We could say that vampires don’t have a material body and they just alter the wavelength of light that passes through them to project a living form towards the eyes of living observers. That way they could be visible without having a reflection.

Then they could give themselves a shadow by shifting the visible light from bright light sources into infrared or ultraviolet instead of blocking it as material objects do.

I tried Minetest a while ago and was never really able to get into it. The new player experience was rough, a lot of decision paralysis. The texture style can vary between mods and servers. It didn’t feel very cohesive. I don’t know if that has changed since I last played, but to me it didn’t feel like a minecraft killer then.

From what I can tell, Hytale was supposed to be a bit like Terreria in 3D, as well as a platform for minigames. The gameplay and graphics from the trailers looked really good. I’m sure it would have been a Minecraft killer for some. (Ex. players who primarily play for the minigames like bedwars)

This shape could exist as a projection onto an upright cylinder, wrapping around the cylinder. The two straight edges go vertically along opposite sides of the cylinder. The curved lines wrap around the circumference. The lines are now straight and parallel on the net of the cylinder.

But we can go further: Imagine taking this cylinder and extending it. Wrap it into a loop by connecting the top to the bottom so it forms a torus (doughnut) shape. This connects both sides of the shape, now all “interior” angles are on the inside of the square, and all “exterior” angles are on the outside. The inside and outside just happen to be the same side.

I feel like that might have been the point. Rather than “using a car to go from A to B” they walked.

Arithmetic coding is one of my favorite algorithms. Any token predictor can be converted into an entropy encoder!

It may be worth it to decide how we define ‘unstoppable force’ and ‘immovable object’.

An Immovable Object has 0 velocity:

v = 0

Acceleration is the time derivative of velocity:

a = d/dt(v(t))

a = d/dt(0)

a = 0

And we know that

a = F_net / m

An object with infinite mass would satisfy this equation, but an object with no net force would too. We could add a correction force that will satisfy the constraint of 0 net force.

|F_net| = 0

∑F_i = 0

F_correction + … = 0

To satisfy Newton’s 3rd law, we would need a reaction force to our correction force somewhere, but let’s not worry about that for now.

A physics definition of ‘Unstoppable Force’ is:

|F_unstoppable| =/= 0

In this case the gravitational force fits this description, given a few constraints

F_g = Gm∑ M_i / x_i²

As long as the gravitational constant G is not 0, our object has mass, and

∑ M_i / x_i² =/= 0, then

|F_g| > 0

But this does feel kinda like cheating because it’s not really what people mean by ‘unstoppable force’. the other way to define it is just immovable object in a different reference frame.

a = 0, |v| > 0

I’m gonna stop here because this is annoying to type out on mobile

Something I figured out that was handy for guessing some human pieces was trying to figure out what the prompt would have been for generating the image. If I couldn’t formulate with words what the image was, then it was more likely a human artist.

On the other hand, looking at light, shadow, and reflections to see if everything made sense really didn’t help.

in a colloquial sense, from an end user’s perspective, the thing they see is “the algorithm”.

Yes, usually the default or most common method of aggregating posts is what people talk about when saying “the algorithm”

However, any method of sorting posts is by definition an algorithm. “top” is an algorithm, “new” is an algorithm, if you can compare two posts and have a method to choose which one to display first, that right there is an algorithm.

I’d actually argue that the “hot” algorithm is one of the more opaque ones. It sorts posts based on a composition of different metrics, and It’s unclear exactly what these metrics are and how they are combined.

Psionic might have some extra sensory perception as well.

Looks like discord with a green background

How you express something absolutely does change the amount of information in the message. That’s the foundation of compression.

Bitmap image files tend to be larger than png files, even when they both represent the same image.

1.41421… can be thought of as an expanded form of sqrt(2). In this case, the expansion is to an infinite number of digits.

Throw away your vote to a 3rd party?

Isn’t this situation exactly when you should look to third parties? There is a large group of people who are dissatisfied with the policies of Biden and who absolutely do not want another term of Trump.

If you vote for either of them, it sends the message that you condone their presidency. If you abstain from voting then it sends the message that you don’t care about government policy and therefore, policy won’t care for your interests.

If you are a third party voter, aren’t the big parties incentivized to try and win your vote over for themselves?

I’m probably going to vote for Biden, but you have to wonder at what point does this diametric system break down.

Using two or more adjectives doesn’t imply conflation.

The sentence “You can have a regular apple or a big green apple” doesn’t imply that green apples are big, or that big apples are green. It also doesn’t imply that big green apples are irregular outside of this local phrasing context.

It just implies that the set of ‘regular apples’ being referenced does not include the instance of ‘a big green apple’

I can see where the confusion is coming from, this is tricky to explain clearly.

I actually use one of these for work. It fits comfortably in my pocket and don’t burn my fingers when I have to light up a bunch of sterno burners.

I occasionally use semicolons. They can help with parsing; finding a semicolon instead of a period may signify that the next expression is a continuation and expansion of the previous statement.

Wasted? No Nutella was wasted in coating every surface. If there was any left over I’m sure he would have lathered another coat on. /j