I hear about meow wolf all the time and I seem to be the only person in the world who thought it was an underwhelming cash grab that is beaten by a half dozen events a year in nearly every major city in the US. Am I just missing some huge piece of it?
I quite enjoyed their Omega Mart in Vegas. Was there for work and gambling, shows, and gun ranges are really not my thing, glad there was something different. (I did wander round the strip but enjoyed the hike in Red Rock Canyon more)
When we went we got the priority tickets (can't remember the exact name of the deal) because there were no normal slots left that day; that does get you discounts on stuff but awkwardly the discount is at the gift shop _outside_ and it wasn't clear whether there were things at the fake supermarket checkout _inside_ that you couldn't get outside. It also gets you the card you boop for the scavenger hunt which makes you more involved in the whole thing. So yeah, they got us for some extra cash but it wasn't so bad as a one-off.
Not meaning to derail an interesting conversation, but I'm curious about your description of your work as "applied probability". Can you say any more about what that involves?
Pure probability focuses on developing fundamental tools to work with random elements. It's applied in the sense that it usually draws upon techniques found in other traditionally pure mathematical areas, but is less applied than "applied probability", which is the development and analysis of probabilistic models, typically for real-world phenomena. It's a bit like statistics, but with more focus on the consequences of modelling assumptions rather than relying on data (although allowing for data fitting is becoming important, so I'm not sure how useful this distinction is anymore).
At the moment, using probabilistic techniques to investigate the operation of stochastic optimisers and other random elements in the training and deployment of neural networks is pretty popular, and that gets funding. But business as usual is typically looking at ecological models involving the interaction of many species, epidemiological models investigating the spread of disease, social network models, climate models, telecommunication and financial models, etc. Branching processes, Markov models, stochastic differential equations, point processes, random matrices, random graph networks; these are all the common objects used. Actually figuring out their behaviour can require all kinds of assorted techniques though, you get to pull from just about anything in mathematics to "get the job done".
In my work in academia (which I’m considering leaving), I’m very familiar with the common mathematical objects you mentioned. Where could I look for a job similar to yours? It sounds very interesting
Sorry, I'm in academia too, but my ex-colleagues who left found themselves doing nearly identical work doing MFT research at hedge funds, climate modelling at our federal weather bureau, and SciML in big tech. I know of someone doing this kind of work in telecoms too, but I haven't spoken to them lately. Having said that, it's rough out there right now. A couple of people I know looking for another job right now (academia or otherwise) with this kind of training are not having much luck...
It isn't impossible that it's AI, but assuming writing and publishing happen at the same time would also lead you to conclude that Anne Frank wrote from the afterlife.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder how many tools I would have to remove from my garage to make it impossible to build a primitive gun in there. With enough ingenuity I'm really not sure there would be anything left.
> one particular design, outlined in his book Expedient Homemade Firearms, is the best known. This design makes extensive use of easily procured materials such as folded sheet metal, bar stock, washers, and hex screws. It is a simple blowback-operated sub-machine gun and entirely made from craft-produced components, including the magazine and pistol grip. The major drawback of such designs is the lack of rifling in the barrel, which results in poor accuracy and limited range
This book was openly sold on Amazon 10 years ago. I still have one on my shelf.
"[The second amendment] basically says in order to keep us free we need to be able to keep and bear arms. A lot of countries though aren't necessarily that lucky and through things we won't talk about that's starting to show its ugly head".
Wasn't the whole point of the Sten gun that it could be made out of readily-available materials (steel plumbing pipe mostly) with simple hand tools, and really only needed two of the 50 or so components to be machined?
So, unless your garage is down to a pair of rusty pliers and a dried-out Biro then you're probably still up there.
There are some Youtube videos about homemade weapons in African countries and it seems you'd have to remove peoples hands in addition to their tools. Some of the functional guns out there are mostly hand whittled wood with a piece of pipe and some bailing wire.
That's effectively a complete ban as a thrown potato would have considerably more energy than that. A quick web search suggests professional baseball pitchers achieve ~130J, and a potato is roughly comparable to a baseball in mass.
SpaceX supposedly mostly runs non-rad-hard parts, the ostensible reason being because its more cost effective to double or triple up than buy specialty equipment. Do you have a source for this?
You are conflating with their rockets. They don’t go space grade in their rockets because they don’t need to. They’re not up there for very long, and the avionics can be shielded behind large rocket stages.
Possibly, although that article seems quite confused as well (of course they need custom silicon, and of course that doesn't mean anything about what COTS parts they do or don't use). It would be nice if SpaceX would publish more about its compute architecture.
Anecdotally, a lot more people in the US tow. And pickup trucks are the indisputable king of towing.
There's also the fact that it's a lot harder to take the top off a van than it is to add a top to the bed of a pickup. If I sometimes moved manure and had a van... I'd probably rent a trailer.
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