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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Because of Al-Kwarazimi. Hindu-Arabic math is base 10 and Al-Kwarazimi developed a really good method for doing math as well as inventing algebra. Base 10 spread with his methods. It looks like the Chinese were also using base 10 as far back as during the Shang dynasty. Meanwhile Europeans and their cultural descendants still use base 5 for ceremonial purposes (yes, even in MMXXV)

    As an engineer life would be easier if we all thought in base 12, for my wife as a computer scientist life would be easier if it was in 2^n. 10 is a really convenient sized number for arithmetic and algebra though. Babylon was insane i genuinely can’t imagine trying to teach children the name and order of 60 digits to the point of instinctive mathematical understanding


  • Yeah it does. Firstly, outside the former confederacy segregation wasn’t as sticky of an issue. That’s not to say we aren’t racist, we’re just less comfortable announcing it. In the Midwest people of his generation would be using euphemisms. Like I’m in my 30s and spend most of my life in Ohio and never heard an old person in that region call for segregation even when they’re shitfaced, instead they talk about drugs, crime, “inner city types”, and rap music when they want to be anti black.

    American bigotry has very regional flavoring and southern is notoriously shameless.

    The other big thing is that the Christianity he’s rejecting sounds like southern Christianity. Every region of the US has it’s vibes of what they mean when they say Christian.

    So yeah it’s everything he reads as foreign to me as an Aussie. The mason Dixon line feels to many Americans as much a cultural divide as the border with Canada, though ontarians have always seemed more reasonable than southerners.