• 5 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • People speaking on their phone using a loudspeaker.

    People who don’t understand basic elevator etiquette and attempt to walk in before people get off.

    People who play Karaoke loud enough for anyone outside of their home to hear.

    People who drive two motorbikes / bicycles beside each other and talk, thereby blocking traffic.

    People who cut in line.

    People who don’t clean up after their pets.

    People who get angry at the animals and not the owners for the above.

    People who display a total ignorance of the most basic facts regarding other countries.

    Dysfunctionally incompetent and/or lazy staff (beyond what is acceptable for low income workers).

    Bureaucrats who clearly prioritise covering their ass over performing the most basic functions of their job.

    People who are rude/dismissive to others who are smaller/weaker/meeker than them.

    Racist taxi drivers.

    Asshole bus drivers.

    People who don’t apologise when they are wrong and know it.

    I can think of more but I’ll stop there.







  • This reminds me of a one of Zeno’s Paradoxes of Motion. The following is from the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

    Suppose a very fast runner—such as mythical Atalanta—needs to run for the bus. Clearly before she reaches the bus stop she must run half-way, as Aristotle says. There’s no problem there; supposing a constant motion it will take her 1/2 the time to run half-way there and 1/2 the time to run the rest of the way. Now she must also run half-way to the half-way point—i.e., a 1/4 of the total distance—before she reaches the half-way point, but again she is left with a finite number of finite lengths to run, and plenty of time to do it. And before she reaches 1/4 of the way she must reach 1/2 of 1/4=1/8 of the way; and before that a 1/16; and so on. There is no problem at any finite point in this series, but what if the halving is carried out infinitely many times? The resulting series contains no first distance to run, for any possible first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. However it does contain a final distance, namely 1/2 of the way; and a penultimate distance, 1/4 of the way; and a third to last distance, 1/8 of the way; and so on. Thus the series of distances that Atalanta is required to run is: …, then 1/16 of the way, then 1/8 of the way, then 1/4 of the way, and finally 1/2 of the way (for now we are not suggesting that she stops at the end of each segment and then starts running at the beginning of the next—we are thinking of her continuous run being composed of such parts). And now there is a problem, for this description of her run has her travelling an infinite number of finite distances, which, Zeno would have us conclude, must take an infinite time, which is to say it is never completed. And since the argument does not depend on the distance or who or what the mover is, it follows that no finite distance can ever be traveled, which is to say that all motion is impossible. (Note that the paradox could easily be generated in the other direction so that Atalanta must first run half way, then half the remaining way, then half of that and so on, so that she must run the following endless sequence of fractions of the total distance: 1/2, then 1/4, then 1/8, then ….)