megane-kun

But the Earth isn’t a plane.

Sure, human scaled patches of the Earth’s surface can be approximated by a similarly sized patch of a plane, but if we’re talking about tiling the entire surface of the Earth with buildings, it can actually be done using twelve pentagons or twenty isosceles triangles. We just need buildings whose footprints are roughly 1/12th and 1/20th the Earth’s surface respectively.

For the pentagon, that’d be around 510.07 × 10^12 m² divided by 12 = 42.505 × 10^12 m². With the Pentagon building having seven floors, one such building would have roughly 297.541 × 10^12 m² of floor space.

For the triangle, that’d be around 510.07 × 10^12 m² divided by 20 = 25.503 × 10^12 m². Assuming this building has seven floors like the Pentagon building does, it’d have roughly 178.524 × 10^12 m² of floor space.

The good thing about dividing into triangles, however is that it can be subdivided into four similar isosceles triangles, which can be applied recursively down to a far more realistic scale.

Doing that, we can subdivide the original triangles sixteen times yielding the following:

25.503 × 10^12 m² / (4^16) = 5.937 × 10^3 m²

And since the area of an isosceles triangle is equal to s²(√3)/4 we can rearrange things to find the side length of a compound with area of 5 937m²

s = √(4A/(√3)) = 117.103 m

I think that’s a human-enough scale for buildings.

In total, there’s 85 899 345 920 such buildings, covering the Earth.

If one such building has 7 floors, it’d have at most 41 559 m² of floor space.

EDIT:

Hit enter too soon. Additional proofreading.

Damn, I discovered a small mistake in the calculations partway through. Corrected.

I’ve used to like grids, but I’m now very partial to lists. I used to like how grids enable you to scan thumbnails quickly, (like in games, music, images and files), but now I find them to be quite distracting. In lists, if I know what I am looking for (name, file type, etc), I can quickly go to where I need to be, and only need to scan a few items.

Of course, if the list is incredibly long, it’d be more difficult, but even more so with a grid of thumbnails. The only possible exception here is images. Knowing when a photo was taken can give me a clue, but hell do I remember what I took that got saved as IMG_20230303163333.jpg is and how the content differs from IMG_2023030316303030.jpg

I can count to ten in seven languages. Not as many as some of the others here, I suppose?

Yes, I sometimes count in one of my target languages.

It is a measure of how your actions get you closer to your goals.

Hence, if my goal is learning Japanese, and I spend time in reading raw manga, I can argue I’m being productive. However, if my goal is to learn Rust, then reading raw manga is not being productive.

Productivity does not have an end goal other than what you set for yourself.

EDIT:

Edited the last sentence to make it say what I meant it to say. “Productivity has an end goal…” isn’t it. 😅

I wonder if answering “I don’t know, I haven’t checked” would count as:

• “Why is this bastard even trying to apply for a job when they can’t even count the number of toilets in their house?”
• “Probably trying to dodge the question, not good.”
• “Homeless motherfucker? REJECTED!”

I used to change WASD keybindings to ESDF for a similar reason. And in most of my emulators, IJKL stand for triangle, square, x, and circle (or their other console equivalents) respectively.

The rest are more or less assigned depending on the console. Since I mostly play PS1 games, the rest of the bindings are follows:

• L1: A
• L2: Q
• R1: ;
• R2: P
• Start: G
• Select: H

It’s a matter of social convention. I grew up where there’s a variety of foods that are typically thought of as “breakfast food”. There are those that would fit in nicely with a typical American breakfast (some bread, coffee, and perhaps some egg; chocolate rice porridge; congee), those that would be proper meals (some rice, either fried or plain white, some protein or two, and an egg), and those that are kinda in-between (noodle dishes, some can be thick and hearty).

I think it’s just something that can quickly be served up while I’m half-asleep and low on energy. A simple garlic fried rice with last night’s left overs or some fried sausages and an egg or two would be more than enough to kickstart my day, but it can be too much of a hassle to prepare on some days. Hence, I can understand why some people would fall into a habit of eating a “dessert breakfast” — high on sugars and easy to prepare.

Okay, so that’s like two-thirds of the earth’s surface (centered at the antipodal point), and it’s a random person. It’s almost certain that I don’t know this person (aside from the info just given to me), and that the easiest way I can help save them in 24 hours is to warn them online.

First off, how can I be sure that those premonitions are real? They’re of a random person that may or may not have an obiturary available to me after they’ve died. Worse, these obituaries might get published days after the death. Making sure that I’m not going crazy (or being driven crazy by those) would be pretty hard.

Listing the deaths (never in a computer, at least at this early stage) with all the details available to me would be a good start. The following details would be the most helpful:

• real name of the person
• the time of premonition
• date of the printed obituary (or the date of the newspaper where the obituary is printed on)

If there’s enough data to convince me that it is indeed real, and be able to tease out the rules of this power, I can start saving people.

First off, I’ll filter those forseen deaths. for those judged “bad”, I’ll keep the info to myself. I am assuming that part of this judgement is my morals, so I do have a hand in the deaths I fail to prevent, whether or not they’re judged “good” or “bad”. At any rate, this would likely be instantaneous, and would happen as I record the premonition and its details.

Second, I’ll create a website, a very secure one for obvious reasons, with effort done to isolate myself (any information that can lead to me) from this website. In this website, there’d be a page listing all the premonitions I decided would be published. Marked as “impending” (or something equally ominous) would be the premonitions I witnessed within the past 24 hours. Another page would list all of those ones (and where people could be alerted). Heck, maybe I can establish an RSS feed for this.

I guess, it’d be like techno Death Note, but I have zero control over the details.

Of course, that’d not be a very effective way of getting the information out. Relatives and friends of those people listed might even suspect the page has something to do with the deaths. I’d expect law enforcement to be on to me, tracing me via the hosting services, the ISP, etc. that I use to publish the website. And in the event they do get to me, and if I’m afforded any trial, people might not even believe what I tell them (even if I tell the entire truth).

If I do nothing, none of that will come to pass, but I’d be racked by guilt over the “good” deaths I am not able to prevent. On the other hand, even just getting that information out, even if no one ever benefits from it, is already putting myself and those around me at danger.

Personally? I don’t have the skills to create that website, let alone do it in such a way that it isolates me well enough to at least not get me arrested within a week of the site operating.

My closet has five drawers and an open space that has three layers next to it. The items in the drawers are arranged according to function.

• Drawer 1 (topmost): accessories This contains my handkerchiefs, face towels, bandannas, but also some headwear and gloves.
• Drawer 2: socks and underwear Pretty self-explanatory, I guess? I put this high up so that I don’t have to bend down, exposing my bare ass into the air when I need to get a change of underwear.
• Drawer 3: shorts Along with the next drawer, this is where I store my “housewear” which is just shorts and simple shirts (or undershirts)
• Drawer 4: undershirts Yep, undershirts and other simple shirts. This can also contain some old “outside shirts” repurposed to become housewear.
• Drawer 5 (bottom-most): cold weather clothes This contains my jackets, pajamas and other “cold weather clothes”. I live in a very warm place, so these see very rare use, hence, their position at the bottom drawer.

For the other space, it’s “outside wear” shirts organized by color for the top two layers. The top layer has shirts with simple, round-neck collars, and the middle layer has the shirts with less-than-simple collars. The bottom layer has my jeans, pants, and other “outside wear” clothes that are not shirts.

Those among them lacking in morals would make bank (or influence, whatever is afforded to them) justifying that government’s actions according to US constitutional law.

Five on Lemmy, one each on Mastodon and Pixelfed (techincally two each, since I moved instances). So that’s seven in total. More if other Fediverse services capture my fancy.

A horrible accident involving a pair of eyeglasses.

I bet the views of the Alps are majestic from there!

And yeah! I imagine the trip would be so much fun (though a bit exhausting). It’d be combining two of the things that fascinate me: mountains and trains.

I sometimes fantasize going from the northern tip of Scotland all the way to Singapore on a train. Not non-stop, of course, but maybe going from one city to another, spending some time on a city until I get my fill, and then hop on the train to the next one. All the way until I run out of land. Maybe from there (Singapore), I can do island-hopping across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Then road trip in Australia. But that’s really stretching it, not just in terms of logistics and planning. At the pace I do things, do I really want to spend like five years crawling through Europe, Asia, and Australia? Even if money’s no object, I don’t think I can do that.

Sorry for the ramble. Given the scope of the question, yeah, a cross-Europe mountain train trip is perhaps my limit (that’d be like, two weeks? maybe a month if I take my time to really enjoy each place I visit?)

Switzerland. Having grown up in the coastal plains, I just have this fascination with mountains. I don’t t have the physical condition to climb one, but just seeing them up close already makes me feel things. Being on top of one, even more so.

Maybe I can do even better and do a train journey from France, and then Switzerland, then across Austria, all the way to Hungary and Romania, making sure that I cross as many mountains as I possibly can.

In most urbanized areas, even in suburbs, you can buy daily necessities (food, personal hygiene, medicine, etc) in just a short walk. If in a subdivision, like in a suburb, there would be some houses with an attached corner store. Failing to find what you need there, a convenience store would be a bit further (either still inside the subdivision, or just out the gate).

If you need to do your groceries, you can use public transport to the market. Even within subdivisions (with some exceptions, like those for the wealthy), there usually would be some form of public transport that could take you to the main highway, and from there, to the market.

That’s just one that immediately came to mind upon reading the prompt. Not sure if there are others, but it’s the most striking to me, and one that I’ve taken for granted until hearing about the US’ suburbs.

Nothing will get done.

Well, not exactly. My clones could probably make a decent guess on what to do, but they’d procrastinate on it and do something else given what’s available to them. Before long, everyone starves to death.

• Publish prematurely in an attempt to take advantage of the momentum.
• Notice that there are grammatical, spelling, and typographical mistakes.
• Edit, attempt to explain the edits, while also introducing more mistakes.

Rinse and repeat.

It’s okay if there are patch notes, right? Right??

As I am right now? Hell no!

But there’d be a question gnawing at the back of my head: “If I am the chosen one, why?!” I’d probably hold on to that question as I try to do what I can to save the world. There must be a reason, right? There must be something that I can do.

Moreover, if it’s known to everyone (or at least to the ones that are powerful enough to make a difference), I’d leverage that fact to have them do something. Like, “Yeah, the Chosen One needs you to be his companion” or some cheesy shit like that. And in that case, I’d probably end up more as someone inspiring (or pushing) others to save the world rather than the actual person saving the world (not that I believe any one person can, tbh).

Petty and minor, huh?

• Dates are now YYYY-MM-DD (2025-02-25) for the short form, and dddd, YYYY mmmm DD (Tuesday, 2025 February 25) for the long form.

• Time is now written in 24-hour notation (14:44:41)

• The first paragraph in a section doesn’t have indentation, but all succeeding paragraphs do. For example:

  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.  Vestibulum quis velit aliquet, accumsan eros id, tincidunt lorem.  Integer ac arcu elit.  Sed efficitur mi vitae viverra egestas.  Quisque sed varius nisi.  Vestibulum in cursus diam.  Ut pharetra quis nibh at semper.  Integer dictum leo eu velit condimentum, a varius mi tempor.  Sed at nunc lacinia, consequat eros sed, fringilla quam.  Proin pulvinar ante ac ipsum suscipit dictum.  In libero augue, tristique iaculis libero in, bibendum eleifend massa.  Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.  Suspendisse a risus non lacus pellentesque molestie congue non risus.  Quisque ut condimentum dui.
  
      Aenean dictum leo at commodo accumsan.  Vestibulum ullamcorper diam et arcu bibendum maximus.  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.  Suspendisse porta libero sed nisi aliquam volutpat.  Nam rutrum, odio quis ultricies blandit, elit metus pulvinar diam, non condimentum tellus arcu sed eros.  Praesent nunc tellus, aliquam vitae leo sed, pellentesque placerat ex.  Aenean tincidunt libero magna, sed sagittis neque facilisis id.  Vivamus quis lectus nunc.
  
      Donec lacinia, dolor sed eleifend volutpat, massa dui elementum risus, congue sagittis tortor sem sed neque.  Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.  Pellentesque tempor risus arcu, a dapibus risus tristique in.  Ut sapien est, placerat ac lectus non, scelerisque feugiat nisi.  Nam nec luctus nibh.  Aenean id ultrices risus.  Phasellus magna enim, sodales sit amet nisi id, interdum interdum neque.  Sed scelerisque scelerisque lobortis.
  

• There are two spaces after a full stop, except when occurring at the end of a paragraph where there should be none.

• They will be used as a generic non-gendered pronoun and will be the default along with one. For example:

  • “Someone sent me an e-mail, but I am not sure they meant to send it to me.”
  • “Really, one should make sure the e-mail address is correct before sending an e-mail.”

• Functions that are called in other functions will be declared before any function that calls them.

• Functions should be around twenty lines long, and at most have three levels of nesting. Functions that are too long or have too much nesting should be revised and broken up into two or more functions.

• Code indentation (tabs) should be set to four spaces.

• Code will be formatted as follows.

  function (params) {
      // code
      }
  

EDIT:

Formatting

For those people like me thinking “WTF is a worry stone?”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worry_stone

Worry stones are smooth, polished gemstones, usually in the shape of an oval with a thumb-sized indentation, used for relaxation or anxiety relief.

Something one would fidget with when worried, I suppose.