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[bradrn]

I do spectroscopy, so perhaps I could co-publish with you, then me and zompist could do something on linguistics… an Erdős number of 6 isn’t as good as 5, but it’s certainly something!

Oh sure, any non-infinite value would be cool. Then I'd just have to participate in a film to start working on that Bacon number.

If you’ve ever played music, then maybe you could get the full Erdős–Bacon–Sabbath number too!

[So Haleza Grise]

Has anyone seen Avatar: The Way of Water? Not only are the big blue aliens spending a lot of time in the water now, they are riding plesiosaurs that are called "ilu"! Zompist should be calling his lawyers IMO.

[doctor shark]

Ooh! Can I publish a paper with you?

I'm a liquid crystal physicist, so not sure how much overlap there'd be in our fields of interest, but if there is, then sure. :)

I do spectroscopy, so perhaps I could co-publish with you, then me and zompist could do something on linguistics… an Erdős number of 6 isn’t as good as 5, but it’s certainly something!

Oh, that's very doable and fun for chain-making! We like people working on spectroscopy (do you do any of TEM, SEM, AFM, or XRD/XRF, perchance?). That said, who knows, maybe I can do a treatise on one of my conlangs that could become a published article to involve the zompist as well... on verra.

[Man in Space]

Did I eat for a day and a half? No. Am I going to regret the smorgasbord of food I ate this late morning/afternoon? Almost certainly. Worth it? YES.

[bradrn]

(do you do any of TEM, SEM, AFM, or XRD/XRF, perchance?)

Nah; last year I did a bit of time-resolved fluorescence, and this year I’m doing mostly Raman for my Master’s thesis. And even there my strengths lie in modelling, not experiment. I tried analysing some neutron scattering data last year, and hated it, so that side of things is not for me, I think.

[Raphael]

I've got a question about the ethics of quoting people.

So there's one quote from the ZBB from a few years ago that I've recently rediscovered and that I really like a lot. Now I'm thinking about posting it on my Mastodon account. Of course with proper attribution; I have no plans of pretending that I came up with it myself or something.

Problem is, the person who posted the quote hasn't been on the ZBB for a few weeks, and I don't know when, or if, they'll return to the ZBB. And I don't know how else to contact them. So, for the moment, I can't ask them for permission to quote them.

So I wonder: would it be ok for me to post the quote, attributing it to that person's ZBB username, without asking them for permission first?

[linguistcat]

So I wonder: would it be ok for me to post the quote, attributing it to that person's ZBB username, without asking them for permission first?

I think, considering you're giving attribution and I'm assuming not twisting their words to say something libelous, you shouldn't need permission to quote something that someone wrote/said publicly. And I would consider a forum board "public".

[doctor shark]

(do you do any of TEM, SEM, AFM, or XRD/XRF, perchance?)

Nah; last year I did a bit of time-resolved fluorescence, and this year I’m doing mostly Raman for my Master’s thesis. And even there my strengths lie in modelling, not experiment. I tried analysing some neutron scattering data last year, and hated it, so that side of things is not for me, I think.

Ah, neutron scattering: I myself have not, but a lot of my coworkers have done the experiments at the giant energy sources, and while they get very pretty results, you can tell the huge amount of stress involved in the whole process, start to finish. (Normally several months' worth of prep for 2-3 days of actual work!) But even with a lot of that, there's plenty of room for modelling, and sometimes the highest impact works have healthy amounts of both modelling and experiment to go with/back up the models.

[Ryusenshi]

Random musings about heroic fantasy.

Why does Legolas use two swords in the film version of Lord of the Rings? He never does so in the novels. I wonder if the film version was influenced, perhaps subconsciously, by the Ranger class from Dungeons & Dragons: it can fight with two swords, and it's a popular class for elves. One of D&D's most famous characters is a dual-wielding elf. That would be interesting, because Aragorn is the one who's actually described as a "ranger"; the D&D class was initially based on him, but has evolved over time.

The trailer for Honor Among Thieves uses the song "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin. I find it jarring and anachronistic for a medieval fantasy setting. But, when you think about it, Wagnerian orchestral music in the Middle Ages would also be an anachronism. Why doesn't it feel that way? Somehow, classical music feels "timeless", so it doesn't seem out of place in a film set in, say, Ancient Greece; but rock music doesn't.

[Raphael]

The trailer for Honor Among Thieves uses the song "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin. I find it jarring and anachronistic for a medieval fantasy setting. But, when you think about it, Wagnerian orchestral music in the Middle Ages would also be an anachronism. Why doesn't it feel that way? Somehow, classical music feels "timeless", so it doesn't seem out of place in a film set in, say, Ancient Greece; but rock music doesn't.

I'm reminded of the German word "früher", literally "earlier", which, in children's language, means basically every period in history before the present (or at least it did when I was a child). Perhaps both medieval and pseudomedieval fantasy, and classical music, are psychologically associated with that sense of "früher", while rock isn't (or at least not yet).

Not that rock should necessarily sound anachronistic in a fantasy setting. There are, of course, all kinds of different varieties of rock music, but there are some varieties of it that basically sound like traditional Northern or Central European folk music, except played on electric rather than acoustic guitars.

[Richard W]

But, when you think about it, Wagnerian orchestral music in the Middle Ages would also be an anachronism. Why doesn't it feel that way? Somehow, classical music feels "timeless", so it doesn't seem out of place in a film set in, say, Ancient Greece; but rock music doesn't.

Well, as backing music, Wagnerian music might be entirely appropriate for Norse gods. An extract from Siegfried's Funeral March seemed entirely appropriate when Axl Johnson (Odin) went Viking to retrieve a bag of cocaine in the Almighty Johnsons, though of course that is set in the present day. (It's the part commonly used as backing music to Icelandic eruptions.)

[Raphael]

Does it sometimes happen to other people that you get temporarily a lot less good at thinking in abstract concepts? Earlier today, I was reading a passage in a book that explained that a certain political institution in a certain place has some amount of responsibility for the political fields of transport, agriculture, education, environment, health, and tourism. And I basically had to force my brain to visualize a train, a field of grain, a classroom, a forest landscape, a doctor's office, and so on, on order to parse the passage. Without these visualizations, the passage somehow didn't make sense to me. Similar things have sometimes happened to me in recent years, but not often.

[alice]

Does it sometimes happen to other people that you get temporarily a lot less good at thinking in abstract concepts?

I don't know about "other people", but it happens to me all the time.

[Moose-tache]

I have two theories:

1) It's the Caterpiller Effect. If you say a word enough, your brain loses the intuitive connection between signified and signifier, and the word just becomes a noise. Maybe that happened to you with words like "agriculture" over the course of a long article.

2) It was 6 am before coffee.

[rotting bones]

Does it sometimes happen to other people that you get temporarily a lot less good at thinking in abstract concepts?

Word is, there's an epidemic of brain fog caused by mast cell inflammation. Besides fixing nutrition, exercise and your sleep schedule, you can address this by adding more flavonoids to your diet.

Other reasons I've experienced brain fog include:

1. Allergies also cause inflammation. I fix this by taking 2.5 mg Levocetirizine, but antihistamines should not be taken routinely unless it's an emergency.
2. Low blood sugar. This might sound like a joke coming from someone with normal blood sugar, but the concern is real. I start the day with half a cup of ice cream if I know I have to work extra hard that day. I also refrain from sugar for the rest of the day when I do this.
3. Sometimes symbolic thought and semantic thought boost each other. At other times, there are trade-offs. I suspect that, to an extent, symbol manipulation relies on the Caterpillar Effect. Recalling all the associations of "x" can actively hinder its use as an uninterpreted symbol.

[rotting bones]

The most evocative story I managed to trick ChatGPT into writing:

Write a story that embodies profusion, cause and enigma.

It was a hot summer day in the small town of Millfield. The sun was beating down on the quaint houses and shops, causing a shimmering effect on the streets. People bustled about their daily activities, enjoying the warm weather and the sense of community that pervaded the town.

But amidst the usual hustle and bustle, there was a feeling of unease in the air. Something strange had been happening in Millfield lately, and no one seemed to know what was causing it.

Every morning, the town square was covered in a profusion of flowers that no one had seen before. They were unlike any flowers that anyone had ever seen - they were bright, almost glowing, and had a strange, otherworldly beauty to them.

The townspeople were at a loss to explain the sudden appearance of these flowers. Some said that they were a sign from the gods, while others believed that they were the work of fairies. Still others thought that they might be some kind of scientific experiment gone wrong.

As the days passed, the mystery only deepened. No one knew where the flowers were coming from, or who was responsible for planting them. Some people began to speculate that there might be some kind of hidden cause behind the flowers, something sinister or even supernatural.

Despite the enigma surrounding the flowers, they brought a sense of joy and wonder to the town. People would stop to admire them and take pictures, and the town square became a popular spot for tourists.

But as quickly as they had appeared, the flowers began to wilt and die. The townspeople watched in dismay as the once-vibrant flowers wilted and faded away, leaving behind only a faint, floral scent.

In the end, the cause of the flowers remained a mystery, and the townspeople were left to wonder and speculate about what had caused the profusion of strange, otherworldly flowers. But even as the flowers disappeared, the sense of wonder and magic that they had brought to Millfield remained, a lasting testament to the mysteries and beauty of the world around us.

[Raphael]

Mindlessly checking out stuff on Youtube, I just got an ad for the miniseries Welcome to Chippendales, available on Disney+. And, well, I'm probably showing my age by writing this, but I found it a bit surreal. I mean, if, 40 years ago, you would have told people "In the future, there'll be a show about a male stripper troupe on a media platform owned by Disney and called Disney+"...

[hwhatting]

Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur cum illis...

[Richard W]

Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur cum illis...

Sed nos non mutavimus!

[foxcatdog]

I read all of the threads marked as unread finally, or at least scrolled down through them.