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Not the kind of show I normally watch, but once I started it I couldn't stop. I was afraid I was going to be watching some woman getting beaten up or worse, but there was very little of that, for…

I think the poster is referring to: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You're_Joking,_Mr._Fe... !…

As a hobby, I have been writing little explainers for non-technical people on my blog. I wrote one for this particular incident: https://www.robotsinplainenglish.com/e/2021-10-14-…

Thank you for writing the post. Newbie question about “nonlocal” from your example: def outer_function(): x = 11 def inner_function(): nonlocal x x = 22 …

Sorry, I should have clarified what I meant. (I think a sister comment did clarify, but to expand on it): Mumbai has a reputation as "a city that works". When I was growing up in India, in t…

I don’t think OP was suggesting merging the two countries. My relatives in India would consider such a suggestion with horror. Pakistan rarely enters their conversations, except when there’s a terror …

The consistent problem with most comments about the conflict in Afghanistan is they fail to fully account for the role of the Pakistan Army and ISI in all of this. They are the most important element …

I like your analogy, but just to clarify, which is the human being in your comparison: the sparrow or the F16? A sparrow can take off and land on a branch, and it regularly weaves through thick foliag…

From the article: The real money comes from the illegal movement of ordinary goods, like fuel and consumer imports. In size and sum, the informal economy dwarfs international aid.

The author is Niall Ferguson, so I am guessing that the reason is not ignorance, but prejudice in support of the author's agenda, which in this case is an apologia for Britain's empire. Ferg…

This. I grew up with Lisp and Smalltalk, yeah I am that old, but today I love Node to build web apps. It’s a fantastic environment for asynchronous programming. It also has a built-in REPL for a manag…

Thank you for the link to Alain de Botton's Ted talk AND for summarizing in text! Wish more people did this.

Oh God, thank you for saying this. I cannot read two pages of Malcolm Gladwell and cannot fathom his popularity. Generalizing from anecdotes in an entertaining way: that’s his whole schtick. Or, maybe…

In Britain they call people from India Asians all the time. Immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are the biggest nonwhite group, and that’s the word they are known by. In the US, I think people oft…

You are right that METAFONT allows a font designer to vary the font in a continuous way using parameters while retaining its essence. But this is addressing a different problem. It allows a document d…

A depositor is not the customer banks are chasing. It's the businesses who want loans and financial services like M&A and IPOs. Their competitive advantage is not in their software at all. It…

France now requires makers of certain electronic devices, including smartphones and laptops, to tell consumers how repairable their products are. Manufacturers selling these devices in France must giv…

Till is a perfectly valid, formal word. I was just having this argument yesterday: Many people assume that till is a misshapen abbreviation of until... However, till is not a shortening of until. It a…

I loved this thriller novel: Forty Days Without Shadow, by Olivier Truc. It's about two police detectives in Norway's northern Finnmark county. The book offers a fascinating introduction to …

This discussion confused me until I looked up "torus" and found there are really two different definitions of this word: (a) a SURFACE generated by a circle rotated about a coplanar axis out…

> Scientists say it is much worse than the flu. For the vast majority who actually experience the disease, it is not much worse than the flu. Thus, people start to mistrust the science ... You'…

> Well imagine all of your news sources downplay covid and even when you get it yourself it's not as bad as the hysteria led you to believe - just some mild flulike symptoms and loss of smell …

Agreed. Gandhi (note corrected spelling) certainly had his flaws. Meanwhile, Gandhi's views on the value of science were not as well known and he is often mis-reported as "anti-science,"…

Clearly old media is a mixed bag. Some do spread misinformation, and those seem to be the most popular outlets today. But there is a third possible solution: sue the spreaders in civil court. Example:…