Predominantly Erroneous (Exohedron nonsense blog)

Like, sure Bilbo found the One Ring in a cave, but this was after the party had already found swords from the Hidden City of Gondolin in a cave. And yeah, sure, the swords weren't necessarily cursed or evil or anything, but they'd been lost a lot longer than the One Ring. Beleriand sank into the ocean during the War of Wrath! Meanwhile Sauron gets a paper cut and then Isildur drops the One Ring in a river and the One Ring vanishes for a few measly centuries.
Look, the point is that sometimes you just find things in caves.

 

Is it too early to start making "vax evasion" jokes?

 

No, that's genius actually.

 

Look, if you're going to name your new secret project "Monkey's Paw", that sets certain expectations.

 

Today on Making Matt Levine Unhappy: $DOG crypto coin, not to be confused with dogecoin, is crypto shares of an NFT of the doge image. The original NFT was bought for $4 million; the shares suggest a market cap of $225 million.

 

I think I've reached the age where deliberately getting pop culture references wrong is amusing to me. This somehow makes me feel older than when I refinanced a mortgage.

 

I think this post about nostalgebraist-autoresponder is the scariest thing I've seen recently.

Spoiler

How long did it take you to realize that this text is computer generated, and not actually a meta post from nostalgebraist?

 

Spoiler: re spoiler

I didn't?? Though that does explain why it's so muddled. Daaamn.

 

Mildly interesting thing found today: a Wikipedia page containing a usage of singular "they" that contains a link to the Wikipedia page on singular "they". Spotted on the Foliation page in the section on Holonomy.

 

More adventures in cooking with hot peppers: almost 24 hours later, my fingertips feel like they've been sunburned.

 

New "which of your ocs" idea: which of your ocs would be the sole non-Muppet in a Muppet version of your [fic/comic/unrecorded daydreams/etc]

 

But I suppose that cursed gold is in fact a pretty metal way to die.

 

I really like how in Chrononauts, a game about time travel, the move where you discard cards and draw to replace because you don't have any better options is called "killing time".

 

Adding to the list of words that I've started mispronouncing because I say them so often (in the particular context of this one person who I talk to often), I would say "what's up?" to indicate interest in whatever nonsense (usually the result of a bizarre programming error) she called me over for, except it's morphed into "wuzzup?" because consonants are too much effort.

 

Being mathematicians, at one point some of my colleagues and I went through the various Standard Mathematician Jokes, mainly by reciting the punchlines since one could basically reconstruct the entire joke from those.
A more interesting exercise (maybe?) would be to pick a not-terribly-illuminating sentence from the middle of the joke and try to work outwards to both ends.
For instance,

 

Back on the subject of color names, we call it the "Red Sea", not the "Vermillion Sea". And the eastern chunk of the Khanate's army was called the "Blue Horde", not the "Azure Horde". So why can't we just say "Red Bird" and "Blue Dragon"?
Or is it just that the original Chinese word doesn't distinguish between blue and green the way Westerners do? Still, "Azure"?

 

Just realized that I have, more than once, quoted scripture for my own purposes.

 

I don't think I'll ever really care about food to be a great cook, but I would feel like a more competent cook if it didn't always take me a few tries to open the spice bottles if I'm not looking directly at them.

 

The difference between partial derivative and fractional derivative.

 

One of the things I am learning is that of all the fandoms that I am in or have been in, Star Wars is the only one where I really feel like the politics matter. Like, A Song of Ice and Fire has some maneuvering, but it too quickly turns into simple violence. In contrast, while the Star Wars prequels had plenty of violence, the point was that the entire war was an excuse for political moves that wouldn't have been possible in peacetime.
This is also why the fall of the New Republic in the sequel trilogy was so comparatively dumb. Again, simple violence.

Conversely, I can't really imagine being interested in a political drama that isn't Star Wars. The closest was me being entertained by The West Wing but it didn't really stick with me.