I was confused about what <4> = \lambda ^ 5 4 meant, since it already seemed to have a "4" in it.

The trick is that the 4 seems to be similar to a positional argument index, but numbered inside out.

IOW, in this encoding, <4> is a function that can be called 5 times (the exponent on the lambda) and upon the fifth call will resolve to whatever was passed in 1st (which because of the inside-out ordering is labeled "4").

(For a simpler example, 0 is a function that can be called once and returns its argument.)

So succ is 3-ary; it says, give me a function (index 2, outermost call); next, give me its first argument (index 1, second-outermost call); when you call that (index 0, dropped, innermost call), I'll apply the function to the argument.

But note that if index 2 is a numeral , the outermost call returns a function that will "remember" the next thing passed in and return it after 1 (succ's innermost call) + N + 1 ('s contract) calls.

I think in _Babel_ (and _Katabasis_ as well), Kuang is a bit more prone than Tartt to showing off legit academic tidbits, which gives a nice scholarly glint (the illusion of high-brow? authenticity, dare I say?) to the environment, while not compromising the easy fantasy reading. More details than vibes, perhaps?

(When she gets details wrong, it does break the illusion. Like a small tangent on the etymology of the Greek word for truth in _Katabasis_.)

Oxford also simply has a certain aura for me, being from the US. All in all, I think Kuang's books are great "binge" or "airplane" reads with a smack of academic authenticity.

I saw _Possession_ mentioned elsewhere, which I think does academic vibes _and_ details very and IMO resides in a more refined literary category than either of the two other books. I should reread it!

For instance, my initial guess was off by (+1,-1,-1,+3,-1-2) and my first impulse was to look at the target and see that I had too much red and not enough green.

We get "valetudinarian" from this word, one who worries (excessively) about one's health.

Kind of reminds me (a layman) of winding numbers. I suppose there are topologically inspired variations of this problem that might be even more "paradoxical" (or perhaps just silly). If you moonwalk the second half, you undo your rotation? Or if you follow specially designed subterranean tunnels, you can end up doing 0 or negative rotations!

But hearing a particular phrase in the below video helped correct my model. One sanity check is that you can see non-full moons during the day (although I definitely would have just assumed it was still a matter of angles).

Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jip3BbZBpsM

Apparently the crux of this proof was showing that "the space of all modular forms with bounded denominators" and "the space of all congruence modular forms" were the same size.

I wonder what kind of expression "size" is here. Presumably not some finite integer, nor one of the simple infinities, since their first step was showing one is "a bit bigger" than the other. I wish this article went into more detail on that.

I definitely remember nerding out about modular forms via Andrew Wiles as a younger self.

- are (displacing bēoþ, sind, and sindon)

- their (displacing heora)

- they (displacing hīe)

As a linguistic game, sounds fun. Hopefully its pupils don't take it too seriously, hem hem, e.g. William Strunk the Lesser: "Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words"

You can find this by searching for "y-MM-dd" in the linked changelog.

AIUI, the official recommendation is to use y-MM-dd, and M/d/yy is particularly ambiguous in Canada, at least relative to the US.

Thought I'd float in case anyone knows more, or has been using the "en-CA" trick to get American-ish dates with YYYY-MM-DD short dates.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34728160

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

A similar phenomenon occurs with waiting "in [a/the] line" vs "on [a/the] line." I think I say either, but I'm "supposed to" say "on line."

I have good ideas, and sometimes I need a break before my idea generation is back to a good state. Perhaps this is because I spend most of my time coding on complicated but not groundbreaking stuff.

But a little bit of jealousy certainly at seeing this described as a "universal human experience."

[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/69cd8629-278d-4cd5-a3e7-96d2f6c85...

That's not to say I have any comment on the accuracy of ellipse calculation. Keplerian mechanics are beyond me. But I did see a the gear-ratio calculation repo linked: https://github.com/amandaghassaei/tellurion-orrery/tree/main...

It seems angular positional error after 100 years of simulation was the optimization goal.

As others have noted, there are often many cues 'n' clues even before a single word is uttered. But also, I have trouble enough picking out words in my native tongue, let alone when transmogrified by musical prosody and accompaniment.

Today I learned that Polish sounds nothing like what I thought it sounded like :)