1
The Lounge / I am here.
« on: August 02, 2023, 01:12:42 AM »
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2
The Lounge / Train tragedy in Greece
« on: March 03, 2023, 02:48:28 AM »
2 days ago two trains collided in Greece. Officially there is more than 50 people dead, and about as many more missing. There's probably going to be more than 100 deaths: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64820085
These days have been terrible. My partner is panicking because she used that line a lot, and her friend is looking for her friend who is missing. Many if not most of the people in the wreck were students because they commuted from one city to another to go to their universities, and a lot had gone down to Patra for the carnival so they were returning.
The infuriating thing is that it was completely and easily preventable. The government is trying to pin the blame on the station master for forgetting to press a button or whatever. The media is playing the same game for the most part. But that is just ridiculous.
The state owned company in charge of the railways was privatized after the crisis and sold for less than 43 million euros, and since then the state has granted the Italian company in charge hundreds of millions to keep operating some less profitable train routes. It was basically theft. The new private company also bought some shit trains that Switzerland had abolished because they were too unreliable and dangerous and advertised them here as ultra modern and amazing. These were not the trains involved here (although they have broken down multiple times), but it just goes to show the degree of abandonment and cynicism. Even more importantly, the fucking signage just plain isn't working, neither are any of the automated systems that are supposed to be in charge of routing the trains etc, and nobody is bothering to fix them, so it's all basically down to one dude pressing buttons, and if that dude forgets to press one button or if it breaks or whatever apparently the trains collide, because the drivers can't tell if another train is on the same line due to signage not working. Furthermore, the personnel is now far less than legally required, less than half the European average per kilometer of line, and not even close to what it was before the crisis and privatization.
The railway worker unions had attempted to strike many times and had given warnings many times, including about 20 days ago when they said there would be more accidents if nothing is done. But they were ignored and their strikes are being deemed illegal according to a new law. Even the strike they are doing right now, after the accident, is being deemed illegal, despite the fact they have literally every reason to be doing that. After all many of their coworkers just died doing what they will have to be doing every day.
Greece has the deadliest railways in the EU:
https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Greece/Warning-No-Signal-199483
The privatization of the lines was a joke, and the new owners are practically mocking us:
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/etr470-train-switzerland-greece-italy-trainose
This is criminal but the people in fault will not be prosecuted, only the mostly irrelevant immediately "responsible" people (if they're even really responsible and the system didn't just malfunction which is very likely) who should never have been put in the position to have so many lives depending on their simple easy to make errors in the first place. It's highly unlikely that anyone more responsible will be touched since, get this, the Supreme Court Prosecutor who has been put in charge to investigate the disaster has a son who recently got hired in the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. It's just all bad.
These days have been terrible. My partner is panicking because she used that line a lot, and her friend is looking for her friend who is missing. Many if not most of the people in the wreck were students because they commuted from one city to another to go to their universities, and a lot had gone down to Patra for the carnival so they were returning.
The infuriating thing is that it was completely and easily preventable. The government is trying to pin the blame on the station master for forgetting to press a button or whatever. The media is playing the same game for the most part. But that is just ridiculous.
The state owned company in charge of the railways was privatized after the crisis and sold for less than 43 million euros, and since then the state has granted the Italian company in charge hundreds of millions to keep operating some less profitable train routes. It was basically theft. The new private company also bought some shit trains that Switzerland had abolished because they were too unreliable and dangerous and advertised them here as ultra modern and amazing. These were not the trains involved here (although they have broken down multiple times), but it just goes to show the degree of abandonment and cynicism. Even more importantly, the fucking signage just plain isn't working, neither are any of the automated systems that are supposed to be in charge of routing the trains etc, and nobody is bothering to fix them, so it's all basically down to one dude pressing buttons, and if that dude forgets to press one button or if it breaks or whatever apparently the trains collide, because the drivers can't tell if another train is on the same line due to signage not working. Furthermore, the personnel is now far less than legally required, less than half the European average per kilometer of line, and not even close to what it was before the crisis and privatization.
The railway worker unions had attempted to strike many times and had given warnings many times, including about 20 days ago when they said there would be more accidents if nothing is done. But they were ignored and their strikes are being deemed illegal according to a new law. Even the strike they are doing right now, after the accident, is being deemed illegal, despite the fact they have literally every reason to be doing that. After all many of their coworkers just died doing what they will have to be doing every day.
Greece has the deadliest railways in the EU:
https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Greece/Warning-No-Signal-199483
The privatization of the lines was a joke, and the new owners are practically mocking us:
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/etr470-train-switzerland-greece-italy-trainose
This is criminal but the people in fault will not be prosecuted, only the mostly irrelevant immediately "responsible" people (if they're even really responsible and the system didn't just malfunction which is very likely) who should never have been put in the position to have so many lives depending on their simple easy to make errors in the first place. It's highly unlikely that anyone more responsible will be touched since, get this, the Supreme Court Prosecutor who has been put in charge to investigate the disaster has a son who recently got hired in the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. It's just all bad.
3
The Lounge / Dabbing on the Americans by being hospitalized for myocarditis without paying
« on: September 26, 2022, 08:01:24 AM »
So yeah that's happening now lol viruses suck.
But it's fine, I actually don't hurt, and the cardiologist said it's mild enough that she doesn't even see anything on the ultrasound, I probably have a little bit of fever though.
But it's fine, I actually don't hurt, and the cardiologist said it's mild enough that she doesn't even see anything on the ultrasound, I probably have a little bit of fever though.
4
Arts & Entertainment / Vangelis died :(
« on: May 19, 2022, 01:18:39 PM »
Vangelis Papathanasiou was one of the best known Greek composers. He died yesterday of covid.
You may know him from his famous soundtracks, for instance Conquest of Paradise:
Or Chariots of Fire:
Or maybe the Blade Runner soundtrack:
Before his famous soundtracks he was the keyboardist of an old Greek rock band called Aphrodite's Child, which was one of the first major rock bands in the country:
One of my favorite pieces from him is his version of the great byzantine hymn "O glyky mou ear":
You may know him from his famous soundtracks, for instance Conquest of Paradise:
Or Chariots of Fire:
Or maybe the Blade Runner soundtrack:
Before his famous soundtracks he was the keyboardist of an old Greek rock band called Aphrodite's Child, which was one of the first major rock bands in the country:
One of my favorite pieces from him is his version of the great byzantine hymn "O glyky mou ear":
5
The Lounge / The most important Greek composer of all time dies at 96 years old
« on: September 02, 2021, 02:18:19 PM »
Today Mikis Theodorakis, almost unanimously considered the greatest Greek composer and one of the most important personalities in the country, died at 96 years of age.
In fact his music is so famous you probably have heard it somewhere, even if you don't know it. For instance, the famous Sirtaki from the movie Zorbas the Greek:
Or the theme from Serpico:
However, his most important work, often considered his magnum opus, was Axion Esti, his musical transfer of the poem of the same name by Odysseas Elytis, the Nobel prize winning poet, an epic symphony combining elements of 20th century (especially Russian) classical music, byzantine music, and Greek folk. He is seen conducting it here in 1977:
To understand his work you first have to understand his life, and the historical context of his music. He was born in Crete in 1925 and showed great musical talent from very young, presenting his first work at 17 years old. At the same time he joined the resistance against Axis invasion of Greece. The next year, in 1943, he was captured and tortured by Italian occupation forces. After his escape, he joined ELAS (Greek People's Liberation Army) the communist rebel forces. His experiences in the resistance were formative for his later development. Soon after the retreat of the occupiers from Greece, the civil war began, and he was once again persecuted and finally arrested in 1947. He was eventually released after an amnesty granted by the government, at which point he went underground and joined the Democratic Army of Greece, the communist side of the civil war. However he was once again arrested and sent to Makronisos, a prison island, where he was tortured to the point of paralysis in his legs, from which he never fully recovered. In 1949 he was finally let free due to his disability.
After his recovery, he graduated from the Athens School of Music in 1950. That same year he attempts suicide but he is saved. In 1954 he leaves Greece and enters in a Parisian conservatory where he studies music under Olivier Messiaen, the important 20th century classical composer, and others. In 1957 he receives the first prize in the Moscow music festival from Shostakovich for his Suite no. 1 for piano and orchestra, a dissonant and complex work influenced by composers such as Igor Stravinsky:
He didn't become so important to Greece however until he "rediscovered" the folk music of Greece. His first such work was Epitafios, based on a book by Giannis Ritsos, a fellow communist poet:
He returns to Greece in 1960 and puts music to the words of Giorgos Seferis, the other Nobel prize winning poet in his album Epifania, which was an incredible success.
Here is an excerpt of Theodorakis conducting for the final time the song Arnisi off of that album in 2017:
The beautiful Kratisa ti Zoi Mou from the same album:
Finally, he presents Axion Esti in 1964. He had already written most of it however he postponed release because he did not think the Greek public was ready for it yet. Around the same time he is elected in the parliament with EDA (United Democratic Left) and composes the theme of Zorba which makes him famous worldwide.
In 1966 he returns to Ritsos, and composes some of his most distinctly revolutionary songs, such as "Otan Sfigoun to Heri", played here by the Red Army Choir:
He also composes Mautthausen, a tribute to Holocaust victims. Here is a rendition of his song Ballad of Mautthausen by Joan Baez:
But in 1967, a military coup brings an end to the already very fragile democracy, and the junta government vehemently opposes Theodorakis. IHe was one of the founders of the first resistance organization, which resulted in him being arrested very quickly and his music being banned. The ban is satirized in this famous scene from a comedy with Thanassis Veggos, released after the fall of the regime in 1974:
During his imprisonment, he is subjected to terrible conditions and torture, and his health degrades rapidly. However, he manages to smuggle some of his works out. It led to his composition of works like The Slaughterhouse:
Or Eimaste Dio:
However, the global outcry against his imprisonment led to him being freed in 1970. It was during this time that Axion Esti became a symbol of resistance against the junta, with songs from that work such as Ena to Helidoni, a song about the burden the people have to carry to achieve liberation:
Lone is the swallow, and costly is the spring
it takes a lot of work for the sun to return
it takes thousands dead at the wheels
and it takes those who are alive giving their blood
Or this one, again performed by the Red Army Choir in honor of the 200 years since the Greek revolution:
So this is the context which lead to him achieving the status he has after the fall of the junta, and critically influenced virtually all Greek music.
Personally I am honored to be able to say I met him, albeit as a little child. I actually have a photo with him somewhere... I distinctly remember his hand being very dry and wrinkly lol
In fact his music is so famous you probably have heard it somewhere, even if you don't know it. For instance, the famous Sirtaki from the movie Zorbas the Greek:
Or the theme from Serpico:
However, his most important work, often considered his magnum opus, was Axion Esti, his musical transfer of the poem of the same name by Odysseas Elytis, the Nobel prize winning poet, an epic symphony combining elements of 20th century (especially Russian) classical music, byzantine music, and Greek folk. He is seen conducting it here in 1977:
To understand his work you first have to understand his life, and the historical context of his music. He was born in Crete in 1925 and showed great musical talent from very young, presenting his first work at 17 years old. At the same time he joined the resistance against Axis invasion of Greece. The next year, in 1943, he was captured and tortured by Italian occupation forces. After his escape, he joined ELAS (Greek People's Liberation Army) the communist rebel forces. His experiences in the resistance were formative for his later development. Soon after the retreat of the occupiers from Greece, the civil war began, and he was once again persecuted and finally arrested in 1947. He was eventually released after an amnesty granted by the government, at which point he went underground and joined the Democratic Army of Greece, the communist side of the civil war. However he was once again arrested and sent to Makronisos, a prison island, where he was tortured to the point of paralysis in his legs, from which he never fully recovered. In 1949 he was finally let free due to his disability.
After his recovery, he graduated from the Athens School of Music in 1950. That same year he attempts suicide but he is saved. In 1954 he leaves Greece and enters in a Parisian conservatory where he studies music under Olivier Messiaen, the important 20th century classical composer, and others. In 1957 he receives the first prize in the Moscow music festival from Shostakovich for his Suite no. 1 for piano and orchestra, a dissonant and complex work influenced by composers such as Igor Stravinsky:
He didn't become so important to Greece however until he "rediscovered" the folk music of Greece. His first such work was Epitafios, based on a book by Giannis Ritsos, a fellow communist poet:
He returns to Greece in 1960 and puts music to the words of Giorgos Seferis, the other Nobel prize winning poet in his album Epifania, which was an incredible success.
Here is an excerpt of Theodorakis conducting for the final time the song Arnisi off of that album in 2017:
The beautiful Kratisa ti Zoi Mou from the same album:
Finally, he presents Axion Esti in 1964. He had already written most of it however he postponed release because he did not think the Greek public was ready for it yet. Around the same time he is elected in the parliament with EDA (United Democratic Left) and composes the theme of Zorba which makes him famous worldwide.
In 1966 he returns to Ritsos, and composes some of his most distinctly revolutionary songs, such as "Otan Sfigoun to Heri", played here by the Red Army Choir:
He also composes Mautthausen, a tribute to Holocaust victims. Here is a rendition of his song Ballad of Mautthausen by Joan Baez:
But in 1967, a military coup brings an end to the already very fragile democracy, and the junta government vehemently opposes Theodorakis. IHe was one of the founders of the first resistance organization, which resulted in him being arrested very quickly and his music being banned. The ban is satirized in this famous scene from a comedy with Thanassis Veggos, released after the fall of the regime in 1974:
During his imprisonment, he is subjected to terrible conditions and torture, and his health degrades rapidly. However, he manages to smuggle some of his works out. It led to his composition of works like The Slaughterhouse:
Or Eimaste Dio:
However, the global outcry against his imprisonment led to him being freed in 1970. It was during this time that Axion Esti became a symbol of resistance against the junta, with songs from that work such as Ena to Helidoni, a song about the burden the people have to carry to achieve liberation:
Lone is the swallow, and costly is the spring
it takes a lot of work for the sun to return
it takes thousands dead at the wheels
and it takes those who are alive giving their blood
Or this one, again performed by the Red Army Choir in honor of the 200 years since the Greek revolution:
So this is the context which lead to him achieving the status he has after the fall of the junta, and critically influenced virtually all Greek music.
Personally I am honored to be able to say I met him, albeit as a little child. I actually have a photo with him somewhere... I distinctly remember his hand being very dry and wrinkly lol
6
Arts & Entertainment / WTF Uri Geller?
« on: May 20, 2021, 02:28:01 AM »
Sooo I had heard a lot about Uri Geller but I didn't really know what his shtick was, I had never seen him do a trick, I just knew he bent spoons and stuff like that. I accidentally found a video where James Randi was exposing him:
What I was impressed was how stupid his trick was. I genuinely have no clue how he got this famous. It's awfully boring and it just so clearly looks like something's up from the handle right from the start and that he's pushing it around with his fingers. What kind of a stupid "power" is that anyways, he can bend them using his mind but he also has to rub them a bunch for some reason? It's also so shoddy and suspicious right from the start, like, they offer him to use some other piece of cutlery and he's like "naaaah I'll use this one". And for a moment apparently he got worried that he picked the wrong one because he lifted another one off the tray and looked at the handle. It's ridiculous.
What a talentless hack, I don't mind "magicians" who pretend they're for real too much because, you know, whatever, it's their job and it's kind of like an art form. I prefer the ones who don't pretend, but it is still fine by me. But there's so many people who are so much better than this moron, and the wildest thing is that the other morons at CIA actually took him seriously for some reason. It also doesn't help that he litigated against people who exposed him. What an asshole.
What I was impressed was how stupid his trick was. I genuinely have no clue how he got this famous. It's awfully boring and it just so clearly looks like something's up from the handle right from the start and that he's pushing it around with his fingers. What kind of a stupid "power" is that anyways, he can bend them using his mind but he also has to rub them a bunch for some reason? It's also so shoddy and suspicious right from the start, like, they offer him to use some other piece of cutlery and he's like "naaaah I'll use this one". And for a moment apparently he got worried that he picked the wrong one because he lifted another one off the tray and looked at the handle. It's ridiculous.
What a talentless hack, I don't mind "magicians" who pretend they're for real too much because, you know, whatever, it's their job and it's kind of like an art form. I prefer the ones who don't pretend, but it is still fine by me. But there's so many people who are so much better than this moron, and the wildest thing is that the other morons at CIA actually took him seriously for some reason. It also doesn't help that he litigated against people who exposed him. What an asshole.
7
Philosophy, Religion & Society / The Greek Minister of Development says "the tourist is our job"
« on: May 06, 2021, 04:23:01 AM »
Love to hear that the country is basically one big amusement park and the tourists are just our collective “job”!
If that doesn’t sound shitty enough to you or if you don’t understand what it’s about, here’s some context:
Only about 20% of the population has received any vaccine doses and only around 10% has been fully vaccinated. The hospitals have been at their limits for a long time and all that is despite excessively strict lockdown measures in some regards and excessively lax in others for much longer in general than anyone else in Europe as far as I know. Basically every time the situation was getting a bit better, they immediately relaxed the measures a little bit, then it got worse after like 5 days so they tightened back the measures. Eventually the British strain took over. This meant that we’ve been in perpetual lockdown for months now with no results. It’s been so long with 0 results and the measures are so weird, confusing, non sensical and unnecessarily restrictive that no one gives a shit about them any more so most of them have become unenforcable.
The motivation behind the strict measures was to eliminate Covid so that the country can open up for tourists in the summer. Except obviously that didn’t happen because they’re incompetent morons. But regardless of the surge the country is still gonna open up now. A few days ago open air restaurants, cafes, taverns etc opened up. This wasn’t bad because as I said previously it’s been some time since people have gotten sick of the often very strict restrictions and right now people meeting others out in the open in taverns and cafes with restrictions in the number of tables per square meter etc is preferable to people piling up in each others’ homes or doing massive parties in city squares. But what no sane person is looking forward to is the tourists. It was clear that when summer comes the government will just ignore the covid situation and let tourists in. But tourists are the fucking worst possible thing for covid transmission. It was tourism during the summer of 2020 which brought us here in the first place, before that we had practically 0 new cases per day thanks to the first lockdown, which did work very well. Tourists bring with them new covid variants, and as if that isn’t enough, tourists never stay in their hotel rooms, which, uh, of course they don’t, no one goes to a different country to stay in place. They eat out all the time. They tend to congregate in specific places en masse. They also tend to get drunk as fuck and barf everywhere. That’s pretty much the whole reason they come here, they don’t come here to do social distancing and self isolation. And it’s not just a few people. In a normal year the tourists that come in are 3x the population of the country. This won’t be a normal year but it’s still gonna be lots.
Here’s the truly crazy thing though. There’s this one measure that is just annoying as fuck and completely nuts. In order to get out of your house, you have to send an SMS with your name, your location, and the reason you are leaving your house. You can chose one out of 6 possible reasons. 9/10 times none of the reasons really matches what you need to do and the rules are getting increasingly complicated.
Here’s one example of how weird the rules are, if your head starts feeling heavy, just skip it:
There’s a new number where you send an SMS now which works in parallel with the other one and that number only accepts one SMS per day and it’s for shopping now that that’s opened up but the other number is also for shopping but it’s about necessities (that’s code 2) and with the new number you can leave your town and go somewhere else to shop but you can’t do that for necessities and in fact you can only go to a supermarket that is within a 2km radius from where you live but you can actually get outside of the town as long as you are within a 2km radius, as opposed to going for a walk which is code 6 and you can go further than 2km but only as long as it is within your town, except if it is a weekend, since recently it was changed so that you can use code 6 to go outside your town on weekends but still inside your county which you can’t leave for any reason afaik right now except you can leave the country so basically you could leave the country and return to a different country and that’s fine but it’s just that you can’t go from one to the other while you are within Greece, anyways in all cases you have to come back before 23:00 which recently went up from 22:00, which in turn had gone up from 21:00 for all days, but before that it used to be 21:00 for week days and 19:00 for weekends, except of course there was always code 1 which is urgent doctor visit which you could use to circumvent the curfew, and I forgot to mention that recently code 6 has been expanded to also include sitting at a cafe or restaurant which btw while they are allowed to operate they can’t have music, as well as swimming in the sea but only as long as the sea is close enough to you or if it is a weekend, and now you can also go fishing but which you couldn’t before, but you can only do that as long as you are no further from I believe 600m from the shore, for some reason.
Yeah.
It’s basically become impossible to not unintentionally break the law in one way or the other just for coming out of your house. So the SMS thing is one ridiculous restriction that everyone hates. Another one is the curfew. Neither measure is working at anyways and people break them all the time by now. Finally a lot of people are annoyed by the fact that you can’t move between counties, since it’s isolated many people from their loved ones or even made working really hard for some.
The reason the minister of development (he’s an ex telemarketer btw who used to sell Holocaust denialist books to boomers) was talking about how tourists are “our job” is that the government decided that obviously it is moronic to try and impose all these weird fucking rules to tourists. However, they haven’t decided the same thing for the rest of us. The tourists have more rights than citizens. It’s not just him, it’s a bunch of other vampires in the government too. All of them are talking about how tourists bring us money so we have to make sacrifices for them, and yes, they literally use the word “sacrifice”. Whooooo I love sacrificing myself so that drunk brits can get drunk more conveniently to generate profit for mobsters who own bars in Mykonos and airlines! WE NEED MORE SACRIFICES FOR THE TOURISM GOD.
I’m doooooone…
If that doesn’t sound shitty enough to you or if you don’t understand what it’s about, here’s some context:
Only about 20% of the population has received any vaccine doses and only around 10% has been fully vaccinated. The hospitals have been at their limits for a long time and all that is despite excessively strict lockdown measures in some regards and excessively lax in others for much longer in general than anyone else in Europe as far as I know. Basically every time the situation was getting a bit better, they immediately relaxed the measures a little bit, then it got worse after like 5 days so they tightened back the measures. Eventually the British strain took over. This meant that we’ve been in perpetual lockdown for months now with no results. It’s been so long with 0 results and the measures are so weird, confusing, non sensical and unnecessarily restrictive that no one gives a shit about them any more so most of them have become unenforcable.
The motivation behind the strict measures was to eliminate Covid so that the country can open up for tourists in the summer. Except obviously that didn’t happen because they’re incompetent morons. But regardless of the surge the country is still gonna open up now. A few days ago open air restaurants, cafes, taverns etc opened up. This wasn’t bad because as I said previously it’s been some time since people have gotten sick of the often very strict restrictions and right now people meeting others out in the open in taverns and cafes with restrictions in the number of tables per square meter etc is preferable to people piling up in each others’ homes or doing massive parties in city squares. But what no sane person is looking forward to is the tourists. It was clear that when summer comes the government will just ignore the covid situation and let tourists in. But tourists are the fucking worst possible thing for covid transmission. It was tourism during the summer of 2020 which brought us here in the first place, before that we had practically 0 new cases per day thanks to the first lockdown, which did work very well. Tourists bring with them new covid variants, and as if that isn’t enough, tourists never stay in their hotel rooms, which, uh, of course they don’t, no one goes to a different country to stay in place. They eat out all the time. They tend to congregate in specific places en masse. They also tend to get drunk as fuck and barf everywhere. That’s pretty much the whole reason they come here, they don’t come here to do social distancing and self isolation. And it’s not just a few people. In a normal year the tourists that come in are 3x the population of the country. This won’t be a normal year but it’s still gonna be lots.
Here’s the truly crazy thing though. There’s this one measure that is just annoying as fuck and completely nuts. In order to get out of your house, you have to send an SMS with your name, your location, and the reason you are leaving your house. You can chose one out of 6 possible reasons. 9/10 times none of the reasons really matches what you need to do and the rules are getting increasingly complicated.
Here’s one example of how weird the rules are, if your head starts feeling heavy, just skip it:
There’s a new number where you send an SMS now which works in parallel with the other one and that number only accepts one SMS per day and it’s for shopping now that that’s opened up but the other number is also for shopping but it’s about necessities (that’s code 2) and with the new number you can leave your town and go somewhere else to shop but you can’t do that for necessities and in fact you can only go to a supermarket that is within a 2km radius from where you live but you can actually get outside of the town as long as you are within a 2km radius, as opposed to going for a walk which is code 6 and you can go further than 2km but only as long as it is within your town, except if it is a weekend, since recently it was changed so that you can use code 6 to go outside your town on weekends but still inside your county which you can’t leave for any reason afaik right now except you can leave the country so basically you could leave the country and return to a different country and that’s fine but it’s just that you can’t go from one to the other while you are within Greece, anyways in all cases you have to come back before 23:00 which recently went up from 22:00, which in turn had gone up from 21:00 for all days, but before that it used to be 21:00 for week days and 19:00 for weekends, except of course there was always code 1 which is urgent doctor visit which you could use to circumvent the curfew, and I forgot to mention that recently code 6 has been expanded to also include sitting at a cafe or restaurant which btw while they are allowed to operate they can’t have music, as well as swimming in the sea but only as long as the sea is close enough to you or if it is a weekend, and now you can also go fishing but which you couldn’t before, but you can only do that as long as you are no further from I believe 600m from the shore, for some reason.
Yeah.
It’s basically become impossible to not unintentionally break the law in one way or the other just for coming out of your house. So the SMS thing is one ridiculous restriction that everyone hates. Another one is the curfew. Neither measure is working at anyways and people break them all the time by now. Finally a lot of people are annoyed by the fact that you can’t move between counties, since it’s isolated many people from their loved ones or even made working really hard for some.
The reason the minister of development (he’s an ex telemarketer btw who used to sell Holocaust denialist books to boomers) was talking about how tourists are “our job” is that the government decided that obviously it is moronic to try and impose all these weird fucking rules to tourists. However, they haven’t decided the same thing for the rest of us. The tourists have more rights than citizens. It’s not just him, it’s a bunch of other vampires in the government too. All of them are talking about how tourists bring us money so we have to make sacrifices for them, and yes, they literally use the word “sacrifice”. Whooooo I love sacrificing myself so that drunk brits can get drunk more conveniently to generate profit for mobsters who own bars in Mykonos and airlines! WE NEED MORE SACRIFICES FOR THE TOURISM GOD.
I’m doooooone…
8
Technology, Science & Alt Science / World's most embarrassing transport system.
« on: April 12, 2021, 02:02:55 AM »HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA how did the city even agree to let this grifter do this? "Durrr instead of making a subway, how about we had a bunch of little cars doing the same thing but much worse, much more expensive and carrying much fewer people per hour and all for a damn 2 mile drive?".
This is even worse than the initial idea because apparently now you don't even enter it with your own personal car, but it's more like an ultra expensive taxi where you pay 20 dollars for a 2 mile ride.
9
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Most embarrassing video ever.
« on: April 07, 2021, 04:44:05 PM »Somehow I never saw this until now. It is by far the most embarrassing video I have ever seen.
Also for some reason while she knows Greek she pronounces the names and Greek words wrong when she speaks English. Very minor complaint compared to the dumpster fire that is the rest of it but I don't know why she does that and it tilts me.
Also it's always the morons who don't even live here who say this sort of nonsense.
10
The Lounge / 200 years of Greek revolution
« on: March 25, 2021, 03:34:36 AM »
200 years ago a horrible mistake was made which led to Greece.
Apparently many cities are projecting the Greek flag or whatever on major buildings. I saw Sydney did that on the Sydney Opera House. Have you seen anything where you live?
Apparently many cities are projecting the Greek flag or whatever on major buildings. I saw Sydney did that on the Sydney Opera House. Have you seen anything where you live?
11
The Lounge / Greek infiltration of Australia's trucking companies
« on: February 27, 2021, 08:22:41 AM »
Sooo my uncle and his family have defied the risk of catching the gay as Intikam once said to move to Sydney. He finally managed to find a good job working pretty lax hours as a shot distance trucker. How? It appears that Greek people have insidiously infiltrated the economy of Australia, and in particular someone who owned a trucking company there was from the same place my uncle is from, which apparently was enough to hire him.
This is step one. I can't reveal step two but step three is elimination of all non-Greek culture in Australia and subjugation of the country to Greece. It shall be named New Cyprus.
By the way he says he likes Australia a lot. In particular he is surprised that people don't break every safe driving law in the books daily and that the toilets are clean or smth. Although that guy is kinda insane so idk how much I trust his opinions.
This is step one. I can't reveal step two but step three is elimination of all non-Greek culture in Australia and subjugation of the country to Greece. It shall be named New Cyprus.
By the way he says he likes Australia a lot. In particular he is surprised that people don't break every safe driving law in the books daily and that the toilets are clean or smth. Although that guy is kinda insane so idk how much I trust his opinions.
12
Arts & Entertainment / Hot take: Orwell is very overrated.
« on: February 25, 2021, 01:23:32 AM »
And also overused. References to his books are just wayyy too common and a lot of the time they don't even make sense, presumably because people haven't read them or they don't remember them, they just see other people making the same comparisons and it kind of becomes a game of broken phone. I didn't know many schools in the UK, US and Australia have his books as requited reading so I guess that explains part of why they are so overused.
Now back to the overrated part. Most people, including me, have only read 2 books, Animal Farm and 1984. That's the books most care about. Animal Farm I never really liked very much. It's not at all creative or artful or anything, it's just an excruciatingly obvious allegory about an oversimplified view of what happened in the USSR. The entire book can be condensed to "the tsars were bad and then Lenin did a revolution and they got rid of them which was good at first but then they started doing some bad things, and after Lenin died Stalin did more badder things and Trotsky was also kinda bad but he was not as bad bad and at least he tried to make things less bad and then Stalin killed him and everything was bad bad bad and it was so bad bad bad bad it was more badder than before". That's literally the entire book. There is no point in reading it beyond that because there is no artful prose, there are no particularly interesting characters, and no creativity. It's just "I'm gonna make an allegory about my limited perspective of the Russian revolution with farm animals". Many act like it is about "authoritarianism" in general and that its scope is broader but it really isn't. It is super specific. It only became popular because it was about the USSR being bad, and also the main message that it ends up passing intentionally or not is "things are bad but if you try to make changes they will get more badder", so it got promoted a bunch during the Cold War. Death of Stalin is genuinely better because even though it is even more inaccurate, it's at least funny and it doesn't pretend like it is anything more serious. It's just "we made a funny parody of Stalinism, the end".
Now, 1984 is a better book. There is at least an attempt at an interesting story and world building, and particularly close to the end it is good at having an emotional impact and evoking a feeling of dread. It's not the oh so insightful criticism of authoritarianism it is made out to be because it is -again- an amalgamation of Orwell's view of Nazi Germany and the USSR (especially the latter), and what he thinks the USSR was going to become (spoiler warning: it didn't). It is completely irrelevant to someone reading it today because it is not how authoritarianism is exercised, and to find something "relevant" you have to squint real hard and bang your head against the wall. People only THINK it is relevant either because they have been told it is, or because they haven't read the book/don't remember it and they imagine what it is saying by the way small excerpts are used in conversation. Pretty much the only society where what he is describing is somewhat relevant is the DPRK I guess but even then like half the stuff in the book are completely inapplicabl.
Nevertheless, I used to think it's an alright book. Then I read the review by Isaac Asimov. I don't agree with every point he makes but it's just so cutting. It makes some excellent points and mentions stuff I didn't even notice when I was reading it or I was just confused by, but totally make sense now. I think my favorite stupid detail was how Orwell was so scared of stuff changing that there was an entire bit about ball point pens (which were new technology at the time) scratch the paper horribly (as opposed to fountain pens lmao) and how people miss how real fountain pens are. Yeah, ball point pens, such a scourge on society. Who doesn't miss fountain pens?
Here is the review, it's a good read: http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
Also he may have been a rapist which makes the dynamic within the couple in 1984 even weirder in that context.
Now back to the overrated part. Most people, including me, have only read 2 books, Animal Farm and 1984. That's the books most care about. Animal Farm I never really liked very much. It's not at all creative or artful or anything, it's just an excruciatingly obvious allegory about an oversimplified view of what happened in the USSR. The entire book can be condensed to "the tsars were bad and then Lenin did a revolution and they got rid of them which was good at first but then they started doing some bad things, and after Lenin died Stalin did more badder things and Trotsky was also kinda bad but he was not as bad bad and at least he tried to make things less bad and then Stalin killed him and everything was bad bad bad and it was so bad bad bad bad it was more badder than before". That's literally the entire book. There is no point in reading it beyond that because there is no artful prose, there are no particularly interesting characters, and no creativity. It's just "I'm gonna make an allegory about my limited perspective of the Russian revolution with farm animals". Many act like it is about "authoritarianism" in general and that its scope is broader but it really isn't. It is super specific. It only became popular because it was about the USSR being bad, and also the main message that it ends up passing intentionally or not is "things are bad but if you try to make changes they will get more badder", so it got promoted a bunch during the Cold War. Death of Stalin is genuinely better because even though it is even more inaccurate, it's at least funny and it doesn't pretend like it is anything more serious. It's just "we made a funny parody of Stalinism, the end".
Now, 1984 is a better book. There is at least an attempt at an interesting story and world building, and particularly close to the end it is good at having an emotional impact and evoking a feeling of dread. It's not the oh so insightful criticism of authoritarianism it is made out to be because it is -again- an amalgamation of Orwell's view of Nazi Germany and the USSR (especially the latter), and what he thinks the USSR was going to become (spoiler warning: it didn't). It is completely irrelevant to someone reading it today because it is not how authoritarianism is exercised, and to find something "relevant" you have to squint real hard and bang your head against the wall. People only THINK it is relevant either because they have been told it is, or because they haven't read the book/don't remember it and they imagine what it is saying by the way small excerpts are used in conversation. Pretty much the only society where what he is describing is somewhat relevant is the DPRK I guess but even then like half the stuff in the book are completely inapplicabl.
Nevertheless, I used to think it's an alright book. Then I read the review by Isaac Asimov. I don't agree with every point he makes but it's just so cutting. It makes some excellent points and mentions stuff I didn't even notice when I was reading it or I was just confused by, but totally make sense now. I think my favorite stupid detail was how Orwell was so scared of stuff changing that there was an entire bit about ball point pens (which were new technology at the time) scratch the paper horribly (as opposed to fountain pens lmao) and how people miss how real fountain pens are. Yeah, ball point pens, such a scourge on society. Who doesn't miss fountain pens?
Here is the review, it's a good read: http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
Also he may have been a rapist which makes the dynamic within the couple in 1984 even weirder in that context.
13
The Lounge / Diego Maradona dies
« on: November 28, 2020, 07:06:29 AM »
Surprised no one made a thread about this yet. I guess it's because football (the real one) isn't as popular in the US. Or maybe because Maradona in particular isn't as popular in the US.
But, like, the dude was a legend. By FB inbox basically blew up after news broke out that he died. He had come in Greece a few times many years ago and there was a huge commotion. His funeral in Argentina basically turned into a riot. My grandfather was a professional player and he loved that guy, I was pretty young when he died but I remember him talking about him.
Also cheating to beat the brits and then no one even being mad about it was funny too lol (except for the bits I guess):
And then in the same game he delivered the "goal of the century" (the commentator really makes it):
Too bad he was so heavily addicted to coke. Also I watched CNN's coverage of his death, it was pretty trash, they didn't say anything interesting about him, they just brought up the interview they took from him once over and over again.
But, like, the dude was a legend. By FB inbox basically blew up after news broke out that he died. He had come in Greece a few times many years ago and there was a huge commotion. His funeral in Argentina basically turned into a riot. My grandfather was a professional player and he loved that guy, I was pretty young when he died but I remember him talking about him.
Also cheating to beat the brits and then no one even being mad about it was funny too lol (except for the bits I guess):
And then in the same game he delivered the "goal of the century" (the commentator really makes it):
Too bad he was so heavily addicted to coke. Also I watched CNN's coverage of his death, it was pretty trash, they didn't say anything interesting about him, they just brought up the interview they took from him once over and over again.
14
Technology, Science & Alt Science / Got some nasty Ransomware on my computer...
« on: November 24, 2020, 01:56:53 PM »
Well, I fucked up. I got Ransomware on my computer. It's encrypted my files, and there's a message telling me I should pay them Bitcoin or whatever. Pretty fucked. Nothing works properly.
Apparently it is some kind of BORISHORSE style virus. I installed the free version of SpyHunter, it seems to have found SOMETHING, but I don't know how to tell if it's what is causing the trouble. Even worse, I have to buy it to do the removal, or wait 48 hours until they activate a limited version or something. It's pretty fucked.
Even worse, I think even if the virus is removed, my files will still be encrypted, and I'm not sure if there is appropriate software to decrypt it.
Does anyone have any idea what to do?
Apparently it is some kind of BORISHORSE style virus. I installed the free version of SpyHunter, it seems to have found SOMETHING, but I don't know how to tell if it's what is causing the trouble. Even worse, I have to buy it to do the removal, or wait 48 hours until they activate a limited version or something. It's pretty fucked.
Even worse, I think even if the virus is removed, my files will still be encrypted, and I'm not sure if there is appropriate software to decrypt it.
Does anyone have any idea what to do?
15
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Today is gonna be the day that the fascists wind up in jail (hopefully)
« on: October 06, 2020, 11:15:16 PM »
In a couple of hours the courts rule after 7 years on whether the neonazi organization Golden Dawn should be ruled a criminal organization and whether they are collectively guilty for the murder of antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas as well as a whole host of other terrible shit. I'm not gonna go that deep into it because you can just look up "murder of Pavlos Fyssas" and see what happened.
Golden Dawn used to hit almost 10% at elections a few years ago. Now they failed to get into the parliament (there is a 3% threshold), and now they might really be screwed if the courts rule what is plainly obvious to everyone, that they are collectively guilty (there is also a wealth of evidence the murder was either directly ordered or green lit by higher ups). However the recent rulings by the prosecutor aren't very encouraging.
So now there's gonna be a huge gathering in front of the courts. Everyone will be there. I'm going there myself now. Even my parents who are really scared of the corone because they are somewhat old and had trouble with their health will be there. If I am guessing correctly there's going to be at least a few tens of thousands of people. Just think that they've arranged for 1500 cops to be there. So this is pretty historic for Greece. Hopefully it goes well.
Golden Dawn used to hit almost 10% at elections a few years ago. Now they failed to get into the parliament (there is a 3% threshold), and now they might really be screwed if the courts rule what is plainly obvious to everyone, that they are collectively guilty (there is also a wealth of evidence the murder was either directly ordered or green lit by higher ups). However the recent rulings by the prosecutor aren't very encouraging.
So now there's gonna be a huge gathering in front of the courts. Everyone will be there. I'm going there myself now. Even my parents who are really scared of the corone because they are somewhat old and had trouble with their health will be there. If I am guessing correctly there's going to be at least a few tens of thousands of people. Just think that they've arranged for 1500 cops to be there. So this is pretty historic for Greece. Hopefully it goes well.
16
Technology, Science & Alt Science / The largest number game!
« on: August 20, 2020, 06:15:52 AM »
This is a thread about notating a larger number than the previous poster. That's it.
Well, there's a few more rules.
1) You don't have to actually write it down. You just have to appropriately describe it.
2) Your description must correspond to one and only one natural number.
3) You can't use primitive semantic vocabulary. That means you can only use mathematical symbols to describe the number. You can explain what the symbols mean but you have to figure out how to write down what you want to say with mathematical symbols.
4) It's better if you prove that your number is larger than the previous one. For some really large numbers, it may be a bit difficult to figure out which is larger. You can just nominate your number and I will try to figure out if it really is bigger than the previous one.
It is actually possible to win the game. To win the game all you have to do is find a number which no one can figure out how to make larger IN A MEANINGFUL WAY for at least a week.
By "in a meaningful way" I mean that answers such as simply adding 1 to that number, or multiplying it, or just using whatever the previous poster used but one more time, it's not really larger in a meaningful way. Of course that rule is highly subjective and we can collectively decide who came up with the most impressive number.
Anyways, I'll start: 1
Well, there's a few more rules.
1) You don't have to actually write it down. You just have to appropriately describe it.
2) Your description must correspond to one and only one natural number.
3) You can't use primitive semantic vocabulary. That means you can only use mathematical symbols to describe the number. You can explain what the symbols mean but you have to figure out how to write down what you want to say with mathematical symbols.
4) It's better if you prove that your number is larger than the previous one. For some really large numbers, it may be a bit difficult to figure out which is larger. You can just nominate your number and I will try to figure out if it really is bigger than the previous one.
It is actually possible to win the game. To win the game all you have to do is find a number which no one can figure out how to make larger IN A MEANINGFUL WAY for at least a week.
By "in a meaningful way" I mean that answers such as simply adding 1 to that number, or multiplying it, or just using whatever the previous poster used but one more time, it's not really larger in a meaningful way. Of course that rule is highly subjective and we can collectively decide who came up with the most impressive number.
Anyways, I'll start: 1
17
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Cypriot hacker extradited to the US
« on: July 30, 2020, 08:28:10 AM »
Cyprus recently extradited a 21 year old hacker to the US, where he faces severe charges. He is accused of hacking Ripoff Report (seemingly so that he could delete reports made by users against certain businesses at the request of said businesses) and a few online game hosts and extorting them for money by threatening to make their user bases public. Here is the deal though (I couldn't find all of the info in English, I read it in Greek language sources): the crimes he is accused of happened when he was 14 and 16. He has Asperger's syndrome, he grew up without his dad and was forced to quit high school to make money to sustain himself together with his Filipino mother.
So the question here is, should a kid with Asperger's syndrome who hacked a few websites when he was 14-16 for money, when his family was in a super tough spot, be extradited and tried in a foreign country he has never been in and doesn't have any family in, even after he has been in jail for a long time, just because he caused some financial damage to some websites? He is facing a 20 year sentence in the US. Furthermore it seems pretty impressive to me that he managed to do all those things so early on, he should be given a scholarship, not a prison sentence, he did enough time in jail already...
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/07/21/cypriot-hacker-extradited-to-the-u-s-to-face-charges/
So the question here is, should a kid with Asperger's syndrome who hacked a few websites when he was 14-16 for money, when his family was in a super tough spot, be extradited and tried in a foreign country he has never been in and doesn't have any family in, even after he has been in jail for a long time, just because he caused some financial damage to some websites? He is facing a 20 year sentence in the US. Furthermore it seems pretty impressive to me that he managed to do all those things so early on, he should be given a scholarship, not a prison sentence, he did enough time in jail already...
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/07/21/cypriot-hacker-extradited-to-the-u-s-to-face-charges/
18
Technology, Science & Alt Science / Quantum mechanics philosophy and interpretations
« on: June 06, 2020, 08:14:43 AM »
Lately I've been studying the subject of quantum mechanics foundations and the various interpretations. As you may have heard there are many different interpretations and a lot are very misunderstood, partly due to science popularizers presenting various interpretations as fact, sometimes not making clear the differences between the different interpretations, and also sometimes speaking too metaphorically. One thing I learned which surprised me was that hidden variable theories were never disproven, as some would make you believe. Hidden variable theories are theories which claim that there is no indeterminism, no randomness, there is just additional variables that we cannot see that guide the phenomena. More on that later.
I read an introductory book on the subject and now I am also reading John Stewart Bell's collected papers on the topic. John Stewart Bell was important for the field because he came up with the Bell inequalities which proved hidden variable theories that are both local (meaning no instantaneous interactions at a distance) and deterministic cannot recreate the predictions of quantum mechanics which are backed by experimental data. This is what people who think hidden variable theories are disproven have in mind, except John Stewart Bell was a proponent of a hidden variable theory himself, the Bohm-De Broglie pilot wave theory.
This all started because people realized there were some very odd things about the "official" interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation (which really is more like hand waving the problems away, unless you adhere to positivism in which case it's alright), you can't say what the state of the system is without a measurement. A particle can't be said to have a position if it is not measured. The state of the system is represented by a special function called a wave function. Measuring any quantity can give you a few different results with probabilities determined by the wave function, so the Copenhagen interpretation is probabilistic, it is not deterministic like other physical theories.
Now even though it is not deterministic it doesn't mean you can't make any certain predictions at all. Let's say you measure the position of a particle, and you get the result x. Experiments are supposed to be repeatable, so you want to be sure that if you measure the position again right after and under the same circumstances, you'll get a predictable answer. What happens is that every time you make a measurement on any variable for a given state aka wavefunction (which can be represented by |ψ>) and you get the value x, then the wavefunction "collapses" to a state |x> which will give you the quantity x if you measure it again right after. You can even make longer predictions for states that are susceptible to change in some cases, since you can solve the Schrodinger equation and find the progression of the state over time (this is not always the case), and thus you can know with 100% certainty the value of the variable you measured at any time after you measured it.
But this creates a problem. It implies the measurement has an effect on the physical reality of things, since measurements make the wavefunction collapse. But what is a measurement then and what is so special about it? Where do you draw the line? Does the measurement happen when the particle interacts with the instrument? Does it happen when the reading of the instrument reaches the eyes of the experimenter? Does it happen in his brain? If QM applies to everything, shouldn't the experimenter also be a quantum system? Who is doing the measuring then?
But that's not all. Einstein famously had issues with the dominant view of QM at the time. Many people have been led by popular accounts to believe that he hated QM (which is plain wrong, in fact he played a great role in QM's founding), and also that he was wrong to have doubts (he was wrong about one particular thing as demonstrated by Bell, which is that he hoped there could be a hidden variable theory that would obey "local realism", which pretty much means it would be local and deterministic, but he was 100% justified to have doubts about Copenhagen, at least at the time). Einstein didn't like the Copenhagen picture and he thought it was incomplete. One of his contributions was the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paradox. He explored quantum entanglement. It is possible to create, say, two photons which always have opposite spins (just a quantity which can either be up or down, you don't have to understand what it means). One is up and the other is down. You may not know which photon has which spin, but you know they have opposite spins. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, before you actually measure the spins, they can't be said to have one or the other, and measurements of their spins yield random results. But if you know that one has to be up and the other is down, and you only measure one and you find that it is up, you immediately KNOW the second one is down, without measuring it. So let's say the detector has a 50% to record an up value or a down value. If it has recorded an up value, then the other detector will give you a down value with a 100% chance, instead of the usual 50% chance one would imagine. So somehow the measurement of the spin of one photon magically affects the spin of the other one too. It's a very weird phenomenon and Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance".
For these reasons people started looking further into the subject and there are now numerous competing interpretations. There are thermal interpretations which basically follow the Copenhagen one but explain the measurement problem by saying that a measurement can be considered to happen when an irreversible thermal process has occurred due to the measurement, thus setting it in stone so to speak. There are many worlds interpretations. There are some weird quantum decoherence/consistent histories interpretations that also find some ways to explain the measurement problem but not much more. Then there are hidden variable interpretations, by far the leading one being the Bohmian one, which is deterministic but it rejects locality.
What are some of the opinions or questions people here have on QM? I imagine we're gonna get some pretty weird ones...
I read an introductory book on the subject and now I am also reading John Stewart Bell's collected papers on the topic. John Stewart Bell was important for the field because he came up with the Bell inequalities which proved hidden variable theories that are both local (meaning no instantaneous interactions at a distance) and deterministic cannot recreate the predictions of quantum mechanics which are backed by experimental data. This is what people who think hidden variable theories are disproven have in mind, except John Stewart Bell was a proponent of a hidden variable theory himself, the Bohm-De Broglie pilot wave theory.
This all started because people realized there were some very odd things about the "official" interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation (which really is more like hand waving the problems away, unless you adhere to positivism in which case it's alright), you can't say what the state of the system is without a measurement. A particle can't be said to have a position if it is not measured. The state of the system is represented by a special function called a wave function. Measuring any quantity can give you a few different results with probabilities determined by the wave function, so the Copenhagen interpretation is probabilistic, it is not deterministic like other physical theories.
Now even though it is not deterministic it doesn't mean you can't make any certain predictions at all. Let's say you measure the position of a particle, and you get the result x. Experiments are supposed to be repeatable, so you want to be sure that if you measure the position again right after and under the same circumstances, you'll get a predictable answer. What happens is that every time you make a measurement on any variable for a given state aka wavefunction (which can be represented by |ψ>) and you get the value x, then the wavefunction "collapses" to a state |x> which will give you the quantity x if you measure it again right after. You can even make longer predictions for states that are susceptible to change in some cases, since you can solve the Schrodinger equation and find the progression of the state over time (this is not always the case), and thus you can know with 100% certainty the value of the variable you measured at any time after you measured it.
But this creates a problem. It implies the measurement has an effect on the physical reality of things, since measurements make the wavefunction collapse. But what is a measurement then and what is so special about it? Where do you draw the line? Does the measurement happen when the particle interacts with the instrument? Does it happen when the reading of the instrument reaches the eyes of the experimenter? Does it happen in his brain? If QM applies to everything, shouldn't the experimenter also be a quantum system? Who is doing the measuring then?
But that's not all. Einstein famously had issues with the dominant view of QM at the time. Many people have been led by popular accounts to believe that he hated QM (which is plain wrong, in fact he played a great role in QM's founding), and also that he was wrong to have doubts (he was wrong about one particular thing as demonstrated by Bell, which is that he hoped there could be a hidden variable theory that would obey "local realism", which pretty much means it would be local and deterministic, but he was 100% justified to have doubts about Copenhagen, at least at the time). Einstein didn't like the Copenhagen picture and he thought it was incomplete. One of his contributions was the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paradox. He explored quantum entanglement. It is possible to create, say, two photons which always have opposite spins (just a quantity which can either be up or down, you don't have to understand what it means). One is up and the other is down. You may not know which photon has which spin, but you know they have opposite spins. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, before you actually measure the spins, they can't be said to have one or the other, and measurements of their spins yield random results. But if you know that one has to be up and the other is down, and you only measure one and you find that it is up, you immediately KNOW the second one is down, without measuring it. So let's say the detector has a 50% to record an up value or a down value. If it has recorded an up value, then the other detector will give you a down value with a 100% chance, instead of the usual 50% chance one would imagine. So somehow the measurement of the spin of one photon magically affects the spin of the other one too. It's a very weird phenomenon and Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance".
For these reasons people started looking further into the subject and there are now numerous competing interpretations. There are thermal interpretations which basically follow the Copenhagen one but explain the measurement problem by saying that a measurement can be considered to happen when an irreversible thermal process has occurred due to the measurement, thus setting it in stone so to speak. There are many worlds interpretations. There are some weird quantum decoherence/consistent histories interpretations that also find some ways to explain the measurement problem but not much more. Then there are hidden variable interpretations, by far the leading one being the Bohmian one, which is deterministic but it rejects locality.
What are some of the opinions or questions people here have on QM? I imagine we're gonna get some pretty weird ones...
19
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Murder of George Floyd
« on: May 27, 2020, 12:19:54 PM »
I haven't really seen any threads on this subject here so I'm gonna make one. I saw the video. I didn't watch the whole thing because it was too sad and infuriating. It's just crazy to think that a handful of cops just slowly murdered some guy on the sidewalk with people begging them to stop all around them.
20
Arts & Entertainment / Thanos Mikroutsikos dies at 72
« on: December 29, 2019, 10:21:54 AM »
You probably don't know him but one of the most important Greek musicians died yesterday after a fight with cancer. I was lucky enough to watch his final performance this summer. His performance was attended by his doctor and he was very kind and thanked him for everything he did for him. It was pretty emotional but at the time I didn't know he was that bad, since the performance was overall amazing and you couldn't really tell he was in a bad state. It was really sad to hear about him dying, he was an incredible artist and a great personality too, very kind, humble and respectful of art. No, he's got nothing to do with Marvel Thanos.
Anyways, here's some of his amazing performances. He was primarily a composer (and wrote some of the most classic and important modern Greek songs) and not a performer, but his concerts were still very emotional and beautiful. Enjoy!
This is "7 Dwarves on SS Cyrenia", his adaptation of the poem of the same name by Nikos Kavadias, a poet who wrote primarily about the lives of sailors. Mikroutsikos adapted his entire book into an album called "O Stavros tou Notou" (The Southern Cross), all of which is amazing.
This is the same song in the aforementioned final performance (audio quality is garbage but his performance was definitely the most emotional I have heard):
From the same album, this is "Ena Mahairi" (A Knife). I like how he interrupts the song to explain what the instrument being played is and why the person playing it is one of its best performers:
The lyrics by Kavadias are pretty amazing too:
I always keep tight on my belt
A small African dagger
Like the ones negros use to play
That I bought from a merchant in Algiers
I remember as if it were yesterday the elderly antique dealer
Who looked like an oil painting by Goya
Standing next to long swords and torn up uniforms
Saying in a coarse voice the following words:
(...)
This knife that you want to buy
Is wrapped in bizarre tales and legends
And everyone knows that those who used to have it
All of them killed someone close to them
Don Bazilio killed with this Donna Julia
His beautiful wife because she cheated on him
Conte Antonio killed one night his unfortunate brother
With this knife here he murdered him in secret
A negro killed his young mistress out of jealousy
And an Italian sailorman killed a Greek boatswain
It went hand to hand and it ended up in mine
My eyes have seen lots of things but this one gives me fear
Take a look at it, it's got an anchor and a coat of arms on it
Hold it, it's very light, not even a quarter
But I would advise you to buy something else
"How much is it?" "Only seven francs, if you want it you can have it."
I have a small dagger wrapped in my belt
Which I made mine on a whim
And since there is no one in the world I hate to death
I fear that one day I may turn it against myself
This one (also from the same album) is called Armida but usually known as "Captain Jimmy's Pirate Ship", most people in Greece know it because it was a common song we sung in elementary school music classes, although with the lyrics slightly modified since it mentions hashish. The video for some reason credits it to Vassilis Papakonstantinou, which I guess is because he sung in most of the songs in that version of the album, but he doesn't in this one. Kinda weird I guess but here it is:
His most famous song is probably Roza, sung by the late Dimitris Mitropanos, probably the greatest Greek folk singer (the weird moves he does are a legit dance btw, this is a dance song in a way, weird as it may seem):
From the same performance, "Panta Gelastoi" (Αlways Laughing):
This one is "Kakoithes Melanoma" (Malignant Melanoma), dedicated to the great marxist sociologist/political scientist Nikos Poulantzas who had committed suicide shortly before the writing of this song. I wanted to post a live version with an actual video but the sound quality of the ones I found on youtube aren't very good). It's actually an extended version of the actual song, which is only about 5 minutes and starts at about 11:50, but the jazzy/spacey improv at the start is amazing.
Here's a last one, again from Stavros tou Notou, "Kuro Siwo":
Anyways, here's some of his amazing performances. He was primarily a composer (and wrote some of the most classic and important modern Greek songs) and not a performer, but his concerts were still very emotional and beautiful. Enjoy!
This is "7 Dwarves on SS Cyrenia", his adaptation of the poem of the same name by Nikos Kavadias, a poet who wrote primarily about the lives of sailors. Mikroutsikos adapted his entire book into an album called "O Stavros tou Notou" (The Southern Cross), all of which is amazing.
This is the same song in the aforementioned final performance (audio quality is garbage but his performance was definitely the most emotional I have heard):
From the same album, this is "Ena Mahairi" (A Knife). I like how he interrupts the song to explain what the instrument being played is and why the person playing it is one of its best performers:
The lyrics by Kavadias are pretty amazing too:
I always keep tight on my belt
A small African dagger
Like the ones negros use to play
That I bought from a merchant in Algiers
I remember as if it were yesterday the elderly antique dealer
Who looked like an oil painting by Goya
Standing next to long swords and torn up uniforms
Saying in a coarse voice the following words:
(...)
This knife that you want to buy
Is wrapped in bizarre tales and legends
And everyone knows that those who used to have it
All of them killed someone close to them
Don Bazilio killed with this Donna Julia
His beautiful wife because she cheated on him
Conte Antonio killed one night his unfortunate brother
With this knife here he murdered him in secret
A negro killed his young mistress out of jealousy
And an Italian sailorman killed a Greek boatswain
It went hand to hand and it ended up in mine
My eyes have seen lots of things but this one gives me fear
Take a look at it, it's got an anchor and a coat of arms on it
Hold it, it's very light, not even a quarter
But I would advise you to buy something else
"How much is it?" "Only seven francs, if you want it you can have it."
I have a small dagger wrapped in my belt
Which I made mine on a whim
And since there is no one in the world I hate to death
I fear that one day I may turn it against myself
This one (also from the same album) is called Armida but usually known as "Captain Jimmy's Pirate Ship", most people in Greece know it because it was a common song we sung in elementary school music classes, although with the lyrics slightly modified since it mentions hashish. The video for some reason credits it to Vassilis Papakonstantinou, which I guess is because he sung in most of the songs in that version of the album, but he doesn't in this one. Kinda weird I guess but here it is:
His most famous song is probably Roza, sung by the late Dimitris Mitropanos, probably the greatest Greek folk singer (the weird moves he does are a legit dance btw, this is a dance song in a way, weird as it may seem):
From the same performance, "Panta Gelastoi" (Αlways Laughing):
This one is "Kakoithes Melanoma" (Malignant Melanoma), dedicated to the great marxist sociologist/political scientist Nikos Poulantzas who had committed suicide shortly before the writing of this song. I wanted to post a live version with an actual video but the sound quality of the ones I found on youtube aren't very good). It's actually an extended version of the actual song, which is only about 5 minutes and starts at about 11:50, but the jazzy/spacey improv at the start is amazing.
Here's a last one, again from Stavros tou Notou, "Kuro Siwo":
21
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Texas is about to execute a most likely innocent person
« on: November 03, 2019, 04:12:43 PM »
There is a petition here to stop it though I don't really think petitions do that much:
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-execution-of-rodney-reed?use_react=false
Here is more info on what happened:
https://www.innocenceproject.org/10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-rodney-reed-who-is-scheduled-for-execution-on-november-20/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/02/us/rodney-reed-death-row-witness-affidavit/index.html
Idk, do whatever you think could be done, spread it etc. It's super shitty that this sort of stuff falls through the cracks. Free him and arrest the other creep again.
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-execution-of-rodney-reed?use_react=false
Here is more info on what happened:
https://www.innocenceproject.org/10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-rodney-reed-who-is-scheduled-for-execution-on-november-20/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/02/us/rodney-reed-death-row-witness-affidavit/index.html
Idk, do whatever you think could be done, spread it etc. It's super shitty that this sort of stuff falls through the cracks. Free him and arrest the other creep again.
22
Technology, Science & Alt Science / Do any of you know C++?
« on: October 18, 2019, 10:02:34 AM »
Because I'm having a hard time with this annoying language. I know Java and it is pretty similar but some things about C++ is pretty confusing. I just need it because I gotta solve some exercises in a textbook that require C++, so it's nothing complicated, I'm just very confused by pointers and references and what you can return using functions and all that stuff.
23
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Indonesia to criminalise gay sex, adultery, criticism of president, communism
« on: September 17, 2019, 08:08:52 AM »
...and contraceptives/sex education.
https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1248284/disahkan-pekan-depan-ini-10-pasal-kontroversial-rkuhp/full?view=ok
https://coconuts.co/jakarta/news/indonesias-new-criminal-code-to-allow-village-heads-to-report-cohabitating-couples-to-police/
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/worldtoday/indonesian-parliament-set-to-impose-conservative-morality-as-law/11519948
Well it hasn't passed yet, but it's in the parliament and for whatever reason there isn't as much noise about it as there was about Brunei, despite the fact Indonesia is one of the biggest countries in the world.
https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1248284/disahkan-pekan-depan-ini-10-pasal-kontroversial-rkuhp/full?view=ok
https://coconuts.co/jakarta/news/indonesias-new-criminal-code-to-allow-village-heads-to-report-cohabitating-couples-to-police/
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/worldtoday/indonesian-parliament-set-to-impose-conservative-morality-as-law/11519948
Well it hasn't passed yet, but it's in the parliament and for whatever reason there isn't as much noise about it as there was about Brunei, despite the fact Indonesia is one of the biggest countries in the world.
24
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Censorship.
« on: August 28, 2019, 02:49:05 PM »
The Trump administration has been a valuable ally in the fight against PC censorship!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/us/harvard-student-ismail-ajjawi.html
Go Trump! DEFEND THE PEOPLE'S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/us/harvard-student-ismail-ajjawi.html
Go Trump! DEFEND THE PEOPLE'S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS!
25
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Could Golden Dawn fail to enter the parliament?
« on: July 07, 2019, 11:35:46 AM »
It's election day today and for a lot of reasons Golden Dawn support has fallen substantially these last few weeks. Not all results are out, but they are sitting at 2.99% right now. The threshold to enter the Parliament is 3%. It will be a pretty big deal if they are left outside.
26
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Democratic Candidate Debate
« on: June 27, 2019, 05:18:47 AM »
You can see it here:
It starts at around 2:03:00.
Any thoughts? My favorite moment was when Booker visibly lost his shit when he realized Beto also had the dumb idea to do that ridiculous speaking spanish thing.
It starts at around 2:03:00.
Any thoughts? My favorite moment was when Booker visibly lost his shit when he realized Beto also had the dumb idea to do that ridiculous speaking spanish thing.
27
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Elections
« on: May 26, 2019, 02:33:26 AM »
Today are the EU elections in Greece, as well as the local ones. I'm off to vote now, I can't say much, I'm just leaving this here.
28
The Lounge / Where is everyone?
« on: May 19, 2019, 01:42:46 PM »
Is it just me or does the forum have less activity recently?
29
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Jordan Peterson vs Slavoj Zizek
« on: April 19, 2019, 04:52:44 PM »
Ok, so it's 3 AM here and I'm sitting here and watching this debate, let's see where this goes. I can't explain who Zizek is right now, maybe later. Check it out though, here:
30
Philosophy, Religion & Society / #GravelGang
« on: April 08, 2019, 02:22:03 PM »
Did you hear about the 88 year old former senator that is apparently being controlled by three 17 year olds who convinced him to run for the democrat nomination just to get on the debate stages and denounce American imperialism? It's the weirdest story in American politics right now, here's some more info:
https://splinternews.com/mike-gravels-viral-2020-campaign-is-the-brainchild-of-a-1833434906
And here's the campaign ad they made:
It's a reference to his infamous previous ad for his 2008 presidential campaign, which was pretty damn weird:
Also the kids are handling his Twitter too and it's pretty hilarious:
https://twitter.com/MikeGravel/status/1114699933918085121
The whole story is weird as fuck and kinda wholesome and it's great.
https://splinternews.com/mike-gravels-viral-2020-campaign-is-the-brainchild-of-a-1833434906
And here's the campaign ad they made:
It's a reference to his infamous previous ad for his 2008 presidential campaign, which was pretty damn weird:
Also the kids are handling his Twitter too and it's pretty hilarious:
https://twitter.com/MikeGravel/status/1114699933918085121
The whole story is weird as fuck and kinda wholesome and it's great.