Uhh, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that, but I’m not sure where now. Any time you need to access a member of a list or array that’s determined by a polynomial - which by Horner’s rule covers all combinations of multiplications and additions - it would be a possible notation. There’s also times when polynomials are used for their own sake, without actually having a meaningful value, and I wouldn’t rule out someone using one of those in an imaginary hypergeneralised data structure somehow, because we just can’t have nice things.

Transfinite algorithms are definitely a topic of research.

Yeah, the Arab spring didn’t really make a huge impact in the end, but it definitely had the potential, and that was down to social media.

One of the new theories I’ve seen is that people, through social media, are being exposed to more viewpoints they disagree with, and radicalising in response - in other words not enough echo chambers. Using the opposite argument to support the same conclusion is suspicious as hell.

I’m not Texan, so unfortunately I can’t really comment on that, but it does sound like a messy clusterfuck.

I’m not denying that having positions and influence can be used to make money, and even in legal ways, but you bet the backstabbing continues, at least in every situation I’m privy to.

Including black Americans?

If we’re talking mathematicians, you just know it’s going to be ω-nested recursive functions any moment now. Just be grateful it’s not all n with polynomial subscripts or something.

The more time a coder spends in #2, the more I trust them.

The trick there is that you’ll be developing forever unless you get your hands dirty, because it like 80% works, and you need 99% to put it in any kind of prod.

Arguably, it’s still less of a joke than it ever was during the Cold War, and was having a golden age up until quite recently.

Fun. Fun fun fun. /s

Please vote, Americans; we all have a guess who Wiemar Germany is this time around.

I’m close enough to politicians and other “powerful” people to say that nobody’s getting a free lunch like that. If you want to climb the ladder, you hustle for it and probably lose, whether you’re gunning for a position in a national cabinet or just food security. The best return you can reliably get on wealth is around 10%, if you don’t mind volatility, and if you could buy connections or fame it’s my guess that it would work out about the same.

If you’re talking about white collar crime, you can make a lot of money that way very easily, but you’re also on borrowed time until someone else looks closely at the books. If you try to completely cover your tracks that’s pricey and complex itself, and it seems that soon enough you’re just working a different kind of 9-5 (blackhat hackers being a great example).