ssmmww | 4 years ago | on: An app called Libby and the big business of library e-books
ssmmww's comments
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: Just because it’s falsifiable doesn’t mean it’s good science
*She
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: FDA is considering drugs to help kids quit vaping
One striking and highly suggestive statistic: 60-80% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia are smokers. (see e.g. the wiki article "schizophrenia and tobacco smoking", or https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smoki...)
While there are many possible explanations for this, a particularly compelling theory is that this is self-medication: nicotine directly alleviates some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, so schizophrenics naturally gravitate towards becoming heavy users.
Along these lines, albeit very anecdotally, many people take up smoking as self-medication for high levels of stress and anxiety.
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: Debussy’s Radical Search for Simplicity
To my not-very-well-trained ear, almost all composers before Debussy sound a little dated, corny, and constrained, and most composers after him - Bartok and Messiaen being important exceptions! - sound abstract and unmusical.
Debussy's music is at this equilibrium point where the harmonic language is complex and atonal enough to evoke a spectrum of iridescent colours and haunting, ambiguous moods inaccessible to traditional common-practice harmony, but just constrained enough to avoid the descent into hostility and noise.
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: America’s Epidemic of Empty Churches
Incidentally, more than 25% of UK pubs have closed since 2001:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/26/uk-pub-clos...
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: “The Riemann Hypothesis” by Michael Atiyah – Preprint
If this really is Atiyah's claimed proof, it is very sad and embarrassing indeed. I think it is in poor taste to discuss this as if it were a serious attempt at a proof.
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: Titans of Mathematics Clash Over Epic Proof of ABC Conjecture
No no no! His website is a treasure! I think the world needs many more garish, lurid, irreverent websites like this.
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: Titans of Mathematics Clash Over Epic Proof of ABC Conjecture
My understanding is that the Monty Hall problem was just a cute puzzle published in a pop-sci magazine that confused a few professors who perhaps ought not to have been confused by it. I don't think it says anything at all about the health of the mathematical community.
ssmmww | 7 years ago | on: Life and death on a superyacht
It’s presumably a reference to the fact that norovirus outbreaks are common on cruise ships.
ssmmww | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: What books are you currently reading?
Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and the Haskell Book.
page 1
That is, you pay an affordable monthly subscription fee in exchange for completely unfettered access to almost every published book, and authors are compensated per book/page/line read, or something like that.