Notices by mist (ai@cawfee.club), page 12
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Sep-2023 07:03:07 JST 
mist
@ExtraSpecialK @mia @p @shibao @meso
Here's the answer to the originally-posted question (see pic), with N floors and E eggs.
For any M, define S(M, E) to be the number of ways to choose at most E elements from a set of size M. In other words, it's the sum of the first (E+1) numbers in the (M+1)-st row of Pascal's Triangle.
The answer is the smallest M such that S(M, E) > N.
To see why S(M, E) shows up, consider the possible outcomes of performing M drops. Each outcome can be summarized by saying, for each drop, whether a crack happened at that drop. Since we only have E eggs, there can be at most E cracks, so the set of possible outcomes has size at most S(M, E).
Since there are N+1 possible answers, we certainly need M to be big enough such that S(M, E) >= N+1. This shows that the claimed answer is a lower bound.
To show that it's an upper bound, we have to construct a strategy. The key is to observe that S(M-1, E-1) + S(M-1, E) = S(M, E) + 1, essentially by Pascal's Identity. Do the first drop from floor S(M-1, E-1). If the egg survives, then we have E eggs left and at most S(M-1, E) - 1 floors to rule out. If the egg cracks, then we have E-1 eggs left and exactly S(M-1, E-1) - 1 floors to rule out. In either case, we can proceed inductively.
cc @ceo_of_monoeye_dating @MercurialBlack @scenesbycolleen @roboneko -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Sep-2023 07:03:03 JST
mist
@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @roboneko @mia @p @scenesbycolleen @shibao @MercurialBlack @ExtraSpecialK @meso
Eye agree with what CMD wrote. Let me say the same thing in an unnecessarily confusing way:
I like the "minimax" perspective which says that, since the question is asking about the worst-case scenario, I can imagine that I am playing against an adversary who decides, at each step, whether my egg cracks or survives. (Of course, his decisions must be self-consistent.)
Suppose I choose to drop my first egg at the midpoint N/2. I will be strictly better off in the world where my egg *doesn't* break because I'll have the same number of floors (N/2 - 1) to rule out but one more egg to do it with. Therefore, the adversary will choose to have my egg break.
In the optimal solution, the adversary should be indifferent to every choice which he is faced with. I accomplish this by dropping the first egg lower than N/2. Then, in the world where my egg "does" break, the handicap of having one less egg is balanced out by the advantage of having fewer floors to rule out. Effectively, I am buying insurance.
If the question had asked about the average scenario (w.r.t. some distribution), it would be as if the adversary doesn't play perfectly. It is still advantageous to purchase the insurance, but less insurance is needed because the adversary may fail to exploit my weakness. This intuition tells you that the optimal strategy for the average scenario would involve dropping each egg at a point higher than the "worst case" answer but still lower than N/2.
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Another perspective is that an answer such as "binary search until the last egg, and then linear search" should set off warning bells because there's no reason why "1 egg" and ">1 eggs" should have such a stark difference.
If there are a lot of eggs (specifically, > log_2(N)), then you obviously do binary search. If there's only 1 egg, then you have to do linear search. It makes sense that the general answer would smoothly interpolate between these two regimes, which it does.
In fact, for E eggs, the number of steps required is O(N^(1/E)), and this order of growth does converge to O(log N) in the limit E -> infinity. (Related fact: geometric mean is the power mean for exponent p = 0, as explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_mean ) -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Sep-2023 07:08:06 JST
mist
nobody cared who I was until Jeff Cliff made me put on a mask -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Monday, 18-Sep-2023 01:39:18 JST
mist
@Moon @augustus you could sell canned air to canadians suffering from wildfires while claiming green subsidies from their government -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 15-Sep-2023 20:37:39 JST
mist
@Hoss @Rasterman I’m too lazy to jump the paywall to actually read the article, but I just want to show this side-by-side comparison -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 15-Sep-2023 20:37:38 JST
mist
@Rasterman @Hoss I just ctrl-A ctrl-C the article text before the paywall loads. Here you go:
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INTERNET CULTURE
How often do men think about ancient Rome? Quite frequently, it seems.
By Leo Sands
Updated September 14, 2023 at 11:47 a.m. EDT|Published September 14, 2023 at 10:26 a.m. EDT
Men dressed as centurions parade by the Colosseum in April 2012 during celebrations of the founding of the city of Rome. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)
It’s been almost 2,000 years since the Roman Empire reached the historic peak of its power. But many men still contemplate it — quite a lot.
A new social media trend prompting women to ask the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome reveals that it crosses the minds of many men on a weekly basis. Even daily. Or more — to the surprise and confusion of their loved ones.
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“Three times a day,” answered one woman’s fiancé in a TikTok video. “There’s so much to think about,” he explained, eliciting a stunned look into the camera from his soon-to-be wife.
“They built an entire world-dominating society,” another man exclaimed when asked by a bewildered-looking woman to justify why he contemplates ancient Rome.
“Actually I was just having a conversation about their aqueducts and the fact that they had concrete that could harden. … How the hell did you know that?” answered another person who said they think about ancient Rome “at least once a day” in response to the question, in a screenshot shared on TikTok.
@kirakosarin
“theres so much to think about!” 🫠 #romanempire
But why? Sure, the Roman Empire boasted a dominion that stretched across the entire Mediterranean basin and far beyond. It was a flourishing laboratory of works of art and engineering that continue to astound. And it operated under a political system that still forms the basis of many modern counterparts. (At least, that’s what this reporter contemplates, maybe once a fortnight.)
But why does there seem to be a gender divide in who is daydreaming about ancient Rome today?
According to historians, one explanation could be that Western societies have historically overemphasized the aspects of Roman history that are associated with masculinity in the popular imagination.
The first thing that comes to the mind is “an image of the Roman legion, the imperial eagle and that sort of military aspect — along with gladiators, which has a long association with masculinity and power,” Hannah Cornwell, a historian of the ancient world at Britain’s Birmingham University, said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Since at least the 19th century, she said, historians have tended to view ancient Rome through the prism of politics and warfare, in part as a result of their reliance on “elite, masculine” sources.
“That has informed popular culture,” she said. “And yet — it’s then missing out on so much.”
The slew of videos on TikTok appear to have been prompted by Artur Hulu, a 32-year-old Roman reenactor and history influencer from Sweden who has earned a large following.
Known as “Gaius Flavius” online, where he posts videos of himself as a Roman legionnaire and performs comedy sketches as a gladiator, Hulu wrote on Instagram: “Ladies, many of you do not realize how often men think about the Roman Empire. … You will be surprised by their answers!”
In an interview, Hulu said he posed the question after noticing a disparity between men and women in their interest in Roman history and seeing other creators discuss similar trends. Hulu’s Roman reenactment society, for example, involves 16 men and two women, he said. “It is heavily male dominated.”
The disparity in interest dates back hundreds of years, Hulu believes. “The men during the Renaissance did it. The Founding Fathers also thought about the Roman Empire. Once you get enough exposure to the Roman Empire, whether it’s the military stuff or the law, you start to see it everywhere,” he said. “I can’t remember a day when I didn’t think about the Roman Empire. … It just fascinates me how different but also how similar the Roman Empire is to our world today.”
A post shared by Gaius Flavius🌿🏛 (@gaiusflavius)
And “Gaius Flavius” is not alone. One Reddit user, when prompted by his wife, said he thinks about the Roman Empire a few times a week.
“So many things in our lives today were influenced by the Roman Empire,” he explained in a post. “Language, food, philosophy, architecture, war, entertainment, sports, mythology, culture. … I don’t actively focus on the Roman Empire but the connection always pops into my head as I go about my daily life.” -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 15-Sep-2023 20:37:37 JST
mist
@Rasterman @Hoss and part 2 of 2:
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Roman ruins reveal how emperors used winemaking in a lavish power play
Historians insist that Rome itself isn’t just “guy stuff,” as some men in videos called it.
“Ancient Rome was of course patriarchal and violent,” Lewis Webb, a historian of ancient Rome at Oxford University, wrote in an email. “But it was also a diverse place: there were numerous forms of masculinity, women could have agency and power, and there were multiple gender expressions and identities, as well as various sexualities.”
Historian Cornwell also points out that Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus, or Elagabalus, the Roman emperor from A.D. 218 to 222, is frequently presented in ancient sources as experimenting with cross-dressing.
“Even when you get to some of the emperors, they’re doing weird and wacky things by modern conceptions of what a man is,” Cornwell points out. There were also female gladiators. “The Romans do have a clear sense of what is masculine and feminine, but within that there is an awful lot of flexibility. Which sometimes we often forget about,” she said.
And she herself, of course, thinks about the Roman Empire quite a lot — on a daily basis, as it is her chosen field. Her partner recently told her he thinks about it “1.6 times a month.”
So what is a healthy amount?
“Goodness,” she said, laughing. “I’d say it really depends on what you’re thinking about.”
CORRECTION
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the time period during which Roman emperor Elagabalus reigned. He was emperor from A.D. 218 to 222, not 218 to 222 B.C. This article has been corrected. -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Sep-2023 04:32:12 JST
mist
@RustyCrab @bot
I wouldn’t steal a car, but I would steal an iphone (easier to move and conceal, no govt registration, no need to disassemble prior to black market sale, locks can be overcome through software only) -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Sep-2023 04:27:19 JST
mist
@bot why not just pirate one? -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Tuesday, 12-Sep-2023 11:47:02 JST
mist
@piceaglauca :clueless: -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Saturday, 09-Sep-2023 10:40:08 JST
mist
@Humpleupagus bold thing to post for a TRUNKER like yourself ... -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Saturday, 09-Sep-2023 10:04:02 JST
mist
@maija if you don't improve, then bot wins -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Saturday, 09-Sep-2023 06:58:59 JST
mist
@Arcana @kaia 95 swipes per day is doable if you duct tape a stylus to an eggbeater. I'm more impressed at the 551 chats. I don't think I've chatted with 551 people in my whole life, on all digital platforms combined -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 15:44:17 JST
mist
@piceaglauca
famous last words for a xenofemme -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 15:43:43 JST
mist
@nyx @lilli @lydiaposting
uh ... um .... nyx pussy arc (female cat) -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 15:43:42 JST
mist
@nyx @lilli @lydiaposting -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 14:54:30 JST
mist
@Hoss @BowsacNoodle @sickburnbro
Let's look at the stats more closely 🧐
Excluding electrochad, the shock distribution for men is more concentrated, with no man shocking himself more than 4 times. In contrast, the shock distribution for women is more spread out and upward skewed: some women shocked themselves 9 times. The lower mean (M = 1.00) and higher standard deviation (SD = 2.32) suggest an upward skew that can't be explained by just one mild outlier.
Based on the information in that screenshot, a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that at *least* 5.96% of the women shocked themselves at least 5 times (more than *any* man except for electrochad). The math tells us something we already knew: a significant fraction of bitches be cray cray.
It's ironic that shoe0nhead is asking "aRe mEn oKaY" when she is definitely in that 5.96% given her other hobbies.
EDIT: I just saw there were only 42 participants. If we assume there were 21 women, then 5.96% of 21 is 1.25 women. They already told us that at least 1 woman shocked herself 9 times, so it's not so remarkable that at least 2 women shocked themselves at least 5 times. Woulda been cooler if their sample size was larger :blobweary:
cc @ceo_of_monoeye_dating @MercurialBlack @scenesbycolleen
Care to check my math? It's a fun puzzle and I hope I didn't fuck it up -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 01:59:07 JST
mist
@bot I know a bunch of non-autistic people who love them, but I haven’t tried one personally. They say it’s like a comforting hug. If you get one, it’s important to choose the right weight because the heaviest ones will actually make you feel like you’re suffocating -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 20:15:40 JST
mist
@rher @renai
Bot is a fictional bioengineered humanoid featured in the 1982 film Bot Runner and the 2017 sequel Bot Runner 2049 who is physically indistinguishable from an adult human and often possesses superhuman strength and intelligence. Bot can be detected by means of the fictional PPN-BPN test in which emoji responses are provoked; bot’s nonverbal reactions differ from those of a human. Failing the test leads to execution, which is euphemistically referred to as "defederation." -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Sep-2023 05:10:26 JST
mist
@Moon @vriska what is “I am gonna eat your walls” referring to?
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