A life without hope

Our young men exist in a world without hope. They don’t have children. They don’t have wives. The young women their age (the ones that haven’t been brainwashed into being gay or trans) are all crazy and “strong independent woman don’t need no man.” They can’t find jobs that pay a living wage in an era when rent for a small apartment starts at $2500 per month. (That requires a wage of more than $45 per hour!) They have been taught, every day for at least 13 years, that they are inherently defective and evil; that the world would be a better place if they all just died.

They don’t believe in anything. They’ve been told they have no culture. They have been carefully taught that Christianity is uniquely evil. They have been subject to over a decade of steady brainwashing. Every level of government, every mode of entertainment, oppresses good and elevates evil.

They trust nothing and nobody. They have been lied to about everything since they could walk. As far as they can tell, everything they’ve ever been told by every authority figure is a lie. They see through the transparent, corrosive lies they have been forced to repeat ad nauseam.

The schools and universities are full-blown Leftist indoctrination camps that can’t manage to teach basic arithmetic and reading skills. The factory jobs were sent overseas. The technology jobs were insourced to hostile foreigners who openly brag about invading our nation. The office jobs are gate-kept by the blue-haired harpies that infest HR departments. The entry level jobs (the few not given to illegal alien invaders) are filled with retirees trying to survive.

They have nothing to lose. Burning it all down would, to them, be an improvement. At least that way, they have a chance at a future. In their current world, they have none.

Happy Halloween 2025!

 

The end of comically bad fiction

Sadly, the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest has finally come to a close. Over 40 years of comically bad opening lines to imaginary novels still reside at the website, though.

https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about

The original, penned by Lord Byron Bulwer-Lytton himself in 1830:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

"Virtual particles" are not real

Oh, sometimes things just piss me off. Take “virtual particles” from physics. Please. Eliminate them. They are neither necessary nor helpful.

“Virtual” means “non-existent” or “fake”. They are not particles.

Here’s a Feynman diagram for two electrons repelling each other. Take a look at it. It contains no less than four virtual particles.

sourced here

1. The electron on the left, sensing the approach of the electron on the right, emits a virtual photon, the recoil of so doing forces it to change trajectory.

   1. How did it know?

   2. How did it get the trajectory exactly correct?

   3. Emitting a photon makes the electron on the left lose energy and change spin.

2. The highly energetic virtual photon splits into a virtual electron-positron pair.

   1. Why?

   2. The virtual electron should be repelled by the real electrons, and attracted to its counterpart. This mostly cancels out to an attraction to its counterpart.

   3. The virtual positron should be attracted to both the real electrons and its counterpart. This mostly cancels out to an attraction to its counterpart.

   4. The real electrons should be attracted to the virtual positron, and repelled by the virtual electron. This mostly cancels out.

3. The virtual electron-positron pair recombine, releasing a highly energetic virtual photon.

   1. The annihilation happens at the right place and time to conserve momentum and send the new virtual photon in exactly the right direction.

   2. The creation-annihilation takes time. How did the sending electron know this random reaction would take place, and adjust the trajectory of its virtual photon accordingly, before it happened by pure chance?

4. The virtual photon continues on just the exactly correct trajectory to impact the electron on the right, forcing it to alter its momentum.

   1. The electron on the right gains energy and changes spin.

5. In the end, the electrons are repelled from each other. Both change spin. The one on the left loses energy and slows down, while the one on the right gains energy and speeds up.

   1. Which one loses energy and which one gains is randomly determined. The reaction can go either way.

      1. Therefore, the reaction actually goes both ways, with a 50% probability of each, so it all balances out.

         1. Yes, physicists actually believe that.

So what really happens when two electrons approach each other? The field gradients alter their trajectories, without any direct interaction necessary. The Feynman diagram with all its virtual whatsits is a mathematical tool for describing statistical outcomes of waves and ripples in fields, not details of actual events.

Taken from an excellent summary of this topic.

Canal and Revolution

The history you don't know.

I have occasionally wondered what caused all the peasant revolutions in Central Europe in the 1830's and 1840's.  Turns out, the opening of the Erie Canal was the root cause.  It's amazing how things are connected.  Especially when new connections completely alter trade routes.

Where do you think all those Norwegian bachelor farmers in Lake Wobegon came from?

Objects and Closures

Yes, this is another short post about programming theory.  I'm a geek.  It's what I think about at 2AM.

What is the difference between an object and a continuation?

An object is data with associated code.
A closure is code with associated data.
A continuation is a closure with a goto at the end.

That's it.  There's no need to overcomplicate these things.

Three programming languages

Here are three lesser known programming languages I like, and you might enjoy exploring. They’re each the creations of one man, who are all very opinionated about how their languages should look and work.

Nim - My current working language. Syntax is similar to Python, but it’s a statically typed, compiled language. It manages memory for you (very, very efficiently), unless you tell it not to. The language embraces generics, both type and procedural polymorphism, multiple dispatch, and meta programming. Has a remarkably diverse collection of packages available.

Odin - Another statically typed, compiled language. Syntax is similar to Go, but without all the hang-ups, and even easier to read and write. (Check out the “or_else” family of error handling keywords.) You have to manage your own memory, but the language makes that fairly easy to do. Has lots of features for games and systems programming, and is ridiculously fast. Ginger Bill’s opinions are worth paying attention to.

Frink - A small language that was designed to be a general-purpose calculator for engineering and science. It attaches units to numbers, and can automatically convert between them. It has a remarkably complete and correct table of constant value and unit conversions, plus historical purchasing power of the US dollar and British pound. It will even correctly compute error bounds and significant digits without any real effort on your part. It runs on the JVM, so it’s quick and flexible. It even has graphics built in.  (Yes, it's named for the mad scientist on The Simpsons.)