toucana

There is a reference to this subscript in the YT video by Sabine Hossenfelder which Eise linked to earlier (c.3:15 elapsed) It's apparently a Pochhammer Symbol - which she says is another type of Gamma Function.

From the expanded text of the main article (§ QFT expectations) --> https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.221601

A novel method of calculating the value of Pi has been found by an Indian physicist Aninda Sinha, Professor at the Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP) - Indian Institute of Science, and co-author Arnab Saha, a post-doc assistant - published in Physical Review Letters https://www.iisc.ac.in/events/iisc-physicists-find-a-new-way-to-represent-pi/ The new method was stumbled upon by chance while the researchers were investigating how string theory can be used to explain certain physical phenomena: There are several well known methods of calculating Pi by using infinite series, notably the Wallis product formula first published by John Wallis in 1656, and the Gregory series discovered by Scottish mathematician James Gregory (1638-75). They can however be cumbersome to use. In the Gregory series you need to use 10,000 terms of the series to get 4 decimal places of π correct. The authors refer to a similar formula known in India as the Madhava series in recognition of a 14th-century Indian mathematician and astronomer Madhava of Sangamagrama who first discovered it - but while the Madhava series takes 5 billion terms to converge to ten decimal places, the new representation with λ between 10 and 100 takes 30 terms according to an appendix in the paper. https://www.iflscience.com/physicists-accidentally-discover-a-whole-new-way-to-write-pi-74768

(For viewers across the pond - Several Conservative MPs, including the one for my own constituency, have been disowned by their own party for allegedly making bets on the date of the General Election before it was announced to the public. - "Things Can Only Get Better" by D:Ream was the anthemic song of the Labour party campaign that swept Tony Blair to victory in 1997).

I recently bought an Apple Watch Series 9, and thought it might be interesting to share some of the issues I have encountered so far. My main motive in purchasing a smart watch was to carry out enhanced health & activity monitoring, and to keep track of medication schedules and medical appointments. Why pick an Apple Watch - rather than a Google Pixel Watch 2, Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 or a Garmin Vivomove Trend ? Well, all my other devices happen to be Apple (iMac, iPad, iPhone) and are already linked up to each other via iCloud. If you happen to be an Android or Samsung phone user, or if you are training for the Olympics - then you would probably make different choices. iOS 17 --> Practically the first thing you need to know is that the Apple Series 9 smart watches have to be paired with an iPhone that is running iOS 17 at the very minimum. This unfortunately means that you cannot pair a Series 9 Apple Watch to an iPhone 8, as the latter only supports up to iOS 16.7 - this was the first gottacha as my existing iPhone happened to be an iPhone 8 - strike #1. Having bought a new Apple Watch Series 9, I then had to buy a new iPhone as well to make any constructive use of the new watch. As it happened, my iPhone 8 needed to be replaced as it had developed a crack in the screen (which also meant it had zero trade-in value). The entry level phone on sale at Apple Stores in our area nowadays is an iPhone 13, which more than doubled the intended outlay for the watch. Magnetic Link Band --> A wide variety of wrist band styles are available for the watch and I selected a fine weave Textile Magnetic Link Band. These are relatively new. Apple originally offered Magnetic Link Bands in leather, but then withdrew these from sale for ecological reasons, and replaced them with Textile Bands made from recycled materials. These new Magnetic Link Bands have attracted some criticism from users complaining that they slip. I initially had some problems with this too, until I realised that these magnet straps have a preferred rotational orientation to each other. When correctly fitted the bands should snap together with an audible clunk - like a magnet toy. If they don’t, then you need to disengage one strap and refit it the other way up. The straps come in 3 colours, Pacific Blue, Dark Olive, and Taupe. The latter has a lighter tone on one side than the other which makes it easier to orientate them correctly.

There is an old piece of sage advice for guys desperate to find a partner:- "You just need to keep on chasing girls until one of them catches you" 😉

I think this NCBI paper provides a relevant and useful precis of what lies behind the ‘Incel’ ideology mentioned in the OP https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9780135/ Probably the most surprising thing is that the Incel movement originally began in 1997 with a female student who created an online site called Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project which documented her struggles on the dating scene, and which soon became a popular hub and mutual support site for individuals with similar experiences. Alana subsequently found a partner and left the site in the hands of others, only to discover some years down the line that the group had splintered, and had been hijacked into a number of embittered male-only assemblies whose sexual frustrations were now often directed at the women who had ‘shunned’ them. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/woman-who-invented-incel-movement-interview-toronto-attack The full extent of this transformation became clear in 2014 when a former college student called Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others in a mass attack at Isla Vista California near the University of California Santa Barbara before committing suicide himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Rodger Rodger had uploaded a video on YouTube called ‘Elliot Rodger’s Retribution’ detailing his plans, along with a 137 page manifesto titled ‘My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger’ lamenting his frustrations with being a virgin and explaining his motivations were to “punish” women for their lack of interest in him. Elliot Rodger was subsequently lauded as a hero and ‘martyr’ by other members of the online Incel community - including notably - Alek Minassian a 25 y/o Toronto man who killed 11 pedestrians (9 of them women), and injured 15 other by driving a van along the sidewalks of Yonge St in April 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack Minassian who was subsequently jailed for life told police that he was an Incel and described the attack as a continuation of the “incel rebellion” started by the late Elliot Rodger. Three years later in August 2021 another mass killing by a self-styled Incel took place at Keyham Plymouth England. A 22 y/o man called Jake Davison shot 6 people in total - including his own mother, and a 3 year old girl at random before killing himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_shooting Checks of his online activities subsequently disclosed that he subscribed to Incel related content, and had posted YouTube videos about ‘the black pill worldview’ which is a favoured theme of Incel programming and propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#%22Red_pill%22_and_%22black_pill%22 In the wake of the Toronto van attack in 2018, Canadian authorities classfied militant Incel activity as misogyny terrorism. The views and values of Inceldom are more generally seen as a dangerous form of psychopathology whose adherents live within self-validating social bubbles and online echo-chambers that simply reinforce their own delusional and violent mysogonistic grievances.

Trump’s newly amended status as a convicted felon debars him from an interesting variety of occupations in various USA states. The Independent has recently published a list which includes the following: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-convicted-felon-jobs-b2558874.html - He cannot hold a liquor license to sell alcohol (New Jersey & many other states too) - He cannot work as a bartender (Florida) - He cannot be a firefighter (Florida) - He cannot work in pest control (North Carolina) - He cannot work in a casino (Illinois) - He cannot work in a health care industry (Virginia) - He cannot work as a vet (Indiana) - He cannot work as a realtor without special permission (New York) - He cannot sell cars (Mississippi) As noted:

Juanita N. Holmes is a name that may become more widely familiar in coming days. She is an American police officer and administrator who is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation - and she has the responsibility of interviewing and making sentencing recommendations to Judge Juan Merchan in respect of newly convicted felon Donald J. Trump before his sentencing hearing on July 11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juanita_N._Holmes One issue that is of particular interest to a Probation Officer is whether a felon is in compliance with 18 US Code §922(g), a Federal law that renders it illegal for a convicted felon to be in possession of a firearm or ammunition. https://www.atf.gov/firearms/identify-prohibited-persons#:~:text=Further%2C%20the%20GCA%20at%2018,or%20possessing%20firearms%20or%20ammunition. The problem here is that Donald J. Trump who was previously reported to be in possession of 3 guns before his concealed carry permits were cancelled in New York has apparently only returned 2 of them to the NYPD. The registration of a third gun was said by his representatives to have been legally transferred to Florida, but according to new reporting by CNN, the Florida Palm Beach authorities have no record of any such transfer. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admitted-to-having-a-gun-in-florida-during-probation-interview-report This is bad news for Trump because an adverse PO report of non-compliance with 18 US Code §922(g) can not only lead to an extra 3-5 years on any prison sentence imposed by Judge Merchan in New York, but can also lead to the revocation of Trump’s bail in all other pending cases throughout the country where he is under indictment. The timing is particularly unfortunate given that Hunter Biden the son of President Biden has just been convicted by a jury in Delaware of three offences under 18 US Code §922(a), a much more minor offence of failing to tick a checkbox disclosing that he was a recreational drug user when purchasing a handgun that was disposed of 15 days later without ever being loaded or used. The 18 US Code §922(a) charge against Hunter Biden (which is hardly ever brought alone) was originally meant to be set aside under a plea agreement with the Trump appointed Attorney/Special Counsel who cut a diversion deal under which Hunter Biden was suppposed to plead guily to two minor tax misdemeanours instead. For reasons best known to himself, the Delaware judge threw out this plea deal, and pressed the §922(a) charge instead.

Poles can be a problem for politicians ..

As a newly convicted felon, Donald Trump can no longer travel abroad to at least 37 foreign countries - according to a recent Newsweek report based on data from the World Population Review: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-travel-ban-1906686 These countries include Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. A number of other countries also reserve the right to refuse entry pending border checks on criminal records: these include Israel, Mexico, Turkey, Ukraine, South Africa, South Korea, and the Philippines. The good news for Trump is that Russia and North Korea aren’t currently on the ‘no-fly’ list. He can always potter off to either the Kremlin or Pyongyang, and hang out with his best mates Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

Trump's lawyers can't file any appeals until sentencing has taken place on July 11th - because the trial isn't complete until that has taken place. This point was covered in a Q&A with former prosecutor Glen Kirschner on Brian Tyler Cohen's channel.

Trump's has just said that "The real verdict will be the presidential election" which is simply false. The real verdict was just given by a jury of his peers, and unless it is overturned on appeal (highly unlikely), he is now - and will remain - a felon convicted on 34 criminal indictments.

Trump has been convicted on all 34 indictments by a unanimous verdict of the jury. Sentencing will be in about 5 weeks time in mid July.

Fact Check: The Battle of Choisin Reservoir (장진호 전투) began on 27 November 1950 during the Korean war when a Chinese force of 120,000 men under the command of General Song Shilun (宋时轮) surprised a UN force of just 30,000 men under the command of Major General Oliver P.Smith - (N.B. UN = ‘United Nations’ *not* American. British Marines and two Regiments of the British 3rd and 7th Army were present, as well as American Marines). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chosin_Reservoir Over the next 17 days, the UN force managed to break out of their encirclement and successfully withdrew to the port of Hungnam. Both sides suffered heavy casualties from battlefield action, and from the freezing weather with temperatures as low as -36F. The UN forces suffered around 13,000 casualties (c.1100 killed) while the Chinese are thought to have suffered almost 60,000 casualties (around 29,000 batttle casualties). For which reason the battle is usually evaluated as a ‘Pyrrhic Victory’ for the Chinese - i.e. one in which the losses substantially outweighed any possible military gains.

The Iranian security police were kept busy in Tehran on Sunday night trying to shut down firework parties thrown by opponents of President Raisi celebrating his disappearance - (lots of video clips on Twitter). One unsettling detail reported by Iranian sources was a claim by deputy foreign minister Mahdi Safari who said "Shortly after the accident, we managed to speak with Tabriz’s Friday Prayer Imam and he said that he was feeling bad and heard the sounds of ambulance cars" https://tass.com/emergencies/1790437 There weren’t any ambulances anywhere near the crash site at that point - there were however plenty of wolves..

The wreckage was located by a Bayraktar Ankinci UAV drone supplied by the Turkish government. They located a heat spot in the Dizmar forest area, and shared the coordinates with the Iranian search and rescue teams. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-69035051 It appears that one of the passengers Mohammad Ali Al-Hashem survived the crash for about an hour and even spoke briefly by phone to the authorities before succumbing. He was the Prayer Imam of Tabriz who was travelling as a personal envoy of Ayatollah Ali Khameni the Supreme Leader of Iran. [Bayraktar Ankinci UAV drone image of crash site] The Dizmar area is also known as the Hyrcanian Forest (Greek Ὑρκανία) - derived from Old Persian Verkâna meaning “Wolf Land” - not an ideal place to make a crash landing.

A helicopter carrying Ebrahim Raisi the President of Iran has gone missing in a remote region of NW Iran close to the border with Azerbaijan. Foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian is also said to have been onboard the same craft which was part of a convoy of three helicopters that were returning from a visit to mark the inauguration of a new dam in neighbouring Azerbaijan. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/5/19/iran-helicopter-accident-live-president-fm-on-missing-aircraft Various reports from Iranian news agencies say that the helicopter made a “hard landing” somwhere near the Iranian border town of Jolfa. Iranian rescue teams are struggling to reach the location because of the rugged terrain and heavy fog, with Iranian TV showing visibility down to 5m in places. Two other helicopters in the same convoy made a safe return, and some Iranian sources indicate that an emergency phone call was received from some of the people onboard the missing helicopter. Other sources say that Iranian TV is currently screening recitations of verses from the Quran, and that the VP has already formed an emergency government. The helicopters used to transport the Iranian president are ageing Russian made Mil Mi-17 military transports which date back to 1975. They have been involved in a number of incidents and crashes in recent years.

A preliminary NTSB report on the collision of the MV Dali with the Francis Scott Key Bridge has been published. A detailed read-through of the provisional findings can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etCUog15pWA Fuel contamination was apparently not the cause of this accident. There were 3 different types of fuel in use onboard the Dali, and all the samples tested clear. The problem seems to have been entirely electrical in nature. The Dali suffered two major power failures in quick succession; the first took out the HR1 and LR1 overcurrent breakers either side of a large transformer which linked the 6600V diesel generator bus to the main low voltage 440V power bus. This failure disabled the lights, comms, navigation systems, and most critical of all, it took out the power to the oil pumps and cooling water pumps servicing the main engine. The loss of these pumps triggered an automatic shutdown of the main engine. The second electrical failure occurred as the crew attempted to restore power to the 440V bus. This time two current overload breakers DGR4 and DGR3 failed, which disconnected the two main diesel generators (#4 and #3) that were online and supplying the high voltage 6600V bus. (Two of the four main diesel generators have to be online to restart the main engine). An emergency generator re-powered the three steering pumps which enabled the pilots to exercise some degree of rudder control, but unfortunately with the main engine and propellor stopped, the steering effect of the rudder is very much reduced. With the Dali only 0.6 miles - or 3 ship lengths - from the Key Bridge when the first electrical blackout happened at 0125, there simply wasn’t enough sea room to avoid a collision. One relevant detail mentioned in the report was this: Which explains why they couldn’t simply ring up "Full Speed Astern" on the engine telegraph.

The large span of bridge still resting on the bow of the MV Dalis is due to be blown up by demolition charges. The detonation is timed to take place around 5PM local time - in about 45m. There are several live stream feeds running on YT to cover the event (although they are buffering quite badly atm). One of them is: Another more stable one by AP The amateur 'Minorcan Mullet' stream which has a better view (and a live commentary) had to be restarted, and is now on:

The title of the OP in this thread was “Why use the atomic bomb on Japan ?” which seemed to me to be about the strategic military thinking and realpolitik of using such a novel weapon to end WW2 in August 1945 - (as opposed to pursuing a devasting war of attrition that might not have ended until 1947). All of those points have already been answered in detail in this thread quite a while ago imho. At some point the discussion then seems to have became a version of the thought experiment known as ”The Trolley Dilemma”. It might be instructive in this context to read a recent study by Exeter Business School which evaluates how different cultural groups - especially Asian ones - evaluate sacrificial dilemmas of this type, and can come to markedly different conclusions and ethical judgements in doing so. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-trolley-dilemma-sacrifice-person-culture.html To me it seems that arguments about ‘Few’ or ‘Many’ deaths descend into a form of Sorites Paradox (Greek σωρός - ‘a heap’) which is a type of [N-1] problem. At what point does a ‘heap’ of sand stop being a ‘heap’ if you repeatedly remove one grain of sand from it ? It’s a type of argument that relies on vague predicates. At what point do ‘Many ‘ deaths become “Few’, and when do you reach a moral tipping point which renders that value ‘acceptable” ? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ Moral philosophers can pursue this type of debate almost indefinitely - but it’s rather different from the one raised in the OP.

Have you considered what would have happened if the allies had gone ahead with the alternative plan B of starving Japan into surrender by means of a naval blockade ? The 32,000 POWs and internees held by the Japanese were already on starvation diets - do you think the Japanese authorities would have made any effort to continue feeding those POWs when they were already making contingency plans to starve a significant proportion of their own non-combatant civilian population to death in order to continue the war ? I take some issue with the Gaza analogy too. The Pacific war of 1941 - 45 did not take place in the Middle East in 2024. It took place in the context of a lethal struggle against a violent and well armed expansionist Japan whose military leadership systematically ignored every clause of the Geneva Convention, and exhibited a total contempt for any concept of the intrinsic value of human life - an aggressor that routinely murdered captured nurses and other medical staff (as they did in Singapore in February 1942) and whose soldiers murdered upward of 250,000 unarmed Chinese civilians during a six week killing rampage in the city of Nanjing in December 1937, and also murdered another 150,000 unarmed Filipino civilians in Manila during the Battle of Luzon in February 1945. At a certain point when you are fighting a particular type of enemy, one (as previously noted) with no history of military compromise or surrender in its 2000 year history, then the finer points of moral argument become somewhat moot. You simply have to be prepared to take exceptional measures to break their will to carry on fighting you. I also take some exception to the implied suggestion that the targets selected for the atom bombs contained nothing but non-combatant civilians. Hiroshima was a major military command centre for the Japanese Second General Army in southern Honshu. It also had a large seaport at Ujina that was used as an embarkation centre for Japanese troops, and housed the Army Marine HQ. The city of Nagasaki was likewise a military seaport, and also the home of the Mitsubishi company who were the principal manufacturers of the deadly ‘Long Lance’ (酸素魚雷) Type 93 torpedo used by the Japanese navy throughout WW2. The Mitsubishi Urakami Torpedo Works were in fact one of the military sites that was completely destroyed by the Nagasaki atom bomb. https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/images/mitsubishi_image.htm

I came upon a passage the other day which reminded me of an issue now mostly forgotten, but one which was very important to Allied military planners back in 1945 as WW2 entered its endgame - and that was the fate of allied POWs and incarcerated civilians who were in the hands of the Japanese throughout the Far East. http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/liberation_photos.html Over 190,000 British and Commonwealth troops were taken prisoner by the Japanese during WW2 - many of them when Malaya, Singapore, and Burma were overrun, and some 32,000 Allied POWs were subsequently repatriated directly from Japan itself after the end of the war. The majority of these prisoners were kept in appalling conditions on starvation diets and and many were worked to death in slave labour camps, like those working on the Thai-Burma Railway at Kanu Camp Thailand, where 60,000 British, Commonwealth and Dutch prisoners worked on the railway, and 16,000 of them perished doing so. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-life-was-like-for-pows-in-the-far-east-during-the-second-world-war There is some vivid testimony from two such prisoners who later became very well-known novelists. One was the Australian born James Clavell who wrote the screenplay for The Great Escape (1963) and later wrote the first of his ‘Asian trilogy’ novels Shogun (1975) partially around his war-time experiences at Changi prison in Singapore. The other was the British writer J.G. Ballard whose family was interned in the Lunghua internment camp near Shanghai in China, and based his autobiographical novel Empire of The Sun (1984) on childhood memories of life there. J.G. Ballard incidentally claims that he and other occupants of the Lunghua camp actually saw the flash of the second atomic bomb when it detonated over Nagasaki 500 miles away across the East China Sea on the morning of August 9 1945. Both of these writers make the point that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 probably saved their own lives and those of countless other POWs and internees, because many of them simply could not have survived the effects of chronic malnutrition they were experiencing at the hands of the Japanese for much longer. They might well have been dead if the war had ended 6 months later. James Clavell who was living on 110 grams of rice per day, one egg per week and occasional vegetables in Changi prison camp was unable to talk about his wartime experience for 15 years, but later disclosed that for quite some time after, he kept a can of sardines in his pocket at all times, and had to fight the urge to forage for food in rubbish bins.