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[Raphael]

Suddenly piqued by vanity, I changed my username from Ars Lande to Ares Land.
When I first joined, I'd picked a Tarandim clan name at random because that was what I was working on. In the interval, though, the language has changed quite a bit, so the name was kind of bugging me.
Not too confusing, I hope.

Ars Lande sounds very Star Wars to me.

Ares Land, on the other hand, makes me think of Mars landers.

[Mornche Geddick]

Reading one of Zompist's old rants: https://zompist.wordpress.com/2011/12/1 ... no-batman/ it struck me that the reason there's no real Batman is that Batman does have a superpower after all; and it's creating physics-defying gadgets.

[Starbeam]

Reading one of Zompist's old rants: https://zompist.wordpress.com/2011/12/1 ... no-batman/ it struck me that the reason there's no real Batman is that Batman does have a superpower after all; and it's creating physics-defying gadgets.

Never underestimate the power of Prep Time.

[rotting bones]

I wrote a simulator in GNU Octave to construct a spanning tree with a unique root node (supposed to be a blue circle) across each shaded region of an image in a decentralized manner:




The boundary nodes feed their positions up the tree, allowing the root node to monitor the growth and/or shrinkage of the shaded region. Deactivated nodes are in black:




i haven't decided how to display the growth/shrinkage information graphically. Also, the root node is chosen based on the energy value associated with a given pixel position. Currently, the energy values are chosen randomly. A better idea wound be to associate it with the shading of that pixel.

I'm sharing this here because I have a vague idea of modifying this algorithm to simulate the formation of empires based on resource divisions. Regional heads would be provincial capitals and the root node would be the imperial capital. Incursion of a neighboring empire would cause an empire to divert resources (energy) towards that boundary to try and reincorporate that territory. Dumb idea?

[Richard W]

I'm sharing this here because I have a vague idea of modifying this algorithm to simulate the formation of empires based on resource divisions. Regional heads would be provincial capitals and the root node would be the imperial capital. Incursion of a neighboring empire would cause an empire to divert resources (energy) towards that boundary to try and reincorporate that territory. Dumb idea?

You don't seem to have a model for why neighbouring empires wouldn't simply coalesce. You might get somewhere with different resources for different empires. Alternatively, you might be able to build unwieldiness into the modelled features.

I like your notion, but I think it has to be part of a much large tool kit.

[rotting bones]

I'm thinking trees will try to prevent others from swallowing them by taxing rich areas and using the revenue to bribe poor ones. Nodes will join whichever of the adjacent trees promises them more energy. Transporting energy will cost energy, so trees won't swallow each other when supply lines become too thin. Does that make sense?

[Richard W]

I'm thinking trees will try to prevent others from swallowing them by taxing rich areas and using the revenue to bribe poor ones. Nodes will join whichever of the adjacent trees promises them more energy. Transporting energy will cost energy, so trees won't swallow each other when supply lines become too thin. Does that make sense?

It may give some interesting results. Presumably the bribes will be withdrawn once the areas have been annexed and absorbed. Are root nodes bribable?

[rotting bones]

I would expect the bribes (most of them anyway) to be confiscated following annexation since more energy is always needed at the frontier. Root nodes gather energy from their children to resist incursions. They may be bribable if offered more energy than they can collect from their tree.

[Qwynegold]

So today I learnt that Finns are a bit mental when it comes to times of the day - apparently they actually have official times for when morning, afternoon etc is:

Aamu - morning 06:00-09:00
Aamupäivä - morning 09:00-12:00
Iltapäivä - afternoon 12:00-18:00
Itla - evening 17:00-22:00
Yö - night 22:00-06:00

I have no idea how strictly people adhere to these, like if referring to 09:15 as aamu gets you shot or something or whether it's like the term "evening" in English - no one really knows when it begins or ends (but they do - aamu ends at 09:00!) Pretty cool though.

I don't think anyone has authority do define exact hours for these words. But I do agree more or less with those definitions.

[Qwynegold]

Suddenly piqued by vanity, I changed my username from Ars Lande to Ares Land.
When I first joined, I'd picked a Tarandim clan name at random because that was what I was working on. In the interval, though, the language has changed quite a bit, so the name was kind of bugging me.
Not too confusing, I hope.

You didn't choose Arse Land?

[Linguoboy]

Suddenly piqued by vanity, I changed my username from Ars Lande to Ares Land.

You didn't choose Arse Land?

I keep reading it as "land of Ares". Which led to me wondering how to say that in Latin (and I do rather like the sound of "Aris Terra"), which in turn led me to wonder what the derived adjective would be in English. Given Ancient Greek Ἄρειος, you'd expect us to use "Arian", but I can find any attestations.

[Richard W]

I keep reading it as "land of Ares". Which led to me wondering how to say that in Latin (and I do rather like the sound of "Aris Terra"), which in turn led me to wonder what the derived adjective would be in English. Given Ancient Greek Ἄρειος, you'd expect us to use "Arian", but I can find any attestations.

It's Arean. You have to be careful with the choice of middle letter!

[Linguoboy]

I keep reading it as "land of Ares". Which led to me wondering how to say that in Latin (and I do rather like the sound of "Aris Terra"), which in turn led me to wonder what the derived adjective would be in English. Given Ancient Greek Ἄρειος, you'd expect us to use "Arian", but I can find any attestations.

It's Arean. You have to be careful with the choice of middle letter!

Not recognised by the OED!

[Ares Land]

You didn't choose Arse Land?

Maybe for the next username change, ten years from now

[Curlyjimsam]

Suddenly piqued by vanity, I changed my username from Ars Lande to Ares Land.

You didn't choose Arse Land?

I keep reading it as "land of Ares". Which led to me wondering how to say that in Latin (and I do rather like the sound of "Aris Terra"), which in turn led me to wonder what the derived adjective would be in English. Given Ancient Greek Ἄρειος, you'd expect us to use "Arian", but I can find any attestations.

Wiktionary has an entry for Arean, with a few examples (all quite recent). The OED doesn't have that though.

[Raphael]

A question inspired by the recent discussion of receding hairlines over in the venting thread: Does anyone else have the impression that Richard Nixon had a partially receded hairline that staid partially receded in the same spot for several decades of his life?

[Ares Land]

That's my impression as well.
I think it's pretty common. My hairline sort of receded in my early thirties and then stayed that way. So did my uncles'.

[Raphael]

That's my impression as well.
I think it's pretty common. My hairline sort of receded in my early thirties and then stayed that way. So did my uncles'.

And here I thought it was a part of his deal with the Devil or something!

[Qwynegold]

You didn't choose Arse Land?

Maybe for the next username change, ten years from now

[Kuchigakatai]

In another corner of the Internet, someone from Belgium reported that Facebook is automatically banning links to archive.org, even in private messages, showing instead a warning that sharing such links is a violation of the terms. Someone from Germany mentioned Facebook has been doing the same with the website of the German Parliament. The bans are country-dependent.

Yet more reasons to promote abandoning Facebook, I suppose.