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Post by Dr Strange on Sept 19, 2021 19:58:59 GMT
People are just generally very bad at assessing probabilities - as in the "birthday paradox", where you only need to have a group of 23 people gathered together to have a better than 50% chance of two of them having the same birthday, and that rises to a 99.9% chance with only about 70 people. So every time you are in a group of about 70 people it is almost a dead cert that there will be at least two of them with the same birthday - which just seems wrong, but it isn't.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 19, 2021 20:03:29 GMT
People are just generally very bad at assessing probabilities - as in the "birthday paradox", where you only need to have a group of 23 people gathered together to have a better than 50% chance of two of them having the same birthday, and that rises to a 99.9% chance with only about 70 people. So every time you are in a group of about 70 people it is almost a dead cert that there will be at least two of them with the same birthday - which just seems wrong, but it isn't. I considered bringing up the birthday paradox myself! How is that for synchronicity!
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Post by ripper on Sept 19, 2021 20:58:45 GMT
I think we will have to disagree and leave it at that.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 19, 2021 21:08:14 GMT
I think we will have to disagree and leave it at that. No! Never! We shall get to the bottom of this!
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Dec 13, 2021 17:23:30 GMT
I was reading ropardoe's book about Pope Joan, who probably didn't exist, and on the TV in the background there was a question on a quiz about The Earl of Oxford being Shakespeare (he wasn't). What bizarre claims about people not being who they say they are do you know? The Shakespeare not being Shakespeare makes no sense, as his contemporaries said he was, like Ben Jonson. And actual actors who should know better, like Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi, encourage this.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Dec 13, 2021 17:45:39 GMT
Nobody is in chatty mood today.
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Post by Swampirella on Dec 13, 2021 17:47:12 GMT
Nobody is in chatty mood today. Maybe because it's Monday?
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 13, 2021 17:54:55 GMT
Nobody is in chatty mood today. Maybe because it's Monday? I didn't wake up this morning.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Dec 13, 2021 17:56:41 GMT
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Dec 27, 2021 23:53:22 GMT
Hello everyone, I hope you had a nice Christmas. I'm looking at books on my ebook site and I found a very odd one which I thought I'd share. The blurb says: Bowling for Communism illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of urban ingenuity amid catastrophic urban decay. Andrew Demshuk profiles the creative activism of local communist officials who, with the help of scores of volunteers, constructed a palatial bowling alley without Berlin's knowledge or approval. In a city mired in disrepair, civic pride overcame resentment against a regime loathed for corruption, Stasi spies, and the Berlin Wall. Reconstructing such episodes through interviews and obscure archival materials, Demshuk shows how the public sphere functioned in Leipzig before the fall of communism. Hardly detached or inept, local officials worked around centralized failings to build a more humane city. And hardly disengaged, residents turned to black-market construction to patch up their surroundings. Because such urban ingenuity was premised on weakness in the centralized regime, the dystopian cityscape evolved from being merely a quotidian grievance to the backdrop for revolution. If, by their actions, officials were demonstrating that the regime was irrelevant, and if, in their own experiences, locals only attained basic repairs outside official channels, why should anyone have mourned the system when it was overthrown? Here is a modern day image of the building, it is now a decaying ruin of what it was, which is such a shame, as it symbolises human achievement in the face of adversity: I can't tell you much more as I haven't read any of it yet, but doesn't this show what can be achieved if people choose to mobilise at a local level.
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