Some Emails to the World
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Photons do not experience time!
According to relativity theory this is a nice interpretation....
At light speed time does not slow down, it stops completely. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, everything in the universe moves through spacetime at a constant overall rate equal to the speed of light. Objects with mass use part of that motion to move through time and part to move through space. The faster something moves through space, the slower it moves through time.
Photons are different because they have no mass, so they use all of their motion to move through space and none through time. That is why a photon does not experience the passage of time. From our perspective, light from a distant galaxy might take billions of years to reach us, but for the photon, the emission and absorption happen in the same instant. It never ages and never experiences time. It simply connects two points in spacetime as if distance and duration do not exist.
At light speed time does not slow down, it stops completely. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, everything in the universe moves through spacetime at a constant overall rate equal to the speed of light. Objects with mass use part of that motion to move through time and part to move through space. The faster something moves through space, the slower it moves through time.
Photons are different because they have no mass, so they use all of their motion to move through space and none through time. That is why a photon does not experience the passage of time. From our perspective, light from a distant galaxy might take billions of years to reach us, but for the photon, the emission and absorption happen in the same instant. It never ages and never experiences time. It simply connects two points in spacetime as if distance and duration do not exist.
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Think chess is just a board game?
Think again. Scientists say the number of possible chess games is greater than the number of atoms in the entire universe — and that’s not an exaggeration. Known as the Shannon Number, this mind-melting figure (around 10¹²⁰) means that every move you make could open a new universe of possibilities — literally!
That’s what makes chess so endlessly fascinating. Even after centuries of play, no two games have ever been the same. From ancient kings to modern AIs, everyone’s still trying to master this infinite puzzle. It’s not just a game of strategy — it’s a glimpse into the boundless complexity of human thought.
That’s what makes chess so endlessly fascinating. Even after centuries of play, no two games have ever been the same. From ancient kings to modern AIs, everyone’s still trying to master this infinite puzzle. It’s not just a game of strategy — it’s a glimpse into the boundless complexity of human thought.
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Points on the board
make that "63 AND COUNTING" winners of The Nobel Prize - say the stickers on our football helmets for our game against UNC tomorrow...
Cal just won FOUR more Nobel Prizes - Go Bears!
Big brains in these helmets too 🧠🏆
Cal just won FOUR more Nobel Prizes - Go Bears!
Big brains in these helmets too 🧠🏆
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vibe coding as contral-signal of originality
So the inventor of the term "vibe coding" basically admits that unless your programming task is some bog-standard simple thing, "AI" will probably not make you faster or better (_if_ you take your work and responsibility seriously and actually check what those bots generate) but the opposite. Quoting Mr. Karpathy:
"I tried to use claude/codex agents a few times but they just didn't work well enough at all and net unhelpful, possibly the repo is too far off the data distribution."
So _if_ your AI makes you faster you are probably doing something by hand that an already existing library or framework could mostly do for you anyways with high code quality.
"I tried to use claude/codex agents a few times but they just didn't work well enough at all and net unhelpful, possibly the repo is too far off the data distribution."
So _if_ your AI makes you faster you are probably doing something by hand that an already existing library or framework could mostly do for you anyways with high code quality.
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11th century method for calculating Earth's radius!
Al-Biruni calculated the Earth's radius to be approximately 6,339.9 km (or 6,336 km in some sources), which is an incredibly close estimate for his time. He used a method involving trigonometry, the height of a mountain, and measuring the angle of the horizon's dip from the mountaintop. This calculation was highly accurate, with a margin of error of less than 1% compared to modern measurements.
Al-Biruni's method:
Concept: Al-Biruni understood that the Earth's curvature causes the horizon to appear lower from a mountaintop than from sea level.
Height measurement: He determined the height of a mountain by measuring the angle of elevation from two different points on flat ground.
Horizon dip: Using an astrolabe, he measured the angle of dip (or depression) of the horizon below the horizontal line from the mountaintop.
Calculation: He applied the law of sines to the large triangle formed by the Earth's center, the mountaintop, and the horizon to calculate the Earth's radius.
Result: His calculation for the radius was about 6,339.9 km, and his estimate for the circumference was within 0.3% of today's accepted value.
Al-Biruni's method:
Concept: Al-Biruni understood that the Earth's curvature causes the horizon to appear lower from a mountaintop than from sea level.
Height measurement: He determined the height of a mountain by measuring the angle of elevation from two different points on flat ground.
Horizon dip: Using an astrolabe, he measured the angle of dip (or depression) of the horizon below the horizontal line from the mountaintop.
Calculation: He applied the law of sines to the large triangle formed by the Earth's center, the mountaintop, and the horizon to calculate the Earth's radius.
Result: His calculation for the radius was about 6,339.9 km, and his estimate for the circumference was within 0.3% of today's accepted value.
express, not stress