antiquark's comments

On: How would a passing gravitational wave look or feel? (2017)

[antiquark]

So (in theory) you could hear the chirp of merging black holes, if they were close enough.

In fact, everyone on the planet would hear the same chirp. Someone should comb the historical records (or even, mythologies) for a birdless chirp heard by many people.

[yetihehe → antiquark]

I don't think life on earth would survive aftermath if such chirp was close enough to be heard.

On: Posit floating point numbers: thin triangles and other tricks (2019)

[antiquark]

This seems to be related to the "type III unum":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_(number_format)#Posit_(Ty...

[andrepd → antiquark]

Posit is the name of the 3rd in a series of John Gustafson's proposals of an alternative to ieee floats.

On: Photon transport through the entire adult human head

[antiquark]

Wow, weak signal... "The measured experimental attenuation was found to be of the order 10^18, corresponding to a detection of around one photon per second for a 1.2 W source."

[Someone → antiquark]

So, around a factor of 10 per cm. I would have expected way worse.

On: New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable

[antiquark]

The problem with these "house size studies" is that they ignore the nomadic people who lived in the surrounding areas and were (by definition), not housed.

How many nomadics were there, and how much wealth did they have?

This question would probably impact the conclusion that there was less wealth inequality back then.

On: Three Felonies a Day (2013)

[antiquark]

Reminded me of the youtube vid, "Don't Talk to the Police" [1]. One of the speaker's points is that there are so many laws that people might not know which law they broke.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

On: Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

[antiquark]

This could lead to the largest "free trade zone" in the world... everyone but the USA.

On: Markdown and the Slow Fade of the Formatting Fetish

[antiquark]

Sounds like you're looking for Iosevka!

https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka

[__s → antiquark]

I switched to this as the narrow version was best working on a 12" monitor

On: Extracting DNA from the air – DNA evidence of human occupancy in indoor premises

[antiquark]

Reminds me of the case of David Butler.

"Mr Butler has a rare skin condition, which means he sheds flakes of skin, leaving behind much larger traces of DNA than the average person. He worked as a taxi driver, and so it was possible for his DNA to be transferred from his taxi via money or another person, onto the murder victim."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-19412819

On: Gig workers worked more but earned less in 2024: study

[antiquark]

Moral of the story: don't be a gig worker.

On: 50 Years of Travel Tips

[antiquark]

Am I the "odd man out" for not wanting to travel, and not enjoying it when I do?

[ghaff → antiquark]

Almost certainly not. I used to work with someone who had to be practically strong-armed into working down his vacation days because he didn't like traveling and, aside from a couple of local-ish hobbies, got bored sitting around home.

I probably got a bit over my travel comfort limit for a while hitting about 160 days/year at peak (including vacation) but I certainly wouldn't criticize anyone for whom that's not their thing.

[refurb → antiquark]

No. Plenty of people don't have any interest in it.

It just seems like everyone likes it because it's because the new status symbol now that material consumption is looked down on. It's a way to demonstrate your worldliness and check the boxes of the zeitgeist.

But of course plenty of people just like it because it's fun too.