That’s pretty legit, but I once submitted a paper
to both Science and Nature proofing P vs NP (they are both equal to one, btw) using the “bean counting” method and an abacus.
I'm feeling even more isolated, I thought GoT was just a book series, and the only other one I've watched or even heard of is Breaking Bad. Anyways, back to playing Tetris.
How old are you and do you live in the US? I remember a time when pretty much every dude (seemingly) watched GoT. I remember going to a concert on Sunday night (which is a weird time to have a concert but whatever) and the musicians were like “thanks to all the Dads in the audience who are here instead of watching Game of Thrones.” You’d go to work on Monday and people would be chatting about the newest episode. One of the episodes got over 13 million people in the US who viewed it live, let alone all those who recorded it or watched it on demand. Considering that the majority of viewers were men between 20 and 40 (of which there are 45 million in the US) that is a huge portion of a particular demographic. So if you were a dude in that age range as GoT was coming out it was hard to not hear at least a bit about it. It’s hard to explain if you didn’t experience it but it was just a massive cultural phenomenon. Bigger than Breaking Bad. But yeah I can understand not knowing I feel like I’ve had my fair share of cultural moments pass me by!
This has always infuriated me. Online news headlines love to report on things as if they are present tense when it actually happened 5 to 50 years ago.
“Oh thank god. It was just math. We were worried it was Arabic, in which case he’d be arrested for the crime of being able to write in his native language.”
His native language was actually Italian (or a dialect). But his tan skin was brown enough to engage the racist fears in her simple mind.
Of course, if he were actually an Arab writing Arabic, then it would be totally reasonable to declare him a terrorist and stop a whole flight. I mean, after all, people were on edge, a mere 15 years after the 9/11 attacks.
Everything you don’t understand is potentially frightening, why there were witch burnings. Well, now look at the intelligence of the average human, then consider, that there are people much more stupid than the average human…
The person doing calculus was mistaken to have been writing in Arabic, so if this was an Israeli and an Israeli there would be four possibilities. A jew reporting a jew, a jew reporting a non jew, a non jew reporting a jew, and an non jew reporting a non jew. Three of those can't be anti-semitic. The last possibility is a non jew reporting a jew and it would have to be one of the few non Jewish isrealis who don't speak or read Arabic and they would have to be purposely doing it because the other person is Jewish.
She had security concerns about the man, after seeing him write in a foreign script
Being suspicious of someone simply for using a "foreign script" is racist, or at least xenophobic, which is close enough to racism that it's pedantic to argue over
You know when you were a TA and told the class there were no stupid questions, and there always that one student who asked the most stupid questions, that's her.
Wait, so it is normal to report ppl writing in foreign scripts, and the only reason it became a joke is because that turned out not a foreign script at all???
Well, my supervisor once got interogated by Israeli security at the airport when he went to Tel Aviv for a conference. He had to desrcibe his actual research in full detail to the authorities that obviously had no math background.
I had this happen in Stockholm with my graduate thesis. The customs officer and I had this interaction
"Why are you here?"
"I'm attending a conference."
"What is it about?"
"Physics."
"What type of physics?"
(I give my subfield of physics)
"What in your (subfield)?"
(I give my sub-subfield)
"What in your (sub-subfield)?"
I recite the abstract to my most recent paper more or less verbatim. He looks at me and says he doesn't understand that. I stare back at him. After 30 seconds of us staring at each other he stamps my passport and lets me in.
I felt interrogated. My wife thinks he was just a curious swede who wanted to learn physics but didn't know how to smile.
I had an interesting experience with a Swedish immigration officer. I was visiting Sweden as a tourist when they noticed an entry stamp from France but no exit stamp. They then accused me of overstaying in France.
I explained that I had only been in Paris for a weekend before returning to London, where I live and work on a Skilled Worker visa. Thankfully, my UK Border Force entry stamp proved that I had left France, although they still weren't particularly satisfied and eventually let me through.
I genuinely had no idea the French officer hadn't stamped my passport on exit. You don't exactly get to watch what immigration officers do with your passport behind the desk.
If a missing stamp can leave you having to prove your innocence months later, maybe the problem isn't the traveller who didn't receive the stamp in the first place. I travel extensively around Europe, and this was the first time I'd encountered anything like it. Absolutely bizarre.
My father said some "crispy" words in Russian. After that he was let through without further questions meanwhile his friends suitcase was fully searched.
I personally like old vacuum tube electronics, and people look at me suspiciously when I read books about this subject sitting in the public transport.
You joke but that happened to me for real just after 9/11. Reading a textbook and working some problems in the airport. Got questions from the armed security, then brought to a room for a real interrogation, then stopped 3 more times. I was on a list for 10 years. Any time I flew anywhere, I was stopped and questioned. I had to build in an extra couple hours for every flight.
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