#product of functions examples

[basictutor]

Product of Functions | Calculus

📚 Welcome to Episode 5 of our comprehensive Calculus series. In this tutorial, we'll delve deep into the essential concept of "Product of Functions".

📚 Welcome to Episode 5 of our comprehensive Calculus series. In this tutorial, we’ll delve deep into the essential concept of “Product of Functions”. Whether you’re looking to grasp the product of functions formula, understand the product rule, or explore a variety of product of functions examples, this video has got you covered!

[severalowls]

The greatest cure to imposter syndrome is having to interact with a coworker who is even worse at everything but definitely gets paid more.

The only problem is then you replace imposter syndrome with becoming some kind of joker.

[morgenlich]

not that i follow their promotions etc that closely but i definitely missed the memo that colourpop is available at target now??

[fozmeadows]

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

Years ago now, I remember seeing the rape prevention advice so frequently given to young women - things like dressing sensibly, not going out late, never being alone, always watching your drink - reframed as meaning, essentially, "make sure he rapes the other girl." This struck a powerful chord with me, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter: that telling someone how to lower their own chances of victimhood doesn't stop perpetrators from existing. Instead, it treats the existence of perpetrators as a foregone conclusion, such that the only thing anyone can do is try, by their own actions, to be a less appealing or more difficult victim.

And the thing is, ever since the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I've kept on thinking about how, in this day and age, CEOs of big companies often have an equal or greater impact on the day to day lives of regular people than our elected officials, and yet we have almost no legal way to redress any grievances against them - even when their actions, as in the case of Thompson's stewardship of UHC, arguably see them perpetrating manslaughter at scale through tactics like claims denial. That this is a real, recurring thing that happens makes the American healthcare insurance industry a particularly pernicious example, but it's far from being the only one. Because the original premise of the free market - the idea that we effectively "vote" for or against businesses with our dollars, thereby causing them to sink or swim on their individual merits - is utterly broken, and has been for decades, assuming it was ever true at all. In this age of megacorporations and global supply chains, the vast majority of people are dependent on corporations for necessities such as gas, electricity, internet access, water, food, housing and medical care, which means the consumer base is, to all intents and purposes, a captive market. We might not have to buy a specific brand, but we have to buy a brand, and as businesses are constantly competing with one another to bring in profits, not just for the company and its workers, but for C-suites and shareholders - profits that increasingly come at the expense of workers and consumers alike - the greediest, most inhumane corporations set the financial yardstick against which all others are then, of necessity, measured. Which means that, while businesses are not obliged to be greedy and inhumane in order to exist, overwhelmingly, they become greedy and humane in order to compete, because capitalism encourages it, and because there are precious few legal restrictions to stop them from doing so. At the same time, a handful of megacorporations own so many market-dominating brands that, without both significant personal wealth and the time and resources to find viable alternatives, it's all but impossible to avoid them, while the ubiquity of the global supply chain means that, even if you can keep track of which company owns which brand, it's much, much harder to establish which suppliers provide the components that are used in the products bearing their labels. Consider, for instance, how many mainstream American brands are functionally run on sweatshop labour in other parts of the world: places where these big corporations have outsourced their workforce to skirt the already minimal labour and wage protections they'd be obliged to adhere to in the US, all to produce (say) electronics whose elevated sticker price passes a profit on to the company, but without resulting in higher wages for either the sweatshop workers overseas or the American employees selling the products in branded US stores.

When basically every major electronics corporation is engaged in similar business practices, there is no "vote" our money can bring that causes the industry itself to be better regulated - and as wealthy, powerful lobbyists from these industries continue to pay exorbitant sums of money to politicians to keep government regulation at a minimum, even our actual votes can do little to effect any sort of change. But even in those rare instances where new regulations are passed, for multinational corporations, laws passed in one country overwhelmingly don't prevent them from acting abusively overseas, exploiting more desperate populations and cash-poor governments to the same greedy, inhumane ends. And where the ultimate legal penalty for proven transgressions is, more often than not, a fine - which is to say, a fee; which is to say, an amount which, while astronomical by the standards of regular people, still frequently costs the company less than the profits earned through their unethical practices, and which is paid from corporate coffers rather than the bank accounts of the CEOs who made the decisions - big corporations are, in essence, free to act as badly as they can afford to; which is to say, very. Contrary to the promise of the free market, therefore, we as consumers cannot meaningfully "vote" with our dollars in a way that causes "good" businesses to rise to the top, because everything is too interconnected. Our choices under global capitalism are meaningless, because there is no other system we can financially support that stands in opposition to it, and while there are still small businesses and companies who try to operate ethically, both their comparative smallness and their interdependent reliance on the global supply chain means that, even if we feel better about our choices, we're not exerting any meaningful pressure on the system we're trying to change. Which means that, under the free market, trying to be an ethical consumer is functionally equivalent to a young woman dressing modestly, not going out alone and minding her drink at parties in order to avoid being raped. We're not preventing corporate predation or sending a message to corporate predators: we're just making sure they screw other worker, the other consumer, the other guy.

All of which is to say: while I'd prefer not to live in a world where shooting someone dead in the street is considered a valid means of redressing grievances, what the murder of Brian Thompson has shown is that, if you provide no meaningful recourse for justice against abusive, exploitative members of the 1%, then violence done to those people will have the feel of justice, because it fills the void left by the lack of consequences for their actions. It's the same reason why people had little sympathy for the jackass OceanGate CEO who killed himself in his imploding sub, or anyone whose yacht has been attacked by orcas - it's just intensified here, because where the OceanGate CEO was felled by hubris and the yachts were random casualties, whoever killed Thomspon did so deliberately, because of what he did. It was direct action against a man whose policies very arguably constituted manslaughter at scale; a crime which ought to be a crime, but which has, to date, been permitted under the law. And if the law wouldn't stop him, can anyone be surprised that someone might act outside the law in retaliation - or that regular people would cheer for them when they did?

[the-freespirited-princess-trope]

something i would love to see from tubatu is a song that does what gidle's 'my bag' does in that all the members get to rap in their own styles

[reasonsforhope]

"In some cities, as many as one in four office spaces are vacant. Some start-ups are giving them a second life – as indoor farms growing crops as varied as kale, cucumber and herbs.

Since its 1967 construction, Canada's "Calgary Tower", a 190m (623ft) concrete-and-steel observation tower in Calgary, Alberta, has been home to an observation deck, panoramic restaurants and souvenir shops. Last year, it welcomed a different kind of business: a fully functioning indoor farm.

Sprawling across 6,000sq m (65,000 sq ft), the farm, which produces dozens of crops including strawberries, kale and cucumber, is a striking example of the search for city-grown food. But it's hardly alone. From Japan to Singapore to Dubai, vertical indoor farms – where crops can be grown in climate-controlled environments with hydroponics, aquaponics or aeroponics techniques – have been popping up around the world.

While indoor farming had been on the rise for years, a watershed moment came during the Covid-19 pandemic, when disruptions to the food supply chain underscored the need for local solutions. In 2021, $6bn (£4.8bn) in vertical farming deals were registered globally – the peak year for vertical farming investment. As the global economy entered its post-pandemic phase, some high-profile startups like Fifth Season went out of business, and others including Planted Detroit and AeroFarms running into a period of financial difficulty. Some commentators questioned whether a "vertical farming bubble" had popped.

But a new, post-pandemic trend may give the sector a boost. In countries including Canada and Australia, landlords are struggling to fill vacant office spaces as companies embrace remote and hybrid work. In the US, the office vacancy rate is more than 20%.

"Vertical farms may prove to be a cost-effective way to fill in vacant office buildings," says Warren Seay, Jr, a real estate finance partner in the Washington DC offices of US law firm ArentFox Schiff, who authored an article on urban farm reconversions. 

There are other reasons for the interest in urban farms, too. Though supply chains have largely recovered post-Covid-19, other global shocks, including climate change, geopolitical turmoil and farmers' strikes, mean that they continue to be vulnerable – driving more cities to look for local food production options...

Thanks to artificial light and controlled temperatures, offices are proving surprisingly good environments for indoor agriculture, spurring some companies to convert part of their facilities into small farms. Since 2022, Australia's start-up Greenspace has worked with clients like Deloitte and Commonwealth Bank to turn "dead zones", like the space between lifts and meeting rooms, into 2m (6ft) tall hydroponic cabinets growing leafy greens.

On top of being adaptable to indoor farm operations, vacant office buildings offer the advantage of proximity to final consumers.

In a former paper storage warehouse in Arlington, about a mile outside of Washington DC, Jacqueline Potter and the team at Area 2 Farms are growing over 180 organic varieties of lettuce, greens, root vegetables, herbs and micro-greens. By serving consumers 10 miles away or less, the company has driven down transport costs and associated greenhouse emissions.

This also frees the team up to grow other types of food that can be hard to find elsewhere – such as edible flower species like buzz buttons and nasturtium. "Most crops are now selected to be grown because of their ability to withstand a 1,500-mile journey," Potter says, referring to the average distance covered by crops in the US before reaching customers. "In our farm, we can select crops for other properties like their nutritional value or taste."

Overall, vertical farms have the potential to outperform regular farms on several environmental sustainability metrics like water usage, says Evan Fraser, professor of geography at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and the director of the Arell Food Institute, a research centre on sustainable food production. Most indoor farms report using a tiny fraction of the water that outdoor farms use. Indoor farms also report greater output per square mile than regular farms.

Energy use, however, is the "Achilles heel" of this sector, says Fraser: vertical farms need a lot of electricity to run lighting and ventilation systems, smart sensors and automated harvesting technologies. But if energy is sourced from renewable sources, they can outperform regular farms on this metric too, he says. 

Because of variations in operational setup, it is hard to make a general assessment of the environmental, social and economic sustainability of indoor farms, says Jiangxiao Qiu, a landscape ecologist at the University of Florida and author of a study on urban agriculture's role in sustainability. Still, he agrees with Fraser: in general, urban indoor farms have higher crop yield per square foot, greater water and nutrient-use efficiency, better resistance to pests and shorter distance to market. Downsides include high energy use due to lighting, ventilation and air conditioning.

They face other challenges, too. As Seay notes, zoning laws often do not allow for agricultural activity within urban areas (although some cities like Arlington, Virginia, and Cincinnati, Ohio, have recently updated zoning to allow indoor farms). And, for now, indoor farms have limited crop range. It is hard to produce staple crops like wheat, corn or rice indoors, says Fraser. Aside from leafy greens, most indoor facilities cannot yet produce other types of crops at scale.

But as long as the post-pandemic trends of remote work and corporate downsizing will last, indoor farms may keep popping up in cities around the world, Seay says. 

"One thing cities dislike more than anything is unused spaces that don't drive economic growth," he says. "If indoor farm conversions in cities like Arlington prove successful, others may follow suit.""

-via BBC, January 27, 2025

[amber-tortoiseshell]

hello! do you know why piebaldism (the Ws allele in cats) is so common in domestic animals? to my knowledge it occurs in cats, dogs, horses, cows, mice, etc. it just seems weird that this specific mutation is so prevalent cross-species, is it just selective breeding? you're the only blog i know that talks about coat genetics in different species so i thought maybe you would know 😅

Piebaldism is an "easy" phenotype: all kind of different mutations that results in worse functioning melanocytes can give white patches. Horses for example have piebald mutations on at least five different genes (EDNRB, KIT, MITF, PAX3 and TRPM1). Probably all those animals you listed have different and unique piebald mutations.

I think this is why it's so common: it doesn't need a specific mutation, just something that turns down pigment production. And turning something off is always easier than changing it but keeping the main functionality.

Piebaldism is observed in all kind of wild animals too, it probably often turns up spontaneously; and by all likeliness that's what happened with early domestic animals too. From that it was simple selective breeding; humans always liked special-looking animals.

[cathkaesque]

The local population in countries that export bananas typically eat different varieties grown primarily by small farmers. The ones for the Americans and the Europeans, Cavendish variety bananas, are grown in huge, monoculture plantations that are susceptible to disease. The banana industry consumes more agrichemicals than any other in the world, asides from cotton. Most plantations will spend more on pesticides than on wages. Pesticides are sprayed by plane, 85% of which does not land on the bananas and instead lands on the homes of workers in the surrounding area and seeps into the groundwater. The results are cancers, stillbirths, and dead rivers.

The supermarkets dominate the banana trade and force the price of bananas down. Plantations resolve this issue by intensifying and degrading working conditions. Banana workers will work for up to 14 hours a day in tropical heat, without overtime pay, for 6 days a week. Their wages will not cover their cost of housing, food, and education for their children. On most plantations independent trade unions are, of course, suppressed. Contracts are insecure, or workers are hired through intermediaries, and troublemakers are not invited back.

Who benefits most from this arrangement? The export value of bananas is worth $8bn - the retail value of these bananas is worth $25bn. Here's a breakdown of who gets what from the sale of banana in the EU.

On average, the banana workers get between 5 and 9% of the total value, while the retailers capture between 36 to 43% of the value. So if you got a bunch of bananas at Tesco (the majority of UK bananas come from Costa Rica) for 95p, 6.65p would go to the banana workers, and 38p would go to Tesco.

Furthermore, when it comes to calculating a country's GDP (the total sum of the value of economic activity going on in a country, which is used to measure how rich or poor a country is, how fast its economy is 'growing' and therefore how valuable their currency is on the world market, how valuable its government bonds, its claim on resources internationally…etc), the worker wages, production, export numbers count towards the country producing the banana, while retail, ripening, tariffs, and shipping & import will count towards the importing country. A country like Costa Rica will participate has to participate in this arrangement as it needs ‘hard’ (i.e. Western) currencies in order to import essential commodities on the world market.

So for the example above of a bunch of Costa Rican bananas sold in a UK supermarket, 20.7p will be added to Costa Rica’s GDP while 74.3p will be added to the UK’s GDP. Therefore, the consumption of a banana in the UK will add more to the UK’s wealth than growing it will to Costa Rica’s. The same holds for Bangladeshi t-shirts, iPhones assembled in China, chocolate made with cocoa from Ghana…it’s the heart of how the capitalism of the ‘developed’ economy functions. Never ending consumption to fuel the appearance of wealth, fuelled by the exploitation of both land and people in the global south.

[leebrontide]

ADHD-havers, I have a suggestion for you.

Consider some kind of foraging activity. A lot of my family have ADHD and a lot of my clients have ADHD and I've noticed over the years that a LOT of folks with ADHD have brains beautifully wired for foraging. Enough of them found this before ever meeting me that the pattern became obvious. It seems to function a lot like meditation works for many people without ADHD. It's great for calming, centering, and dopamine production.

That could take many forms! I first noticed it with fruit/berry picking, and mushroom foraging. But I've seen wild herb foraging, and even trash pickup. Basically find a way to be outside, looking for something with a bit of demand for detail noticing, that gives you something for succeeding (like, for example, raspberries). My wife can spend 10 minutes picking raspberries in the ally of our city lot and come back visibly calmer and happier, and, you know, with raspberries.

And this is why, along with native planting, I'm designing a foraging garden for my household.

[fairyminnie444]

Why Does Physical Change Literally Happen?

{+1 explanation for the logical part of the brain}

“Will I just be pretending to myself?” “What is the logic in changing my current unwanted body for what I want to be and how others see me and this change?”

Some questions that go through our heads when we talk about manifesting the desired appearance, and this is normal. Let's demystify this and be absolutely sure to manifest more easily and quickly.

First no, you are not “faking it to yourself.” What you are doing is a process of mental self-reprogramming that uses the power of the mind to create a new internal reality, which will inevitably be reflected on the outside.

1. The Mind Doesn’t Distinguish Between Reality and Imagination

When you intensely imagine your desired body, your brain acts as if it were already true. It begins sending signals to your body to align your physiology with this new vision. This isn’t “faking it,” it’s literally reprogramming your system.

2. How Does Physical Change Literally Happen?

Your body is run by your brain. Everything it does—from regenerating cells to changing its structure—responds to instructions that you, consciously or not, send it. When you see yourself as the version of yourself you want to be, you are literally reprogramming your brain to create that physical change.

Examples in Science and Biology:

• Epigenetics: Your thoughts influence which genes are “turned on” or “turned off.” If you internally assume the identity of a person with the desired body, your body begins to align with that identity.

• Neuroplasticity: The brain reorganizes itself based on the beliefs you hold. It can change hormonal patterns, metabolic patterns, and even cellular regeneration to adapt to what you believe to be true.

3. Why Does Physical-Touchable Reality Change?

• Assumed Identity: When you believe that you already have the desired appearance, the body begins to respond with real physiological changes. For example, a mental model of “I am thin” can change hunger patterns and metabolism, while “I am young” can stimulate collagen production.

• Instructions to the Subconscious: The subconscious controls automatic functions of the body, such as cell regeneration and fat distribution. It accepts everything you imagine with emotion as absolute truth.

4. How Others See You

People see you through the energy and confidence you exude. If you are aligned with the feeling that you are already who you want to be, others will automatically begin to treat and see you that way.

• They may not know “how” or “when” you changed, but they will notice that something is different. This is because your self-confidence and inner congruence have a direct impact on social interactions.

5. You’re Not Pretending, You’re Choosing

When you decide that you are already the desired version of yourself, you’re not pretending, you’re taking on a new identity. This is a conscious exercise in creating the reality you want, and 3D has no choice but to reflect that decision.

6. Real-World Example to Make It More Concrete

1. People who underwent hypnosis believing they had real burns on their skin developed physical blisters—because their bodies responded to their minds.

2. Patients in placebo studies who “believed” they were taking a rejuvenation drug experienced real physical changes, such as improved skin and organs.

These are extreme examples, but they show that the mind instructs the physical body, and the body obeys. It’s not symbolic or “just in the imagination”—it’s a transformation that manifests itself in the tangible.

7. How to Make This Transformation Solid and Firm

To truly believe that your physical transformation is happening:

• Decide and Feel: “I already have this.” See your body as what you want, not what you “think it is.”

• Visualize Clearly: Imagine what it would be like to touch, see, and live with this body. Not just mentally, but as if it were already a reality.

• Believe in Inner Logic: Whatever your mind accepts as truth, your body will do. If you have assumed this new identity, your body has no choice but to follow.

It’s not pretending, nor is it wishful thinking. It’s using the power of your mind to literally transform your body into something physical and real.

[tinystepsforward]

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

[locally-normal]

Great example of an operation that's not associative, like how (a^b)^c isn't a^(b^c) (actually that's the same example!). We just picked a standard order for how to parenthesize ->, and everyone who uses it knows it, including you, evidently. No big deal. It is weird though.

You're right about argument order, god made tensoring symmetric monoidal and language designers shouldn't take away our natural symmetries. Keeping track of symmetries like that is what compilers are for. That said, this isn't currying's fault, sometimes you really want to put in one argument and get back a function, being able to do so is lovely.

a two-argument function is the same thing as a function which spits out a one-argument function.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Speech Development

Several stages of development have been distinguished in the first year, when the child develops the skills necessary to produce a successful first word.

FIRST 2 MONTHS

Apart from the cry patterns associated with hunger, pain, and discomfort, the first 2 months of life display a wide range of primitive vocal sounds reflecting the baby’s biological state and activities – as in the ‘vegetative’ noises heard while eating and excreting.

Some of the most basic features of speech, such as the ability to control air flow and produce rhythmic utterance, are being established at this time.

BETWEEN 6 & 8 WEEKS

There emerge the sounds generally known as cooing, produced when the baby is in a settled state.

Cooing sounds do not grow out of crying; rather, they develop alongside it, gradually becoming more frequent and varied.

They are quieter, lowerpitched, and more musical, typically consisting of a short vowel-like sound, often nasal in quality, and usually preceded by a consonant-like sound made towards the back of the mouth.

Strings of cooing noises soon emerge, and the sounds become more varied, as the baby begins to develop a greater measure of control over the muscles of the vocal organs – especially over tongue and lip movements and associated vocal-fold vibration.

BETWEEN 3 & 4 MONTHS

Cooing sounds begin to die away, to be replaced by sounds which are much more definite and controlled, often repeated, and produced with wide pitch glides.

It is a period commonly called vocal play, because the baby seems to take great pleasure in producing these noises, especially those made with the lips.

But it is perhaps more accurate to call it a time of vocal practice or experimentation.

AROUND 6 MONTHS

Vocal play gives way to babbling – a period of syllable sequences and repetitions which can last most of the second half of the first year.

To begin with, the consonant-like sounds are very repetitive:

Example: "babababa"

But at around 9 months, the babbling moves away from these fixed patterns.

The consonants and vowels change from one syllable to the next, producing such forms as [adu] and [maba], and there is a wider range of sounds, anticipating the sounds of the accent of English to be learned.

The utterances do not have any meaning, though they often resemble adult words – and of course adults love to ‘hear’ such words (especially mummy and daddy) in the baby’s vocalizations.

But babbling does not gradually shade into speech; indeed, many children continue to babble for several months after they have begun to talk.

Babbling is perhaps best summarized as a final step in the period of preparation for speech.

The child, in effect, ‘gets its act together’; but it has yet to learn what the act is for – that sounds are there to enable meaning to be communicated in a controlled way.

With the production of the ‘first word’, this final step is taken.

NOTE

However, the first word is not the first feature of adult language to be acquired.

From as early as 6 months, there is evidence that the child is picking up features of the melody and rhythm of the adult language.

Certainly by 9 months, strings of syllables are often being pronounced in conversation-like ways which adults interpret as communicative:

‘He/ she’s trying to tell us something’ is a common reaction to a piece of ‘scribble-talk’, and such speech-act functions as questioning, commanding, and greeting are ascribed to babbled utterances.

The melody and rhythm of often-used phrases, such as "all gone", are also likely to be heard long before the vowels and consonants are clearly articulated.

It is these prosodic features which are the first signs of real language production in children.

Prosody - the linguistic use of pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm; the study of versification

Source ⚜ Notes & References More: Children ⚜ Children's Dialogue ⚜ Childhood Bilingualism

[sunmoon-starfactory]

Potions A Plenty - Potion Brewing Set

Pulling from most every other set of Sun&Moon for potion ingredients, this set gives the sims the ability to brew various potions that affect moods, skills, life states, aging, pregnancy, health, and a variety of other mostly harmless effects.

The Quick Feature Review/Set Breakdown below the cut.

Download - SFS

View Use/Instruction Manual

The Potion Crafting Bench - The heart of the set itself, the potion bench is where components are stored, prepared, and combined into batches of potions. At this station, sims can do the following.

Practice potion making and brew a total of 56 potions that have varying effects when drank by sims

Earn Logic Skill and Science Enthusiasm

Stock materials

Order Supply Bundles to facilitate quicker potion making

Obtain a Writ of Mastery in potion crafting

Keep a tidy workstation by keeping things clean

A set of “basic” potions, and their ingredients will be considered REQUIRED for function. Do not remove those files. Let the manual guide you.

This set is MAC-compatible and requires Smarter EP Check, Easy Inventory Check, Easy Lot Check and Money Globals. These are HARD requirements. The set will NOT FUNCTION without these files.

Access to these is dictated by logic skill level as well as a writ of mastery/Creature Life State/Traits.

This station has 28 decorative slots, as well as a decorative mode to enable/disable effects and an "in use" look at will.

Story Mode Enabled - Skip all the ingredients and steps, just enjoy the end products, or just run the animations on a station for the ease of taking pictures.

*New Feature* - Station Cleanliness. As the station is used, it will obtain dirty points. This dirty level affects the outcomes of potion crafting and increases failure chances. Make sure to keep the cauldron clean to ensure quality products!

*New Feature* - Supply Ordering. For a flat rate, sims can buy a bulk order of various materials needed for any potion. They will be added directly to the station's crafting counts.

All potions can be found in Hobbies/Logic. Complete Dutch and Portuguese translations. If you'd like to translate into your native language, please share your strings with us and we'll update the set proper!

Inventory Tools & New Items

Botanical Book - Pretty and useful. Inventory Tool.

Writ of Mastery - Apothecary Version. Inventory Tool.

Crate of Jars - 6 glass jars needed for potion making.

Cauldron Dregs - Waste produced from cleaning the station or failing in potion making.

Bonus Items

Reference Tome - In game recipe book for all potions

Counter Split OMSP - Give maxis counters a chance to hold more things!

Display Shelves - 9 decorative slots, two versions.

Apothecary Todd Cart and Pavilion - Previously released sets bundled into this set; they have been optimized and renamed, please remove the old versions.

Potion Specifics

Potions come in 5 types: Basic, Folk Remedy Potions, Arcane Potions, Creature/Lifestate Potions, and Poison Potions. The more fantastical the potion, the more complex it is to make.

Please be aware that depending on your playstyle you will have to add more files from other sources or you can delete certain files from this set without worry; For example, if you do not play your game with creature life states or custom creature life states, you may delete anything related to those potions, provided it is not used in another “basic” potion.

Potions are NOT recolorable and will not be made so in the future. If you wish to alter the bottle/potion colors yourself, this may be done in the properties/categorized properties tab of each subset txmt in SimPe, using the stdMatDiffCoef line.

Potions Vs. Teas: You will notice that many potions have the same effects as previously released teas from the Quali-Tea set. So what’s the difference? 

Teas are based on cooking and logic skills only. Potions function more on Logic skill level and a Writ of Mastery, OR Witch/Warlock state, and other traits.

Teas are single cup per crafting interactions (except basic hunger teas). Potions will always produce in a batch of 6.

In some cases, Teas require MORE ingredients to make, whereas Potions require LESS ingredients but higher Logic skill and rarer/less natural ingredients.

While potions can have the same effect as a similar tea, more risk is involved with taking them and sims can experience adverse/opposite of intended effects.

[elicathebunny]

HEALTH SHOULD ALWAYS COME FIRST! PRIORITISING HEALTH BEFORE EVERYTHING ELSE TO LOOK GOOD + FEEL GOOD.

People always leave out the basics when it comes to trying to improve their looks. Prioritising health is so important before going in and tempering with your body. Your base is what you work with and you can definitely level up with what you've got naturally.

DIET

Your diet also depends on what your goals are. Someone who wants to build muscle will obviously eat differently from someone who just eats relatively healthy. So identify what your goals are and work your meals around that.

Here are some videos to give you a better insight: HOW I LOSE FAT AND KEEP IT OFF MEANS, WORKOUTS + EVERYTHING ELSE PROTEIN EXPLAINED, STRENGTH, MUSCLES, FAT LOSS & ENDURANCE HOW METABOLISM WORKS

Diet not only makes you feel better from the inside, but it also reflects on your outside. Your skin is a huge display of how you eat.

When you consume junk food, it can show up on your skin as breakouts or dullness. Your skin is one massive organ which soaks up everything put onto it and reflects everything you put inside your body. Fix the problem from the inside before getting confused about why your skincare routine isn't working.

FITNESS

Again, your fitness will differentiate from your goals. So work out your goals and make a plan around that. There are so many forms of fitness, some more intense than others and with different results. Working out in general is good for you, our bodies are meant to move. So even if you don't have a goal, staying active is always recommended.

HOW TO CREATE THE PERFECT WORKOUT PLAN

THE BEST WAY TO GAIN MUSCLE, SCIENCE EXPLAINED SIMPLY

Low-intensity workouts:

Yoga: Focuses on flexibility, strength, and relaxation through various poses and breathing techniques.

Pilates: A low-impact exercise method that strengthens muscles, improves flexibility, and enhances posture.

Walking: Simple yet effective, walking is a great way to improve cardiovascular health and boost mood without high impact.

Swimming: Provides a full-body workout with minimal stress on joints, making it ideal for people with joint issues or injuries.

High-intensity workouts:

HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training): Alternates between short bursts of intense exercise and brief recovery periods to maximize calorie burn and improve cardiovascular fitness.

CrossFit: Combines elements of weightlifting, interval training, gymnastics, and other exercises to build strength, endurance, and overall fitness.

Sprinting: Short, explosive bursts of running at maximum effort, often performed in intervals for cardiovascular conditioning and leg muscle strength.

Circuit Training: Involves moving through a series of exercises targeting different muscle groups with minimal rest in between, combining strength training and cardiovascular exercise.

These are just a few examples, but there are plenty of other workout styles out there to explore depending on your preferences and fitness goals. Walking every day is just a simple way to stay toned.

SLEEP

Sleeping is important for rest and recovery after workouts and energy-consuming activities. Sleep is needed for the brain to function, mood regulation and performance + productivity. Lack of sleep deprives you of all of these things, so getting your beauty sleep is absolutely needed.

School-age children (6-13 years): 9-11 hours per day.

Teenagers (14-17 years): 8-10 hours per day.

Young adults (18-25 years): 7-9 hours per day.

Adults (26-64 years): 7-9 hours per day.

HYGIENE

Upkeeping good hygiene is always needed anyway. Making sure you are clean (smelling good is a plus). Make sure you always wash your hands and take daily showers to remove any dirt on your body (clean those feet and your back well, don't forget them!). Taking care of your oral health must not be forgotten. Oil pulling and brushing your tongue for a healthy mouth. Make sure your hair is also getting the attention to keep it as healthy as you possibly can make it (this also depends on diet). Doing the extra things like spending time on your nails (making sure there isn't that stuff underneath them), making them pretty.

BODY CARE ROUTINE | FOR SMOOTH & GLOWING SKIN, TREATING KERATOSIS PILARIS, SHOWER ROUTINE

ENVIRONMENT

Having a stress-free environment is obviously the best to thrive in. But clearly not even being lucky enough to live like that constantly. So make sure you have that space to be on your own and have some alone time to really recharge. Keeping your space clean for a clear mind. Surround yourself with like-minded people and really set boundaries for those who prey on your mental clarity (energy vampires). Spending time in nature is one of the best ways to detach, rest time should not equal spending time on your devices. Let go and truly let yourself decompress. Mental health will improve how you carry yourself.

EMBODY YOUR POTENTIAL.