back and better than ever pt 2

-when he does the first big jump the announcers start screaming. I don't understand enough of what I'm looking at to get what about this is breaking records but the announcers screaming was a pretty big clue

-He's dancing to music from Succession????? I don't recognize all of it but some of it is definitely the theme from Succession. At one point the audience claps along to the music. And I'm not sure if it's out of support for the skater or because they like the song 🤣

That first big jump is a Quadruple Axel. It's 4.5 rotations in the air (you take off forwards rather than backwards, which is the extra half rotation). Nobody else in the world can do this jump it's so hard. He is the first and only person to ever land it cleanly, much less consistently. He had to land it cleanly here to have any hope of winning the World Champion title.

Yes, he's skating to music from Succession! The audience is clapping in support because he was doing so well (also because it was hosted in Montreal and the audience was very supportive of all the skaters that evening).

He lays down on the ice because he just broke multiple world records. He landed all 6 types of quadruple jumps cleanly, which no one has ever done at all (again, because he's the only one that can do the quad Axel), much less in a single program like this. This was an insane feat of athletic ability! If you go watch the other guys who competed against him, Yuma Kagiyama was in second place by 20 fucking points, and Yuma skated with no falls. This is Micheal Phelps / Katie Ledecky levels of smashing the competition (sorry the only other sport I know is swimming).

Some other notes for everyone:

Ilia listed that first jump as a Triple Axel on the sheet you give to the judges, meaning that he wasn't committed to doing the Quad Axel. (Technically you're not committed to anything on the sheet but it's generally your "plan" for the program.) He also doesn't do a quad axel in the 6-minute warmup beforehand when he does go and do it in the program, so it was a complete toss-up as to whether he was going to go for it. It's incredible that he manages to land the jump so perfectly without warming it up first!

He was 3rd coming into this skate from the previous short program. (All skating competitions require you to skate 2 different programs, 1 short and 1 long.) In order to win the title, he was going to have to skate without any falls, especially because his one strong point is his jumps and other skaters are stronger in other areas. There are many, many skaters who fall on their quad jumps, even when they're just doing one. It is so fucking hard to do even one of the 6 types of quad jumps. And he just does all 6! In one program! Insanity!

He did a 4 Lutz - 3 Flip at the halfway point of his program. Almost no one puts a Flip on the end of their combos, it'll usually be a Salchow instead because it's much easier. The only other skater I can think of to put a Flip on the end of a combo is Shoma Uno (who was also at these championships but didn't have a good skate).

His last jumping pass was a combo that was supposed to be a 3 Lutz - 2 Axel. He decided, in the moment, to change the 2 Axel to a 3 Axel. Nobody else has ever attempted this, much less succeeded. It is orders of magnitude more difficult to do another rotation to the second jump in a combo, at the very end of a 4.5 minute sprint no less.

So like… It isn’t THAT out there that someone was able to make a digital version of it. Making an algorithm that randomly generates every possible combination of those 29 characters within that space and making a website that lets you explore those combinations are things that are pretty squarely within the scope of things you’d expect someone to be able to make a computer do.

But it begins to get pretty out there when you start thinking about all the things that are technically contained there (and that someone randomly browsing it could THEORETICALLY stumble upon) just by virtue of being one of those possible combinations of letters, spaces, commas, and periods.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that specifically mentions me by full name before giving an accurate, excruciatingly detailed, 410-page long physical description of me. There’ also many more books that SEEM to be that but are actually factually inaccurate. There’s also versions of all of those containing every possible combination of every possible typo, spelling mistake, and grammatical error.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s a perfectly accurate prediction of how and when I will die narrated in third person over the course of 410 pages. There’s also a book that contains the exact same events narrated in first person. Not only for me, but for every person in the world. There are many more that claim to be that but are actually inaccurate.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s completely blank except for the world’s funniest dick joke written right at the end of the very last page.

on the second to last page, about halfway down it reads “OH TIME THY PYRAMIDS” a singular grain of order in the sea of chaos.

The library of babel contains every book to ever exist and moreover it contains all information that can be encoded in a finite string of characters from its alphabet.

So in the book, the library of Babel consists of a bunch of hexagonical rooms, arranged more or less like a beehive. Two walls are doors connecting them to adjoining hexagons. One wall contains the supplies necessary for human life. the other three walls contain these 410-page books (it’s 410 pages because that’s how long Borges’ copy of Don Quixote was), most of which are gibberish.

The story is mostly focused on what life is like for the humans inside the Library- their only source of stimulation is the books, they have no idea why they’re here, and they can’t get out. It’s generally agreed that the answer to why they’re here and how to get out is somewhere in the library, but there are literally TRILLIONS of books, and as stated above, even if you find one that makes sense, there’s no way to know if it’s true. some people have devoted themselves to searching for the way out, some just collect anything that makes sense, and some are wholesale burning every book they find to try to break the library.

Borges wrote his story in the 1930’s well before the advent of databases, and the mechanics of the library weren’t the main focus- the effect on people when confronted with the dubiousness of The Truth was. We now live in an era where the Library is Real- or at least, a digital version of it is, and we may be able to do something none of Borges’ characters could:

Actually sort the damn thing.

Text AI is unfortunately being used for stupid purposes, but we’re getting close to machines that can read text and reasonably judge if the text is gibberish or Real Words, and do so at speed. There are Trillions of Books, but we crunch bigger datasets than that.

Imagine a sorting algorithm that moves through the library, room by room, reading every book in the room in a flash, and flagging it as “total gibberish” or “some comprehensible text”, highlighting any comprehensible text, and perhaps even searching for cryptographic clues in the nonsense. It’s going through the library much, much faster than any human can, and methodically, room-by-room, never returning to a room it’s already processed, a but like the old phone game of Snake.

Acutally, kind of literally. I imagine it would manifest in the database as a sort of enormous serpent, twisting through the labyrinthine library, devouring books whole. The Comprehensible ones are left standing on the shelves in its wake, survivors not of a force of nature, but a cataclysm of technology.

…But can you trust it?

Who created this monster? What parameters did they use? Why the hell did they make this thing? Can you trust the creator’s motives? and what about the serpent itself? Is it a mindless thing, following it’s creator’s orders, or is there a spark of self with in it? Has the consumption of this data changed it? Or are we talking to

Your ex boyfriend is not a "narcissist". He's a typical misogynistic douchebag who treats women like shit because society allows him to.

Your boss is not a "narcissist". They're a typical classist dipshit who thinks workers' entire purpose in life is to generate profit because society allows them to.

And even if they happen to be a "narcissist", that's not what gave them the power to get away with abuse.

She explains she wore a freshly ironed blazer with a collared top. Her nails were painted a professional beige. She got a blowout for her hair, so a professional style. She had on subdued gold earrings.

The only thing she wasn’t wearing was makeup; she states she really doesn’t wear makeup, and only had chapstick on, as her skin is sensitive. Her lawyer mother has already explained she has no legal case against the company for any type of gender-based discrimination.

Just in case anyone wants to ask why feminists still refer to the “pink tax” or rail against more and more elaborate makeup trends being pushed on girls and women.

couple things here:

multiple things can actually be bad at the same time

Little kids really aren’t equipped to work full time without damaging their physical, mental, and emotional development and health, and when you play the “but adults work all day!” card you sound like a nineteenth century textile baron.

Highschoolers can easily be “working” 40+ hours a week, between school, homework, and extracurriculars and/or part-time work, and still hear this smug “:/ wait til you get to the real world sweaty” rhetoric all the time.

- When my work day is done, it’s done. I don’t need to spend hours each night to study or do homework. 

- I don’t have tests and exams.

Or I’ll be asleep dreaming that I’m at school but suddenly realize at the end of the semester that I’ve missed all my classes and don’t know what’s going on