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In truth I rarely ever miss a train, a bus, or a plane. They miss me though because they are delayed.

I think travel by bus/train is more friendly when they have "headway".

Instead of a specific schedule, there is a bus/train every "n" minutes.


That works when it's high frequency enough. If it's every five minutes, no problem. If it's every 20, this doesn't work quite as well. If it's every hour it's unworkable.

It's fun to see this. My father (W7AAI) recently passed away, and we were just going through his QSL cards from the 60's and 70's. I never learned Morse code, but spent a lot of time hearing him using it as a kid. He first got his license in 1955, and my time in his HAM shack, playing with teletype tape, oscilloscopes and other such things was really pivotal for me becoming a CS major but handy with a soldering iron.

If you're curious about what it was like, here's something he wrote up in 2020 about his experiences with HAM radio in the early days. I see now I shared this once before on a YC post about QSL cards...

https://www.qcwa.org/w7aai-29229.htm


Sorry for your loss. I enjoyed the write-up. It's fascinating to see how much ham radio has changed. It used to be the height of novelty (and expense!) for the privilege of talking to someone across the world in real time via dits and dahs. A lot of people don't realize that even though telephones existed in that time, they were really only practical for local or regional calls.


I don't know what the US FCC rules are, but you might be able to inherit his callsign.



Clark Zapper… Hmm sure offers some interesting properties!

> This device is used tocure, treat and prevent any disease. It will cure anything.

https://www.555-timer-circuits.com/clark-zapper.html


I have no exposure to UAP media but the first thing that came into my head was, “like some oddball theory of how a classic ufo works from the 70’s.” That and the send $5 for paper on the secrets of antigravity ad from the back of Popular Science magazine back then.


The overhead view of figure 3 in particular is noteworthy to me. The 3 human subjects are represented as abstract ovals, and the cat drawn as a cat who is staring up as if to look through the fourth ceiling at the reader.

The reader becomes, in a sense, a greeble.

This paper would have been a fun project for a scientific illustrator.


For reference, in the cat realm a greeble is what cats are looking at when they stare up at the ceiling or wall and there is nothing there. At least that you can see.

So instead of the real cat staring at the imaginary greeble, we the reader are the real greeble staring at the imaginary cat. Who is staring back because it can see us.


When wondering if there was some dumb programming joke about "settiers" to go along with "getteirs" it dawned on me that there's a certain gettier nature to Get/Set encapsulation.

Suppose you've got a class library with no source, and the documentation defines a get method for some calculated value. But suppose that what the get method actually does is return an incorrectly calculated value. You're not getting the right calculated value, but you're getting a calculated value none the less. But then finally suppose that in the same code is the right calculated value in unreachable code or an undocumented method.

On the one hand, you have a justified true belief that "the getter returns a calculated value": (1) you believe the getter returns a value; (2) that belief didn't come from nowhere, but is justified by you getting values back that look exactly like calculated values; (3) and the class does, in fact, have code in it to return a correctly calculated value.


I’m reminded of the New Yorker cartoon where two armies face each other, both carrying the same image on their flags.

“There can be no peace until they renounce their Rabbit God and accept our Duck God“


Mentioned by the OP! See "Note added October 18, 2017".

The same cartoonist, Paul Noth, did this one too—also brilliant: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jfkihlstrom/images/Jastrow/New... (see "Note added June 30, 2017").

OP notes "Noth must have really enjoyed his introductory psychology course" and links to https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jfkihlstrom/images/Jastrow/you... as well.



They are currently active in my kitchen. I think those thinking that AI and ML need massive compute power and electricity should take note that these little bastards can be annoying and pervasive as hell with just 100k neurons in that little head. And run off ripe bananas.


Indeed it is miracle of evolution (or a creator if that suit you) to be so efficient.


I'm not a Bay Area person, but was visiting a few months ago and got a new tattoo at Rose & Thorn right off the 16th BART station. Took a walk around waiting for the appointment and it's crazy how fast the vibe changes from block to block.


Seems like a lot of focus on "fun" here and not much on "function". E.g., the city search is fine if you happened to live in a major metropolis. But good luck trying to find your city if it has a common name.

E.g., "Springfield" in the US drops you in rural Illinois with limited zoom or pan abilities to figure out what state you're in. And it won't even let you zoom out enough or pan to even get to that Springfield.


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