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twocubes · 2 days

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on the one hand i know that beauty is meaningless. it shouldn't matter.

on the other hand it is absolutely upsetting that beauty is meaningless. it should matter.

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twocubes · 2 days

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on the one hand this is very flattering, on the other, what if people start to think i stole it from kurt vonnegut now?

people want doing the right thing to be like pulling the correct lever at the correct time but actually usually doing the right thing is more like holding a moderate weight at arm's length continuously for seventeen years

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twocubes · 3 days

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trying to get back to normal after my response to my problems was reading various pieces of fiction continuously for like a month at the expense of everything that wasn't eating

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twocubes · 3 days

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really, magic feels like it should be more like, exact-solution-ish as opposed to being like, numerical-methods-ish

like, compass and straightedge constructions, big pretty formulas, all that stuff. it just feels like galois theory should be important to magic. (galois theories in general, i guess).

that and like, combinatorial design theory, i guess

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twocubes · 18 days

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i'd say, the deck is exceedingly large right now; feel free to... not put that many cards in there.

i haven't come up with any games for this that aren't spread-based divination, so, you will probably have to improvise. i'd say trying to keep to theme might be interesting? (algebraic numbers together being some kind of hand, transcendental numbers together being some other kind of hand, ↑ giving you initiative, etc, i don't know how balatro works)

i expect, particularly with the 6 suits, that the game might need some balancing. being generous with the extra types of hands will probably help.

@twocubes i kind of want to try make a mod for Balatro (poker roguelike) that implements your deck (extra suits, number cards, tarot, etc). I think there's enough info in #nouveau tarot nouveau that i'd mostly just be trying to figure out if it's possible in code. do you have any requests/suggestions?

it might be a bit of a hassle to figure out hand types for the added cards....

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twocubes · 1 month

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how exactly do you know everything

well, most of the time it feels like i've forgotten all of it, but every so often it comes back to me

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twocubes · 1 month

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i think my ambient set of fetishes has actually managed to get like. one tick worse. seems to correlate with Bad Things Happening In My Life. worrying.

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twocubes · 1 month

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no like. this sort of thing. the functor there.

So if you have a pointed space (X,x), a non-pointed space Y, and a continuous map f: X -> Y, then there is a unique point y in Y such that f is a pointed continuous map (X,x) -> (Y,y) (namely if we take y = f(x)). This phenomenon feels similar to taking a Kleisli extension of a morphism A -> T(B) for some monad T, but among other differences it goes the other direction.

Let U: Topₚ -> Top be the forgetful functor from the category of pointed topological spaces to the category of topological spaces. For every f ∈ Top(U(X),Y) there is a unique Z ∈ Obj(Topₚ) and g ∈ Topₚ(X,Z) such that U(Z) = Y and U(g) = f.

This is used pretty frequently in algebraic topology ('let X,Y be spaces, x ∈ X, and let f: X -> Y be continuous, then f*: π₁(X,x) -> π₁(Y,f(x)), etc.'). I wonder if there's other scenarios that have the same categorical structure?

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twocubes · 1 month

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yeah, might be an opfibration, i keep forgetting how the arrows flip, it's been a while, and i'm too sleepy to read through an article to check...

discrete is right tho

So if you have a pointed space (X,x), a non-pointed space Y, and a continuous map f: X -> Y, then there is a unique point y in Y such that f is a pointed continuous map (X,x) -> (Y,y) (namely if we take y = f(x)). This phenomenon feels similar to taking a Kleisli extension of a morphism A -> T(B) for some monad T, but among other differences it goes the other direction.

Let U: Topₚ -> Top be the forgetful functor from the category of pointed topological spaces to the category of topological spaces. For every f ∈ Top(U(X),Y) there is a unique Z ∈ Obj(Topₚ) and g ∈ Topₚ(X,Z) such that U(Z) = Y and U(g) = f.

This is used pretty frequently in algebraic topology ('let X,Y be spaces, x ∈ X, and let f: X -> Y be continuous, then f*: π₁(X,x) -> π₁(Y,f(x)), etc.'). I wonder if there's other scenarios that have the same categorical structure?

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twocubes · 1 month

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isn't this just like. a cofibration.

So if you have a pointed space (X,x), a non-pointed space Y, and a continuous map f: X -> Y, then there is a unique point y in Y such that f is a pointed continuous map (X,x) -> (Y,y) (namely if we take y = f(x)). This phenomenon feels similar to taking a Kleisli extension of a morphism A -> T(B) for some monad T, but among other differences it goes the other direction.

Let U: Topₚ -> Top be the forgetful functor from the category of pointed topological spaces to the category of topological spaces. For every f ∈ Top(U(X),Y) there is a unique Z ∈ Obj(Topₚ) and g ∈ Topₚ(X,Z) such that U(Z) = Y and U(g) = f.

This is used pretty frequently in algebraic topology ('let X,Y be spaces, x ∈ X, and let f: X -> Y be continuous, then f*: π₁(X,x) -> π₁(Y,f(x)), etc.'). I wonder if there's other scenarios that have the same categorical structure?

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twocubes · 1 month

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i mean, sure, being killed for cheating is moderately better than being killed for, like, trying to break up or something, but like, come on, i'd hope that if you were going to kill me, it'd at least be for like, some momentary sexual thrill, or for food, or as part of some sort of factory process or something

i mean it's not like i'm asking to be killed as part of some elaborate artistic statement or anything, like, this is not that unreasonable

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twocubes · 2 months

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i don't mean to sound like i blame her. she did nothing wrong, morally. this isn't a post about who is in the wrong and who is in the right. these questions have obvious and therefore uninteresting answers.

on some level i'm a similar person to her, and am trying to extract lessons for myself by proxy, by focusing on the archetype of this situation and funneling the emotion to that.

there are no lessons i can extract by empathizing with the guy, so there's no point criticizing his actions. he deserves no thoughts.

i know i shouldn't expect tragedy to teach anything. that's not how the world works. i can't help but try.

i think,,, maybe people should consider doing effective altruism on relationships.

like, instead of following that urge and trying to fix one guy by spending five miserable years with him, you can instead do some research and activism to work towards there being fewer broken guys in the future. perhaps you can find places to actively interrupt the chain of screaming by reducing the amount of pressure people are under all the time by working towards better social services or something.

that way more things are fixed and also you don't have to morosely tell your daughter that "apparently [you] need a project" when you came over because couldn't sleep in your car that night because it was in the shop and eventually be found dead in a park under a rock a month after your death

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twocubes · 2 months

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i think,,, maybe people should consider doing effective altruism on relationships.

like, instead of following that urge and trying to fix one guy by spending five miserable years with him, you can instead do some research and activism to work towards there being fewer broken guys in the future. perhaps you can find places to actively interrupt the chain of screaming by reducing the amount of pressure people are under all the time by working towards better social services or something.

that way more things are fixed and also you don't have to morosely tell your daughter that "apparently [you] need a project" when you came over because couldn't sleep in your car that night because it was in the shop and eventually be found dead in a park under a rock a month after your death

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twocubes · 2 months

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my research methodology here was entirely noticing the symbols used this way in old papers, which, it makes sense that i made this mistake, thank you.

alright. What are some symbols that are easy to draw and don't look like any latin or greek letters? I'm really suffering from too small alphabet when I write formulas. @twocubes ?

I'm thinking astrological and alchemical symbols to start with right? anythign else?

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twocubes · 2 months

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NEW MUSIC ON THE HORIZON

i'm releasing an EP on the next Bandcamp Friday, April 5th. it's called "I've Had A Toothache Since 2019". it's a fun synthpop-y time imo and represents my return to full-time(ish) music making! i'm excited to share it with you

please follow me on Bandcamp and join the mailing list so you get updated as soon as it goes live! thank you have a good one

#my beloved creature

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twocubes · 2 months

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"easy to draw" is relative; it'll depend on what you're used to writing with (see: hanzi, hiragana, katakana, etc).

it should be noted that, in most languages, handwriting doesn't derive uniquely from character shape. this should be obvious in retrospect, if you (e.g.) think about the diversity of handwritten forms in english, or consider the two variant forms of φ (along with the symbol ∅, which derives from it) or even the relatively recent evolution of ∈ from the alternate form of lowercase epsilon.

(in fact, in my experience, getting instructions on how to handwrite characters outside the ones you're used to is often complicated. I don't think I've ever seen a guide on how to handwrite the IPA characters, as an example.)

so you're just going to have to develop your own handwritten forms, no matter what. the procedure i recommend is as follows:

take out a nice sheet of paper

for each character you intend to use (including the ones you're already using), write each like 10-20 times in a row as quickly as you can; the goal here is to see what they'd look like when you're not trying very hard, and also what they feel like when you're writing quickly (it's annoying to have to slow down when writing a formula).

try variant ways of drawing each character until they're all satisfyingly distinct and don't feel tedious to write quickly. so, if you're writing ð, you can try drawing the bar before or after the d, drawing it at different angles, drawing the d like a ∂, etc.

(this is also a good time to fix annoyances you might have with your own writing; my lowercase "a"s looked too much like my lowercase "u"s so i started using the typewritten form in handwriting)

now, with all that said, while they look pretty, astrological and alchemical symbols, in my experience, are often less nice than just letters in a different alphabet; they're not built for handwriting as much, and often involve enough strokes that it feels grating. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but, be aware. Beyond that, familiarity is good? like, if there's a short name for that symbol in your head, that can be good for when you're reading your notes. Using (e.g.) cyrillic will be more fine for you if you're more familiar with that alphabet in the first place.

anyways. none of this is really a list of examples, which is what you actually asked for, but, unfortunately, my experience here suggests that it's not so simple. Hopefully, this helps at least as far as procedure is concerned.

alright. What are some symbols that are easy to draw and don't look like any latin or greek letters? I'm really suffering from too small alphabet when I write formulas. @twocubes ?

I'm thinking astrological and alchemical symbols to start with right? anythign else?

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twocubes · 2 months

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Back in middle/high school, I had this brief moment where I fixated on how chiptunes worked. I read a bunch of stuff but never actually made anything. During that time, I'd developed this theory that, at the end of the day, individual square- or triangle-wave channels were most similar to violins, due to their inability to play more than a note but relatively precise control over the dynamics of the note.

This idea ended up rattling in my brain for some years, until November 2023, when I finally decided to try and make something to test it. So, I fished out a book of compositions for string trios from my grandmother's collection (she played the fiddle all her life into her 80s, and left a large collection) and tried to transcribe this piece. I hadn't looked at sheet music in 20 years though. I thought maybe I'd post it here after.

Towards the end of the month, my mom came over, and we talked about how we'd gotten a bit estranged from each-other recently, and talked about meeting more often and sharing our lives more. Her mom had died about a year before (cancer) and I showed her this dumb project. She helped me correct some of the mistakes I'd made. I don't know if it's all of them.

A week and a half later, she was dead, (apparently) killed by her boyfriend. She was found a month later, having been left in a park to rot under a rock.

Anyways. It's like, a piece by Robert Mackintosh. I selected it randomly, it's on p.2 of the book titled "the Mackintosh Collections". It was just supposed to be a test.

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