bunker time: y1, d236 timekeeping
As of this morning, it is now BLARTS (Bunker (Lorxus and @rey ) Time (Standardized)) T +20 megaseconds.
bunker time: y1, d236 timekeeping
@rey (I forgot to mark T +2^24 , which was on the evening of September 27, 2020)
bunker time: y1, d246, mh (+)
FINALLY got through to see a therapist for the first time in about 5 years. I think the intake went well, but I didn't realize just how much of @makyo 's archness I absorbed.
bunker time: y1, d249, idle thoughts(-)
I got slightly nostalgic and watched some of Who Speaks For Earth of Sagan's Cosmos. I used to mourn Sagan's loss. But listening to -
"In the last two centuries abject slavery, which was with us for thousands of years, has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring world wide revolution. Women, systematically mistreated for millennia, are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied to them. And some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations. The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalism are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed."
Nah. Not that I can tell. It was a brief fever dream of the 80s and 90s, and then done away with, to the best of my perception, and we live in the result.
bunker time: y1, d249, a supposition I keep coming back to (--)
What if this is a dead world spinning, and has been since the late 19th century? What if the last hope we had to reach the stars was to avoid any or all of the failure of Reconstruction, the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Taiping Rebellion, the Scramble for Africa, the War of the Triple Alliance, and the Gilded Age?
bunker time: y1, d279, not exclusviely glowtide, mh(-)
me: I must offer something of value to this community I feel myself to be at the edges of, so that they will not reject me
also me: I will never be fully sure whether I am accepted in this community that I feel myself to be at the edges of because of the thing of value I brought, why does this keep happening to me
bunker time: y1, d280, mh (~), social/romantic
It occurs to me all of a sudden that all this worry I feel, all these games I end up half-consciously playing around how long to wait until responding and micro-positioning around power dynamics and trying to pretend I need the other person less than they need me -
that these things are likely totally unnecessary and the other person doesn't even realize that they're going on, and that if I were ever actually justified in doing these things, that that's a relationship I probably don't want to be in to start with.
bunker time: y1, d281, mh (-), social
why did I think that they actually liked me
bunker time: y1, d290, reflections on the past gregorian year
This year, what did I get done? What did I achieve?
1. I survived. I lived through a literal fucking plague.
2. I finally saw what might be this nation's fever breaking, if even a little bit - direct action on the one hand, and electoralist bleed-stopping on the other.
3. I passed my quals in algebra and geometry with flying colors. I got a rerun of the Forty Days of Hell, and I won.
4. I finally managed to get in touch with local mental health services.
5. I kept my tiny experiment in macroeconomics running (again, *through a plague.*)
5'. (More on that here: lorx.us/favor )
6. I bought a first firearm, and have been teaching myself to shoot long(ish)-range. I'm still decently good at it, after all these years; thank muscle memory, I suppose.
7. I applied to about 50 postdoc math programs.
8. I helped out with local mutual aid efforts and jail support (again, DURING A PLAGUE) more than a few times, both materially and with labor.
9. Colossal successes in [Unspecified Project 3] through predictive skill and access to [unspecified resource] permitting generous aid.
bunker time: y1, d290, reflections on the past gregorian year
10. I came to conceptualize mathematical research, academic pursuits, and other personal pursuits as *literal* pursuits; that is, hunting abstractions.
11. I taught several friends to hunt basic algebra and calculus.
12. I turned 27; again, IN THE MIDDLE OF A WORLDWIDE PLAGUE. I didn't fully expect to make it this far.
13. I won the Little Drummer Boy Game! 9 hours to go on the bonus round.
14. I kept my own plague calendar and covid statistics tracking.
14'.) The calendar (BLaRTS) is defined to have Bunker Time Day 1 as March 17; right now is Year 1, Day 290. More finely, right now as I type this is BLaRTS T+24,985,000 - the time since 2020/3/17, UTC 22:00.
The plague stats are here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14X18mvs9dlsg9rnihnd8Vi6cMNesOkcp3AXV2epZWUQ/edit#gid=971024186
15. I put the finishing touches on my first original result (in geometric group theory, no less!).
Could I have done more? Certainly. But ultimately, hindsight is 2020.
bunker time: y1, d290, reflections on the past gregorian year, death
Let us remember those who entropy has stolen from us this past year.
Let their names and their deeds live on in us.
Liang Wudong, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Li Wenliang, who is dead, but not forgotten.
David Graeber, who is dead, but not forgotten.
John Horton Conway, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Vaughan Jones, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Freeman Dyson, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Chuck Yeager, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Michael Hertz, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Ronald Lewis Graham, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Alex Trebek, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Shin Kyuk-ho, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Wes Wilson, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Yi Hae-won, who is dead, but not forgotten.
bunker time: y1, d290, reflections on the past gregorian year, death
Cullen Mahany, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Rick May, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Ahmaud Arbery, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Breonna Taylor, who is dead, but not forgotten.
George Floyd, who is dead, but not forgotten.
James Scurlock, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Krzysztof Penderecki, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Kim Yong-un, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Bernd Fischer, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Peter Borwein, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Bernard Stiegler, who is dead, but not forgotten.
Michael Darwin Morley, who is dead, but not forgotten.
George Robery Carruthers, who is dead, but not forgotten.
I don't believe there's anything after death, unless people make it, and we haven't yet. Accordingly, these people are permanently gone. It is now ours to remember them, and to continue their work.
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
I wonder if topologically interesting molecules have an chemically interesting properties? @Canageek ?
Like - use the stick number for knots to make a hideously densely trefoil-knotted topoisomer of benzene. Does it behave any different?
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus Poke me later, chemist is like 90% topology and I don't have the time right now to give you a good answer
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus Ok, so what you are talking about are called isomers. Same composition, different connections.
Easy example: transplatin vs cisplatin
and I just learned I don't have chemdraw installed XD
Ok, So is is trans-Dichlorodiammineplatinum(II). PtCl2(NH3)2. It is mostly just a molecule you can make useful things from. It is called that as the similar groups are across from one another, that is trans.
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus This is cisplatin, a famous anti-cancer drug. cis = the identical groups are on the same side of the central atom, beside one another. Totally different properties.
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@Canageek yes, I know about topoisomers
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus Ah, do you also know about enatiomers and such?
Where you actually asking about spacial arrangement, as that is very different then topological.
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@Canageek No, definitely things like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_knot
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus OK, so yeah. Those are spacial arrangements, not topological.
Topological just refers to how the atoms are connected via bonds, like in graph or network theory, with molecular knots you care about spacial arrangements.
The answer is yes, and they do have weird properties, but I've actually never encountered a um, use for them. Mostly papers showing off how clever the chemist who made them was.
The exception is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotaxane which have a lot of research into them though I don't know of any uses.
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus On a larger scale, in the solid state, you can get interpenetrated networks. This is one from my thesis, each colour is a different network that doesn't come into contact with the others. (The actual atoms have been heavily simplified to show how they interpenetrate)
These are mostly an annoyance, as porous materials with channels in them are a big research area right now, as you can react things inside the channels and the amount of internal volume you can get is insane. So lots of catalytic, gas storage, purification use. Interpenetration in that case is usually bad, as it fills up that volume, though you can see in this case it leaves plenty of space.
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus But yeah, people do make knots, I saw someone make a Star of David a few years back by interweaving two molecules.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/molecular-knot-shaped-like-a-star-of-david/7768.article
I haven't heard of any interesting properties for them, but ah, I could have missed something?
I think they are usually made to demonstrate a technique so far, rather then for the molecule themselves.
bunker time: y1, d296, chem, idle thoughts
@lorxus If you have specific questions let me know
bunker time: y1, d304, idle thoughts
"What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it any worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it is true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it."
I think about that a lot. One of the little charred scrolls I took with me after a couple of wise men made a series of very long and very foolish mistakes, and failed to update well enough to notice in time.
re: bunker time: y1, d304, idle thoughts
@lorxus Curious, where is that from?
re: bunker time: y1, d304, idle thoughts
@Kyresti It's the Litany of Gendlin. Something I took with me when I fled LessWrong's burning.
... Fuck me, I missed my chance to ever meet Gendlin.
re: bunker time: y1, d304, idle thoughts
@lorxus yeah, it can be helpful.
bunker time: y1, d288
Suddenly, snow.