2025 is a good number, it’s a quarter of the way through the 20 hundreds and it’s got that nice set of 2s separated by only a 0. not bad. whatever happens this year at least it’ll be happening during a good number 😌
and IT’S A SQUARE. IT’S 45 SQUARED. THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED WAS IN 1936 (44 squared) AND IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN UNTIL 2116 (46 squared)
It’s not just any square, it’s the square of a triangle number – 45 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9. (Which is also the sum of all the squares in a Sudoku grid, an inescapable tool if you like to do more mathematically intense sudokus.)
The squares of triangle numbers, also known as Nicomachus numbers, have a very interesting identity – the square of the sum is equal to the sum of the cubes! So we have
The previous Nicomachus year was 1296, and the next is 3025 – and given that the Gregorian calendar wasn’t in use until the 16th century, I’m not holding my breath for a second Gregorian Nicomachus year to happen at all.
It is one of the biggest errors in world history and here’s why:
Although starting in the middle of summer with a few small battles, it eventually dragged on for almost six more months into a brutal winter
The Russians’ scorched earth policy surprised the French and made the French’s advances much more treacherous and costly
Napoleon’s thirst for a full victory were impossible to satisfy because the Russians refused to engage in any prolonged battles, instead wisely choosing to use guerrilla tactics to decimate an already broken, famished, and sickened French Army.
Over 17,000 French troops lost their lives each month during the disastrous campaign
I think you’re thinking of the French Invasion of Russia. I understand the confusion, as I always get dates mixed up if the numbers or first letter of the month are the same or even similar. The French Invasion started in June not July, on the 24th rather than the 11th, and in 1812 rather than 2014.
Dashcon was a disaster because:
Everyone was relying on an intricate network of trade. So, if the materials from location A were delayed, that would affect the production of materials at location B, and people C would end up without the final products. These chains were multilayered, so if something went wrong in one place, the dominoes would start falling in all directions all at once.
There was a similar intricate network of political alliances that could also unravel at a moment’s notice.
Stress on the trade networks would put stress on the political network, and vice versa. Basically, society was a tightly wound tinderbox kept in a grain store.
In a very short space of time, a couple of events threw metaphorical lit matches at this explosive society, namely: new technologies, wars, plagues, droughts, and volcanoes. Any one of these things, perhaps even two or three of these things, might have been survivable. All of them at once was apocalyptic.
This is where Dashcon comes in; some people blame it for the destruction of Mycenaean Greece. Like, the whole thing. Others argue this is one of those internet rumour mill exaggerations.
And then the Sea Peoples attacked.
I think you’re thinking of the Bronze Age Collapse, it’s an easy mistake to make as there are many similarities, but this actually happened several thousand years BC and not in 2014.
Dashcon was a disaster because:
Early online fandom was a dumpster fire of cliques, Big Name Fans vying for attention, and people drunk on the idea of reinventing themselves behind usernames.
Harry Potter fandom, in particular, was a mess of in-groups and small posting venues moderated according to the whim of individuals.
It was easy (and relatively common) to create additional accounts that would fan the flames and agree with a user whenever they needed back-up – these accounts were called ‘sock puppets’ after the kind of old-fashioned homemade toy we elder fans played with because they were children before the internet.
In addition to the shipping wars, there’s a fake stalker, a fake nanny, and MsScribe even harassed a woman dying of cancer, all in her quest to be the centre of attention.
Dashcon is really an uber wank containing many other wanks within.
I’m not even familiar with what you’re talking about there. But I know it’s not Dashcon.
Dashcon was a disaster because:
Operators reduced power to reactor #4 in preparation for a safety test, timed to correspond with a routine maintenance shutdown. They wanted to test if the plant’s turbines, which would still be spinning, would provide enough power to keep the reactor cool in the event of a power failure.
In order to conduct the test without interference, the operators disabled reactor #4’s emergency cooling system.
Power in the reactor stabilized at too low a level to conduct the test. To raise power, the operators removed almost all of the control rods from the reactor.
The test began, and then there was an unexpected power surge. In response, the operators tried to scram the reactor (emergency shutdown), but the control rods jammed going in. The reactor’s power surge caused a massive increase in steam pressure inside the reaction vessel, which caused the fuel cladding to fail and release fuel into the water coolant.
The increased steam pressure caused a steam explosion, which blew the roof off of the reactor building, ruptured more fuel rods, and severed the coolant lines that fed more water into the reactor. The remaining coolant flashed to steam, leaving the core exposed with nothing to cool it down.
A second explosion, much more powerful, sent chunks of graphite from the control rods flying out of the building. These lumps of hot moderator caught fire, increasing the spread of radioactivity from the destroyed reactor.
From there, it was a matter of realizing the extent of the damage, evacuating civilians, and containing the meltdown to prevent further contamination. To this day, a 1000 square mile area around the site of Dashcon is off limits to human habitation and contaminated with radioactives.
This is one of those things where the discourse is just completely broken. Both of these takes are shit and no one is concerned about the actual problem.
Republicans want to bring back incandescents because they just want to trigger the libs and have decided light bulbs are woke.
And the “LEDs are fine” crowd are throwing people with flicker sensitivities under the bus. And, no, you don’t have to be “pretty far on the spectrum” to notice a difference. And even if you did… why in the world is this person so dismissive of the millions of autistic folks?
LEDs, for the most part, are superior to incandescent bulbs. Collectively they save people billions of dollars in energy costs and greatly reduce fossil fuel use. You have more options for color and brightness. You can control them with your phone. LEDs are fantastic.
Unfortunately there is a design flaw that makes LEDs hard to use for certain people. Due to AC power, most LEDs have a 60hz refresh rate. Meaning they turn off and on 60 times per second. With incandescents this didn’t matter because the filament didn’t have time to lose its glow between cycles.
Most people cannot see this flicker in LEDs. But there are millions of people who are sensitive to it and it can cause migraines and discomfort.
The solution is definitely not to go back to incandescents. There are flicker free LEDs and I think with some regulation we could make sure all LEDs are flicker free or at least make sure flicker free bulbs are easy to find and not priced at a premium.
Thankfully there is a group testing bulbs to find the ones that will most likely cause no discomfort. They call themselves the Flicker Alliance and their website has a pretty decent selection of tested and approved bulbs.
So if you feel like your LED bulbs might be causing you distress, that is a good resource to try. I think there is also something you can do to make sure the LED drivers are using DC power, but I haven’t really looked into that.
It’s probably not as important as preventing migraines, but bulbs with bad flicker also cause a lot of problems for photographers and videographers. Photos can have heavy banding and video can have these horizontal lines that just slowly travel down. There are some newer cameras that can detect the flicker and sync your shutter to it. And Sony just released a global shutter camera that also fixes this issue. But it would just be a lot easier if they started manufacturing LEDs without flicker in the first place.
In any case, I just thought this was an important subject that doesn’t get a lot of attention so I’d post it here as well.
we have to write poems in my creative writing certificate program, so I pieced something together from Belphie’s medical reports
my professor really liked this and said that it should be ‘the nucleus of a chapbook’ (so like 15-30 poems of the same theme that I would attempt to get published) but now I feel awkward because I think that she thinks HE DIED? but it turns out, everything will be alright! his heart recovered! the FIP meds are working!
if I do make a chapbook, this will be the next page:
and then this will be the page after that:
I couldn’t believe how fast he went from death’s door to running and playing once we got the GS441525 into him. I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who’s spent their time researching and legislating it!!
The artist Paweł Ponichtera seems to have inexplicably dedicated a massive amount of time and effort to hyper-detailed and hyper-accurate illustrations of chinchillas engaged in historical fencing, many with clear and specific reference to particular historical treatises. So, I give you:
MAGA is still melting down about the whole H1B visa controversy. They knew he was a criminal, they knew he belongs in prison, but they voted for him because they thought he’d get rid of brown people. Now, they’re realizing that re-electing Trump still won’t usher in a white ethno-state, and they’re big mad. I hope terrible things happen to all of them
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amhrancas 