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Monday, Oct. 28, 2024

2:28pm EDT

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Complex Numbers

by Spirit HalloWaltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #1196512

Not for the faint of art.

Complex Numbers

A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.

The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.

Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.

Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.

http://www.ddewey.net/mandelbrot/

Signature for Honorable Mentions in 2018 Quill Awards

A signature for exclusive use of winners at the 2019 Quill Awards

Signature for those who have won a Quill Award at the 2020 Quill Awards

Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

NIGHTMARE BUSTER Boo

about 3 hours ago
In response to "Waste Not"

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6156cebc4c605e281289a232/6156cebc4c605eb8bc89... e%20for%20beginners%2024%2009%2018.pdf

Spirit HalloWaltz

about 3 hours ago
In response to "Waste Not"

NIGHTMARE BUSTER Boo

- Hey, it's a replicator from Star Trek!

Now let's invent the holodeck.

1 Like

NIGHTMARE BUSTER Boo

about 3 hours ago
In response to "Waste Not"

We the people of the world could use those products before they are compost as free sources for 3D printed foods that could be used for emergency food, or if tasty enough, re sold.https://builtin.com/articles/3d-printed-food

1 Like

Elisa: Stik or Treat

about 4 hours ago
In response to "Waste Not"

When looking at the article, I did notice that they discussed compostings' pros and cons. I recognize the initial cost would go up, but I do think increasing composting infrastructure could be a productive way to address surplus perishables. I know in somd municipalities that have composting the pickup for that is handled by the local authorities, so enforcement can be built in. It can be one of a few strategies implemented simultaneously (such as donating food that's still safe for consumption but composting items that have already reached an inedible stage).

2 Like

Elisa: Stik or Treat

a day ago
In response to "Revisited: "Stylish""

I admit I don't even hear the "like/comment subscribe" verbiage anymore, although it helps that I follow several channels that don't include it. That said, having heard directly from some YouTubers, they say that because it works much better than we like to admit. I'll be touching on this a bit in today's Watch This Space entry (which I'm trying to write in a way that soesn't require watching the video to understand without being too full of spoilers for those who want to watch it).

As for drama, I think there is an overlooked middle ground: interacting with people in a meaningful context and having conflict stemming from a drive to achieve a common goal. I get this from my job and my PAC work, and it helps me maintain conflict resolution skills,

1 Like

tj: Tenebrous Jekyll

a day ago
In response to "Moon Illusion"

I've witnessed this as the moon, and sun have risen and set. I've also heard many of the wrong explanations.

1 Like

Spirit HalloWaltz

Oct 26, 2024 at 10:04am
In response to "But What I Want Is Cheesecake"

Good points, Elisa: Stik or Treat

. I hadn't known about the influenza thing, because I don't follow that sort of content.

Elisa: Stik or Treat

Oct 26, 2024 at 10:01am
In response to "But What I Want Is Cheesecake"

I've been mulling over this for a bit, and I've come to the conclusion that I think both the original post and you miss a few points on this concept. The term "intuitive eating" is being both actively and passively pushed as a way to try to counterbalance influencers that are straight up promoting disordered eating. (Yes, I would consider long term adherence to some protein-heavy diets to be disordered eating, as it promotes an incomplete picture of nutrition and contributes to forms of body dysmorphia that emphasize muscle size and visibility.) The discussion of intuitive eating is done the way it is to try to get a lot of bullshit out of algorithms, and I can appreciate that kind of move.

There are also a few things I'd like to offer comment on from the entry.

Given how emotional this work can be, experts recommend working with a professional when possible.

Again... this kind of nullifies the "intuitive" part.

Not necessarily. I've talked with my counselor about intuition. Honestly, I'm starting to believe that intuition is different from instinct (i.e. a behavior programmed prior to birth/hatching). Intuition is more of an unconscious expression of past experience. Since experience is different from person to person, how one experiences hunger on an intuitive level is actually externally learned first THEN internally programmed. Since intuitive eating is essentially a reprogramming exercise, working with a professional is useful. It's especially needed for those recovering from disordered eating.

Recently, there has been renewed interest in an approach called “intuitive eating”, based on the idea that your body already knows exactly what it needs.

Yes, it absolutely does, and apparently, it "needs" to be overweight.

Going back to the intuition development principle I mentioned earlier, if you are introduced to and eat vegetables regularly, it's definitely possible to come to crave them. And this can happen for those on assistance programs, but again there are a lot of cultural factors involved. I remember reading an article years ago where for a lot of low income people vegetables needed to be introduced to them in a somewhat structured way in order for them to more actively take donated produce of any kind. And yes, there is more active work being done to get fresh produce being donated to food banks. The point is, it takes time and practice, but a person can come around to picking produce or prepared veggies over a baked good. I'm not sure how I managed to reach this point as a toddler, but let's just say after I threw a fit to get an orange over a donut my mom stopped complaining about peeling oranges.

Giving yourself permission to eat what you want may involve wrestling with how your culture’s foods might have been villainized by mainstream, white American culture, Johnson explains.

Oh, give me a fucking break. I get that it's fashionable to turn mainstream white American culture into the Bad Guy, but how about doing it by ragging on deep-fried butter with mayonnaise, or whatever culinary abomination came out of some Midwestern state fair this year?

Because the worst food demonization isn't coming out of the Midwest? I mean, at least with those food-like things we all kind of know it's meant to be a joke. Unfortunately, I think the worst of this demonization is coming from the coasts. Feel free to fight me on that one.

1 Like

Fearlycia Lee ☮

Oct 25, 2024 at 12:24pm
In response to "Pass da Pasta"

Eh? No. I don't put it in the boiling water. I drizzle them on the pasta itself.

1 Like

Spirit HalloWaltz

Oct 25, 2024 at 11:00am
In response to "Pass da Pasta"

Fearlycia Lee ☮

- maybe it is true. At worst, you just waste olive oil; I don't think oil in the water can do any real harm to anything but your wallet.

1 Like

October 28, 2024 at 9:54am

#1079055

Waste Not

I don't know if I've used anything from Inverse before. This article caught my eye a while back.

The Rotten Secret Plaguing America’s Grocery Stores
Why, exactly, do grocery stores overstock food?

Just as the answer to any yes/no headline question is "no" by default, the answer to "why do [businesses] do [thing]" is almost always "money."

It's been a while since I saved this article, so let's see if I'm right.

We live on a planet where people still die of starvation, and yet we still waste so much food — it’s a problem, and not just for sustenance but the environment.

We can solve the problem, or we can learn to live with it. I did.

Part of it is just a category problem: Americans are used to seeing a wide and alluring variety of foods on shelves, and a lot of it, especially for produce and meats.

One of the first times I set foot in a Whole Fools, long before they merged with Amazon, I noticed the marketing gimmick of their produce section: an abundance of everything, all bins topped off and on the verge of overflowing. This was obviously a long time ago, but I remember thinking: "Some marketing expert decided that the store has to look like it'll never run out." I imagined stock clerks (or "associates" or whatever) being paid minimum wage to watch the produce section, and run in and replace every cantaloupe or courgette some customer put in their cart.

This is in contrast with other local grocery stores, who seemed to have no problem letting bins get nearly empty before replacing the contents. I imagine that's bad in a couple of ways. Some people, seeing that there are only three oranges left, will move on to buy something else, thinking, perhaps, "Those three must have been the ones no one else wanted," or, if they're more generous in their estimation of humans, "Let someone who really needs them have them." Others will grab all three, thinking something like "I'd better get that now," and then they don't eat them, thus simply moving the food waste problem from the producer to the consumer.

To be clear, though, I have no idea if there's any difference in food waste between WF and, say, Kroger.

So what do the stores do? They overpurchase, “knowing that some food waste must be built into their bottom line,” says Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

And what do they do with the unbought food? Do they donate it to homeless shelters? Not from what I've heard; they just toss it into a dumpster under a surveillance camera to make sure no one's getting free food.

Profit margins on perishable foods are so high that stores would rather overstock so as not to miss even one sale.

Yeah, I'm going to need a citation for that. But it does tie in to my "money" answer above.

On the high-tech side, retailers are starting to use artificial intelligence to better determine how much and when to order food items.

Using AI, huh? Well, that should calm consumer fears.

Another high-tech solution is “dynamic pricing,” or flexible price points that can shift depending on real-world market factors, in this case allowing stores to discount items that are getting close to the end of their shelf life.

That's actually pretty cool, in my opinion. Though stores have done a version of that for as long as I can remember, selling yesterday's bakery products, for example, at a discount. (The article does point that out.)

Still, when food does go unsold, it can go somewhere more productive than a landfill, and there, too, ReFED has seen progress. In the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment, signatories increased the percentage of unsold food that was composted by 28 percent and donated by 20 percent.

Okay, so maybe some of it does get donated. My inner cynic (which is like 90% of me) wants to know if the companies get tax breaks for doing so.

One challenge for dynamic pricing is how to reduce prices without a ton of extra labor. Some startups are experimenting with digital labels that could be easily changed.

If a price can be easily changed, it can be easily increased. When gas stations moved from physical signs to digital ones, their prices became more dynamic, too, probably because it takes less labor to change it.

There are also plenty of hurdles for finding useful places for food waste to go. For one thing, “landfilling in the United States is dirt cheap,” Sanders says, so doing just about anything else with unsold food costs more.

"Landfilling." "Dirt cheap." I see what they did there.

Also, again: money.

Donating food, meanwhile, not only comes with liability risk to keep the food well preserved, but it also requires new processes and labor for store employees to collect the food and new partnerships for how it gets picked up and where it goes.

Yeah, you have to wonder about liability in those situations. That's gotta affect their bottom line, too.

At some point, change will require mandatory measures, not just voluntary ones, to disrupt that dynamic. “We need laws and regulations from the government to hold industry accountable and make food waste prevention a requirement,” Molidor says.

Oh, more regulations? You just lost half your support.

Anyway, I don't have solutions. Like I said, I forced myself to get comfortable with food waste, because it's like when you were a kid and you wouldn't eat your vegetables and your mom was like "Think of all the starving children in Ethiopia!" (or whatever place was well-known for having famine when you were a kid). And you pushed the plate toward her and said "Send it to them!"

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