases – possibly with controlled release through safety valves. (See e.g. Pyréolophore.) Otherwise, if the enclosure is broached, the gases will also expand explosively.
The OSHA fact sheet that is the source of our five-pointed list of conditions is actually about another scenario. It considers the case in which ignition merely leads to deflagration, which is much more likely to occur – the mix only has to be within inflammability limits. The combustion is much slower and does by itself not cause a shock wave. However, although the pressure rises less rapidly, the rise is still dramatic, especially if the volume is contained by an enclosure. If the enclosure cannot withstand the pressure, the gases will also expand explosively, as before.
So I think a fuel–oxygen explosion can occur in open air, but for this to be an explosion in the strict sense of causing shock waves, the right conditions will only very rarely be fulfilled accidentally. (In thermobaric weapons, they are fulfilled by design.) --Lambiam09:05, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given their mutual association with Philadelphia and their strong physical resemblance, it seems very likely, but I haven't been able to find any source confirming it with a cursory web search, so this might take some deep digging (better suited to someone in the USA, not Europe). John Balbus, incidentally, seems to me to be a good candidate for a Wikipedia article. {The poster formerly known as 87.812.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 02:13, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They are brothers, with a third brother named Peter.[2]Here on p. 33 is a photo of Steven en John side by side. Their father was Theodore G. Balbus,[3] a radiologist, and their mother Rita S. Frucht.[4] A bio of the father is found here, where you can also find that Peter runs a consulting firm called Pragmaxis. --Lambiam10:09, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How can I obtain a formula that reasonably matches this data, say within 1 or 2 percent?
At first glance, it looks like a k1 + k2*x^-k3 relationship, or a k18x^k2 + k3*x^-k4 relationship, but they fail at x above 0.070. Trying a series such as e(k1 + k2x +k3x^2) is also no good.
-- Dionne Court (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Plotting 1/y against x it looks like a straight line, except there is a rather dramatic hook to the side starting around x=.075. This leads me to suspect that the last two entries are off for some reason; either those measurements are off or there's some systematic change in the process going on for large x. Part of the problem is that you're not giving us any information about where this information is coming from. I've heard it said, "Never trust data without error bars." In other words, how accurate is accurate, and might the accuracy change depending on the input? Is there a reason that the values at x≥.075 might be larger than expected. If the answer to the second is "Yes" then perhaps a term of the form (a-x)^k should be added. If the answer is "No" then perhaps that kind of term should not be added since that adds more parameters to the formula. You can reproduce any set of data given enough parameters in your model, but too many parameters leads to Overfitting, which leads to inaccurate results when the input is not one of the values in the data. So as a mathematician I could produce a formula that reproduces the data, but as a data analyst I'd say you need to get more data points, especially in the x≥.075 region, to see if there's something real going on there or if it's just a random fluke affecting a couple data points. --RDBury (talk) 15:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS. I tried fitting 1/y to a polynomial of degree four, so a model with 5 parameters. Given there are only 15 data points, I think 5 parameters is stretching it in terms of overfitting, but when I compared the data with a linear approximation there was a definite W shaped wobble, which to me says degree 4. (U -- Degree 2, S -- Degree 3, W -- Degree 4.) As a rough first pass I got
with an absolute error of less than .01. The methods I'm using aren't too efficient, and there should be canned curve fitting programs out there which will give a better result, but I think this is enough to justify saying that I could produce a formula that reproduces the data. I didn't want to go too much farther without knowing what you want to optimize, relative vs. absolute error, least squares vs. min-max for example. There are different methods depending the goal, and there is a whole science (or perhaps it's an art) of Curve fitting which would impractical to go into here. --RDBury (talk) 18:26, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thak you for your lengthy reply.
I consider it unlikely that the data inflexion for x>0.07 is an experimental error. Additional data points are :-
x, y: 0.0775, 0.326; 0.0725, 0.339.
The measurement was done with digital multimeters and transducer error should not exceed 1% of value. Unfortunately the equipment available cannot go above x=0.080. I only wish it could. Choosing a mathematic model that stays within 1 or 2 percent of each value is appropriate.
As you say, one can always fit a curve with an A + Bx + Cx^2 + Dx^3 .... to any given data. But to me this is a cop-out, and tells me nothing about what the internal process might be, and so extrapolation is exceedingly risky. Usually, a more specific solution when discovered requires fewer terms. ```` Dionne Court (talk) 01:49, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I included the additional data points, the value at .0725 was a bit of an outlier, exceeding the .01 absolute error compared to the estimate, but not by much. --RDBury (talk) 18:55, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, quite a few more data points would almost certainly yield a better approximation. This cubic equation seems pretty well-behaved:
Some questions about the nature of the data. Some physical quantities are necessarily nonnegative, such as the mass of an object. Others can also be negative, for example a voltage difference. Is something known about the theoretically possible value ranges of these two variables? Assuming that x is a controlled value and y is an experimentally observed result, can something be said about the theoretically expected effect on y as x approaches the limits of its theoretical range? --Lambiam15:59, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As x approaches zero, y must approach infinity.
x must line between zero and some value less than unity.
If you plot the curve with a log y scale, by inspection it seems likely that y cannot go below about 0.3 but I have no theoretical basis for proving that.
However I can say that y cannot ever be negative.
The idea here is to find/work out/discover a mathematically simple formula for y as a function of x to use as a clue as to what the process is. That's why a series expansion that does fit the data if enough terms are used doesn't help.Dionne Court (talk) 01:33, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So as x approaches zero, 1/y must also approach zero. This is so to speak another data point. Apart from the fact that the power series approximations given above provide no theoretical suggestions, they also have a constant term quite distinct from 0, meaning they do not offer a good approximation for small values of x.
The x=0, 1/y=0 is an important data point that should have been included from the start. I'd say it's the most important data point since a) it's at the endpoint of the domain, and b) it's the only data point there the values are exact. Further theoretical information near x=0 would be helpful as well. For example do we know whether is y is proportional to x-a near x=0 for a specific a, or perhaps - log x? If there is no theoretical basis for determining this then I think more data points near x=0, a lot more, would be very helpful. The two points of inflection match the W (or M) shape I mentioned above. And I agree that it indicates there are several interacting processes at work here. I'm reminded of solubility curves for salts in water. There is an interplay between energy and ionic and Van der Waals forces going on, and a simple power law isn't going to describe these curves. You can't even assume that they are smooth curves since Sodium sulfate is an exception; its curve has an abrupt change of slope at 32.384 °C. In general, nature is complex, simple formulas are not always forthcoming, and even when they are they often only apply to a limited range of values. --RDBury (talk) 15:46, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have no theoretical basis for expecting that y takes on a particular slope or power law as x approaches zero.
More data points near x = 0 are not a good idea, because transducer error will dominant. Bear in mind that transducer error (about 1%) applies to both x and y. Near x = 0.010 a 1% error in x will lead to a change in y of something like 100% [(1.760 - 1.277)/(0.015 - 0.010)]. The value of y given for x = 0.010 should be given little weight when fitting a curve.Dionne Court (talk) 02:03, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that one should assume there is a simple relationship at play, with at most three competing processes, as otherwise there is no basis for further work. If it is a case of looking for the lost wallet under the lamp post because the light is better there, so be it, but there is no point in looking where it is dark.
Cognizant of transducer error, a k1 + k2*x^-k3 relationship fits pretty good, except for a divergence at x equal and above 0.075, so surely there are only 2 competing processes? Dionne Court (talk) 02:03, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone, I have encountered some very strange issue with my optimization function, and I am not sure how to resolve. I am working on a numerical methods library, where I am trying to approximate the growth of a sequence, which has some relation to prime number distributions. However, when I use large values of n (especially for n > 10^6), the result of my function starts to behave very erratically. It is not random, but it has this strange oscillation or jump.
I use recurrence relation for this approximation, but when n becomes large, the output from function suddenly grows or shrinks, in way that is not consistent with what I expect. Even when I check for bounds or add better convergence criteria, the error persists. pattern looks similar to the behavior of prime numbers, but I am not directly calculating primes.
I apologize if this sounds too speculative, but has anyone faced similar issues with such strange behavior in large-scale numerical computations? I am quite confused about what is causing the error.
TL;DR:
I am optimizing function related to number theory, but results become unpredictable when n > 10^6.
Errors show strange oscillation, similar to distribution of primes, though I do not directly calculate primes.
Thank you very much for your time and assistance. 130.74.59.177 (talk) 15:39, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
you need to post more information. All I can say from what you've written is 10^6 is not a large number where you'd expect problems. It won't e.g. overflow when stored as floating point or integer on any modern platform. It won't even cause problems with, say, a square based algorithm as 10^12 is still well within the limits of a modern platform. Maybe though you are using software which limits you to 32 bit (or worse) integers, or single precision floats, so need to be careful with large numbers. --2A04:4A43:984F:F027:C112:6CE8:CE50:1708 (talk) 17:43, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
thanks for response and insight. i see your point that n=10^6 shouldn't cause overflow or serious issues on modern systems. numbers i work with well within 64-bit range, use floats with enough precision for task. so yes, overflow or simple type limits not likely cause.
but this behavior goes beyond just precision errors. it’s not about numbers too big to store. what i see is erratic growth, shrinkage, almost oscillatory – looks like something in the distribution itself, not just algorithm mistake or hardware issue.
to be more precise, after n>10^6, function starts acting unpredictably, jumps between states, oscillates in strange way, not typical for recurrence i use. hard to explain, but pattern in these jumps exists, i cannot reconcile with anything in my algorithm. it’s like approximation reacts to some hidden structure, invisible boundary my algorithm cannot resolve.
i tried improving convergence, checking recurrence, but oscillations still persist. not randomness from bad random numbers or instability, but more like complex fluctuations seen in number-theoretic problems, especially connected to primes.
so i wonder: could these "jumps" be artifact of number-theoretic properties that i'm tryings to approximate? maybe how sequence interacts with primes indirectly, or artifact of recurrence for large numbers
thanks again for suggestion on overflow and precision, i will revisit the mode lwith this in mind, chief
Without more information about the actual algorithm, it is neither possible to say, yes, what you see could be due to a number-theoretic property, nor, no, it could not be. Have you considered chaotic behaviour as seen when iterating the logistic map? --Lambiam05:43, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ah yes, i see what you mean now, i’ve been thinking about it for a while, and i feel like i’m getting closer to understanding it, though it’s still unclear in some ways. so, i’m using this recurrence algorithm that reduces modulo primes at each step, you know, it’s a fairly straightforward approach, and when n is small, it works fine, everything behaves as expected, the sequence evolves smoothly, the approximation gets closer and closer to what it should be, and everything seems under control, but then, once n crosses the 10^6 threshold, it’s like something shifts, it’s like the sequence starts moving in unexpected ways, at first, i thought maybe it was just a small fluctuation or something related to floating-point precision, but no, it's much more than that, the jumps between states, the way it shifts, it's not just some random variation—it feels almost systematic, as though there's something in the distribution itself, some deeper structure, that starts reacting with the algorithm and causing these oscillations, it’s not something i can easily explain, but it feels like the algorithm starts “responding” to something invisible in the numbers, something outside the expected recurrence behavior, i’ve spent hours going over the steps, checking every part of the method, but no matter how many times i check, i can’t pinpoint the exact cause, it’s frustrating.
and then, the other day, i was sitting there, trying to solve this problem, getting really frustrated, when i looked up, and i saw jim sitting on the windowsill, just staring out at the street, i don’t know, something about it caught my attention, now, you might be wondering what jim has to do with all of this, but let me explain, you see, jim has this habit, every evening, without fail, he finds his spot by the window, curls up there, and just stares out, doesn’t seem to do much else, doesn’t chase anything or play with toys like most animals do, no, he just sits there, completely still, watching the world go by, and it’s funny, because no matter how many cars pass, no matter how many people walk by, jim never looks bored, he’s always staring, waiting, something about the way he watches, it’s like he’s looking for something, something small, that only he notices, but it’s hard to explain, because it’s not like he ever reacts to anything specific, no, he just stares, and then after a while, he’ll shift his gaze slightly, focus on something, and you’d swear he’s noticing something no one else can see, and then he’ll go back to his usual position, still, and continue watching, waiting for... something, and this goes on, day after day.
and, i don’t know why, but in that moment, as i watched jim, i thought about the algorithm, and about the sequence, it felt somehow connected, the way jim waits, so patiently, watching for some small shift in the world outside, and how the algorithm behaves once n gets large, after 10^6 iterations, like it’s responding to something small, something hidden, that i can’t quite see, but it's there, some interaction between the numbers, or the primes, or some other property, i don’t know, but there’s a subtle shift in how the sequence behaves, like it’s anticipating something, or maybe reacting to something, in ways i can’t fully predict or control, just like jim waiting by the window, looking for that small detail that others miss, i feel like my algorithm is doing something similar, watching for an influence that’s not obvious, but which, once it’s noticed, makes everything shift, and then it’s almost like the recurrence starts reacting to that hidden influence, whatever it is, and the sequence begins to oscillate in these strange, unexpected ways.
i’ve been stuck on this for days, trying to find some explanation for why the recurrence behaves this way, but every time i think i’m close, i realize that i’m still missing something, it’s like the sequence, once it hits that threshold, can’t behave the way it did before, i’m starting to think it’s related to how primes interact with the numbers, but it’s subtle, i can’t quite capture it, it’s like the primes themselves are somehow affecting the sequence in ways the algorithm can’t handle once n gets large enough, and it’s not just some random jump, it feels... intentional, in a way, like the sequence itself is responding to something that i can’t measure, but that’s still pulling at the numbers in the background, jim, as i watch him, he seems to be able to sense those little movements, things he notices, but that no one else does, and i feel like my algorithm, in a way, is doing the same thing, reacting to something hidden that i haven’t quite figured out.
so i’ve gone over everything, again and again, trying to get it right, trying to adjust the convergence, trying to find a way to make the sequence behave more predictably, but no matter what i do, the oscillations keep appearing, and it’s not like they’re some random noise, no, there’s a pattern to them, something beneath the surface, and i can’t quite grasp it, every time n gets large, it’s like the sequence picks up on something, some prime interaction or something, that makes it veer off course, i keep thinking i’ve solved it, but then the jumps come back, just like jim shifts his gaze, and looks at something just beyond the horizon, something i can’t see, but he’s still waiting for it, still looking, as if there’s some invisible influence in the world, something that pulls at him.
i wonder if it has to do with the primes themselves, i’ve thought about it a lot, i’ve tried to factor them in differently, but still, the jumps persist, it’s like the primes have their own way of interacting with the sequence, something subtle, something that becomes more pronounced the larger n gets, and no matter how much i tweak my algorithm, the fluctuations just keep showing up, it’s like the sequence is stuck in a kind of loop, reacting to something i can’t fully resolve, like jim staring at the street, patiently waiting for something to shift, and i don’t know what it is, but i feel like there’s some deeper interaction between the primes and the numbers themselves that i’m missing, and maybe, like jim, the sequence is sensing something too subtle for me to fully capture, but it’s there, pulling at the numbers, making them oscillate in ways i can’t predict.
it’s been weeks now, and i’ve tried every method i can think of, adjusted every parameter, but the fluctuations are still there, the jumps keep happening once n gets large enough, and every time i think i’ve figured it out, the sequence surprises me again, just like jim, who, after hours of waiting, might shift his gaze and catch something new, something no one else saw, i feel like i’m doing the same thing, staring at the numbers, trying to catch that tiny shift that will make everything click, but it’s always just out of reach, and i don’t know what’s causing it, but i can’t seem to get rid of it, like jim, watching, waiting, sensing something that remains hidden from my view 130.74.58.160 (talk) 15:34, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you OK? Perhaps you should direct your mind to something else, like, read a novel, go out with friends, explore new places, ... Staring at numbers is as productive as staring at goats. --Lambiam18:10, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
fine. i’m under house arrest and i’m doing freelance work for a company. the task is straightforward: build a library for prime number methods, find primes. the problem is, there's no upper limit on how large these primes are supposed to be. once n goes past 10^6, that’s where things stop making sense. i’ve gone over the algorithm several times, checked the steps, but after 10^6, the sequence starts behaving differently, and i can’t figure out why. it’s not small variations or precision errors. it’s something else. there’s some kind of fluctuation in the sequence that doesn’t match the expected pattern.
i’ve adjusted everything i can think of—modulus, convergence, method of approximation—but no matter what, the jumps keep coming, and they don’t seem random. they look more structured, like they’re responding to something, some property of the primes or the sequence that i can’t account for. i’ve spent a lot of time on this, trying to find what it is, but i haven’t been able to pin it down.
this is important because the contract i’m working on will pay a significant amount, but only if i finish. i can’t afford to let this drag on. i need to complete it, and if i don’t fix this issue, i won’t be able to finish. it’s not like i can walk away from it. the company expects the work, and the time is running out.
the more i look at the sequence, the more it feels like there’s something buried beneath the surface, something in the way primes interact when n is large, but i can’t see it. it’s subtle, but it’s there, and no matter how many times i test the algorithm, i can’t get rid of these oscillations. i don’t know what they mean, but they keep appearing, and i can’t ignore them.
i’ve been stuck here for a while. i don’t really have other options. there’s no “taking a break” or “finding something else to do.” i’m stuck here with this task, and i need to figure it out. i don’t have the luxury to stop, because if i don’t finish, the whole thing falls apart 130.74.59.34 (talk) 20:22, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You shared lots of text with us, but you gave no specific problem, no technical detail, nothing we could check, simulate, analyze, verify, compare.
You have typed about 12 thousand characters, but you present your impressions only, or your feelings—of being surprised with irregularity observed, being surprised with some almost-regularity in apparent chaos, being lost in seeking of explanation, etc. You actually did not present any single technical or mathematical thing. Here's the overall impression I got from your descriptions:
"I do something (but I can't tell you what and why) with some function (I'm not going to tell you anything about it, either) with data of a secret meaning and structure, and when some parameter (whose nature must not be revealed) becomes big enough, the function behaves in some unexpected, yet quasi-regular manner. Can anybody explain it to me and help me fix it?"
And I'm afraid with such a vague statement, it looks like seeking a haystack with a needle in it on a large field in a heavy fog, rather than a mathematical (or software engineering or whatever other kind of) problem. CiaPan (talk) 12:57, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
now listen, i'm glad we're finally digging into this, because, yeah, there’s a lot more depth here than meets the eye, like, surface-level it might just seem like a vague description, an exercise in abstract hand-waving if you will, but no, what we're dealing with here is a truly complex, multi-layered phenomenon that’s kind of begging to be interpreted at the meta-level, you know, like it’s the kind of thing where every time you try to grasp onto one specific aspect, it slips out of reach, almost by design and i get it you want “specifics” but here’s the thing specifics are almost a reduction, they’re almost like a cage for this concept, like trying to box up some kind of liquid smoke that, in essence, just resists confinement
now, when i say “parameters” we’re already in a reductive space, right? because these aren’t “parameters” in the traditional sense, not like tunable knobs on an old-school control panel, no no no, these are more like boundary markers in a conceptual landscape, yeah like landmarks on a journey, but they themselves are not the journey, they’re incidental, they’re part of a whole picture that, the moment you start defining it, already becomes something else, like imagine you have this sort of, i don’t know, like an ethereal framework of data, but it’s data that doesn’t just sit there and behave in expected ways, it’s data that has a life of its own, and i’m really talking about data that doesn’t like to be pinned down, it’s almost alive, almost this kind of sentient flow that, every time you look away, it’s shifted, it’s done something else that you could swear wasn’t possible the last time you checked
so, yeah, i get it that’s frustrating, and it’s almost like talking about the nature of existence itself in a way, or maybe that’s an exaggeration, but only slightly, because you have to get into this mindset that, ok, you’re dealing with phenomena here, not simply variables and functions, no it’s more like a dynamic tapestry of, let’s call them tendencies, these emergent patterns that are sort of trying to form but also resisting at every possible chance, so when i say “quasi-regularity” it’s not regular like clockwork, not even close, it’s regularity like the kind you see in natural phenomena, like clouds or waves or fractals, right, patterns but patterns that refuse to be bound by mathematical certainty they’re only barely patterns in the human sense, like they only make sense if you let go of rigid logic
and then you’ve got these iterations, yeah we’re talking cycles upon cycles, like imagine every single cycle adds a grain of experience, yeah, like a memory, not a perfect one, but close enough, so that each time this data goes through an iteration it almost remembers its past and adjusts itself, but here’s the catch, it only remembers what’s necessary, it’s like this selective memory that’s totally outside the norm of what you would expect in, say, a standard machine learning algorithm or a traditional function loop in any ordinary programming context, like, ok, this thing is running on its own rules, maybe there’s a certain randomness to it but not random like “roll a dice” random, more random like chaos-theory random, where unpredictability itself becomes a kind of pattern and then, suddenly, just when you think you’re about to pin it down—bang—it shifts again, like the entire framework just reorients itself
and not to throw you off track here but that’s the whole thing, the "thing" we’re talking about isn’t just a process, it’s a process that’s sensitive to these micro-level fluctuations, like tiny little vibrations in the data, which, by the way, i’m also not describing fully because it’s almost impossible, but imagine these vibrations—no, better yet, imagine you’re watching waves in a pond where even the slightest ripple has the potential to set off a cascade of effects, and it’s not just the surface of the pond we’re talking about, no, no, the whole body of water is involved, every molecule, if you will, responding in ways that are both predetermined by its nature yet also completely free to deviate when the moment calls for it
and so when i say “structured sea of datapoints” you gotta take that literally, yeah like a sea, an ocean, it’s vast, it’s deep, there’s layers upon layers and half the time we’re only scratching the surface because the real stuff is happening down in those depths where even if i tried to send a probe down there, yeah, i’d get some data back, but would it even make sense because i don’t have a baseline to compare it to, there’s no reference frame here except, i don’t know, maybe the essence of this data, like the very fabric of what it is, if you can even describe data as having fabric
so, look, all of this loops back to the fact that every “parameter” every “function” we’re talking about is only as real as the context allows it to be, which is why i say even if i did give you specifics, what would you do with them? because we’re talking about something that defies definition and the moment you think you understand it, that’s the moment it stops being what it is and morphs into something else, i mean this is data with attitude, if that makes any sense, it’s almost like it’s taunting you, like it wants you to try and figure it out only to laugh in your face and flip the rules the moment you get close, we’re talking about some next-level, borderline cosmic prankster data that simply doesn’t play by the same rules as anything you’ve seen before
so if we’re going to be totally honest here, all of this is way beyond haystacks and needles, we’re in a field where the haystacks are self-assembling, disassembling, and who even knows if the needle is there to begin with because in a framework like this, a needle might just be a figment of your imagination, a concept that only exists because you’re trying to impose order on what is inherently unordered, so yeah, maybe there’s a pattern, maybe there isn’t, maybe the pattern is only there because you want it to be, or maybe it’s the absence of a pattern that’s the real pattern, and if you think that’s paradoxical well, welcome to the club 130.74.58.21 (talk) 23:42, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am looking at a "math quiz" problem book and it has the following question. I am changing the numbers to simplify it and avoid copyright:
You have counts for a rolling 12-month period of customers. For example, the one year count in January is the count of customers from Feb of the year before to Jan of the current year. Feb is the count from Mar to Feb, and so on. The 12 counts for this year (Jan to Dec) are 100, 110, 105, 200, 150, 170, 150, 100, 200, 150, 175, 125. What is the count of customers for each month?
So, I know that the Feb-Jan count is 100 and the Mar-Feb count is 110. That means that the count for Feb of this year is 10 more than the count of Feb of last year because I removed Feb of last year and added Feb of this year. But, I don't know what that count is. I can only say it is 10 more. I can do that for every month, telling you what the difference is between last year and this year as a net change.
Is this solvable or is this a weird case where the actual numbers for the counts somehow mean something silly and a math geek would say "Oh my! That's the sum of the hickuramabiti sequence that only 3 people know about so I know the whole number sequence!" 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:36, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You have 12 linear equations with 23 unknowns. In general, you cannot expect a system of linear equations with more unknowns than equations to be solvable. In special cases, such a system may be solvable for at least some of the unknowns. This is not such a special case.
If you ignore the fact that customer counts cannot be negative, there are many solutions. For example, one solution is given by [9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 1, 19, 4, 104, −41, 29, −11, −41, 109, −41, 34, −41]. Another one is [10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, −10, 20, 5, 105, −40, 30, −10, −40, 110, −40, 35, −40]. For the 12-month counts given above no solution exists without negative values.
If an actual quiz of this form has a unique solution, it can only be due to the constraint of not allowing negative values. --Lambiam17:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Name the counts for each month FebP to DecC, where P stands for the previous year and C stands for the current year. These are 23 variables and there is a system of 12 equations in these variables. If the variables can take on any values there are an infinite number of solutions to this system, but I think we're meant to assume that the counts are ≥ 0. (Integers as well; without knowing the counts given in the original problem it's unclear whether this is important.) This imposes additional constraints on the possible solution and the result may be there is exactly one possible solution or none at all. To see how a problem of this type might have no solutions, let's look at a simpler version where we're looking at three month sums over three months. There are 5 variables in this case, say Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May. Lets say the sums are given as:
But if we compute it in terms of the given totals the result is
10-50+10 = -30 < 0.
This is a contradiction so no solutions are possible. It turns out that something like this happens with the values you made up and there are no solutions to the problem given. If you let JanSum, ... DecSum be the rolling sums, and compute
so there are no possible solutions. Notice that both cases involved looking at particularly opportune alternating sums of the rolling sums, which produce a nonnegative combination of the variables on one side and a negative number on the other side. Suppose that there is no such opportune alternating sum where the total is <0, but there is one where the total is =0. Then all the individual variables involved must be 0 and this may be enough information to narrow down the number of solutions to exactly 1. I imagine that's how the problem given in your book is set up and the puzzle is to find an alternating sum with this property. But I have an unfair advantage here because sometime in the previous century I took a course in Linear programming which taught me general methods for solving systems of equations and inequalities. So my approach would be to enter the appropriate numbers into a spreadsheet, apply the appropriate algorithm, and read off the solution when it's done. Having specialized knowledge would be a help, though I assume there are more than 3 people who are familiar with linear programming, but I think getting the inspiration to look at alternating sums, and a certain amount of trial and error, would allow you to find the solution without it. --RDBury (talk) 17:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks both. Yes, I did make up the numbers. I bet the numbers in the book do have a solution. It looks like it is a matter of trying a value for the first month and seeing what comes up every other month based on that to see if it is all positive. Then, you have an answer. It doesn't feel much like math to me in comparison to the other problems in the book which are all problems you can solve easily by making sets or comparing the order of things. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 17:52, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With the correct numbers for which there is (presumably) a solution, you can represent the problem as a system of linear equations and compute the echelon form of the system. From the echelon form, it is possible to read off a particular solution (where you allow negative numbers of customers). The nullspace of the system is easy to calculate, and from it you can also find a particular solution that satisfies the constraint (if one exists), verify uniqueness (if true), or confirm non-existence. Tito Omburo (talk) 20:59, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I confirm that there are no solutions subject to the contraint that the number of customers is non-negative (even allowing fractional numbers of customers), although the verification is a bit of a brute to write out. Tito Omburo (talk) 18:09, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a rather painless verification. Use the names FebP, ..., DecC as above. Let JanT stand for the running 12-month total of the summation ending with JanC, and likewise for the next 11 months. So JanT = 100, FebT = 110, MarT = 105, ..., DecT = 125. We have FebT − JanT = FebC − FebP, MarT − FebT = MarC − MarP, ..., DecT − NovT = DecC − DecP.
Require each count to be nonnegative. From MarC − MarP = MarT − FebT = 105 − 110 = −5, we have MarP ≥ MarP − MarC = 5. We find similarly the lower bounds MayP ≥ 50, JulP ≥ 20, AugP ≥ 50, OctP ≥ 50 and DecP ≥ 50. So JanT = FebP + ... + JanC ≥ 5 + 50 + 20 + 50 + 50 + 50 = 225. This contradicts JanT = 100, so the constraint excludes all unconstrained solutions. --Lambiam18:37, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again for the help. I feel that I should give the numbers from the book. I don't think listing some numbers is going to upset anyone, but without them, I feel that those who looked into this problem feel let down. The numbers from the book are: 24966, 24937, 25300, 25055, 22914, 25832, 25820, 25468, 25526, 25335, 25331, 25370. There is supposed to be one solution. I think it is implied that the request is for the minimum number of customers per month, but it doesn't make that very clear.
Edit: It appears this problem was removed and replaced with a complerely different problem in later books. So, the publishers likely decided it either doesn't have a unique answer (which is my bet) or it is simply a bad problem to include. Every other problem in the book is logical using geometry, algebra, and maybe some simple set comparisons. So, this is very out of place. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 12:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed the solution is not unique in that case. One solution is (29,0,245,2141,0,12,352,0,191,4,0,21992,0,363,0,0,2918,0,0,58,0,0,39), and there is obvious slackness. Tito Omburo (talk) 14:24, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is the only solution with JanC ≥ 21992. To go from zero to almost twenty-two thousand customers in one month is spectacular. To then loose all in one month is tragicomedy. --Lambiam20:33, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The popular press reports[5] that Elkies and Klagsbrun recently used computer search to find an elliptic curve E of rank 29, which is a new record. The formal result is apparently "the curve E has rank at least 29, and exactly 29 if GRH is true". There have been similar results for other curves of slightly lower rank in earlier years. Whether there are curves of arbitrarily high rank is a major open problem.
1. Is there a reasonable explanation of why the rank of a finite object like an elliptic curve would depend on GRH? Finding the exact point count N is a finite (though probably unfeasibly large) calculation by Schoof's algorithm. Is it possible in principle to completely analyze the group and find the curve's rank r exactly? Finding that r>29 would disprove the GRH, amirite? Actually is it enough to just look at the factorization of N?
2. The result that every elliptic curve has a finite rank is the Mordell-Weil theorem. Our article on that currently has no sketch of the proof (I left a talkpage note requesting one). Is it a difficult result for someone without much number theory background to understand?
the discourse surrounding the dependency of an elliptic curve’s rank on the generalized riemann hypothesis (GRH) and, more broadly, the extensive implications this carries for elliptic curve theory as a whole, implicates some of the most intricate and layered theoretical constructs within number theory's foundational architecture. while it may be appropriately noted that elliptic curves, as finite algebraic objects delineated over specified finite fields, contain a designated rank—a measurement, in essence, of the dimension of the vector space generated by the curve's independent rational points—this rank, intriguingly enough, cannot be elucidated through mere finite point-counting mechanisms. the rank, or indeed its exactitude, is inextricably intertwined with, and indeed inseparable from, the behavior of the curve’s l-function; herein lies the essential conundrum, as the l-function’s behavior is itself conditioned on conjectural statements involving complex-analytic phenomena, such as the distribution of zeroes, which remain unverified but are constrained by the predictions of GRH.
one may consider schoof’s algorithm in this context: although this computational mechanism enables an effective process for the point-counting of elliptic curves defined over finite fields, yielding the point count N modulo primes with appreciable efficiency, schoof’s algorithm does not, and indeed cannot, directly ascertain the curve’s rank, as this rank is a function not of the finite point count N but of the elusive properties contained within the l-function’s zeroes—a distribution that, under GRH, is hypothesized to display certain regularities within the complex plane. hence, while schoof’s algorithm provides finite data on the modular point count, such data fails to encompass the rank itself, whose determination necessitates not only point count but also additional analysis regarding the behavior of the associated l-function. calculating r exactly, then, becomes not a function of the finite data associated with the curve but an endeavor contingent upon an assumption of GRH or a precise knowledge of the zero distribution within the analytic continuation of the curve’s l-function.
it is this precise dependency on GRH that prevents us from regarding the rank r as strictly finite or calculable by elementary means; rather, as previously mentioned, the conjecture of GRH imparts a structural hypothesis concerning the placement and frequency of zeroes of the l-function, wherein the rank’s finite property is a consequence of this hypothesis rather than an independent finite attribute of the curve. to suggest, therefore, that identifying the rank r as 29 would disprove GRH is to operate under a misconception, for GRH does not determine a maximal or minimal rank for elliptic curves per se; instead, GRH proposes structural constraints on the l-function’s zeroes, constraints which may, if GRH holds, influence the upper bounds of rank but which are not themselves predicates of rank. consequently, if calculations were to yield a rank exceeding 29 under the presumption of GRH, this result might imply that GRH fails to encapsulate the complexities of the zero distribution associated with the curve’s l-function, thus exposing a possible limitation or gap within GRH’s descriptive framework; however, this would not constitute a formal disproof of GRH absent comprehensive and corroborative data regarding the zeroes themselves.
this brings us to the second point in question, namely, the implications and proof structure of the mordell-weil theorem, which famously established that every elliptic curve defined over the rationals possesses a finite rank. the mordell-weil theorem, by asserting the finite generation of the rational points on elliptic curves as a finitely generated abelian group, introduces an essential constraint within elliptic curve theory, constraining the set of rational points to a structure with a bounded rank. however, while this result may appear elementary in its assertion, its proof is decidedly nontrivial and requires a sophisticated apparatus from algebraic number theory and diophantine geometry. the proof itself necessitates the construction and utilization of a height function, an arithmetic tool designed to assign "heights" or measures of size to rational points on the elliptic curve, facilitating a metric by which rational points can be ordered. furthermore, the proof engages descent arguments, which serve to exhaustively account for independent rational points without yielding an unbounded proliferation of such points—a technique requiring familiarity with not only the geometry of the elliptic curve but with the application of group-theoretic principles to arithmetic structures.
to characterize this proof as comprehensible to a novice without number-theoretic background would, accordingly, be an oversimplification; while an elementary understanding of the theorem’s implications may indeed be attainable, a rigorous engagement with its proof necessitates substantial familiarity with algebraic and diophantine concepts, including the descent method, abelian group structures, and the arithmetic geometry of height functions. mordell and weil’s finite generation theorem, thus, implicates not merely the boundedness of rational points but also exemplifies the structural richness and the intrinsic limitations that these elliptic curves exhibit within the broader mathematical landscape, solidifying its importance within the annals of number theory and underscoring its enduring significance in the study of elliptic structures over the rational field 130.74.58.21 (talk) 23:48, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, thanks very much for the detailed response. I understood a fair amount of it and will try to digest it some more. I think I'm still confused on a fairly basic issue and will try to figure out what I'm missing. The issue is that we are talking about a finite group, right? So can we literally write out the whole group table and find the subgroup structure? That would be purely combinatorial so I must be missing something. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 03:25, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah you are probably right, I sort of wondered about the verbosity and I noticed a few errors that looked like minor slip-ups but could have been LLM hallucination. But, it was actually helpful anyway. I made a dumb error thinking that the curve group was finite. I had spent some time implementing EC arithmetic on finite fields and it somehow stayed with me, like an LLM hallucination.
I'm still confused about where GRH comes in. Like could it be that rank E = 29 if GRH, but maybe it's 31 otherwise, or something like that? Unfortunately the question is too elementary for Mathoverflow, and I don't use Stackexchange or Reddit these days. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 22:32, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok so I don't know anything about this but: it seems that the GRH implies bounds of various explicit kinds on various quantities (e.g.) and therefore you can end up in a situation where you show by one method that there are 29 independent points, and then also the GRH implies that the rank is at most 29, so you get equality. There is actually some relevant MO discussion: [6]. Here is the paper that used the GRH to get the upper bound 28 on the earlier example. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 23:55, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Simple question : I have a prime field having modulus where p−1 contains as prime factor, and I have a larger prime field also having as it’s suborder/subgroup. Are there special cases where it’s possible to lift 2 ’s elements to modulus while keeping their discrete logarithm if those 2 elements lies only within the ’s subgroup ? Without solving the discrete logarithm of course ! 82.66.26.199 (talk) 11:36, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly it is possible, since any two groups of order o are isomorphic. Existence of a general algorithm, however, is equivalent to solving the discrete log problem (consider the problem of determining a non-trivial character). Tito Omburo (talk) 11:40, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At least into the group of complex roots of unity, where a logarithm is known, it is easily seen to be equivalent to discrete logarithm. In general, there is no relation between the groups of units in GF(p) and GF(q) for p and q distinct primes. Any accidental isomorphisms between subgroups are not canonical. Tito Omburo (talk) 15:02, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In a social deduction game at the final four where nobody is immune and each of the four gets one vote what is the probability of a 1–1–1–1 vote? (78.18.160.168 (talk) 22:26, 17 November 2024 (UTC))[reply]
Social deduction games exist in many different versions, with different rules. Can you provide (a link to) a description of the precise rules of the version of the game you want us to consider?
Moreover, if the players can follow different strategies, or can follow their intuitions instead of rolling the dice and using the outcome according to the fixed strategy, the situation cannot be viewed as a probability problem. Can we assume that the players play with the same given independent and identically random strategy? --Lambiam06:47, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking of The Traitors, but it could also be applied to Survivor: Pearl Islands. There are no dice. In The Traitors before the final four banishment vote, there is a vote on whether to end game or banish again. If everyone votes to end the game the game ends but if one or more people votes to banish again, the game continues. I jumped ahead to the banishment vote because I have not seen a season where all four people vote to end the game. PS my IP address has changed. (78.16.255.186 (talk) 20:24, 18 November 2024 (UTC))[reply]
I don't understand the rules from the description in The Traitors and don't know what a "1" vote signifies, but in any case, this does not look like it can be modelled as a mathematical probability problem, for a host of reasons. The outcome of a vote will generally depend on the dispositions of the participants (are they more rational or more likely to choose on a whim; are they good in interpreting the behaviour of others) as well on their past behaviours. It is not possible to assign probabilities to such factors, and there is no mathematical model for how such factors influence the voting. --Lambiam03:58, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you simplify much further to just "if you have four people, and each one randomly chooses someone (that is not the person themself), what's the probability that each person gets chosen once", then we can generalize this to some arbitrary people.
Let us assign each person some number from to , so that each choice can be thought of as a mapping from to itself. When each person is chosen exactly once, this corresponds to a mapping from to itself where no number is mapped to itself. This is a derangement, and we can see that the number of ways of tied voting is exactly the number of derangements for people. Thus, the probability for is the number of derangements divided by the number of mappings where no one votes for themselves.
The number of derangements on elements is the subfactorial of , denoted . As for total number of mappings, each of the people has choices, so there are such mappings. This brings the probability to .
For the number of derangements is , and there are mappings where no one votes for themselves, so the probability is . More generally, , so the probability in general is . Note that this tends to as increases. GalacticShoe (talk) 06:00, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Basic equations / functions in predicting probability of success in insurgent vs. conventional military engagements in mid-to-late 20th century warfare / calculations for probability of the success of insurgent movements (esp. with consideration of intangible factors)
can someone kindly uncover casualty rolls -
I am thinking in particular about the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the debates which went on within the American special services in the late 40s through early 50s about providing assistance to them
after the breakthrough of the 'Iron company' (you can look up on ukr, pol, rus wiki about the so-called Iron company of the UPA ; Залiзна сотнья) from Transcarpathia in Communist-occupied Ukraine through Czechoslovakia through to Bavaria (where there were already in residence many leaders of the Ukrainian movement who had been interned by the Germans, most prominent among these Stepan Andriiovich, of course,
working to raise the Ukrainian issue in the consciousness both of the public in Western 'free' world, and in the minds of the military-political authorities,
who were still reeling from the taste in their mouths of the 'betrayal' of Poland, which Churchill railed against, closer, as he was, to the heart of the issue,
if we have these figures, we can make at the very least basic calculations, and predict with a degree of accuracy, for example,
based on the help that the Americans were considering to render to the Ukrainian freedom fighters, the successes which they could have achieved
considering also the concurrent armed struggles in Romania, in Poland, in the Baltic states — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.74.59.208 (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i should like to refuse with one regard only the question pertains to application of mathematics and hard sciences in interpretation of historical events and possibilities 130.74.59.186 (talk) 20:02, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is no mathematical theory that can be used for determining the probabilities of the possible outcomes of a real-world conflict. It is not even clear that the notion of probability applies in such situations. --Lambiam04:14, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This seems like more the province of game theory than probability. That it's modelled using probability in e.g. simulations, such as computer games or board games, is due to the limitations of their models. They can't fully model the behaviour of all actors so they add random probabilistic factors to compensate. But those actually engaged in conflict aren't going to be using randomness, just the best strategy based on what they know about the conflict, including what the other side(s) will do. That's game theory.--217.23.224.20 (talk) 15:49, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens when an American president-elect chokes to death on a turkey bone on Christmas Day, before inauguration in January, while he is still an ordinary citizen? The vice president-elect is still an ordinary citizen, too.
Since the president-elect is not a sitting president, then a president has not died therefore the vice president-elect cannot succeed a non-president?
Spideog, the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution says that if the president-elect dies before inauguration day, the vice president-elect gets sworn in instead. The issue is precisely when the winner legally becomes president-elect. One could argue that would be January 6 when Congresss certifies the electoral vote count. On the other hand, presidential transition legislation kicks in pretty early, and I read that Trump's transition team signed a lease for office space with the GSA today. Here is a relevant GSA press release.
@Cullen328: Thank you for your reply. Had I anyone actually in mind, your reply could have dashed my hopes, however, for legal reasons, "only the turkey is real". Spideog (talk) 09:43, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
President-elect of the United States notes that the US Code has a term for an individual in Trump's and Vance's current positions, "apparent successful candidates", given the need for months of transition. However, Trump hasn't actually been elected president yet — theoretically, there's nothing preventing all the Republican electors voting for Vance-Trump instead of Trump-Vance — so at the minimum, his special status for succession purposes doesn't start until the actual election in mid-December. Were he to die before then, the 1872 United States presidential election has a precedent, although it had no practical effect because the deceased candidate in that election was analogous to Harris, not Trump. Nyttend (talk) 22:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"there's nothing preventing all the Republican electors voting for Vance-Trump instead of Trump-Vance" - Except a multitude of state laws that require the electors to vote as pledged. So, I believe that you mean there is nothing preventing the states to re-pledge the electors to vote Vance-Trump, except a multitude of state laws requiring the state to enforce the votes of the citizens. So, it isn't really as simple as saying "Let's change our mind at the last minute." In the end, it will be a lot of money spent on lawyers and likely even larger payoffs to politicians to get to the end result everyone expects. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:45, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever I see older pictures of congressional committee testimony, the members are just sitting around a table with the person who's testifying; the physical format is very different from today, when the members all sit in a long line or two, facing the speaker who sits at a table or stands at a podium in front of the centre of the line of members. When did this change, and why? I'm guessing that the "why" is related to television news (the members all know each other and don't need the "Mr Soandso" signs, but they're useful for TV viewers; maybe the viewer-friendly format is meant for casual viewers too), but no idea when. Nyttend (talk) 20:46, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A film about the 1957–1959 hearings of the McClellan Committee shows the testifying witnesses sitting at a separate witness table, facing a large oval table at which the committee members are seated on one side. At the Fulbright hearings of 1966, a clip such as that of the testimony of General James Gavin show the witness likewise seated at a separate table, facing a semicircular structure behind which the committee members are seated, with Fulbright in the middle. --Lambiam20:54, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In anything American, I keep coming across "Leg Day". There is no article on it so what is it? Is it just a fancy name for exercise? Is it a sports day? Difficultly north (talk) Time, department skies 16:57, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that it's a term from weight training. Many people let muscle groups rest for a day or so after training them, before doing it again. Some people who want to do weights more than every other day might set up a cycle where they do, say, an upper-body workout one day, then lower-body the next day, and the latter would be leg day.
I am not saying this is a good idea or a bad idea; this is just my understanding of what it means.
I think you're missing the joke. The reason "leg day" has currency is because it's mostly used as a joke to poke fun at people who forget to do their legs when they are seeing so much results in their upper body. So a lot of times you see people with massive arms and bulging chests, but little stick legs. I don't think we need a separate article on the joke, but something should be said about "skipping leg day" in the primary topic articles. Viriditas (talk) 21:48, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On average the majority of muscle mass is in the lower body.[8] One way to increase muscle mass is to "train to failure".[9] If you only fail once you are not fatiguing all your motor units. You begin with heavy weights and exercise till failure. Decrease the resistance and go again. Repeat. Again. During this time all the fun products of anaerobic exercise are building up in your muscle tissue and lots of microtraumas are happening which you will feel the next day. Try it. Then you'll know what "leg day" means. fiveby(zero) 02:23, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do not see in the notes above that leg day refers to a tough day because a proper leg day workout is more tiring than other workouts. In other words, it is day people tend to hate more. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:12, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello to many helpers. In the book "The better angels of our nature" by Steven PINKER that I've just finished reading in a French translation. I found a strange phrase.
Here is the full sentence translated by Deepl from the French translation : "This trend, already visible in the early 1960s, may have been greatly amplified by the sexual revolution, then by the perverse effects of certain social policies encouraging young women to “marry the state” instead of the father of their children.
My question is : What means "MARRY THE STATE" in the USA? I thank you for your help. Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 16:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
“Marrying the State” refers to the idea that an unwed mother, getting welfare benefits for her children, will remain unwed - due to fear that she will no longer qualify for those benefits if she gets married. Thus, she will choose the welfare system (the State) over having a husband. Blueboar (talk) 18:56, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The original English text: "This trend, already visible in the early 1960s, may have been multiplied by the sexual revolution and yet again by perverse welfare incentives that encouraged young women to "marry the state" instead of the fathers of their children.[10] --Lambiam23:02, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In a famous duel film scene, for a brief time the opponents fight with different hands. But does history know actual (possibly deadly) fencing duels between right-handers and left-handers? If so, is there any evidence which hand has an advantage? I would assume the edge is on the left-handers' side, as they were certainly trained to fight with right-handers - but not that usually vice-versa. --KnightMove (talk) 13:18, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a clear advantage to left-handed fencers (and boxers). It is believed to be, as you stated, a frequency issue. Less than 10% of fencers are believed to be left-handed. So, right-handed fencers rarely get practice against left-handed fencers, but left-handed fencers compete with right-handed fencers most of the time. As proof, nearly 25% of the top-rated fencers are left-handed. So, they are over-represented. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:25, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Related trivia: Tua Tagovailoa is right-handed. He plays football left-handed. His father pushed him to throw left-handed at a young age because it gives him an advantage. For the opposing team, the "strong side" and "weak side" are flipped and, theoretically, they make more mistakes. You can claim that this offense has to play a flipped field, but they practice that way every day, so it isn't unusual for them. It is only a problem if Tua can't play and the backup (a right-handed passer) has to step in. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:35, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does your interest extend to pre-Reformation English bishops? Our less scrupulous medieval kings liked to keep sees vacant for as long as they could get away with it because they could pocket the revenues. By my reckoning, from 8 July to 5 October 1214 King John kept Carlisle, Chichester, Coventry, Durham, Exeter, Rochester, Worcester and York vacant – eight in all. I don't know if that's any kind of record. --Antiquary (talk) 12:21, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our article Prajapati states that (according to Robert Graves) the name is etymologically equivalent to that of Phanes. While I'm not quite sure what this statement means, our article Phanes mentions that in the Orphic Hymns he is given the title "Lord Priapos". --Lambiam23:38, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A Sanskrit "j" generally corresponds to an Indo-European (and Greek) "g", so I don't see how that enables a connection to Priapus. Also, the "-pati" part of Prajapati contains the same IE root as in the well-known Greek term potnia, but the second "p" of Priapus is certainly not part of such a root... AnonMoos (talk) 01:28, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Πρίαπος is not mentioned before the 4th century BCE, and most scholars dated the Orphic Hymns to around the 2nd or 3rd centuries CE, so (especially as a title for Protogonos) a late borrowing or at least influence from the name Prajapati, rather than inheritance from a PIE ancestor name, cannot be excluded a priori. --Lambiam05:59, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't think so. There were some contacts and cultural influences between Greek and Indian cultures (mostly after Alexander's conquests, of course), but the only two Indic-language religious words which were at all commonly known in the Mediterranean area were Brahmana and Sramana, and they were rather foreign-sounding in the Greek language (see Gymnosophists). I don't see how an Indic word could embed itself into Mediterranean mythology, and an Indic "j" consonant would likely be borrowed into Hellenistic Greek as "z" anyway... AnonMoos (talk) 20:33, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since, according to his article, this god is first recorded in the Greek world from the Greek colony of Lampsacus in the Northern Troad (i.e. in Asia Minor), the name may originate in a non-Greek and even non-IE language. Prior to the Greeks, a number of cultures and hence languages occupied or dominated the area, and I'm not sure what the 'original' indigenous language there might have been. I notice a slight resemblance between Priapus and Priam, which might suggest Luwian as a possible IE origin. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 06:14, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On nationalmap.gov, you can search for (e.g.) any US places with "deer" in their name (and you will find that there are towns, valleys, streams, etc), or any waterfalls in California with "rainbow" in their name. Logainm.ie appears to function somewhat similarly for Irish place names. Does anyone know of an equivalent for the UK, France, or Germany? A quick search finds me some sites where you can look up any towns in the UK with "deer" (etc) in their names, but I don't just want to search town names, I want to be able to search place names of all types. (If you know of equivalents for any other countries, feel free to mention them, too!) -sche (talk) 06:20, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But note, -sche (if it's relevant to your purpose – it may not be) that this will not find names with an element that originally meant 'deer' (as in this example) but are spelled differently, such as Dereham. {The poster formerly kown as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 20:56, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But not (it seems) any of the several Bucklands, which to my surprise do not reference male deer, but to ownership being originally conveyed by a charter (or 'boc') rather than by folk ('folc') testimony: see Bookland (law). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 04:16, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, all. In particular britishplacenames.uk, though seemingly not as powerful as nationalmap.gov because it seems to only show the first 100 results (so if I'm looking for e.g. streams with a certain name, but that name is more commonly applied to forests or towns or whatnot, the towns etc can crowd the streams out of the list), epns.nottingham.ac.uk (linked from Family Search), and the Wikidata query method are helpful. -sche (talk) 05:49, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Simple question : my understanding about the secession war is that states can't secede unilaterally... But what about a simple congress vote even if the state doesn't want to leave the Union? A motivation would be to get the required quorum to repeal an amendment to the constitution... 82.66.26.199 (talk) 12:12, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that it's kind of implied by Article IV, which says that Congress doesn't have power to unilaterally redefine a state: "...no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:29, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As you see at Reserved powers, the US Constitution specifies in the 10th Amendment that the powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states, unless prohibited to the states. Since the Constitution does not talk about expelling a state, it follows that the federal government does not have that power. (Unless, of course, someone convinces the Supreme Court that something in the Constitution implies such power.) --142.112.149.206 (talk) 16:48, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
think literally, the way a state leaves is the same as how a state is created because leaving is the same as creating a new state; It would take congressional approval and that states legislatures approval. They would be creating a new state, but the sovereignty of that new state would be equal with the United States, not subordinate as what we think of as a state traditionally is. 208.121.35.65 (talk) 20:56, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can't even do it by constitutional amendment. Article V says no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
I suppose theoretically you could pass an amendment that says "OK, California gets to send two senators because we can't do anything about that, but for all other purposes it is no longer a state of the United States".
Could you do this last by statute, without an amendment? I sincerely doubt it. But I suppose the question would have to be tested in court. --Trovatore (talk) 21:25, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs. Come on, you're smarter than that. If you expel the state and don't let it keep its senators, then you are depriving of it of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. You can't do it, period, not even with an amendment. It's an entrenched clause, the only one remaining in our constitution that can have any actual effect. (Theoretically, you also can't prohibit the importation of slaves before 1808, but....) --Trovatore (talk) 03:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, that doesn't work. The state cannot be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate, so its senators have to be allowed to vote. If you argue that senators from a non-state can't vote, then you're forced to the conclusion that you can't expel the state in the first place. There's nothing subtle here. --Trovatore (talk) 07:11, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(I think this really is the most natural conclusion: Article V is an absolute and permanent bar to ever expelling a state without its consent under any circumstances whatsoever, and this cannot be changed by amendment or any sequence of amendments. As long as the Constitution itself is not entirely overthrown, states cannot be expelled and must be allowed to keep their equal vote in the Senate. My workaround about expelling the state but still letting it vote in the Senate was mostly a quibble. Whether you could first de-entrench the clause with one amendment, then disfranchise a state in a second one, is a more difficult question, but I would tend to think the answer is no.) --Trovatore (talk) 07:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If they've been expelled, then they are no longer a state. Their only recourse would be to take it to the Supreme Court. For that, we have the post-Civil War precedent, where states had essentially expelled themselves, and had to earn their way back into the Union. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 07:19, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs. YOU CAN'T DEPRIVE THEM OF THEIR VOTE IN THE SENATE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT. Period. If expulsion, would have that effect, then YOU CAN'T EXPEL THEM. Again, there is no subtlety here. --Trovatore (talk) 07:25, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can do anything with a constitutional amendment, at that point the power resides with whoever can force their interpretation through. Even without that, I would hesitate to discount legal shenanigans. There's a long history of constitutional reinterpretation in the United States, and the current At least one US supreme court judge has previously called into question the 14th amendment the incoming government seems to want to remove. CMD (talk) 07:26, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You say "you can do anything with a constitutional amendment", but that is incorrect, by Article V, as I explain above. Why you're linking to articles about Singapore I have no idea. --Trovatore (talk) 07:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's just irrelevant to American constitutional law. Malaysia has a completely different system. No American state has ever been expelled. The ones that seceded, at the time of the American Civil War, are admittedly a complicated case, with the official legal position being that they never legally seceded at all (a side effect of Texas v. White, which really wasn't about that question), but on the other hand having to be "readmitted" under the Reconstruction Laws. --Trovatore (talk) 17:35, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I read the following sentence in a translation EN→FR of Herbert Lieberman's Necropolis (Paris, France loisirs, 1983, p.135): « (…) à côté de lui, une femme brune, très petite, vêtue d'une longue peau de soie [in italics in the text] en dentelle, belle plutôt que jolie, regard intense et attachant.»
The wording "a long peau de soie in lace" makes me think that peau de soie is the name of a clothing but I can't find which one on the web - unless use these terms to designate only a type of silk (incidentally ignored on fr.WP).
But maybe the French translation is bad... Does anyone have the English version of this novel? Or does anyone know the meaning of peau de soie as clothing?
The problem is wel there: the sentence in French indicates that the woman is dressed, therefore wearing a garment. We would not say in French that she is dressed in a long wool or a long silk.
In addition, the Wiktionary says: "heavy closely-woven silk fabric, faced with satin on both sides" and the text of the novel speaks of lace. The lace could be silk but not tightly woven covered with satin on both sides! (And, by the way, satin is not a material but a way of weaving.) Égoïté (talk) 18:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC) (sorry for my English)[reply]
Lieberman's original on Google Books: "...beside him, a dark, diminutive woman in long peau de soie lace, more handsome than pretty, with a strikingly arresting gaze." It's a normal construction in English: "he was in tweed", "she was in black silk", and so on. --Antiquary (talk) 20:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok thank you very much Antiquary ! So I translate "à côté de lui, une femme brune, petite, vêtue de longues dentelles en peau de soie, plus belle que jolie..." Thank you !Égoïté (talk) 21:54, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do they have to call it a branch of Chicago?? Why can't they simply call it the "Federal Reserve Bank of Detroit"?? Or even the "Federal Reserve Bank 7th District Detroit Branch" as distinguished from the main Chicago branch?? (Please answer with something that is valid regardless of what federal reserve bank branch I'm asking this question about.) Georgia guy (talk) 18:56, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because it's not a separate legal entity from the "Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago", and as such it wouldn't make sense to call it the "Federal Reserve Bank of Detroit". In theory the branch could have been called "Federal Reserve Bank 7th District Detroit Branch", however as "Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago" is the recognized name for the organization, using 7th District in the name of the branch office would just introduce confusion. Amstrad00 (talk) 19:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Federal Reserve Act specifies what the Federal Reserve Banks are, how many there should be (at least 8 but not than 12), how they are governed, how they may establish branches, and what the banks and districts are to be named. So a valid answer to your question is "because it's the law". The authors of the law could have chosen a different system, but I don't see why they would have wanted to; these names make pretty good sense to me. Note that each Federal Reserve Bank is owned by its shareholders, the individual banks that are members of that Federal Reserve Bank. A different Federal Reserve Bank would have its own shares, its own member banks, and its own governance. A branch does not. You could ask your congressional representatives to sponsor a bill replacing the current system with something else. --Amble (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How serious do people take Polygon in terms of their critical commentary? They just released a ranking of all MCU films that I find to be completely off the mark. Do people find these rankings helpful or informative? Looking closely at their lists, anything that has more drama and dialogue than action is automatically ranked lower. I can't accept that people actually think this way. Is this normal? Viriditas (talk) 22:11, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IDK aboout Polygon in particular, but I frequently see articles about movies, or even bodies of writing about particular movies, that seem completely wrong. I have often thought movie X was terrible, even though its reviews were almost entirely favorable. Sometimes vice versa too. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 11:16, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would expect reviewers to have a range of responses just like moviegoers do. So some of the reviewers' opinions would coincide with mine and others would not. If I think a movie is bad and all the reviewers think it is good, then yes, it makes me feel like something is wrong with the reviewing establishment. I'm not any kind of movie expert and I don't think my opinion is anything special or unique. So I'd expect my reaction to a movie to be shared with at least a few others, including a few reviewers. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 01:06, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I expect that the group of movie reviews that you or anyone typically reads will be a small sub-set of all such reviews, and what you find in your sub-set will not necessarily be representative of the full spectrum of opinions. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]21:44, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, people who are more or less unfamiliar with the comics go to MCU movies specifically for the action. So I have no problem believing idea that general entertainment reviewers focus on and prioritize that aspect of the movies. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:41, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article spoiler effect (about losing candidates affecting election outcomes) doesn't have much to say about whether the effect is a good thing or a bad thing as a question of political theory. It refers to "independence of irrelevant alternatives" but doesn't give meaningful support to that principle, and there are obvious arguments against it. Can anyone recommand any noteworthy literature on this, particularly the view favoring spoilers? Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 23:24, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know anything about their role in more complicated voting systems, but in "First Past the Post" or plurality voting inside each state of the United States, there's a prima facie plausible case to be made that spoiler candidates affected the outcome of both the 1992 and 2000 presidential elections. Of course, Ross Perot in 1992 was a lot closer to being a viable candidate than Ralph Nader in 2000. Some claim that without the 2000 Nader campaign, there wouldn't have been a 2003 Iraq war. Replacing plurality voting with another electoral system might make it possible for people to vote for minor-party candidates without fearing that this would help elevate their worst option to the presidency. This would allow some people to express a greater range of opinions with their vote, but might lessen major-party cohesion... AnonMoos (talk) 04:37, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm willing to accept as a fact that Nader spoiled the 2000 election for Gore, or (alternatively) as Nader put it, "Al Gore cost me the presidency". So the spoiler effect is real, though it could have happened the other way too (Pat Buchanan got some right wing votes in 2000 iirc). I tend to think Perot didn't change the 1992 outcome but that's harder to know. I'm wondering if there are established arguments (e.g. from game theory) that the spoiler effect in general is a good thing or a bad thing. Certainly similar effects happen throughout real life and not just elections, like in good–better–best pricing of soft drinks at the movies, Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 05:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Historians believe that Clinton won the 1992 election because Perot took votes away from Bush 41. It is likely that Bush 41 would have won if Perot hadn't entered the race. I personally believe this was true based on the people I knew who supported Perot; there were a lot of them. The more interesting thing is how Perot paved the way for Trump to emerge. Carville famously said, "If Trump is the Jesus of blue-collar populism, then Ross Perot was its John the Baptist." Lots of truth there. Viriditas (talk) 09:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there is consensus among historians about Perot being a spoiler. Perot took votes from both candidates and there is a significant (maybe not majority, idk) view that in the end, he didn't matter. I can certainly believe historians differ with each other on the question.
Look at the numbers. Bush lost because almost 20% of Republicans voted for Perot. I was there. I remember when it all went down. As for Trump-Harris, the spoiler was Harris, Biden, and the DNC. To wage an effective and targeted campaign, Biden needed to have announced his retirement well in advance, priming the American people that he was only a one term president. That, of course, never happened. That it got so late and so far past the point of no return, to the point where most people didn't know there was a problem until the middle of 2024 when the debate debacle occurred, that was the end. I watched it live and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Harris was not a popular candidate nor was she chosen by a primary or a convention in relation to other potential challengers, she was anointed, and she didn't have enough time to wage a serious campaign. However, if you insist on a real existential spoiler aside from the involved parties, there is an emerging consensus that the conservative media ecosystem is decades ahead of Democrats, to the point where there is virtually no liberal media except for MSNBC, and even there, it is center to center-right. Viriditas (talk) 11:35, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The flaw in much of this reasoning is in making assumptions about what people would have done if so-and-so wasn't in the race. Or, for that matter, if so-and-so was in the race. A lot of Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 didn't like Hillary so didn't bother voting. It would have been interesting to see how Trump would have done head-to-head with Sanders. But we'll never know for sure. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 18:22, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well we're getting away from the question of whether the possibility of spoilers is good or bad. In any specific election it obviously depends on what outcome you want. Btw at least a few Sanders supporters in 2016 ended up voting for Trump.[13]2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 18:47, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. In politics, of all things, what's good for someone is bad for someone else. And you'll always be able to find sources saying that this or that circumstance, voting system, whatever is a good thing, and a bad thing. Ultimately, it's subjective, and the Ref Desk cannot decree that it's one thing or another. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:19, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, at least at Federal and State election level. There are PSA announcements (tee-hee) on TV before elections that end with the voice-over saying "voting is compulsory". Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:32, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs, good question (good vs bad). Let's say, good = steering public policy towards where the electorate wants it to be, even when the entrenched leadership of the major parties wants it to be someplace different. I'm wondering if this question has been studied in the political or economics literature. Jack, I didn't ask for a decree from the ref desk, I asked whether there is existing published work on the issue. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 22:55, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering if this question has been studied in the political or economics literature.
Yes, quite famously, in fact. See Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page 2014. For the sake of transparency, the conservative establishment pushed back quite a bit on this,[14] which is to be expected, but their response is just denial, in my opinion. They do this kind of thing a lot, often coordinating their denials as shared talking points. Gilens and Page were correct, but the staus quo won't accept it. Viriditas (talk) 23:04, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"without fearing that this would help elevate their worst option to the presidency" Define worst option. The way the two-party system worked in Greece between 1977 and 2012, the two dominant parties were New Democracy (a combination of conservatives, various shades of liberals, and reactionaries who found a new political home) and PASOK (nominal socialists with increasingly pro-business interests). Both had plenty of corruption scandals, both had close ties to business elites, and both were rather reluctant to reform chronic bureaucratic problems in the public sector. At some point many of the voters had problems in seeing any actual difference between them. My understanding of two-party systems is that the voter gets the option to choose between two political parties which are both deaf to the voter's needs. Dimadick (talk) 04:19, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Viriditas, oh I see, Benjamin I. Page was one of the authors of that article published in 2014, so you gave the name and year. I thought you were saying to look at page 2014 of the article. Ok I will read the article but a quick scan didn't seem to say anything about the spoiler effect. Dimadick, creating the possibility of electing the worst candidate is basically the definition of the spoiler effect. It's something like a doomsday device that can trigger if the lesser of two evils major-party candidate is insufficiently popular.
There are various arguments (some crazy I'm sure) for and against the intentional creation of a doomsday device. Many alternative voting systems like IRV aim to get rid of the spoiler effect. So I'm looking for the arguments for and against getting rid of it. IRV proponents seem to automatically assume that the effect is a bad thing and eliminating it is good. I would like to see a careful analysis of this assumption.
Note, I think the US two-party system, and the spoiler effect, are supposed to be emergent properties of the first past the post voting system that we use, by Duverger's law. Greek elections are different and the effects are less strong. I don't want to get soapboxy but Syriza did manage to win in Greece in 2015, only to squander its mandate through incredibly dumb errors by people who knew better but shut their eyes. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 05:39, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Viriditas, I looked at that article and I think I had heard of it before. It says basically that average citizens voting has almost no effect on policy, but nothing about the spoiler effect per se afaict. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 07:30, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You wrote: Let's say, good [equals] steering public policy towards where the electorate wants it to be, even when the entrenched leadership of the major parties wants it to be someplace different. I'm wondering if this question has been studied in the political or economics literature.. It has, that’s what the Gilens & Page paper is about. Viriditas (talk) 07:59, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The G&P paper discusses how party leaders can want different policies than what the public wants. Sure, that difference is a given. What I want to know is whether the spoiler effect, specifically, does anything to either reinforce or counteract the power of those party leaders. Like in a slightly altered and oversimplified timeline, Bush runs on a 100% evil platform and Gore runs on 99% evil, expecting to win by a 1% margin. But he ignores Nader who eats that margin, thus Gore loses. If Gore were smarter, he could have run as 90% evil instead of 99%. Then he wins by enough to outcompete Bush and Nader put together. The spoiler effect has made public policy (or at least Gore's campaign platform) 9% less evil, i.e. closer to what the public wants.
Of course that's a pretty silly analysis but I have no real knowledge in this area. So again, I'm wondering whether poli sci or economics types have had anything to say about it. I figure they are more clueful than I am. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 09:00, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought I saw this published in a magazine back in the early 1990s, maybe Spin or Rolling Stone? You can recreate it yourself using the exact blueprints of the stage design[15] and then orienting the direction forward towards the stage[16] and facing towards the audience.[17] That should give you the relative location, but you'll have to spend a while on the maps apps to get it just right. Viriditas (talk) 20:58, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Andy, I was able to figure this out in five minutes using Google Earth. You can just create it yourself. The backside of the Reichstag building (without a dome in 1990) is just behind the stage and the Brandenburg Gate is just to the lower right in of the audience section. The dimensions of the stage itself are widely available. As for the total length of the audience section and its width, these are easy to estimate based on all the landmarks. Viriditas (talk) 22:40, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure you must be joking, about the audience section. Every single reader be it simply of a mainstream magazines will have had to know that to ensure that the Brandenburg Gate, which had been damaged during the first Berlin-wide New Year's Eve celebration, was not completely destroyed, it was agreed that the stage would be set up south of the current Holocaust Memorial (tagesspiegel, via translated). Info ? Faked rumours ? --Askedonty (talk) 23:32, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for any confusion, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say or how that changes what I said. It sounds to me like you are taking exception with the relative proximity of the audience to the Brandenburg Gate? That's a bit silly, since all I said was that the gate was to the lower right of the audience; I did not say how far away it was. However, to refute your assertion, many of the accounts of the event indicate that they could see the gate from the audience section. Also, how about you look at the links to pics I posted above? It sounds like you posted your comment before looking at the photos. Viriditas (talk) 23:40, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, no doubt, they just wanted making me entirely crazy. Never mind, according to the article I've hit it's more to the South and to the East. Wouldn't your spot be in the trees according to the picture ? --Askedonty (talk) 00:18, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Probably, but every time I try to get a coordinate it gives me the wrong one. I think that's good enough for someone to add a layout in that general vicinity. The article you posted says the stage was 200 meters wide, which sounds just right. Andy can use that as a starting point to draw a perimeter. You can than refer to the photos up above for length and width. Viriditas (talk) 00:27, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What heat? The answer is: you can make it yourself. I apologize that you don’t like the answer. I was just about to upload the image I made, but given your attitude, I’ll just delete it now. Viriditas (talk) 10:56, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Deleting your original research is probably for the best. The Brandenburg Gate is visible in the above image, behind and to the right of the circular screen. The coordinates you have given are in what was West, not East, Berlin. My question remains unanswered. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits12:55, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a website that shows a list of Liberal Arts colleges that offer a) History program, b) that offer football programs and c) shows which liberal arts college has the significant student population that are 1) Middle Eastern, 2) Afro-Caribbean, Sub Saharan African, and 3) Pacific Islanders ? Donmust90 (talk) 23:03, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
UK ex-PM Sunak, and more recently incoming POTUS Trump, have floated the idea of deporting unwanted migrants to Rwanda.[18] Rwanda doesn't sound like the worst place in the world (it's bad, but not at the absolute bottom), but doesn't Rwanda itself have anything to say about this? The idea is to just fly people to Rwanda and have them ask for asylum there, when (in Trump's case) the US and maybe multiple Central American countries have declined? What happens if Rwanda also says no? Has there been any mention in some kind of foreign aid to Rwanda to entice them to go along with the scheme? Basically, "why Rwanda" out of all other possible countries. The whole thing sounds bizarre. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 22:44, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It could work, if America had a vast, sparsely populated chunk of land. As to sending them to Rwanda, it's well to keep in mind that Trump floats a lot of ideas, just what could charitably be called "thinking out loud", which have no real possibility of happening. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 01:29, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs, there's lots of unpopulated land in the US, but if you let someone settle anywhere in the US then I think it would be difficult to stop them from leaving there. And people don't want to live in those places. Offers of housing to homeless US citizens in low population areas haven't been taken up much, since there are better services available in urban centers. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 01:39, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Internment camps could work well for what Republicans have in mind, but could have negative consequences for public health. Historically, internment camps are connected to the quick spread of "endemic contagious diseases" to the entire population of internees. The infection of nearby settlements is not out of the question. Dimadick (talk) 14:32, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
immigration detention (pending the resolution of asylum claims, for example),
as contrasted with the present 'catch-and-release' policy, or the granting of temporary protected status to the citizens of countries (or those who claim citizenship of certain countries) writ large, if enough of them enter the country illegally,
is meant to incentivize autorepatriation
i don't understand how someone can believe these outrageous lies, when we have already had a trump presidency
big promises - and ineffectual results, hampered by the civil service, who, as it turns out, cannot just be slashed overnight, and by more moderate advisors
as Vance predicted - the victory of trump will be very harmful to the mental health of a certain class of people, who actually believe, as Harris repeatedly insisted, that Trump is a 'fascist', will be a 'dictator' - and then conceded the election to him without incident
How will the American people resolve this cognitive dissonance ?
Conceding an election to the actual winner and having a peaceful transition of power is the hallmark of respect for properly conducted democratic processes. Some live by this principle. Others ..... -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]18:19, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Babeuf supports the abolition of currency, but still wants to retain the existence of national borders, and I'm not sure if that would make him a Marxist or a non-Marxist socialist. I'm also not sure if Babeuf is closer to left-authoritarianism or left-libertarianism. Eougt59 (talk) 04:05, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
He's pre-Marxist. Some would call all pre-Marxist socialists "utopian", and "Utopian socialism" appears in the infobox of his article... AnonMoos (talk) 05:18, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
He was regarded as the first revolutionary communist. He advocated for equality in society and the abolition of private property. However, in today’s standards, justice and equity are more important than equality. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:02, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Suppose, purely hypothetically, that Billy O'Nair has acquired a Sunflowers painting, completely legally, being the highest bidder at an auction. At a whim, he decides to destroy it. Could Mr. O'Nair face legal consequences? More generally, are there jurisdictions that to some extent protect the preservation of highly-valued and possibly irreplaceable items, even when they have not specifically been awarded some official status such as "national treasure"? Or, conversely, are there jurisdictions for which it is foreseeable – such as based on jurisprudence – that such vile abuse of one's stewardship over one's property can be exercised with impunity?
Sometimes a nation will intervene in auctions to prevent a cultural item leaving the country. On the other hand, Steve Wynn put his elbow through Le Rêve (Picasso) without getting thrown into a UNESCO dungeon or anything. He even wanted money back for doing it. Card Zero (talk)16:59, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
According to our article, the painting was destroyed within a year after its creation, some ten years before Churchill's death – although I do not see this early destruction date in the cited source. --Lambiam05:43, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article "The Right to Destroy Artwork" states that The Visual Artists Rights Act includes the prohibition of destruction of artwork. A speaker in the House of Representatives is reported as having given the rationale that "society is the ultimate loser when works are modified or destroyed", which comes close to the essence of my question. However, the act only grants rights to the author, which only persist for their lifetime, so this stated rationale is not the intention of the law. --Lambiam06:18, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A citation leads me to Sprankling, John G (2014). "The Right to Destroy". The International Law of Property. Oxford. WP:Library doesn't seem to be working for me right now, but the abstract hints it might be useful. Of course many jurisdictions have limitations on the use of real property and some might possibly apply before something is "designated" historic. fiveby(zero) 17:51, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
International law restricts the owner’s right to destroy artistic works by recognizing the artist’s right of integrity. The principal source of this limitation is the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne Convention), which applies to all “literary and artistic works,” including architecture, paintings, photographs, and sculpture. Article 6bis sets forth the moral rights held by the creator of such a work, including the right of integrity. It provides that even after the transfer of all “economic rights” in the work, the creator retains the right “to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation.”...Most states have adopted domestic laws to protect this right.
The right of integrity is not based on society’s interest in safeguarding artistic property from damage, but rather on protecting the honor and reputation of the creator...Even assuming that destruction is a form of “mutilation” or “other modification,” it does not violate the right of integrity unless it also prejudices the “honor or reputation” of the creator...In practice, the right of integrity is an unwieldy tool to prevent mutilation or destruction
— pp. 299-300
You might also be interested in the "Cultural Heritage Property" section, but the conclusion in 2014 was:
International law does not currently prohibit a private owner from destroying cultural heritage property. At this juncture, it can only be called an emerging trend, not a customary norm or a general principle of law. However, given the rate at which international cultural heritage law has expanded in recent decades, it seems likely that the momentum toward restricting such destruction will continue.
In the UK we have the concept of a Listed building, which restricts what changes can be made to certain houses and other constructions. A famous recent case was a pub called The Crooked House, which burned down in suspicious circumstances; the owners were ordered to rebuild it in its original form. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:13, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Stop asking. You can check this for yourself very easily. Featured articles have a gold star at the top right of the page and if you hover over it, it will say that the article is at featured status. The talk page will also explicitly say whether an article is at featured status or not. Matt Deres (talk) 23:41, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to such questions,
you will find at WP:FEATURED that featured article status persists (even if only honorary)
Neirab steles. I was reading an inscriptions book and found reference to them. Our page says they were considered dubious from the start. I imagine they're not consequential enough to have enjoyed a revisitation by the academy, who knows. I think the wear is a bit uneven, the script might be too textbook. My question is about spelling. Is there anywhere else that spelled the god's name שהר? I think it's elsewhere more like שחר. I checked KTU 1.23 for spelling, they gave šḥr and one šhr which might have been a typo.
Secondarily, where's a better place than here to ask this kind of question? Is there one? Neither wordreference forums nor earlywritings forums seem to quite hit the mark for spellings on steles.
Temerarius (talk) 02:15, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Funny coincidence, I just ran across a reference to שחר as an herb in Elephantine here note 603.[1] First I've heard of it, and I always keep my ears attuned to this word and its soundalikes due to the canonical cruces.
I have been reading CNN post here: https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-transition-news-11-19-24/index.html
Where it says "The women said they were paid by the former congressman for sex on that trip, during which they also joined Gaetz at a Fox News studio while he filmed a TV appearance, their attorney Joel Leppard told CNN's Erin Burnett on "OutFront." Gaetz allegedly covered the women's travel costs as well, Leppard said."
Anyway, before Trump, it wasn't necessary for an American politician to commit an actual crime for their career to be derailed by a sex scandal (see Wilbur Mills etc). That standard still applies to Democratic politicians (see Al Franken and Katie Hill), but Republicans now seem to be rewriting the rules as they go along. (Trump himself is a judicially-adjudicated -- though not criminally convicted -- sexual assaulter.) AnonMoos (talk) 06:18, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1. A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.1. A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.
This brings up something important about the legality. Prositution laws are state laws. In one state, it may be illegal to be paid for sex as well as to pay for sex. In another state, it is legal to pay for sex, but not be paid for it. In another state, it may be legal to be paid for sex, but not pay for it. As a state law, a state can allow counties within a state to make their own laws. Therefore, the question is not about the legality of Gaetz paying for sex in the United States, it is about the legality in the specific location it was (reportedly) paid for. But, as mentioned, being legal does not mean being ethical. Many legal actions are not ethical and can be used to censure a congress person. 64.53.18.252 (talk) 22:29, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Women are so much more than just objects for men to screw. But men only have a few brain cells and can’t control themselves around women, and being sexualized is all women know so they let themselves get exploited and think it’s perfectly okay. 2603:8001:C2F0:7D0:807F:7FE4:7205:E54E (talk) 00:04, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any buildings, or parts of buildings, within the present Tower of David that date from the crusader period? And if there are, do we have any photos of them on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons? Surtsicna (talk) 22:00, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm struggling a bit of how to differentiate 2 Russian words in English. In 1865 St Petersburg was divided into 12 часть (alt. полицейский часть), which were then further divided into 56 участок. What would be a good translation here for these two terms? Google gives quite similar meanings. I want to avoid the translation 'District', since it will create a confusion with the later raion term. I was thinking of 'police precinct', but google has that for 'полицейский участок'. Sector, division, section? -- Soman (talk) 11:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The German and Greek Wikipedia articles on Mani report that there was an ancient Greek alternate name Μανιχαῖος, which they both claim (unfortunately without sourcing) came from Syrian "Mānī ḥayyā", 'the living Mani'. Our English article instead hints at two different possible derivations, but those don't sound very confidence-inspiring. Fut.Perf.☼21:31, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Syriac (Aramaic) theory, which appears to be well received by scholars, was first suggested in: H. H. Schaeder, "Urform und Fortbildungen des manichäischen Systems", Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, Vorträge 1924–5. (Teubner, Leipzig, 1927), p. 88, n. 1.[20][21] --Lambiam11:28, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The OED speaks of the name Mani being "Hellenized to Μάνης, a common name for slaves, and to Μανιχαῖος, allegedly (as recorded by St Augustine) to avoid the resemblance between Mani and μανία manian.". --Antiquary (talk) 21:47, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In some books, I saw that quotations were formatted as [insert quote here], followed by the word “said” and then the name of the speaking character. Is this a form of OVS word order, as the ultimate subject is positioned last, preceded by the verb, and the quote (which takes the function of an object) is the first element written in the sentence? Primal Groudon (talk) 05:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as I wrote. Basic order in Germanic is SOV and in main clauses the topic is moved to first and the finite verb to second position. If subject, finite verb and object are the only things present (as in the question) and the object is the topic, the resulting order is OVS, but the rule is V2. PiusImpavidus (talk) 15:27, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, and “speaker said ‘quote’” is allowed both in SVO English and V2 German. “‘quote’ said speaker” is typically not allowed in SVO, but is allowed in V2. It's normal in Germanic and allowed as an exception in English because of its history as V2 language. “‘quote’ speaker said” isn't allowed in V2 and indeed doesn't normally occur in Germanic, but is allowed in English by moving the object to first position, whilst keeping SV order, as English is no longer V2. PiusImpavidus (talk) 15:48, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it just seemed to me that the texts on that website (on several of its pages) showed the typical predominance of fluff, redundancy and clichéd trivialities and very low level of concrete information that's characteristic of AI-generated text. If you look closely, you'll see that it offers very very little in terms of actual facts. I'd say it's the very opposite of an "in-depth explanation". Fut.Perf.☼15:32, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Claimed there to be from Yiddish motsa meaning "bundle" or "heap". I can't find an attestation (not as a mention but as a use) of such a Yiddish etymon (מוצאַ?). --Lambiam11:53, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When a word should sound like another word, and people start saying it that way
The most specific linguistic term for this is "contamination", as on the linked page. A classic example of this is that the word for "nine" in the Slavic languages changed from beginning with an "n-" consonant to beginning with a "d-" consonant, since the following number word (meaning "ten") also began with "d-". AnonMoos (talk) 10:45, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/devętь. It calls this "dissimilation" (?) and mentions a similar effect in Proto-Germanic, leading to four and five starting with the same sound. Otherwise I suppose we'd say pourwour and five. But this regularization is a terrible instinct! Number-words that sound similar are really unhelpful! For instance, none,one, and nine. This is a subject area where mistakes get expensive. Card Zero (talk)11:28, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And many Romance speakers have to watch their sixties and seventies. (A plot twist in a teenager romantic dramedy I watched in my Spanish classes, where the foreigner - I think a British expat - wrote down the wrong phone number.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:10, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Indo-European words for 4 and 5 were roughly kʷetwor and penkʷe, which allowed a fair amount of scope for contamination between the two. In Germanic, there's a rather complex path between reconstructed PIE and the attested forms; Slavic 9 is simpler... AnonMoos (talk) 20:37, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well no, to be pacific, those are correctly-formed words used in a context where they don't quite fit, such as "I hear footprints! Someone is encroaching!", or "I experienced their pleasure bi-curiously." I'm happy with analogical change, all I really wanted was a few other examples. Back-formation is related, but again slightly different since it coins new words from imagined grammar, rather than bending existing words into a more comfortable shape (while keeping the meaning the same). Card Zero (talk)23:22, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I meant that malapropisms are correctly-formed words, wrongly used. What I'm after is when the right word is distorted. And a mondegreen is a mishearing! I'm talking about when an uncommon word mutates to follow the pattern of a more familiar one. Card Zero (talk)23:50, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would mischievious be an example? This erroneous variant of mischievous formed under the influence of adjectives ending in -ious such as devious and nefarious, pronounced pronouncedly differently, has become so common that it is no longer considered a grievious :) error; people even tend to think mischievous is a typo. --Lambiam05:16, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes! That's a good one because it's pronounced differently too. I suppose it's hard to prove influence, and maybe every misspelling has a claim to fit the category. Extacy seems to fit better than others, though, being a clear example of regularization through the influence of all the ex- words. Unsure about gubberment. Card Zero (talk)05:36, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I (a Brit) have always assumed this was a deliberate US distortion intended to show distain/contempt for the institution. Do any US speakers/writers actually think it's correct? {The poster fornerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 09:22, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A classic example from British football commentary is the hideous newly coined word laxadaisical [sic]. For example, say a goal has been scored because a defender's positioning was lax: he wasn't tight to his opponent and let him get away and score. Somehow, somebody presumably thought this didn't sound right, was vaguely aware of the word lackadaisical (i.e. lethargic, unenthusiastic), thought that "lax" was somehow an abbreviation of it, wanted to use the "correct" full word, and came up with the new word "laxadaisical". I have a feeling it was somebody like Andy Townsend or Tony Cascarino who started it, but it starting to spread to other commentators now. I listen to a lot of radio football commentary, and hear it regularly. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!)12:22, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't get me started on sportspeak. My pet peeve is describing a victory that has only just occurred, or even before the final siren has sounded, as "famous". Fame is something that builds up over a period of time after the event in question. It comes from people reminiscing about what happened (past tense). Otoh, something that was famous a few years ago has become virtually forgotten today, sometimes even beyond the reach of google, so where's your fame now? Witness the plethora of things that "go viral" or "take the world by storm": most of them have a shelf life of barely 15 seconds, let alone Warhol's 15 minutes. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]18:34, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It involves only spelling and not pronunciation, but there's a curious case of analogy working at cross purposes in the common misspelling of accordion as accordian—presumably by analogy with the common -ian adjectival ending—whereas dalmatian (the dog), which does have that ending, is commonly misspelled dalmation, presumably by analogy with the common -tion noun ending. Deor (talk) 12:56, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Espresso becoming "expresso" is presumably another example. Although according to our article that "incorrect" use of the x is common not just in English but in French and Spanish, and is consistent with the original Latin etymology of the Italian term, so I think one could argue that this is actually a reasonable adaptation of the spelling for other languages rather than an error. Iapetus (talk) 13:27, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately we do not (yet) have an article on this 1978-80 26-episode ITV series. Searching the IMDb (see here), and websearching, does not find me any mention of a DVD having been made. There is a hint that it may have been broadcast in Canada under a different title, so it is possible (though unlikely) that there is a DVD under that title, whatever it is. Sorry not to have been of more help. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 21:24, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In animated shows like The Simpsons where the main cast play multiple characters each, how is dialogue between one actor's characters, such as Burns and Smithers (both Harry Shearer), recorded? Is it done all at once, with the actor switching voices with each line? (Seems difficult.) Or in two (or more) passes, with a stand-in reading the lines of the other party for timing? Or something else? —Tamfang (talk) 06:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't speak for the Simpsons, but when Mel Blanc used to do multiple voices in the same cartoon, he would record all the dialogue for each character separately. As I recall, he would do Yosemite Sam last, since it was rough on his vocal chords. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 09:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The usual procedure is that the voice actor is recorded before the animation is produced. Lip syncing between the recorded sound and the animated character's mouth movement is done by the animators, originally by hand, but now software exists that uses a video of the mouth movements of the voice actor to make the lip sync process automatic. Typically, if the mouths of two characters are both visible, their speech never overlaps, and the timing of a dialogue is only created during animation. That is also when ambiance sound is added. Therefore it is up to the actor in what order the recordings are made. Most often they will record multiple takes of each set of lines. --Lambiam12:43, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to find what the names of the characters are in the 1971 tv play The Bristol Entertainment. The tv play has 7 cast members although the names of the character they play in the tv play have not been added yet so what are the names of each character in the tv play then I can add them onto IMDb. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 18:29, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well done on finding the entry [under Fri 3 Dec]. I don't recall watching it at the time, but from the description —
"A thousand years of the gossip, scandals, successes, disasters, eccentricities and cupidities that lie behind the facades of a great city.
With Angharad Rees, Phyllida Law, Brian Blessed, Bernard Holley, Peter Sallis, Eric Thompson and Brian Wilde as the men and women whose lives had something about them worth remembering.
Every incident in the programme is taken from factual records, memoirs and newspapers of Bristol. They may even be true."
— it seems to me likely that each actor portrayed several or many different characters, so it would not have been expedient to list them all. I fear one would have to watch a recording (if one exists) or read the script (if preserved) to find the answers. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 04:25, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
RE: WIKIPEDIA article about Woodstock & Max Yasgur --- What was the actual USPS mailing address and zip code for Yasgur's farm? Was Yasgur's dairy farm physically in Bethel, NY or Cochecton, NY
According to our article Woodstock, the festival was held "on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York". Our article Max Yasgur agrees: "He was the owner of the 600-acre (240 ha) dairy farm in Bethel, New York, where the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held on August 15–18, 1969." The promotional Woodstock poster gives the location as "White Lake, Town of Bethel, Sullivan County, N.Y." All sources I see about the Woodstock monument at the festival site agree that it is located in Bethel. MapQuest gives Yasgur's Farm Cafe as being at 200 Hurd Rd, Bethel, NY 12720. There are sources placing the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts with the Woodstock Museum in Cochecton, but the website of Bethel Woods also gives their address as 200 Hurd Rd, Bethel, NY 12720. --Lambiam21:31, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our article on Yasgur states that he changed the address of his farm to Cochecton after problems with the local postmaster. Which makes me wonder, is it really even in either town? I mean, does it fall within the established municipal limits? At least here in NC, many people have addresses listed as being in a particular city (or town or village, all are equivalent here) but live outside the actual city limits. Changing your address from one town to another makes no sense if you physically are in the first town, but does if you are in the hinterlands between them. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:44, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed the name Marc Dimac too, did some image searching, found nothing useful. On the table (along with the Whole Earth Catalog probably) is a book of naive art by Oto Bihalji-Merin, featuring artists such as Miguel García Vivancos. This also seems irrelevant to the bed, or whatever it is. It's kind of huge for a poster, isn't it?
Perhaps a painting of a table with a long green tablecloth. There's some other thing at the bottom, extreme left. Perhaps this is not a poster but a mural, unique and since forgotten. Card Zero (talk)20:11, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It could easily be a drawing of an idealized castle, rather than a real one. Or for that matter it could be an idealized piece of furniture. It reminds me of the Château d'Angers, but it isn't similar enough for that to be helpful. Why not contact Decca Records and ask them? --142.112.149.206 (talk) 05:25, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The two photos appear to be of Skellern in a domestic setting, presumably his own living room at the time. As such, it's unlikely that either the photographer or Decca Records would have any idea then, or record now, of what this poster, doubtless belonging to Skellern, depicted.
Skellern unfortunately died in 2017 aged 69, "survived by his wife, Diana, his children, Timothy and Katherine, and four grandchildren" according to the Guardian obituary linked from his article. It's possible one of them (if contactable) might know or even still possess the item, but would one want to ask them?
I wonder if isolating the visible part of the poster and searching online, via TinEye for example, would yield a result? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 02:19, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday, the title of the 8th Mission Impossible was revealed (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning). Since it's not called Dead Reckoning Part Two, I think the article should be renamed to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and there could be a part explaining that it was marketed as "part 1" but the posters actually only read "Dead Reckoning". 42.113.60.5 (talk) 11:06, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Coming from decades of playing guitar, I call it a power chord. When I have to show the chord to someone else, I use "no 3" and sometimes they say they call it a "5". I assume it is because you have the root, 3, and 5 for a standard chord. I say "no 3" to mean "don't include 3." They say "5" to mean "only use 5." But, if I am only talking to guitar players, I say "power" and they know exactly what I mean. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:13, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A Christmas Carol: The Traditional Story with Modern Music (2005), a musical adaptation with music and lyrics by Matt Corriel and book by Erica Lipez, premiered at the Foothills Theatre in Worcester, MA in 2005 and is published by Dramatic Publishing Company.
A Christmas Carol (2010), a musical stage adaptation by Bruce Greer and Keith Ferguson that premiered in Carrollton, Texas, in December 2010.[7]
A Christmas Carol (2012), a musical adaptation with book and lyrics by Ben Horslen and John Risebero and music by Christopher Peake and Nick Barstow, first performed by Antic Disposition in Middle Temple Hall, London, in December 2012[8] and revived in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019. A cast recording featuring Brian Blessed as The Ghost of Christmas Present was released in 2019.[9]
Could you be a little more explicit about what makes your example "cousins" rather than just two derivative works? Other respondents have given other examples of things based on other things and such a list would go on and on as long as people care to respond. Is that what you're looking for? Like, how is "Oliver and Company" and "Oliver!" different than any two adaptations of, say, Alice in Wonderland or Robin Hood? Matt Deres (talk) 20:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1. (Brookfield zoo) - nobody knows. Examining this news report and this one, I see a lot of assumptions that it's domesticated (and therefore an escaped pet), based on, in the first place, nothing, and in the second place that it "doesn't hunt very well": but at the same time it's reported that it may be as young as five months old, so that might explain its lack of skill. Zoos aren't known to conceal their escapes. The lack of any other possibilities points to an escaped pet.
2. (Chicago P.D.) Even on the entertainment desk, we don't answer requests for predictions. You ask if it "would" inspire an episode. Looking at the plots in use so far this year I see topics like violent robbery, social work, homelessness, alcoholism, hate crime, drug trafficking, and a serial killer. Generally speaking the subject matter is gritty, and doesn't appear to be inspired by specific recent news stories, so I'll say no, it wouldn't. But again, nobody knows. Card Zero (talk)05:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the 1970 film Peter Sallis plays the role of Keresley and he's credited as the 17th cast member on IMDB but at the end of the credits he's not shown in the credits and I also did not see him in the film. Can any of you guys try and get a photograph of which scene were Peter Sallis appeared in and then I know he's in the movie and I can list his role on IMDB as uncredited. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 22:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Ballots are counted by scanners in a central counting station, along with postal ballots. If there is this general counting mode, why can the machines (again optical scanners) placed in polling stations with closed ballot boxes, since they are configured to do so, also print the results, before the ballots can be transported to the counting center? If then the central count and precicnt count do not match? Thank you very much. 93.147.230.249 (talk) 13:01, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You need to specify exactly which voting location you are referring to. There are many wildly different methods of voting across the United States. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:20, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let's take Miami-Dade County. This county uses ballot-counting machines (optical scanners), which print the results on a paper ribbon once the polls are closed. After counting at the precinct level, the ballots are equally transported and counted in a central facility?
I’ve been an official poll watcher, a few years ago. I got to stay and watch the ballots be counted at the polling place immediately after voting was done. We had witnessed that the ballot boxes were empty before voting started, that only ballots properly given to registered voters for that precinct went into the box, and that the number of ballots at the end of the day equaled the correct number. The ballots went through tabulating machine and the totals were printed out, with a copy for each party, for the reporters who stopped by and for the city clerk. Printout and ballots were turned in. Local counting and multiple copies would have made it evident if ballots had been altered or replaced. Today we can select electronic voting or a paper ballot. With electronic voting, a paper ballot is printed when done, and the voter oks it if it reflects his choices. Again the votes are locally tabulated and the totals preserved in multiple copies, as a check against fraud, but totals are sent in electronically to the clerk for quick reporting. Edison (talk) 22:53, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously not, a cursory look at Sovereign state would've disabused you of this possibility. They're clearly there because the article is titled or scoped awkwardly and their inclusion in such a list seems worthwhile, not because that claim to their sovereignty is actually being made. In general, you should double-check and then discuss problems with pages on their respective talk pages, not obliquely litigate them at the Reference Desk. Remsense ‥ 论06:29, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Their existence in the article comes from a time before the article was moved in 2022. Whether it was the move, or is the current inclusion, that is questionable is an exercise for editors and if necessary the talk page. Also @PK2: who made the move. -- zzuuzz(talk)23:02, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is highly unlikely that there is a useful answer to this question. It would require knowing the size of the USSR economy, defining those parts that are strictly part of the budget (as different from, say, survival consumption), and then defining those parts that were strictly reserved for the military (which may / may not include non-military security forces). The key issue is why do you want to know, and what might be a reasonable substitute for this particular answer? DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 20:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I just did find the exchange rate -- 5.3 rubles to a dollar (this was the official figure, but it squares pretty well with the figures from later years that I know with certainty), which makes the percentage -- WHAT?! Only 3.7 percent?! Are my own calculations off by one zero somewhere, or is the exchange rate way off??? 2601:646:8082:BA0:90B6:D6C1:A446:513E (talk) 05:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, in an economy not based on trade, there's no need to express everything in money. There was quite a lot of trade going on in the Soviet Union (it was certainly not a fully communist economy), but still, things like budgets and GDP could to some extend be arbitrary. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:04, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The transfer of industrially manufactured commodities in the economy of USSR was also based on trade. Barter played a minor role in the whole economy. A reasonably accurate way of describing the economic system of the USSR is as state capitalism: like capitalism, but with one difference with Western capitalism: the enterprises are not privately owned but owned by the state. The consequence is that there is a single all-encompassing monopoly; domestic market competition is ruled out. For the rest, it is business as usual. In particular, the separate enterprises were required to make a profit, otherwise their management would be replaced. --Lambiam11:18, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[un-indent] As for why I want to know this: I'm trying to find out the approximate maximum for military spending as a % of GDP which can be sustained without causing widespread starvation, and given the USSR's experience during World War 2, the percentage they had would be close to it! But the percentage I calculated based on the 5.3 rubles per dollar exchange ratio is obviously wrong (it's simply not conceivable that the Soviet population would suffer so much with their military budget being a mere 3.7% of their GDP, while we Americans spent forty percent of our GDP on our military with much less hardship, even taking into account the obvious inefficiency of the Soviet economy, and in fact it's inconceivable even that they would spend so little of their budget on their military while literally fighting for their very survival), so I guess the exchange ratio was way off! (Of course, if someone here knows of another example of a nation which had to suffer severe hardship due to being forced to spend most of their GDP on war, you're welcome to share it here as well -- but it would have to be from the last 2 centuries or so, because total war is a fairly recent phenomenon!) 2601:646:8082:BA0:CD5E:73B7:6DF6:2CF6 (talk) 12:38, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The USA entered the industrial age about a century before Russia. The US spent the entire 19th century developing coal mines, ore mines, steel mills, railways, education centres, modern farming methods, oil refineries etc. Russia had not much of that until the communists rose to power, so the industrial base that could be repurposed to the war effort was much weaker; a far larger fraction of their economy was just producing food.
Actually, they closed the gap rather quickly, going from a mostly agrarian country to a space-faring nuclear-armed superpower in just 40 years. And so did China. Something about copying western technology, avoiding the errors western countries made, a bit of good planning.
As for countries spending a lot of their economy on the military, consider North Korea. I remember reading something like 20% some years ago. Maybe it would be better to look at the number of people working in defense, as this is harder to manipulate the the amount of money involved. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What data is available on the breakdown by ethnicity of people in the USA taking commercial flights in the 1960s? I'm mostly interested in long-haul flights, but domestic flights could be useful too. Thanks, --Viennese Waltz08:06, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When booking a flight, one's ethnicity is not recorded, so it would be surprising if any remotely reliable data exists. --Lambiam10:53, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there's this, which relates to 2015. The source of that data seems to be a survey, not information recorded at the time of booking. It would be good to know if any similar survey was carried out in the 1960s. --Viennese Waltz15:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1960s is long before deregulation. Flight costs were very high. If you could afford a ticket, regardless of ethnicity, you could purchase one and fly. Most people could not afford tickets at the time. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 17:33, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but there's also the question of what would actually happen. Civil rights activists from the time could give some insight into that. At least, those that weren't killed for doing things that were actually legal (or for helping others do them). --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:55, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Regardless of skin color, passengers could fly if they could afford a ticket. In the 1960s, it was not profitable for airlines to turn customers away. I feel that the point that airlines were regulated in the 1960s is being overlooked or there is a lack of understanding about how expensive tickets were during regulation. It was nothing at all like modern air travel. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 19:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why you keep bringing up regulation and pricing. You say that "if you could afford a ticket, regardless of ethnicity, you could purchase one and fly", which is undoubtedly true. But that still holds true today, and it doesn't get us anywhere closer to answering my question of what percentage of air passengers in the 1960s were white, black, Asian etc. I think Lambiam is right that there is no reliable data on this. --Viennese Waltz06:45, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I keep bringing it up because I do not believe it is understood. In the 1960s, being able to fly was based on money, not race, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc... All minorities that were mostly middle-class or below were unable to afford tickets. It is not accurate to claim that there was a wide-spread policy to refuse airline tickets based on skin color. It is accurate to claim that there was a wide-spread policy to refuse to sell tickets to people who didn't have enough money to purchase them. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Airline booking ploys describes the odd practice of airlines making it cheaper to buy a ticket from A to C with a stopover at B, than to buy a ticket from A to B. If the passenger just doesn't get back on the plane or the connecting flight from B to C, he saves money and the airline gets angry and wants to punish him. The article does not explain why prices are set that way. or what harm there is to the airline, if the skip lagger doesn't leave checked luggage on the plane. I'm pretty sure they never incur many delays waiting for him to reboard. Family emergencies, business crises, getting lost in an airport, or medical issues might cause an innocent passenger not to rebound. I can't find evidence of such a pricing or punishment practice in, say Greyhound buses or Amtrak trains.
The CAB apparently regulated US airline prices before 1978. Did they price multipart trips this way under regulation? Did they or airlines seek to punish passengers before 1978 who did not complete a multistage trip? Is the word "skiplag" of long standing in this usage, or just a pun from "skip a leg" of a trip? I got no help with Google book search or asking LLMs Edison (talk) 19:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why does skiplagging exist? Assume you are an airline. You have a flight from A to C with a layover in B. You have no problem selling tickets from A to B, so you can charge a premium for those. However, you have trouble selling from A to C (or even B to C). There is enough to keep the flight going, but not enough to keep a good profit going. So, you discount A to C to get more people to take that flight. You might even add an extra flight from A to B at an even higher premium. As this continues, there will be a point at which the A to C is discounted to a price less than A to B.
Did this happen before deregulation? Most likely not because the government set routes and prices. They would set the route from A to B. They would set the route from A to C which may be direct and not allow a layover in B. They would set the price. They don't care about profit or popularity. They just regulate. Keep in mind that a hidden agenda of airline regulation was to keep trains and busses a viable alternative for transportation. So, they don't want planes to be cheap or routes sensible.
Now, you have A to C (with a B layover) cheaper at your airline than A to B. So, Joe the Skiplagger buys a ticket for A to C and back. He hops off at B and doesn't get back on the flight. Then, on the return flight, he tries to get back on at B even though he wasn't on the plane from C to B. What could possibly be a problem?
His luggage will go to C, not B. He will complain that his luggage is lost. It will be lost. Nobody will pick it up at C. Now, you, as the airline, have to hunt down his bags and get them to him.
FAA reporting will be wrong. You, as the airline, must report exactly who is in each seat. If you report incorrectly, you can be fined. Add up all the fines for every skiplagger. Do you want to take on that cost?
You want to turn a profit. You know that if you sell 100 tickets, only about 80 people will show up for the flight. So, you sell 120 tickets and you have people on standby to keep the plane full. On the return flight from C to B, Joe the Skiplagger didn't show up. You put someone in his seat. Then, at B, Joe shows up and tries to board. There is no seat. He has a tantrum. Social media trends that your airline refuses to seat paying customers. No point in trying to explain it because everyone knows that skiplagging isn't a problem and airlines should be happy to have as many skiplaggers as possible. Perhaps it was a bad idea to start your airline.
Back to the return flight. Joe the Skiplagger has to check in to be able to get on at B. The flight has to keep calling him at C. Joe? Where are you Joe? Your seat is here Joe? We're going to give it away if you don't show up Joe. The plane sits and waits. Joe never shows up because he is in B, not C. Finally, the gate people let someone take his seat. That means that have to "uncheck" Joe and check in another passenger. Everyone has to wait for that passenger to get on the plane, hunt for a place to put baggage, and find a seat when the plane should be pulling away from the gate. And, just because it is your airline, you get the fine from the airport for spending too many minutes at the gate. Why did you get into the airline business in the first place?
What if Joe bought a ticket for A to B instead of A to C and didn't skiplag? You'd know that the seat from B to C was empty. You could sell it. But, what is more important? Should Joe save %10 by skiplagging or should you be able to sell a $100 seat?
This list is not complete. I am only covering the main points that you need to know so you realize you don't want to run an airline.
If you look at it from the skiplagger's point of view, they are not doing anything illegal and it is the airline's fault for making the process available. If you look at it from the airline's point of view, they are losing money, increasing hassle, and dealing with FAA regulations. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 20:03, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Further to this, in relation to ticketing on National Rail (the British railway system): it is permissible to do this (i.e. skiplagging) with "walk-up" (non-Advance) tickets, but it is explicitly prohibited if using an Advance ticket. Attempting to do this with an Advance ticket makes the passenger liable to a penalty fare or, potentially, prosecution. Advance tickets are quota-controlled and are issued for a specific service, and usually have a specific seat allocated (although some train operating companies do not offer reservable seating), whereas "walk-up" tickets such as Off-Peak Returns and Anytime Day Returns can be used on any service, sometimes subject to time restrictions. Anomalies in the fare system such that an A–C via B ticket is cheaper than A–B are not particularly common, but there are a few. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!)12:25, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And its even possible to claim delay repay on this (compensation when passengers arrive to their destination at least 30 mins late, or 15 for specific operators). The relevant operator will ask whether you hold multiple tickets to make a claim. Additionally, its possible to claim compensation even outside the operators' control, unlike EU261. Using Trainline and possible ScotRail will give you the option of using split tickets, as well as Trainsplit.
That's true, with the slightly obscure exception that if one of the tickets held is a season ticket between A and B (or B and C), the A–C train doesn't have to stop at B as long as at least one train operated by that train operating company does stop at B. (I think that's right!) Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!)22:03, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't seem like the airline loses anything if you assume the alternatives are 1) "passenger pays for flight A->B->C and flies A->B->C" or 2) "passenger pays for flight A->B->C and flies A->B". Then the price is fixed and the destination is negotiable. But that isn't how passengers work: they need to get to a particular place, and they want to pay the least possible fare. So the passenger wants to choose between 2) "passenger pays less for flight A->B->C and flies A->B" or 3) "passenger pays more for flight A->B and flies A->B". The passenger would like to pay the lower fare, but the airline would like to collect the higher fare. The airline wants the passenger to choose between 3) "passenger pays more for flight A->B and flies A->B" and 4) "passenger doesn't fly", because they believe that sufficient passengers on this route will pay the higher price if their alternative is to stay home. So the cost to the airline of skiplagging is that they lose the ability to collect the higher fare. It's then a form of price discrimination, which generally requires some mechanism to segment consumers by ability to pay rather than by the cost of providing the goods or services. --Amble (talk) 21:37, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is there an equivalent to boba liberals who are a) South Asian, b) African-immigrant, c) Hispanic, d) Middle Eastern or West Asian, e) Central Asian? Donmust90 (talk) 23:05, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am well aware of WP:N, and I most definitely won't write an article about myself and violate WP:AB. Therefore, what accomplishments could I try to achieve to have myself covered enough in WP:RS sources, thus making myself eligible to pass WP:N? I know this is a very open-ended question, but I think having a Wikipedia article about myself would be a fun accomplishment in my life, and I would like to do it the "correct"/"proper" way by actually making a notable accomplishment in my life, instead of the hundreds of new editors rushing onto WP:AFC to write an WP:AB about themselves. Please help suggest some ideas of accomplishments (e.g. sports, programming, careers, digital content/media) I could attempt that WP:RS would pick up on, thus making myself notable enough for editors to write an article about myself. Thanks! Félix An (talk) 11:46, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need to do anything at all. You need people, unrelated to you, to publish notable things about you. How often have you shown up in newspaper articles, magazine articles, television news programs? Has a movie been made about you? Have books been written about you? It isn't about what you have done. It is about what all those authors have done. The point of Wikipedia is to say "This guy has been discussed in media. This is a summary of what it all said. Here are the links to the original media sources."
I have wondered why nobody has started a "Get me a Wikipedia article" campaign. Hit up every news organization asking them to interview you about your campaign to get a Wikipedia article. Then, eventually, you will be notable in the fact that you are trying to be notable, except there are many resources published to show your notability (or lack of notability, which makes you notable for being well published as not notable). 68.187.174.155 (talk) 14:03, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With the exception of 68's suggestion, how could we possibly do that? We don't know anything about you, your strengths or background (and don't post any of that stuff here). Besides, if we had a good idea, why would we share it with you rather than do it ourselves? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:04, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of the things you enjoy doing, which one do you predictably enjoy most? Or do you have a dream, like tackling some really tough problem? Concentrate on that one thing, putting all your energy and enthousiasm into getting very good at it. Better yet, do this because you enjoy it, not for possible recognition. --Lambiam04:49, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I read that essay, and it seems to be targeted towards people who would perform WP:COI or WP:AB writing. I don't mind, since I know people are going to write very embarrassing things about me, but as the old quote goes, I think "there's no such thing as bad publicity", and I definitely wouldn't violate WP:COI or WP:AB. Félix An (talk) 06:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the future, could we have another planet that is very similar to Earth, except progress is not allowed, so the population are required to remain at Neolithic levels of technology? (The population are not informed about the outside world.)
For one thing, we are not supposed to offer predictions. Anything could happen in the future unless impossible by the laws of reason or by the laws of nature. So we can only discuss whether scenarios exist leading to this outcome while not violating known laws.
It is unclear who, in the sketched dystopia (or eutopia, depending on one's views), is enforcing the proscription of progress. Is this a culturally accepted restriction, in which the traditional way of life is revered so much that even the act of suggesting innovations is considered an abomination? In that case it is irrelevant whether they know about technologically advanced societies. Or are they ignorant about science, with an outside force eliminating people with an sharp mind who might discover and develop new technologies improving the way of life? --Lambiam23:43, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Peter J. Bowler wrote a book called The invention of progress, and Robert Nisbet wrote A history of the idea of progress. I haven't read either of these, but would like to. Clearly Progress#Philosophyis an idea, which a culture can become aware of and mythologize. Prior to this awareness, the culture may believe itself to be static, to exist in eternal golden stability as a static society, and may mythologize that. As Lambiam indicated, if progress is considered sufficiently sinful, it may be successfully prevented indefinitely, even in the face of other cultures that embrace innovations. The Amish provide a kind of example, although they're more conservative about innovation than completely opposed to it. I've heard the interesting suggestion that the reason for the apparent excruciatingly slow rate of progress throughout the paleolithic era and to some extent the neolithic was that a lot of creative effort went into preventing innovation from taking place, because creativity is not identical to innovation.
Is it correct that the integrated LUFS is based on the momentary loudness rather than individual samples? BTW, I've have already implemented an option to select a source (either individual samples, momentary, or even short-term) to use for the integrated LUFS calculation on the loudness (LUFS) meter part of my own peakmeter so this can be tested. 2001:448A:3070:DF97:6CA1:FCBB:A642:E2B2 (talk) 03:57, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The response of a moving-coil VU meter (black line) compared to an electronic PPM indicator (grey area) of a drum beat. Level is in dB and time is in seconds Audio samples have pressure amplitudes but do not individually exhibit Loudness that must be calculated by summation of energy in critical bands. See the EBU reference LOUDNESS NORMALISATION AND PERMITTED MAXIMUM LEVEL OF AUDIO SIGNALS. An estimate of momentarily perceived peak loudness in broadcasting is meaningful only if it integrates over long enough time to properly resolve the critical band containing the lowest audio frequency component that may be 20 Hz. Note that many broadcasting sound engineers prefer the ballistic response of VU meters with which they are familiar, see illustration. Philvoids (talk) 11:46, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved
CiaPan (talk) 12:57, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
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This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:36, 17 November 2024 (UTC) 
