#hyperphysics

[daily-hanamura]

[physicsgoblin]

Physics and Mathematics Resources (plus some Chemistry):

I will update this because I know I have more recommend textbooks somewhere in my files, I'm just too tired to look right now. Latest update: 5/13/25

Physics:

The Science Spot--Mostly lesson plans for teaching kids

The Physics Classroom Tutorial--Has interactive online activities and models. Some videos and also some chemistry stuff.

HyperPhysics--Quite possibly the best resource I've ever seen because it shows how all concepts are linked together. The site isn't loading for me but it says it's up. There is a downloadable version on the Internet Archive (though it doesn't look as nice and clean). EDIT: I found a GitHub that lets you clone and download the html so you can click through it offline and it works! If people are interested I can make a tutorial, it was very easy.

PhET--A ton of demonstrations and tutorials. Also has some for mathematics and chemistry.

Paradigms Physics Notes--this was the curriculum that was used in my junior and senior classes. A lot of stuff here. If you are interest about teaching physics using this method, you can read more here.

Quantum Mathamatica Add-on--Useful for calculations.

The Hypertextbook--uhh lots here. Problems, solutions, explanations, etc.

oPhysics--interactive physics software.

MiniPhysics--more demonstrations and interactive software.

Michel van Biezen--really clear work-throughs of many subjects (algebra, calculus, chemistry, physics). He actually has a tumblr but has been active in like a decade @ilectureonline

Mathematics:

Paul's Online Math Notes--Got my whole class through junior and senior year

Calculator Soup--a lot of different kinds of calculators

3Blue1Brown--Very interesting youtube channel that shows a lot of calculus and linear algebraic principals visually or in intuitive ways.

Mathologer--more interesting advanced mathematical concepts.

General:

OpenStax--Free textbooks, legally

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Thermodynamic Potentials

Specific state functions that depend on so-called natural variables (such as temperature, entropy, pressure, etc.) are known as thermodynamic potentials. The set of relevant natural variables is unique for each potential, though all rely on the number of particles and potential energy. These potentials can be thought of as similar to potential energy, which is the capacity to do work:

Internal energy is the capacity to do work as well as release heat, with variables including entropy and volume

Helmholtz free energy relates to mechanical and non-mechanical work, with variables including temperature and volume

Gibbs free energy is specific to non-mechanical work, with variables including temperature and pressure

And enthalpy is the capacity to do non-mechanical work and release heat, with variables including entropy and pressure

A fifth potential is also considered common, though less well known: the grand potential.

Sources/Further Reading: (Image source - Statistical Physics) (Wikipedia) (University of Frankfurt) (Hyperphysics) (LibreTexts)

[rohirric-hunter]

Here's the whole thing if anyone feels like, uh, hurting themselves

(TBH I always end up laughing when I read it. Unsure if this is because I know the full story of why it was written or if it's just because I wrote it.)

Caliborf’s hands bothered with the cuffs that held them before him, two prisoners taking indecorous liberties with their jailor without even the base human need for freedom driving their rakish coquetry. A more pedestrian audience would parse the display as agitation, presentiment, perhaps even fear; subtle disquietude regarding the malignant kismet that doubtless awaited us under the paramountcy of the Learned Repletion of Scytheria. But the Repletion could see with all the salience their most august position tacited (for only the most abstruse and well-versed men of sortilege were invited to stand in the Hall of Proselytism) that his seemingly manic impulsion indicated only profound boredom, the kind elicited by a lecturer failing to notice that his allotted time had expired. My brother did not fear the Repletion, nor did any of the hyperphysical windsock-faced men who stood before us, hands tucked perspicaciously into the sleeves of their malachite robes, believe, for even a single moment of their inveterate expanse of time, that any of the three of us would approbate their casuistic offers of so-called mercy. All of us were on the same page.

But, despite the consummate apathy of all involved parties, there were laws, and the Learned Repletion took perverse pleasure in observing each and every one to the serifs of the letter, in some way inditing themselves as the virtuous martyrs of recalcitrant rectitude. A spurious mimesis of justice stood ready to play out on the breadth of planate cobblestones that graced the portico of the Hall of Proselytism. Before the vestibule that only the most venerated members of Scytherian society were suffered to pass stood the violet and viridian that marked the members of the Repletion, and across from them, before the people who had come to recognize the tribunal, the sanguine vestments that we three as Auguric Schismatics wore to display our heterodoxy. Verdigris towered over claret like the meritorious vindicators of the status quo. And yet here they stood, holding out their gnarled old man hands with the audacity to insinuate that they offered us justice! Justice by what measure but their own.

Zillozo, the leader of the Repletion, stepped forward sagaciously and spoke. “Caliborf and Calliana of Rushpere. Lorktan of Merfash. You are charged with meretricious flouting of Scytherian laws, displayed in your neoteric attempt to appropriate the Tome of Inculcation from the Hall of Proselytism. Furthermore, you are charged with flagrantly fraternizing with and substantiating the Auguric Schismatics, affronting our society and its probity and sodality. You have promoted dither and obfustication, and have striven to prostrate our most affluent society and openly opposed the Learned Repletion, asomatous descendents of Corianis and upholders of acumen. The just punishment for these malfeasances is banishment, to the outer ring beyond the world.” Oh Zillozo, if only you understood the reality of our powers, the Moirai that gave our Schismatism the strength to hinder even the most noble Learned Repletion! If only you and your Repletion, for all your conjectural learning, could even dream that the creatures, nay, the transcendental gods that dwell therein lend their endowment of will and mysticism to those who oppose you, and that by banishing those to your putative empty outer ring, you only lend them more power! If only you could fathom that these were the very oaths they whispered into our ears each night as we gave ourselves over to their paragon! Then you would understand that among the plans of the deep ones, your acumen and your affluence mark you as naught more than an astigmatic fopdoodle.

Lorktan matched his advance step for step, accosting him in the center of the mosaic cirque and superstructing his body against that of Zillozo. “We proudly aver the charges you have enumerated against us, as if our remonstrances were anything to feel shame for. As if they really were crimes. It is not us, but you, who claim to be paladins for this land, who lead it inexorably to perdition. Your antidisestablishmentarianism will bring our people only to ruin. By banishing us you only grant us salvation from the Abbadon of your society.” Caliborf and I poised ourselves with conviction behind Lorktan. His words adequately delineated our own views, and we neither contradicted nor embellished his words.

“Your contention betrays your reckless promptitude,” said Zillozo. “The punishment for these crimes is banishment, but in this case it will not be your punishment. It has come to the consciousness of the Repletion that the Auguric Schismatics who we banish return to plague us in greater efficacy than the pitiful trills of ill-gotten faculty they initially opposed us with. And so the punishment adapts. No banishment stands before you; but a service which the Repletion requires, to redress some of your iniquities and reanimate the balance of thaumaturgy in our realm. Your banishment shall be partial, if your mortal umbras can withstand it, and you will dwell in the half-realm between this place and the beyond.”

“You prevaricate!” I cried. “What punishment is this but an execution? A vapid veil over a killing banned by ancient precepts! This is why the Schismatism formed! You, who claim to guard the law, are only just short of parading your misdemeanors before all. Here, humanity lives. In the outer ring, humanity lives. In the realm between, humanity may not live, and all know this!” I turned to the concourse that stood behind me. “And you acquiesce to these men! These men who keep their power to themselves when all could share it as equals! These men who walk on the law like a rope drawn tight, but wrap it around you and around us!”

“Silence,” Zillozo said. His hand trembled for a moment, wrinkles pendling earthward and suddenly, appallingly visible in the aurelian light of the descending sun. The light sluiced toward me and blinded my mouth with its honeyed obeisance, and I was curbed. Thus the Repletion shapes the narrative for those who know no magic, silencing all who dissent, and thus my brother Caliborf opened his mouth to perorate, but Fromkil, behind Zillozo, raised his hand likewise, and Mordikin, beside him, and the truth was glutted in our throats.

“You will not die, for your flagitious reciprocity with the beings that reside in the outer ring will not allow it. The debenture you owe them is not so evanescent that you can leave this world by the usual channels. Are you so fatuous cockamamie that you failed to inquire the terms of your contract before binding yourselves? Were you to die, you would decamp from their indenture forever. And who, having once separated themselves from those unpropitious ones, would return to be bound again?” His hand lowered, slowly, and Fromkil and Mordikin’s behind him, and the diabolism stopping our words dissipated. Yet we did not speak. Though we lingered in our certitude that the Learned Repletion and all they signalized were pernicious leeches starving our society of all that lent it esprit, his words had struck at a different proclivity, one which the gods had not warned us against, or mentioned at all. A thread of inquisition writhed in cinereal entropy. No answer, no whisper of succor. Curse the Repletion and their escutcheons that blocked the outer gods from the Hall of Proselytism. Curse the outer gods for not warning us that our intermediation would be severed when we entered the Hall. And curse the Tome of Inculcation for providing the Repletion with a privilege, an edge against all comers, a weighted scale that must be harmonized before justice could once again don the veil that promised equity.

“And if our dispensation should grant us freedom from our half-banishment?” Caliborf said dilatorily. “Are you prepared to face this contingency? If the gods see fit to manumit us again upon this land and its people? Your ersatz of ascendency crumbles before our very feet. You cannot discomfit the Schismatism.”

Zillozo did not respond to Caliborf. His amaranthine eyes met each of ours as he continued his exegesis. “You will strive to mend the delictum you have enacted against our nation. In the half-realm exists a source of power, the Flame of Approbation. This flame wanes with the fluctuations of wizardry in Scytheria. If it were to be fully abrogated, our land’s defenses would fail, and exigency would come upon its people in profusion. Your removal of the Tome of Inculcation from its place in the Sepulchre of Erudition has dealt it a near fatal blow. But, were one or more of you to sacrifice your artifice of power, it would live again. And when this task is completed, you may, perchance, return to our plane as exonerated citizens.”

Clever, clever Zillozo! How many hours did you and your Repletion appropriate for this plot? Well did we of the Schismatism know of the Flame of Approbation, and its purport for the wards guarding Scytheria from the unconscionable world outside. Well did we know that it flickered as we usurped the magic of the Repletion and subsidized their power with rivers of strength from the outer gods. Long had we prepared for the day it would capitulate. What was it to us when we had auxiliaries in place straining for that day to come? The Flame of Approbation would terminate and we would take the wards and rebuild them, drawing unadulterated potentiality from pools of prestdigitation stored below our temple. What concern did we have for an inessential crutch the Repletion had long depended upon? And how were they to enforce their contemptible interdiction? Perhaps, had I connoted any of these considerations, Zillozo would have thought less of his design.

But even as I thought to speak, the mass of sere quietude expanded from the space within our minds and filled in the spaces around us, blotting out the paved tiles and the faces of those who watched and the Repletion before us. Fetid light streamed through palpability and all things whorled together, stones and robes and sun and Calliana and Caliborf and Lorktan were one, were phenomenal, were hyaline, were chimerical. A hand reached for cognition, brushed it, lost it. Sleep came, sleep went. A malady floated past like a fish, swimming through unnavigable waters and fluctuating cement. Perfection stood before us and then sat, and Truth turned her back and Time was old and young at once. Irradiation fell from the sky and sank through us. Tentacles of rumination brushed through our hair and writhed toward what they imagined was the sky, only to find themselves curling around feet like snakes luring their prey to complacency. The complacency of the Learned Repletion - but that was Lorktan. The complacency of the Learned Repletion will be their downfall, Lorktan thought, and he went on thinking it until an age had risen and grown and fallen again, and only then did I stop to consider the preternaturality of the fact that I knew Lorktan’s thoughts and had thought them myself, and reach out with flippant indifference until I found Caliborf.

Caliborf, Caliborf, brother mine! A strand of consciousness stroked his psyche too late. By twinkles or aeons, does it temper reality? Two children crouched upon a hearth had once touched each other’s heads and closed their eyes, trying with the focus of a telescope to see what lay beyond the wrinkled skin and soft, still-developing bone. Two foolish little children had failed then, left only to their own fanciful fabrications to imagine the other’s mind, for the legerdemain was not naturally ours. Language failed us as we sat together and charted each other’s thoughts and emotions, tracing lines of ardor and acrimony along paths of social conjunctions and personal liaisons. Doltish nincompoops! Did we dream we could succeed, or even begin to perceive the fathomage of the human mind? The fickle dissonance of thoughts and desires and motivations? Those most detestable and carnal aspects that we refuse to own in our own psyches, but see all too clearly in that of those around us.

Two youths stood before an assembly in carmine robes and added to the color with the more carmine liquid spilling from their veins. As the outer gods touched their minds and granted the lagniappe of magic, power to compel nature and people and spinning molecules and atoms, trees fresh with the verdure of a Spring never encountered before, it never occurred to them to touch the mind of the other, a childhood daydream long left behind with the accoutrements of jejunity. Four years held the gods’ favor close to our bosoms and far from our hearts. Four years carried us from timorous novices of the Auguric Schismatism to adults serving their pedagogues with the monomania expected of Emissaries of the Fifth Order. We met Lorktan there, and though the three of us shared an amity that left no room for surreptition, never did it seem to us that we should share anything more convivial. Childhood dreams, as childhood dreams should be, had been left in the brume of childhood. What use did we have for telepathy or the joining of minds? A posture that would serve only to impress those we dared delate our powers to.

And now two adults subsisted in a half-realm and I reached out with my mind to my brother and for the first time, contiguity joined us. The spasmodic disascertainment that surrounded us had entrenched his brain and I found nothing there that approximated what as a child I had envisaged. I was not there and Lorktan was not there. No family, no friends, no suzerain or fellow Emissaries. Only the anaemic dissimilitude of the realm around us and an overwhelming, all-environing compulsion to abstract, no matter the disbenefit. And surely this was not all that made my brother! Surely he was more than injudiciousness and trepidation. Surely the mind behind the arms that girded me as mine girded him as we burgeoned over the years held love at least. Surely the mind that had found the Schismatism when they did not want to be found had perspicaciousness. Surely this was not my brother! But his mind felt mine and grasped it even as I struggled to levant and for a moment we were bound, more profound and inward than ever we had been before. A womb of swirling ambergris held us to each other, once again ensconced in the ebony reality of two motes of potentiality swirled together, milted together, and then became whole together, mouths touching feet and stomachs brushing as we did homage to each other in a beautifically balanced ying and yang. But no warmth here, no growth.

Not even my brother’s insinuated supplication could constrain me to remain. I wrenched myself away and left slithers of my intrinsity behind to swim in the half-realm for other comers to encounter and fear. And he was alone in the emptiness, unless he too could sustain Lorktan’s thoughts which still echoed in my soul as well as his. Let him know them! I pled. Let him see wroth! Let him feel indignation and indomitability. Let him abide by any other movement but the limited palette to which I had exposed myself for those tortuous moments.

The Repletion believes that an Emissary of the Auguric Schismatism will do their proletarian duties. Never have they been so wrong. They believe we will bow to their wills. This fallacious belief will not serve them. Our wills are our own. Our minds belong only to ourselves and the outer gods. Our hands and --

“Lorktan,” I said or perhaps my voice existed only in the channels of thought that allowed me to probe Caliborf’s mind, and through which Lorktan was inadvertently advertising his convictions. “Desist.” And he stopped, for the respect he bore for me was greater than that which he believed he owed the gods, and in this moment I offered a moment of meditation to those same gods to express my thankfulness for that. For a moment, nothingness reigned, and I reached out again to Caliborf’s mind, this time barely exposing myself to him. Consternation warred with vacuity in him. I retrograded before he was cognizant of me. Lorktan goaded me through the mysterious bond we shared. I replied that he should wait while I considered our options, a duty usually allocated to Caliborf. How I missed him in that moment, though he floated just beside me in the half-realm to which we were banished!

The Repletion would not have sent us here if they believed the gods could reach us, for what gratification would that gain them? Nonetheless, I stilled my mind and waited for their elucidation. Profound placidity responded to my inarticulate request, an umbilical cord not cut but tragically absent. But my faith was allegiant. Were the gods absent, or merely laconic? Was I abandoned, or was this a probation? My newfound ability to touch Lorktan and Caliborf’s minds raised a question: were the arteries of power and knowledge from the gods to myself conduits of singular direction? Could they be probed by a mere human? I withdrew and began to rebuild their amplitude up, thrusting out vibrissae as I tried to search out the communicatory pathways. Stifling, stagnant effluvium on every side, pressing in, trying to force my consciousness back into itself, but transient in the end for there, there was the comforting presence of the outer gods and their whisperings of prudent acumen, and, what was more, approbation for my consummation in finding them, the reward of kings!

I extended myself more, touching Caliborf. Perhaps the gods could ameliorate him. For a moment, hope fructified as I connected to him, but disappointment overwhelmed me as I sensed a negative response through my connection with the gods. I could touch them, but even utilizing me as a conduit, they could not reach through the nebulosity of this half-realm. Caliborf’s mind was closed to them, they postulated, until he learned to reach out as I had or we escaped this realm. They urged me to escape, to defy the Repletion, and for a moment I lost myself in their avidity. But when I importuned of them how I should escape, they gave no answer, only that I should, and when obsecrated help, they offered none.

For fear of losing myself again in this realm, stretched thin between moments like a mucal strand bearing its own weight under the tensity of stoicism, I withdrew from them and reached out again to Caliborf, dandling at the edges of his consciousness. And suddenly there he was, scintillating at the edge between trepidity and absence, a tiny mote of preserved ipseity. Exultation gave way to celerity, however, for I could see that the mote was fading, a speck of mud in a flowing stream that continually shlepped bits of it. I shored it with what power I had in myself, and then I opened my mind to Lorktan again. “We will reimpose the Flame of Approbation,” I said.

Oh Zillozo! If only the people you purport to represent could see the way you extend fear and call it justice! Then would they follow you so obtusely? Would that the sheep could see that the shepherd values them only for wool and meat! Would that people knew better than to follow perfidious men and women! Your designs on my brother came to greater fruition than you aforethought, but it is not against him alone, but me also that you have trespassed, and it is to me that you will answer when justice prorates our existences. Flee, Zillozo, flee, for if justice will not have you then I shall. Flee, for your abomination against magnanimity will inexorably bring redress back to you.

“You contemn the outer gods,” Lorktan said. “We cannot obesiate before the Repletion like this. What you speak of is heresy.” Lorktan, dearest friend. Your allegation was not wrong. My heresy was engendered only of love, love for a dearest brother, and the misguided intuition that by repudiating the gods I could help him. How I have paid for my sin. May you be rewarded for your adhesion, even if it prevailed only in the absence of concordance with my peccancy.

“I foster my brother,” I responded, assured in my own solecism. “If you wish to abnegate my right to help him, then our friendship is terminated. Essay, if you will, to stop me.” We both knew well his unwillingness to deny my aspiration. My surety of his implicit consent was paramount to the understanding of my intentionality.

“Will you sacrifice his magic while he lies torpid? Or if you lose your own, how do you connote to return to Scytheria with no power? Surely you do not believe your sacrifice will elicit a rescue from the Learned Repletion?” Alas, I believed that. Asinine, imbecilic Calliana. I contended with him for minutes or decades before absconding, wrapping my being around Caliborf and departing, following intuition and the intemperate draw of power.

I arrived at the Flame of Approbation, glowing chartreuse in the indeterminate landscape that housed it, and as I arrived Caliban’s mote of consciousness expanded and germinated enough that I heard him speak as I had heard Lorktan speak. “Calliana, will you accede to the Repletion? Will you sacrifice your magic to this thing?”

“This half-realm is spoliating you,” I said. “If you stay, you will disinherit yourself.”

“I understand,” he said. Breathtaking sweetness in a statement the meaning of which I did not comprehend when it was said. The self-evidency of this meaning you, dear reader, have doubtless determined by now, for what can rival the love of siblings? What in any realm stands between siblings and their native bond of fraternal inclination?

I turned my attention from Caliborf to the Flame of Approbation and reached out, dancing mandibles of awareness along its flickering verdigris. The pull was prodigious, drawing the magic from me into itself. I composed my essence, and prepared to release the augurism into the Flame.

Caliborf thrust himself before me and reached gawkish, walloping tentacles of himself into the Flame, like a imbecilic spider caught in a web it had spun itself. Sensing a closer target, the Flame released me and flickered brighter than ever for a moment, tracing the rubicund outline of Caliborf for a fugacious moment before suddenly he was dissipated into the soupy realm, ingurgitated by a Flame overcome with insatiable rapacity. I pulled backwards, appalled, and felt behind me the weird propinquity of Lorktan.

And I did not speak to him, and he did not speak to me, for after many long years of experience, we both knew which words the other would choose to dispense our displeasure. I opened my mind with no particular locution but that which naturally arose from my current propensity. And I began to build, layer upon layer, reactualizing the connection that had so recently borne my mind toward the gods above. Wrath was carried along with my cognizance, wrath so abundant and fetid that for a moment when contact was established, the gods found my essence as lost as Caliborf’s had been before. A spigot suddenly cut of from pouring water and scudding along in the liquid already dispensed, barely salient in the mass it sourced itself.

Wrath, as it turned out, not the stern, justified wrath that had led us to the Schismatism in protest of wrongs against us and our kin, nor the petty, compendiary anger that resulted from imagined slights, was the conduit for the outer gods. The provoked, lasting, but uncontrolled rage that birthed revenge and bullying brought me closer than ever I had been before to my masters, despite the mist of obfustication separating us. With the clarity of freshly cleaned cathedral windows I knew what I was capable of, that with the same intrepidity that had allowed me to contact the gods I could free myself, independent of them, and walk once more in the human realm, dependent of them.

My mind brushed Lorktan’s and he accepted this information placidly and together we built, intertwining essences and fortitude and when obstacles halted us, drawing from the Flame of Approbation, the Repletion’s own weapon building us up until we would ascend to become their downfall. For if Zillozo, in all his limitless sagacity, believed that the return of those who had been sent to the outer ring to learn from the gods directly were the greatest threat he and his doltish Repletion faced, then he had much to learn. For what is the strength of education beside that of learning? Our desperation and our wrath will feed the flames that will consume them, and Justice will be satiated.

***

This was the second revision. I took the feedback from the first round of "make it easier to read," and "use shorter words," and I made it harder to read and added more stupid long words.

Despite the everything about this I do think that, "Flee, Zillozo, flee, for if justice will not have you then I shall," kind of goes hard and I might have to steal it for something else.

[sarkariresultdude]

"Study Smarter: Expert-Recommended Tools and Materials for Students"

 Whether you're a excessive faculty student, university undergraduate, or lifelong learner, having the proper have a look at substances can extensively enhance how efficaciously you analyze and retain know-how. Below is a curated list of encouraged resources labeled by means of topics, getting to know styles, and desires, overlaying each traditional and virtual codecs.

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Books

A have to-study for all rookies, this book explores proof-based mastering techniques and helps you increase greater effective study behavior.

"How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

Teaches analytical reading strategies and how to approach distinct genres of texts seriously.

Stationery & Tools

Highlighters, sticky notes, flashcards, notebooks (ideally sectioned or dot-grid)

Apps like Notion, Obsidian, or Evernote for virtual be aware-taking

Use Pomodoro timers like Focus Keeper or TomatoTimer for time management

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Flashcards

Anki – Spaced repetition software program first-rate for memorizing anything from scientific terms to vocabulary

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XMind or MindMeister – Great for visual rookies and organizing complex ideas

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History

"A People's History of america" by way of Howard Zinn – A fresh, alternative perspective

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Oxford History Series – Detailed but on hand instructional sources

Literature

The Norton Anthology of English Literature – Comprehensive and properly-commented

SparkNotes and CliffsNotes – Great for summaries, subject matters, and quick evaluations

Poetry Foundation – Great for knowledge poems and their analyses

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"Sophie's World" with the aid of Jostein Gaarder – Fictional introduction to philosophical standards

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) – Free, instructional-stage articles

🔬 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)

Mathematics

Khan Academy – Free tutorials from basic mathematics to multivariable calculus

Paul’s Online Math Notes – College-degree notes and worked examples

Brilliant.Org – Interactive math problems and puzzles

Physics

"Fundamentals of Physics" via Halliday, Resnick & Walker – A staple for undergraduates

MinutePhysics and Physics Girl on YouTube – Bite-sized physics defined

HyperPhysics – Visual-based on-line physics concept map

Chemistry

ChemCollective – Virtual labs and trouble units

Organic Chemistry as a Second Language with the aid of David Klein – Excellent for understanding difficult standards

Periodic Videos (YouTube) – Fun deep dives into the periodic table

Biology

Campbell Biology – Comprehensive and general for maximum university-degree courses

Bozeman Science – Great video content for AP and university biology

BioInteractive (HHMI) – Interactive resources and animations

Computer Science

CS50 by way of Harvard (edX) – Free, newbie-pleasant intro to CS

freeCodeCamp – Free interactive studying in coding and net development

Cracking the Coding Interview by using Gayle Laakmann McDowell – For technical interview prep

Languages and Communication

English (and ESL)

Grammarly – Writing help and grammar checking

The Elements of Style via Strunk and White – Classic writing guide

BBC Learning English – Free resources for vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar

Foreign Languages

Duolingo – Great for beginners

LingQ and Pimsleur – For immersive language studying

HelloTalk / Tandem – Connect with local audio system for actual conversations

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ACT Prep Black Book by means of Mike Barrett

Khan Academy’s free SAT prep – In partnership with College Board

GRE/GMAT

Manhattan Prep Series – Strong for both GRE and GMAT

Magoosh – Affordable, digital-first gaining knowledge of platform

Official ETS GRE Guide – Direct from the check makers

Medical (MCAT, USMLE)

Kaplan Series / Princeton Review – Comprehensive applications

Anki Decks (like MilesDown for MCAT) – Top-rated for memorization

SketchyMedical – Visual mnemonics for microbiology and pharmacology

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Wellness Apps

Headspace / Calm – Meditation and mindfulness apps to enhance attention

Forest – Encourages you to stay off your cellphone while you look at

Study Bunny – A cute gamified productivity app

Study Methods

Pomodoro Technique – 25 minutes paintings, 5-minute smash

Feynman Technique – Teach the idea in easy phrases to yourself

Active Recall + Spaced Repetition – Proven satisfactory for lengthy-time period retention

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Coursera – Offers publications from top universities in really all fields

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YouTube Channels – CrashCourse, Veritasium, CGP Grey, Kurzgesagt, and extra

7. 📅 Organizing Your Studies

Planning Tools

Google Calendar – For scheduling classes, study classes, and reminders

Trello or Todoist – For handling responsibilities and assignments

[y2k25-bug]

when I'm discussing SuperHeroes™, one thing I like to highlight is the distinction between Super Powers and Super Abilities.

because, like Batman told The Flash - being the fastest person alive means nothing if you don't think before you act. and Batman is actually a great example of this.

IMO, he legitimately DOES have Super Powers - his Logic, Tenacity, amd Blind Devotion. They're all highly-trained mental superpowers - heightened states of perception and logical processing, which he uses to exercise a disproportionately large amount of control over his both his own physical body and external circumstances.

Superman's Abilities - like flight, strength, frost breath, or laser eyes - are all just things he can do.

Superman's real power is that he's kind to all of us mosquitoes. Even when he doesn't have to and honestly really shouldn't be. ESPECIALLY when he doesn't have to.

True Power exists solely in the MetaPhysical Realm, and True Ability exists solely in the HyperPhysical.

Superpowers are stored in the mind, so if you want to begin unlocking your own, you must first pass the Mosquito Test.

If you wish to unlock your true potential and start practicing Focus!Magic instead of just letting Auto!Magic run your life for you - if you're ready to take off the training wheels, then you need to learn Radical Empathy, and to do this, you must first consider your answer to the Ultimate Question:

"OK then, buddy - what would YOU do if YOU were suddenly In Charge?"

and then afterwards you need to start dissecting your own answer as meticulously and thoroughly as if it were a stranger's response to that same question and you were actively trying to find holes in their logic.

[satanasaves]

Bosc de Vesey, in his "Small Synthetic Encyclopedia of the Occult Sciences," which is not very well organized and far from complete, writes that the ancient secret nomenclature divided magic into four sections:

1. Natural magic, capable of performing certain miracles by means of a deeper knowledge of Nature. It was defined by Father Kircher as the Knowledge of the Sympathy and Antipathy of Things. It was the magic of Hermes Trismegistus and Zoroaster; it was the High Kabbalah.

2. Mathematical magic, consisting in the knowledge of the laws of mechanics. This was the knowledge of Albert the Great, Boethius, etc.

3. Poison Magic, so named by Agrippa because it deals with love potions, mysterious mixtures, metamorphoses, etc. This was the magic of Medea and Circea.

4. Ceremonial magic, the most powerful and the most terrible, whether it was black magic or magic that provided communication with spirits

On the other hand Pierre Piobb in his "Vault of High Magic" says: "Magic, according to Charles du Prélle, is nothing but an unknown Natural Science. Formerly the three great sciences astrology, alchemy and magic proper were confused in expressing the same thing. Today they are thoroughly separated: astrology deals with cosmic bodies and their movements. It is the science of worlds. Alchemy deals with the essence and development of the world. It is hyperchemistry. Magic contains its own domain, which is a manifestation of the fourth state. It begins where physics ends. It is hyperphysics. But even from the point of view of magic, P. Piobb distinguishes between superstition on the one hand, quackery, which Levi calls "the sign which outlasts thought, the dead corpse of religious rites," and which is but a distorted rite, a caricature of higher science. On the other hand the latter is worthy of respect and study and survives in the use of the three states, magnetic, stellar and intrinsic, in its four forms:

(1) Man acting by himself or

(2) By the laws of the external world.

(3) An area acting according to the laws of the star or

(4) of external factors.

The first two forms constitute microcosmic magic. The last two constitute macrocosmic magic. Each form operates in two ways, individual and ceremonial. Individual is performed without the aid of external rituals. The ceremonial one is performed with the aid of external ritual. That is, it is what is used by religions. Ceremonial magic, says F. Barlet, is the action by which man endeavors by means of the forces of nature to make the invisible power act according to his requirements. Hence magic figures, special condensers are conditions of time and place. It resembles industrial science, where human power is nothing compared to steam, electricity, explosives, etc., but where it becomes immense by being able to utilize these forces.

As for individual magic, it is also very effective when it manages to use two forces that are clear even to the layman: Love and the Word, whose power is a hundred times stronger for the initiated.

[erhangwang]

DP2 - Project 01 - Market Stall in the Intoxicating Garden

Week 5 - Interim Review:

This week I started by compiling the useful information that guided my design of the market stall into the site plan and the research pages (which should've been done much earlier). I spent some time finalising this iteration of the design but mainly focused on producing technical drawings, details and time-based axonometric drawing to communicate the idea clearly to the audience.

The important thing at this stage is to reflect on the advice given in the review and make decisions on what I need to explore more and that has the potential to be brought to project 02.

I also decided to change the purpose of the market stall. I gave up on the idea of serving food but focused on ways to intensify and exaggerate the flow of nature, producing a hyperphysical space for people to be submerged in. While there is lots of experiment on the wind deflectors that's been done over the past few weeks, I think I should investigate more into how tubes can produce harmonic sound and design the tube systems in more detail. I should also enhance the design of the garden as food is not served.

Crucially, I need to produce structure calculations and environmental simulations for the next step. I think calculating and designing a lateral stability system can be very effective as wind is an important factor in my design.

[candlelightreader]

History person here: at the turn of the 20th century, the notion of mens sana in corpore sano was prevalent and many cities, along with providing libraries, intended to connect them to physical activity spaces. In my home town, in 1924, a plan for two public pools (then still called baths) in working class neighborhood initially included a library above the pool. That is, until funds ran out and they just went with the pool. (Also it might not have been a good idea to have a library on top of a pool... but I digress.) The point was, they wanted people to have a one stop shop to educate their minds as well as their bodies. They were intertwined.

The idea of sport/physical activity early on was that it was an extension of training your spirit. An unhealthy body could not, naturally, nurture a healthy mind, and vice versa. Sport clubs prized erudition of the body AND the mind. The jock archetype didn't exist at the turn of the century because it was understood that anyone with such control, mastery of their body was also intellectually gifted, well developed. And most who were high level athletes (in a predominantly amateur system that was only available to the rich who could afford to play for no pay) were also well educated. Universities are who formed the first sport clubs and major leagues.

What happened? Racism mostly, with a side of capitalism. When people who were not White started doing well in sport, the script changed. All of a sudden, sport mastery became a sign of empty headedness. Black athletes became a symbol of racialized people's animalistic, instinctual physicality. Their sport prowess was not read as a sign of intelligence, but as indicative of 'natural hyperphysical' characteristics. White men, on the other hand, retained the label for the most part: if they were good at sport, it was because they trained hard and were dedicated and smart. The rest were either trying to be men or considered masculine and unattractive (i.e., women) or brutes with no control over their body. This is why stacking happens: the smartest positions in sports like gridiron football, soccer football, and baseball were assigned to White players. For instance, it is only recently that you have started seeing Black quarterbacks and in numbers. You still do not see Black people or racialized people in managerial positions as much as you do White, because the notion is still backed into the system.

The other aspect was, as happened with my hometown pool, the concept of educating the mind as well as the body was expensive. Gradually they got separated. Sport were entertaining and brought funds, but no one was funding reading competitions with that same intensity. The privatization of sporting facilities also led to less emphasis on the books and learning aspect. A healthy mind was not longer tied to a healthy body.

[paaaaaaanic]

kant this night right now.. much interesting again: transcendental logic and the critic of dialectical illusion; hyperphysical use of... bye... joe...

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Thermal Expansion

Most materials expand in volume when heated, a property known as thermal expansion. In the instances where this is not the case it is known as negative thermal expansion (not thermal contraction or anything similar). For solids, this can be calculated for each material using the coefficient of thermal expansion, often represented by the lowercase Greek letter alpha, and can be calculated in linear, area, or volumetric forms depending on the precision one desires (and shape of the object in question). As the shape of liquids and gases depend on the shape of their container, thermal expansion of these phases in a rigid container leads to increased pressure as well. Thermal expansion occurs primarily because an increase in temperature increases the kinetic energy of the atoms or molecules of a substance.

Sources/Further Reading: (Image source - Plumbing Supply) (Wikipedia) (LibreTexts) (Hyperphysics) (Rice University)

[lucidragon]

okay okay okay. I think about the horror of flatness on occasion, tho from a completely different angle. in introductory electrostatics there's a set up with a certain result: the electric field of an infinite sheet of charge (image courtesy of hyperphysics thank you gsu i owe you my life)

this is useful because, although infinite sheets of charge don't exist in real life, the closer you are to a finite sheet, the better of an approximation this is (and capacitors are sheets of charge).

here's the thing, tho: the all-important result is that near an infinite sheet of charge, the electric field is constant. it doesn't depend on your position.

maybe that seems fine. after all, why not? think about it for a second longer. put yourself there. if you're a charged particle, and there's this infinite plane next to you, there's no way to tell how close you are. you look around but can't see any edges, just a vast expanse taking up one half of your world. you can feel the acceleration caused by the electric field, you're rushing away, away. still the plane looms large. are you really moving away from it? you can't escape it. you search for a landmark. something, anything, to give you a sense of scale. but the plane is featureless, and the half of your world that is free from the plane, the void into which you are falling, is empty...

so yeah flat planes can definitely be eldritch if they're big enough

[00towns]

2023: media in review

The Secret History by Donna Tartt 

I read the Goldfinch earlier this year and enjoyed it immensely, and The Secret History came to me as the natural next pick by recommendation of P. I tucked into the book in the waning days of the summer, and read it in overflowing fistfuls on the train, bus, and at my desk. 

I expressed once, in a memory of that same but very different summer that I recall very sharply, that it feels like I have not eaten drywall in quite the same way that I have since I was a teenager. We were in the car, heading back to DC from the Northern Neck. I was driving, which always seems to make the things that I say sling a little looser than they might usually. I remember feeling like I was testing the waters – part of eating drywall is always, of course, the tentative, desperate fear that no one else has. 

To me, this is the term that most closely encapsulates the feeling of obsessive fandom behavior that is an almost hyperphysical, overstimulating sensation of fixation on something. I first heard the word from S, who tossed it out in a conversation about our individual yet parallel media consumption viruses almost on a whim, but I remember feeling like I had understood it instantly. There is something so eating drywall about the sensation of eating drywall, perhaps contained in the implication of being locked in a room alone, where all rightful, God-fearing fandom behavior should occur, perhaps in the suggestion of a quiet, personal insanity that isn’t containable by any words except going up to the edges of your enclosure and just starting to chew. 

The point that I mean to make is as follows: I think The Secret History is the closest I have felt to the type of unerring, self-evident obsession that I characterize to being a teenager. In a way, the book doesn’t even particularly deviate from the types of tropes that would have made up one of those quintessential franchises (Richard is decidedly Teen Wolf-y at moments), and yet I feel drawn to it because it is such a strong example of an originator text that made way for all the hedonistic, trope-y delights of its contemporaries, and therefore is able to do so without the limitations of more modern cliche or platitudes. The book is indulgent in references to philosophy and Greek mythology, but a shining moment to me is in Julian, who upon discovering the unsettling circumstances around Bunny’s death, reacts with a perverse interest. The moment feels like a meta-reference to the reader themselves, who is having the same experience of hunger for story and desperation for plot despite it all. That – the macabre of searching for the next thing to eat drywall over – is also something to contend with as I consume, and consume. 

I ended up discussing the book with P and K a few months later, who I had originally broached the eating drywall with. It was interesting hearing their thoughts on the book and revisiting parts that I had remembered, and slowly reflecting together that this book is really, really excellent. It was strange that it took this long to solidify to me the novel as good as it was, and I can’t help but think that this campus novel about a coastal elite friend group is perhaps best enjoyed with two friends who were part of my own experience of a parallel setting, and who made the novel’s wry criticism cut all the more deeply. 

I’ve been up to my ears in Japanese study lately, and in these moments where I struggle through basic interactions I’m additionally grateful for the simple gift of incredibly crafted English prose, and that I have the ability to appreciate it. 

Recommended double feature:

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Interview with the Vampire (2022)

NCT 127 – Fact Check (The 5th Album) 

Entergalactic 

I know that another Spiderverse movie came out this year, but my deep desire to appear introspective prevents me from putting a Marvel IP on my list of favorite things this year (and a sequel, at that), so I’ll put instead another favorite animated film from this year. 

Entergalactic is Kid Cudi’s visual companion film to his eighth studio album, and was the first work of his that I’ve ever engaged with. I knew nothing about the Entergalactic concept itself except for the hoodie, and didn’t even find out that the film was a visual album until I had finished it and was looking it up. With a runtime of just over an hour and a half, the film not only covers a lot of thematic ground but also highlights the story of the album in a both visually and sonically interesting way. 

Now, quite a few months after watching it, what I remember in most vivid detail is the main character Jabari and his relationship with his original character. Mr. Rager is partly Jabari’s inner voice and partly his own mouthpiece. Originating in the street art space, Jabari’s creative roots personified through this character follow him even as he rides his bicycle through psychedelic music cuts and the comic book-style animated streets of New York City into the ritzy hallways of the expensive apartment he lives in. Through the act of packaging him up into a replicable, handheld, consumer art, Jabari loses touch to the protest and rebellion tradition that made way for Mr. Rager but gains the socioeconomic mobility and upwards trajectory that allows him to meet his love interest in the story and experience creative growth. 

Criticism of Entergalactic has said that the project is a visual album attempting to be a fully fleshed-out animated film, and not much advancement to the characters or story actually takes place. I’ll disagree by saying this: with music as medium, the meandering between the love story, the inquiry into the creative economy, and quotidian New York City is what makes it so successful as an extended exploration of the music video form, making the album and film both more interpretable in conversation with each other. I think this is part of the reason that the film appealed to me so much. I love music videos, and Entergalactic blows up the parameters of a typical one, allowing the story of the album to shine while still showcasing an aesthetic appeal of the music. The additional story embedded by the film elements, along with Kid Cudi’s own involvement through the entire production project, lends a sense that the film is Kid Cudi doing interpretive work on his own art. It’s both a visual and auditory feast, and comes with my high recommendation for coastal elite, POC Spiderverse enjoyers. 

Recommended double feature:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 

Beef 

After this weekend’s disaster at the Golden Globes, Anthony Christian Ocampo tweeted something along these lines: this is what happens when representational politics in Hollywood do exactly what they’re intended to do. I’ll try to add my own thoughts to his words: it’s the inevitable platforming of some of the worst Asian Americans you’ve ever met. 

I struggle to use these words to describe Beef because of just how against a politics of representation the story of the series is, but they still apply to the media environment that it was raised in and the allegations (and inactions) that followed the series’ release. Asian Americans are allowed to be terrible, bad, awful people on screen; sometimes, the people playing them are too. 

Representation aside, which I must mention annually at least in passing or I’ll die, Beef is really, really good. Ali Wong’s character takes up Koyohaus like the brand itself is its own being, and I find the idea echoing in my head constantly, especially back at home this winter break in Chantilly and Centreville’s new Asian American yuppie cafes, shoppy shops, and restaurants. Perhaps a bit grossly, I was moved by the cultural anxiety of the things lost with generational upwards social mobility and increasingly esoteric taste, a trait which I share with many of my friends but not much of my family. The show’s depiction of the intersection of East Asian American white adjacency and coastal elite consumer arts makes my skin crawl. I love it. 

As we see spring 2024 syllabi for ‘bad Asians’ proliferate on Twitter and laud projects like Beef and Joy Ride (which comes to mind not a representation of bad Asians per se but perhaps a representation of Asians that is bad) for their distortion of representational politics with ‘bad representation’, I wonder how we can think of those whose actual poor behavior and continual platforming have simultaneously undermined and advanced the open-ended possibilities of ‘bad representation’, and if so, if we can consider cultural productions machines like Hollywood as working in any way except as intended. 

Recommended double feature:

It’s not out yet but I’m going to say the Mr. and Mrs. Smith reboot with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine 

The Book of Mormon 

When Ina and I walked out of the Eugene O’Neill Theater, she admitted to having some anxiety about our seats. We had bought them earlier that same day, meaning they were off to the side of the stage and not next to each other but adjacent in different rows. A kind woman instead offered us the empty one next to her, saying her family had caught COVID and weren’t going to be attending. 

‘If we hadn’t moved, I was going to ask you to sit in front of me,’ Ina had said. 

‘I probably would have blocked your view.’ 

‘But I wanted to see your reactions.’

I would leave it to her to know me better than anyone else, because I hadn’t had quite the visceral reaction to anything in a long time as I had to The Book of Mormon. I went into the show blind, if you can consider growing up around a lot of Mormons and surviving several intensely awkward proselytization attempts ‘blind’, and had no clue of exactly what kind of parody was awaiting me. The Book of Mormon had me scream-laughing, bodily reacting, and probably exhibiting some extremely poor Broadway etiquette. At the same time, the show is so technically and logistically intense that I was blown away by the simple act of extremely talented people performing to the absolute best of their ability, taste level aside. I feel the same way about liking The Book of Mormon this much as I do about really intensely loving Dimension 20 and collecting stickers, in that it’s the type of thing that I would consider outside my typical taste, but really is exactly within it if I choose to be honest with myself. It's a few hours that feel so intensely funny and perfected that it’s almost outside of time. 

The next day, I worked from Ina’s dinner table in Brooklyn and we watched the Mean Girls musical on Youtube, followed immediately by our high school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Jersey, which is exactly what is sounds like and was performed exactly as good as you would think a high school cast of 90% Koreans who have never been to America would. In the recording, you can hear us and our friends scream-laughing in the audience, both at and with one of our best friends as the lead. This is perhaps why I still find myself drawn to musicals: while I might not have been watching the show directly at that moment in Brooklyn, I had been, nearly five years prior in Yeonhui-dong. What I recalled the most was not the players in front of me but that same feeling of being in that body, surrounded by friends, watching what was at the time the funniest musical I had ever seen, embodied, present, and crying with laughter. 

(My runner-up for the play or musical spot was Spirited Away: Live on Stage, which I caught at a Tuesday night limited run screening at the Angelika in Mosaic. In retrospect, my reflections on that show are much more admiration for the technical aspects of the show, which I know close to nothing about, so I chose my friends instead, of whom I am ten-thousand-hours-studied proficient and hold supreme expertise over.) 

Recommended double feature:

Mean Girls (musical)

Something with zombies 

Conclusion 

This year has brought immense amounts of change to my life and seemingly everyone around mine as well. The turnover of the year marks the fourth that I’ve been near-obsessively cataloging all the media I read, watch, listen to, or generally consume, and at this point I’d like to think my dataset is big enough that I can say a nice few sentences about how my taste has changed since the waning days of my teens or how I’ve been profoundly affected by how I choose to cultivate my media environment, but the truth is that there’s nothing much to say, no grand conclusions to be drawn, no effectual change. Perhaps the only constant is the person who I was when I was seventeen peeking through, who sometimes feels like the most solidified version of who I am. I wonder if they’d like Hadestown. 

[thestarpilot]

for those interested

[promithiae]

When I first made this post I was very very tired and didn't have my glasses on so I was just going off a list of faculty from UU. Going back to the L space wiki now that I'm more conscious, and with appropriate eyeware applied, I have noticed a list of actual degrees. Have at 'em-

Baccalaureates:

Bachelor of Thaumatology (B.Thau)

Bachelor of Magic (B.Mgc)

Bachelor of Sortilege (B.S.)

Bachelor of Magianism (B.Mn.)

Bachelor of Divination (B.D.)

Bachelor of Civil Lore (B.C.L.)

Bachelor of Applied Theurgy (B.Ap.Th.)

Bachelor of Impractical Necromancy (B.Im.N.)

Bachelor of Fluencing (B.F.)

Bachelor of Amulets and Talismans (B.Am.Ta.)

Bachelor of Cabalistic Rites (B.C.R.)

Bachelor of Hyperphysical Chiromancy (B.H.Cr.)

Bachelor of Esoteric Occultism (B.Es.O.)

Bachelor of Eldritch Lacemaking (B.El.L.) (Nobody knows why.)

Masters:

Master of Thaumatology (M.Thau.)

Master of Magic (M.Mgc.)

Master of Sortilege (M.S.)

Master of Magianism (M.Mn.)

Master of Divination (M.D.)

Master of Civil Lore (M.C.L.)

Doctorates:

Doctor of Thaumatology (D.Thau.)

Doctor of Magic (D.Mgc.)

Doctor of Sortilege (D.S.)

Doctor of Magianism (D.Mn.)

Doctor of Gramarye (D.G.)

Doctor of Divination (D.D.)

Doctor of Civil Lore (D.C.L.)

Doctor of Magical Philosophy (D.M.Phil.)

Doctor of Morbid Spellbinding (D.M.S.)

Doctor of Condensed Metaphysics (D.C.M.)

Doctor of Wizardry (D.W.)

Honoraries:

Doctorum Adamus Cum Flabello Dulce ("Doctor of Sweet Fanny Adams")

Hogwarts houses are out. Unseen University disciplines are in. Choose your side

Indefinite studies

Recent Runes

Inadvisably Applied Magic

Cruel and Unusual Geography

Post Morthem Communications

Applied Astrology

Approximate Accuracy

Applied Anthropics

Extreme Horticulture

Liberal studies

Illiberal Studies

Morbid Bibliomamcy

Recondite Architecture and Origami Map Folding‎

Recondite Phenomena

Slood Dynamics

Esoteric Studies

Wooly Thinking

Op you forgot-