vmilner

Thanks - sounds like Western Europe and the US arent that different from England.

Anyone with experience from an Asian country or Eastern Europe (eg Poland Hungary)

I’ve been surprised recently to discover that matrices are not now taught in English schools unless “extra” qualifications (GCSE further maths at 16, A level further maths at 18) are taken, whereas when I did maths in the mid-80s they were included in the main syllabus.

How are matrices taught at school (if at all) in other countries?

He wrote my favourite maths book.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/all-the-math-you-missed...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ur0UGCL6RWc

The power button in the top left corner was so prone to being hit by ones knee in its underdesk location almost all of them in my office had little polo/lifesaver shaped guards jerryrigged to stop it…

I used to check the live world snooker championship scores on teletext in the 80s (when the BBC didn’t show it all live) Now skipping between it on iPlayer and hacker news in my phone…

Weird flashback to reading on Ceefax in 1988 that Feynman had died.

Returning to a Uk university after 30 years recently to do a taught masters (STEM subject) I noticed that modules were either marked on a curve or (more dubiously) had a “revision lecture” where essentially the lecturer described what questions would be on the exam paper to a close approximation.

Christopher Priest was working on a biography of Ballard when he died this week.

Yeah - my mother has this (symptoms similar to the article) - annoyingly more teas seem to be including small amounts of bergamot in - currently Twinings English Breakfast in the uk is fine though - so we stock up when on special offer.

Really enjoyed the interview with Freeman Dyson here on his life story - “someone left some Real Analysis textbooks in the school library but they were in French. It was probably (G. H.) Hardy.”

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgW...

I’m always curious as to whether taking the top 1% (say) of articles in Wikipedia (ordered by view frequency over a year say) and possibly adding the articles that link to those to some depth (say 3 deep) would feel very different to the full version to most users.

The actor John Shrapnel read this and 4 others (including “The Sentinel”) beautifully with very subtle background effects for bbc radio over 5 nights (labelled “The nine billion names of God”) but annoyingly they don’t seem to have them accessible anywhere.

Even playing bridge (card game) with random people online can be pretty grim, though playing online games organised by some national authority (eg the English Bridge Union) is a lot better.

This reminded me that the Ready Player One audiobook is wonderfully narrated by Wil Wheaton and has Wil Wheaton mentioned in passing as a character about halfway through…

I hadn’t grasped the all-cause aspect from a skim read.

I’ve loved Henry Sugar since the 70s but assumed any video adaptation would make a mess of it - thankfully the Wes Anderson film is wonderful.

I’m enjoying working through

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematics-Its-History-Undergradua... by Stilwell

Which is a history of mathematics but with serious examples to work on, and may appeal to self-study maths fans.

Do physicists really pretend to have read the Principia?

Any excuse to revisit BBC4’s brilliant comedy drama doc “Micro men”..,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sIcAyFVK0gE

Is the mention of the history of 3D printed firearms likely to be the issue, I vaguely remember those causing similar issues before. (Mandatory clarification: I don’t necessarily agree that that’s a good reason to shut an account, but Google may do)

Yep - those were the days when there was a pretty good chance that people doing Uk computer science degrees had a working knowledge of Z80 or 6502 machine code from hacking Elite/Jet Set Willy/Manic Miner on their ZX Spectrums/BBC Micros...

As an aside modern bridge dealing machines/algorithms generate a 96 bit random number and do a one-to-one map to a particular deal (ie not doing lots of random calls and moving cards with a Fisher Yates shuffle, say).

Weakness discussed here https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06300

When I see perceivable sneakiness, I assume non-perceivable sneakiness is there too. (E.g. Poor product standards, worker abuse)

I bought Lidl Tower Gate Chocolate Digestive Biscuits because of the annoying look-like-mcvities-packaging thing, but they're actually pretty good...

https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/14/590x/seconda...

Sainsbury’s don’t like changing the weights encoded in their urls so although Cadburys 180g “Price locked” Fruit and Nut has been shrinkflated for over a year the link is still:

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/cadbury-dairy-mi...

…www.Sainsbury's.co.uk/gol-ui/product/cadbury-dairy-milk-fruit---nut-200g

My

Can you get other (ie non-Cadbury) brands of chocolate that don’t have the butyric acid that (I believe) makes Hershey etc. so grim to most British palates?

You can still get UK blackcurrant yogurt (eg "Longley Farm") in the same little pots I used to get from the milkman in the mid-70s so not all is wrong with the world....

I remember Annapolis MD used to have a store with lots of British biscuits, Marmite, Bovril, marmalade, Ribena etc. - an oasis to the Englishman abroad.