#math systems

[er-cryptid]

Math Develops in Mesopotamia

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[happypeachsludgeflower]

Yue Qingyuan has hanahaki. He accepts he’s going to die. He keeps quiet about it and quietly arranges for the sect to be taken care of when he’s gone. The sickness is getting worse and worse though and one day someone catches him coughing up flowers. The rumors spread. Soon everyone in the sect knows the sect leader is dying of the flower sickness. He loves someone so much it’s killing him.

Shen Jiu shows up furious and demands to know who Yue Qingyuan loves. Who did Yue Qi deem worthy of his affection. He mocks Yue Qingyuan when the man doesn’t answer and cruelty says that whoever it is obviously wise to not want to live such a moron. Yue Qingyuan begins to have another coughing fit and Shen Qingqiu jerks back upset, before storming away.

Yue Qingyuan’s condition steadily worsens and Shen Jiu is tearing the sect apart looking for whoever it is that rejected Yue Qingyuan. The other peak lords keep trying to convince Yue Qingyuan to have the flowers removed but he just shakes his head and says it’s fine before coughing some more. When Shen Jiu hears of this, he flies into a rage and corners him in his bedroom so he can shake sense into Yue Qingyuan, demanding once more to know who it is. They both know Yue Qingyuan’s time is almost up. He’s dying. He won’t live much longer.

“You’re going to die,” Shen Jiu snarls at the other man, eyes burning with unshed tears.

Yue Qingyuan smiles softly as a shaking cough tears through him once more. He shrugs. “I know.”

“No.” Shen Qingqiu is shaking with fury. “NO.” He slaps Yue Qingyuan hard. Yue Qingyuan's head snaps to the side, face plastered in wide eyed shock. Shen Jiu shoves him against the wall glowering at the stunned man before him. Yue Qingyuan gingerly touches his reddened cheek and stares up at Shen Jiu, his eyes bright with glossy tears. Shen Jiu snarls down at the moron's guileless expression and grabs the front of Yue Qingyuan’s robes, yanking him in close as he looms over him threateningly. “You don’t get to leave me,” he seaths. “WHO IS IT?”

“Xiao Jiu,” Yue Qingyuan breathes with a wheezing cough, chest heaving as he continues to stare up at him in a morbid, twisted awe.

“WHO!” Shen Jiu shakes Yue Qingyuan again, his knuckles going white. There’s a rattling sound coming from Yue Qingyuan’s chest and it’s infuriating. “Tell me who,” he demands, shoving his face in close to Yue Qingyuan’s.

“You. Are. Mine.” Shen Jiu snaps. “You don’t get to leave me again.” He drags Yue Qingyuan into himself and crowds him hard against the floor, pressing a bruising kiss hungrily against the other's mouth. Yue Qingyuan lets out a strangled groan and goes pliant under him.

Shen Jiu growls against Yue Qingyuan’s lips, “Mine. They can’t have you.” Yue Qingyuan hums lowly in agreement and presses into the kiss with a moan. He shudders under Shen Jiu and tugs at Shen Jiu’s robes, trying to pull him closer.

Shen Jiu pulls back and grabs Yue Qingyuan’s jaw forcefully, jerking his gaze to meet his own. “You will forget about them. You belong to me.”

“It’s as Xiao Jiu says,” Yue Qingyuan murmurs, dazedly, a slight smile tugging at lips.

Shen Jiu’s grip on his jaw tightens and he scowls down at the serene face. “You will forget about them,” he promises threateningly. “You are having those roots removed.”

Yue Qingyuan blinks up at him in infuriating befuddlement. Shen Jiu glowers and leans in close again, “They. Will. Be. Removed.”

Yue Qingyuan blinks. “There’s no need.”

“What the fuck do you mean there’s no need?” Shen Jiu’s voice burns with unconcealed fury.

“There’s no need,” Yue Qingyuan says again, smiling softly. His hand tightens in Shen Jiu’s robes, tugging him down slightly. “Xiao Jiu’s cure works best.”

Shen Jiu stares. “What?”

Yue Qingyuan blinks up at Shen Jiu earnestly, cheeks flushed a light pink. “Xiao Jiu’s cure is effective.” Yue Qingyuan glances away nervously and wets his lips. “Xiao Jiu could keep curing me if he wants?” he says hopefully, embarrassment coloring his voice.

“What?” Shen Jiu blinks at Yue Qingyuan’s flushed face in angry, bewilderment. “Roots were just suffocating you to death. What do you mean there’s no need.” He yanks at Yue Qingyuan’s jaw to force their gazes together again and watches in bafflement as Yue Qingyuan’s throat bobs and his flush gets deeper.

Yue Qingyuan gives him a bright smile, “Xiao Jiu needn’t worry about it. Xiao Jiu has the best cures.”

[grand-line-shenanigans]

For those of us who cannot comprehend big numbers (me) I have done the math. FOUR FUCKING YEARS. SECUNIT WHAT THE FUCK.

[cannibalisticdespair]

So, humanity is at over eight billion people. Time for a bit of statistics education for y'all, because I feel like it.

Okay, take a group that's around 1%. At least officially, it could possibly be higher. So like,

BPD: 1.6% officially

DID: 1.5% officially

Trans: 1.14% officially

Schizophrenia: 1.1%

These are American statistics, but presuming that overall none of these have some sort of strong cultural cause, they should be representative of the norm of humanity. Now, let's get the raw number estimate out of this. What we're going to need to do is multiply 8,000,000,000 by 0.016, 0.015, 0.0114, 0.011 respectively.

128,000,000

120,000,000

91,200,000

88,000,000

So, this a rough estimate for the number of people in each category respectively. Bit bigger than you might assume when you hear "approximately 1%", right? When you hear "approximately 1%", you're liable to think something is super rare. And in proportion, yeah, sure.

But plot twist, I'm discussing misinformation and bad propaganda. Did you know the internet allows disparate groups of small populations to connect and form larger communities than was ever possible offline due to how irl populations are distributed? Now, imagine a community of just 25% of trans people. Using the prior information, you can do this calculation yourself.

Done it? Did you get 22,800,000 people? Good job. If not, the calculation should have been 91,200,000 x 0.25. Now, imagine a community online of 22,800,000 people. That's a pretty damn big community online, right?

And this here shows how false claims of the level of visibility of various groups online being the result of "fakers" and "trenders" is. Those claims rely on your inability to understand that even 1% of humanity is 80,000,000 people. You aren't seeing anywhere close to 80,000,000 different people posting about it. You aren't even seeing 1,000,000 people posting about it. You are seeing a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of humanity posting about it. Social media just enables that itty bitty bit to find each other and interact.

[reality-detective]

Mathematics 🤔

[mydogatemymotivation]

I had a thought about Lasan. People tend to agree that Zeb is kind of looked down on or seen as less intelligent by the people around him, despite him obviously being very smart, and I was wondering why that was. I do think there's some underlying xenophobia in the rebellion, even if it's not as rampant, that when someone looks at Zeb they might see him as something 'other' or somehow more animal like and therefore unintelligent. But then why does Zeb so frequently look down on himself as well? Is it just a lack of confidence? Well, I was thinking and I came up with this idea: what if the foundation of knowledge itself is different on Lasan compared to the rest of the galaxy?

So, hear me out, I'm a historian, I love history and there was a history class I was in some time ago that was all about the Aztec, Inca, and Maya, major empires each during their heyday, and in one of the units, we learned about the Mayan calendar and their number system (you don't have to be a mathematician for this, I promise) (I can't do math) (also this whole post is an excuse for me to talk about this cuz I think it's neat).

The Mayans (and by extension most people in Central America) used a completely different number system to do math. They used what's called a vigesimal system, not a decimal system. A decimal system is a Base 10 system: 1's, 10's, 100's.  This is the way we learn math today.

(sorry for the shitty quality. and the. stains. i was snacking on salt an vinegar chips and they spilled. ignore that.)

However a vigesimal system is not Base 10, but Base 20, and this changes the most basic arithmetic. Actually, it flat out changes the way numbers are read.

It seems like Lasan was a fairly isolated planet, there weren't a lot of Lasat seen in the galaxy at large, and Lasan was neutral during the Clone Wars, so it could be that there wasn't a big push to learn how things are done in the rest of the galaxy unless you were specifically planning on leaving Lasan. And since Zeb was in the Honor Guard, I don't imagine he ever even wanted to leave, but rather was forced to. Which means he probably never would've learned the systems that the rest of the galaxy used.

Now, I will say that the decimal system only exists because humans have ten fingers, which is why it called Base 10. And the vigesimal system exists because humans have ten fingers and ten toes, which is why it's called Base 20. Lasat have neither, which means they probably didn't use a vigesimal system; but it also means they probably didn't use a decimal system either. Not unless they imported it. Like I said, I'm not a mathematician, so I'm not even going to try to figure out what a Base 8 or a Base 16 number system looks like, I'm not that good at math.

But imagine, if you will, being forced to step out into a world where you can't even read numbers (I'm going to keep using vigesimal as an example). How would people look at you? Say you're in a foreign market and you're trying to scrape together enough credits to buy food. You look at the characters the rest of the galaxy uses and you have to translate them, so you're stood there staring at this price tag, the guy behind the counter is getting impatient. So you manage to translate the characters into the ones you know and pull out your credits. It's a 2 and an 8. 2x20 is 40 and an 8, is, well, 8. So you try to pay 48 credits for the food. Your new traveling companion clears his throat and tells you that's almost double the price and you really can't afford to lose credits on a translation error. Then you remember, they use tens. So 2x10 is 20. Not 40. Now the shopkeeper's looking at you funny, and your companion is paying the proper price for the food. And you have to just stand there, embarrassed, that you can't even do basic math.

So you get back to your new ship and there's this thing there, it's metal, and it thinks with a system called binary. Which is somehow a language based on a number system that you don't understand. And it's yelling at you. Loudly. And a lot. Would anybody blame you if you tried to punt the little trash can into the sun? If that was your experience day-in, day-out would you offer yourself up when somebody asks for ideas? I wouldn't. And to go through some version of that repeatedly without really being able to explain because first of all, who wants to learn new math just for you, and second of all, this is your second language anyway so how are you supposed to explain new math sufficiently when you have to translate everything in your head first. That would be crushing, and isolating. And some days, maybe it's just easier to be the dumb brute.

As someone who grew up bad at math, all STEM actually, and blonde (which doesn't seem like it'd be a big deal, but people really do treat like you're stupider than everyone else. Far and away NOT the worst hair-based discrimination, but the stereotype does get under your skin eventually) I was genuinely convinced I was stupid. I know now that my brain is wired for arts and humanities and I am NOT stupid. But my inability to do simple math without a calculator is humiliating to this day and I can really empathize with Zeb about feeling like you're lacking something that comes naturally to everyone else. The self-doubt and the self-loathing that come with looking around you and realizing that if you ask for help, you open yourself up to mockery because what's hard for you is basic for everyone else. It sucks. I don't blame Zeb for being so down on himself.

Zeb could've had the best education on Lasan but it truly doesn't matter how quality your education is if everyone around you reads 28 differently than you do. It's not a lack of intelligence, it's a translation error coupled with a lack of grace from the people around you. I'd beat myself up, too.

I'm not saying that I think this is what the writers had intended or anything, in fact, I don't think they thought about Lasan and it's culture all that much, if I'm being honest, but that's a thought for later. I just, I had this idea and wanted to share.

Can you believe this post exists because my dad bought me a mug lol. I collect mugs and my dad found one that has Mayan hieroglyphs carved onto it and he knows that I can understand a handful of glyphs and thought I'd like it. I don't have it yet but it's en route. Anyway, it got me thinking about ancient Maya and I've got kalluzeb brainrot and they collided and made this.

[casadecopia]

New manager starts training tm I’m excited gonna wear my new ghost shirt

[juicedpeachy]

Shang Qinghua getting to return to his position on An Ding peak despite being a traitor is actually very similar as to how Ling Wen remained in Heaven post-canon

[gammija]

WAIT hang on, so. Connecting this post (suggesting that ep7 was an attempt at a Mass Ritual and that the military group stopped it) with this one (suggesting that 'Catalyst' from ep9 might refer to someone capable of performing a ritual) with my own post and other theories that the tapes from tma/U1 might in some form be in U2, here's a theory:

the tapes entered this world when the Fears did. maybe not complete, but with enough information to let everyone who was looking for it know, for sure, without needing millenia of trial and error, the exact steps needed for a succesful ritual:

- you need subjects (the victims);

- agents (the 'avatars', more or less);

- and, a catalyst.... an Archivist. Someone who can experience all the horrors without being used up, able to let them flow in them, through them, and out into the world.

The faction shutting down ep7, the OIAR response team, maybe the existence of the OIAR at all, is because the threat of a Ritual succeeding has had to be actively foiled for this universe to still exist without an active apocalypse. which would also mean that this world, at any given moment, is teetering on the edge of a successful ritual, and a new apocalypse

[promiseslikewater]

It's always Lou Bingge that his very own Shen Yuan this. Fuck it what about post-transmigration Shen Yuan finding his very own Binghe? What if SY!Sqq was sent back to his world, his former body intact and very much alive, by the system because the protagonist reached maximum satisfaction points smth smth and therefore his mission is officially completed?

What if maiden-hearted and grief-stricken Shen Yuan stumbles upon this person who looks very much like his precious husband?

[ann-decart]

someone whos plural and can do algebra. call that a system of equations

[nyoomerr]

donate to help palestine & receive gift merchies from me as thanks!

hello!! i'm pip, and every year i make some binghe-centric enamel pins to give away to fandom. this year, i wanted to take this tradition as an opportunity to help raise money for palestine.

how does this work? similar to all the gatcha for gaza events, you'll send me proof of a donation to one of the approved fundraisers, and i'll send you the merch as a thank-you gift!

unlike the gatcha for gaza events, there's a very limited supply of merch based on what i could afford to produce + give away, and it will be first-come-first-serve. this post is the heads up that this will be happening, so you can be ready for the drop.

i'll post the official form on september 14 at 12:30pm EST. please feel free to reach out before then if you have questions! this is the first year that i’m bringing this giveaway to tumblr, so i’m not sure what info y’all will want 🙈

(mutuals can reach out to me for early access now, if you'd like! don't be shy!! 💞)

[thevoidstaredback]

Phantom's Coffee

Enough Caffeine to Kill an Elephant Side Story

There is a lot that comes with being a ghost. Most of that is really cool superpowers. The unfortunate side effect with the whole being dead thing is that he doesn't have need for human functions or sustenance.

It had been a horrible thing to discover, really. The lack of constant need for sleep and food and drink was sometimes useful, but that came with the realization that nothing affected him.

At first, Danny and his team thought it was because he was dead. No blood flow, no working organs, no metabolism. This lead to a lot of experimentation. Drugs and alcohol had no effect, neither did poisons. He didn't get sick anymore, no matter what he did!

And then he realized that coffee didn't work.

Naturally distraught, Danny went straight to Frostbite to figure out what was going on. It's finals season, damnit! Coffee was gonna be the one thing to pull him through his studies!

"From what I can tell," the yeti explained, "your human functions have stopped. Quite the opposite, really."

Danny blinked. "But, I'm dead. Ghosts don't have working organs or stuff like that."

"Indeed, but you're only half dead."

"What difference does that make?"

Why did Frostbite now have charts, and where did they come from? "I can only guess, but when you died and brought back, the electricity jump started everything in your body. It essentially supercharged you. I can only assume that it'll die down in time to the point of non-function, but we can't know for sure."

"Wait," Danny's voice was nervous, "What does that mean?"

Frostbite took a minute to think over his words, looking for how to phrase what he wanted to say. "When you are alive, your heart beats slower than it did before your death, yes?"

"Yeah."

"That would be the effects of the ectoplasm that reanimated you. Your heart rate is slower, breathing takes a more conscious effort, your blood flow is slower, your organs are all working at half of what they used to." He took another moment of pause. "When you are dead, your heart beats faster than it did, breathing is faster, blood flow is faster, your organs are working at twice capacity."

Danny's breathing, now that he was very aware of it, picked up. "What- But that- What?!"

"With a high enough voltage, electricity kills. With a high enough concentration, ectoplasm reanimates."

"Reani- but I'm alive!"

"Indeed."

"But that doesn't make sense!"

"Doesn't it?"

"No!"

"Perhaps I should try a different phrasing." Frostbite said. "When you are Danny Fenton, you are more dead than alive in the sense that your body has been killed and not fully revived. When you are Danny Phantom, you are more alive than dead in the sense that your body was revived and not fully killed."

Danny was quiet for a moment. "Reanimated and revived aren't interchangeable, Frostbite."

"In some contexts', no. In others, they are."

"Are they here?"

A beat. "Yes."

Danny knew he was lying, but he didn't call him out on it. That was a crisis for another day, thank you very much.

So, higher metabolism for Danny Phantom, lower one for Danny Fenton. Great.

All crises pushed aside to freak out about never later, Danny's ew mission was to find out exactly how much caffeine would be required to give him the buzz of wakefulness that he was searching for.

Normally, the course of action would to be to measure how much e weighs and look up the maximum caffeine intake his body could handle. It was the first thing he tried, and it failed.

By the tried and true method of 'Fuck It, We Ball', Danny learned that he needs to have 35,000 milligrams of caffeine in a single sitting before any effect takes hold when he's drinking as Phantom.

The calculations running at a 5:1 ratio, caffeine milligrams to weight pounds, the lowest end on the scale of average weight of a small female elephant (3,175 kilos), multiplied by five gives him the 15,875 milligrams that would be enough to give him a low buzz and keep him awake for a few hours. That's enough to kill the elephants on the low end of the scale.

(Jazz vetoed any kind of caffeine that wasn't naturally occuring in chocolate when he's Danny Fenton. She said that he's already died once and that he doesn't need heart problems to kill him.)

(Danny calls bull, but he isn't willing to risk his sister's ire.)

Because he can't let finals get the best of him, Danny decided to take it a step further.

The highest end of the scale for the average weight of female elephants is 4,050 kilos, multiplied by the same five, gives 20,250 milligrams of caffeine.

Essentially, the lower end of the scale would give him the same effect as 99 (and a bit) 473 milliliter cans of Rockstar Energy Drinks in one sitting. The higher end of the scale would be 126 (and a bit) 473 milliliter cans of Rockstar Energy Drinks in one sitting.

All that was left to do, now that he has the maths for the desired effect figured out, was to mix that in his favorite drink: A Red Eye.

Truly an abomination for the ages.

After way too much brain power, Phantom's completed coffee order looks like this:

A large Red Eye with 20,250 mg of caffeine

2 tablespoons of cinnamon

1 tablespoon of honey

1/8 cup of chocolate syrup

and 3 mint leaves or 1 teaspoon of mint extract

(he added 4 shots of vodka when he turned 21)

Danny is gonna kick his finals' ass, and be hyped up on caffeine while doing it!

Storyboard

[t00thpasteface]

it IS a little embarrassing when the other servers are like hey shelby you got any plans after work?! and i'm like umm i have calculus homework, and i know i said that last time you asked me about my evening plans, but i have a LOT of calculus homework...

[shycroissanti]

*Le croissant being silly*

Idk, today I wanted to draw myself xD

Sorry

[a-typical]

If the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2.4 meter mirror were scaled to be large enough for Webb, it would be too heavy to launch into orbit. The Webb team had to find new ways to build the mirror so that it would be light enough – only one-tenth of the mass of Hubble’s mirror per unit area – yet very strong.

The Webb Telescope team decided to make the mirror segments from beryllium, which is both strong and light. Each segment weighs approximately 20 kilograms (46 pounds).

The hexagonal shape allows for a roughly circular, segmented mirror with “high filling factor and six-fold symmetry.” High filling factor means the segments fit together without gaps. If the segments were circular, there would be gaps between them. Symmetry is good because there need only be 3 different optical prescriptions for 18 segments, 6 of each (see above right diagram). Finally, a roughly circular overall mirror shape is desired because that focuses the light into the most compact region on the detectors. A oval mirror, for example, would give images that are elongated in one direction. A square mirror would send a lot of the light out of the central region.

Lee Feinberg, Webb Optical Telescope Element Manager at NASA Goddard explains, “Aligning the primary mirror segments as though they are a single large mirror means each mirror is aligned to 1/10,000th the thickness of a human hair. What’s even more amazing is that the engineers and scientists working on the Webb telescope literally had to invent how to do this.”