green casted purple

Tapa, 7, hydraulics engineer

[mathematically-awry]

what does "green casted purple" mean?

I have three green (biological) grandparents. My IQ is within a standard deviation of the green average. My hobbies are mostly green hobbies – I love math and the sciences, and I enjoy intellectual discussion in general. I value the pursuit of truth and a better understanding of the world. Many nerd green stereotypes apply to me; for example, I can neither tell nor care whether my clothes match, and I occasionally forget to eat meals when I am absorbed in a math puzzle or a particularly interesting project at work. I tend to get along better with greens than members of any other caste. If possible, I want to marry a green and have green children. 

However, because my maternal grandmother is purple, I am purple.

[hyperbolicgifs]

SECRET GIF THEOREM

Notation. Let R denote the set of real numbers, which form a line. Write p, q, r, s, x, y, w, h, and t for real numbers. The Cartesian product A×B of sets A and B is the set of ordered pairs (a,b) where a is in A and b is in B, and similarly for A×B×C. This means R² = R×R forms a plane, on which each point has standard coordinates (x,y). The closed interval from p to q is the set [p,q] of real numbers t with p ≤ t ≤ q. Just as [p,q] is a region of R, a rectangle is a region of R² of the form [p,q]×[r,s]. Definition. A pixel gif G having width W px, height H px, F frames, and colors in the set C, is a map G:A→C, where A is a 3D matrix of dimensions W×H×F. Definition. A gif Γ of height h and width w is a map Γ:[0,w]×[0,h]×[0,1]→C. Remark. The correspondence is given by G(i,j,f) = Γ(iw/W,h-jh/H,f/F), where (i,j,f) is the pixel in the ith row (from the top) and jth column of frame f. Definition. A gif Γ loops if Γ(x,y,0) = Γ(x,y,1).

Definition. A function T: R²→C is called a tiling if T(x+1,y) = T(x,y). Definition. A map T*:[0,1]×R→C from an infinite strip of width 1 is a tile. Proposition.There is a 1-1 correspondence between tiles and tilings. Proof. Every tile extends to a tiling and every tiling restricts to a tile. Definition. A map F:R²→R² is a transformation. Write F = u×v for u,v:R²→R. Theorem. For a tiling T and transformation u×v, the gif Γ(x,y,t) = T(u+t,v) loops. Proof. Γ(x,y,0) = T(u,v) = T(u+1,v) = Γ(x,y,1).

[mathematically-awry]

Ha, this is excellent.

[beesandbombs]

donut

[openamenta]

so you know there’s the stereotype that old people are pokeboxes? and yeah, i know it’s kinda true, my grandpa literally still uses an everything with a pokebox :P

and like – yeah, they don’t always know how modern technology works. but when you think about it, they do know how to use all this super cool old stuff! this morning my grandpa was showing me his old mechatone – he got an adaptor for it, so it can still charge, and he plays all his old music on it! it’s actually pretty neat, it’s like a toy everything, only circular and kind of bulky.

and he was telling me how he remembers people using dialbells when he was a kid! and he said that only a decade before i was born, a lot of apartments still had those old-fashioned elevators that can go to every single floor, with buttons that stick out of the wall! (apparently they’re still really common in some countries! weird)

and it makes you think, like, wow. in 20 years my grandkids are gonna think i’m such a dark-eyed old pokebox! only they won’t say pokebox, they’ll use some new slang term that hasn’t been invented yet!

[megasilverfist]

Whats a pokebox?

[mathematically-awry]

I’d never heard of it either, but I looked it up after reading this post. Apparently it’s a feature that early pocket everythings had, where instead of touching the screen or using gestures to control your everything, you had to touch the sides of a small square near the bottom. Supposedly it gave you more precise control when selecting things onscreen, but to me it just looks hard to use.

They’re making a bit of a comeback in Anitam, at least according to a random article I found on Citrus.

[ooc: original mention]

[dimw0]

Let’s tesselate

[not-brighter-but-stranger]

math greens are art greens pass it on

[flameofcertainty]

apparently one of the local university caste progressiveness (?) groups is having a “purple and green solidarity night”

(i am not totally clear on what this group supports and i don’t think they are either)

where they try to get purples to come so they can talk about purple experiences and problems that purples face, or something like that

anyways! last time they had one of these no purples showed up

i am strongly considering going so that they will have more than zero purples. so is one of my coworkers (i heard about it from her). she’s kind of annoying but that’s mostly because she’s bad at her job, so going to the group thing with her would probably be fine

[mathematically-awry]

I should look up whether any of the universities in my city hold these. I don’t particularly feel the need to speak about my experiences as a purple, but it would be nice to go to a green social event at which I am officially welcome, instead of all the ones I have gone to which I am not technically allowed to attend.

[mathematically-awry]

You've been nominated for the Alternate Caste Meme! Post what job you would do in each other caste, then send this anonymously to three more people!

I will order these by how much I think I would like them.Green: Mathematician.

Yellow: Programmer.

Orange: Math teacher for 3-year-old greens.

Purple: I am purple. I work as a hydraulics engineer, and I like it moderately well.

Blue: I would not enjoy being a politician or judge. I do not possess the social skills or propriety to be the sort of blue who makes speeches or interfaces with people. Perhaps I could devote myself to some background government job involving some very detail-oriented policy research. Alternatively, if I could arrange it, I would have a yellow manage my real estate and then mostly dedicate myself to mathematics research – in that case, I would prefer it to being purple.

Grey: I would make a horrible gray. I’m not athletic and I dislike physical work. I suppose I could be a bookie, although I don’t actually find statistics very interesting.

[mathematically-awry]

At dinner with Mom-1 and her parents last night, it came up that I had gone to a performance of Ambassador To last week. Turns out Mom-1′s paternal uncle had played a major character. Mom-1 and grandparents were quite amused that I hadn’t noticed.

It is a little funny, but then again, how would I have known it was him? He was wearing a light blue beard and wig, instead of his usual green bun, and I was seated too far back in the audience to be able to recognize him by his face.

In any event, I messaged him about it and he said he was delighted that I’d come and that I could offer a couple of free tickets to my friends. Unfortunately, the tour has already left my city, but they’ve got performances planned all over Tapa in the next two months [ooc: link is to the tour schedule]. Can any Tapai followers use a free ticket?

[mathematically-awry]

The other day, while I was visiting a friend of mine, I inadvertently caused an unfortunate situation involving his apartment’s garbage disposal (I will elect not to explain in detail). While he and I were both dithering about how to clean this up, his fiance stepped into the room, having heard my yelp. She took one look,  dug plastic gloves and soap out of a drawer, and cleaned it right up as if it were nothing worse than a spilled bag of rice.

When I thanked her, she just shrugged and told me she was hyposensitive. This brought to mind an odd thought -- that certain disabilities can be convenient, in very particular circumstances. Hyposensitives can clean up polluted matter without much distress. Blind people can sleep with the lights on. While of course it would be best if these disabilities could be cured, it is nice to think that there is at least some small silver lining.

[mathematically-awry]

To my last anon: as a general rule, I do not answer invasive anonymous asks, especially on unpleasant topics.

[OOC context]

[mathematically-awry]

Did you eat polluted food during the Voan food crisis?

[Memories surface, of their parents coaxing them to eat, but they knew. They knew, and they could see the pain in their parents’ faces, and they did not eat –

Another memory: their parents made soup, and they were hungry, and they ate it. It stayed down, however disgusting it was, however yucky.

Memories of their parents washing the produce, washing the eggs, washing everything. They still felt a knot in their stomach when they took their first bite.

A memory of Mom-1 bringing them a special thing to eat, a treat, clean oatmeal with clean raisins, and they gulped it down. Delicious.

Mom-1 apologizing. Sorry. Sorry, honey. I wish there were more. Dad and Mom-2 looking on, silent.

Why did you ask this? Do you not get why people might not want to think about this?

They sigh and delete the ask.]

[highlighter-flowcharts]

It would probably be pathetic if I sent her a letter and apologized and begged her to take me back. I should not do that.

I might miss having her almost as much as I miss her for herself as my friend and partner, now that I no longer do. She knew what my springs were like and how to avoid everything that felt disgusting.

The feelings I have toward the people I meet on spring apps feel so empty and flat by comparison. I am not good at meeting people and liking them. I have been at the same job with the same coworkers for years, and with most of them I am at most “friendly acquaintances”. In the end, I am not actually particularly interesting or desirable, and am too picky for this to work well with people who don’t mind.

[mathematically-awry]

I hope things get better for you. If it helps, I think “particularly interesting or desirable” is a highly subjective property. People vary greatly in what traits they prefer in a partner. Likewise, not becoming friends with coworkers doesn’t reflect negatively on you or on them; people are quite varied, and it’s inevitable that many pairs of people won’t have compatible enough personalities and interests to be suitable friends for each other.

Spring apps (and all-season apps) notwithstanding, the best way to make friends or meet potential partners is just to meet people in general, especially people in the sorts of communities which you enjoy being in. Lots of the people you meet won’t be suitable, but if you keep it up long enough, a few inevitably will be.

[steel-song]

I really like the whole idea of post-birth income-adjusted child credit payments.

The way it would work is, your child is expected to earn a certain income which represents a certain amount of contribution to society. You pay for their credit throughout their life. If their earnings are above the threshold, the parent’s regular credit payments are reduced accordingly. If they’re below the threshold, the price of their credit increases by the relevant amount - so the parent has to pay extra for the privilege of bringing a child into the world who wasn’t going to contribute much.

This is really eugenic because it strongly disincentivises bringing children into the world who are likely to earn less. Don’t have mixed caste children, get sterilised if you have executive dysfunction disorder, etc. Plus, it incentivises people to be the best parents they can be and give their child all the education and support they can possibly give to help their child earn more. There’s a version where the child can choose to pay a tax, or to keep the money for themselves and force their parent to pay the higher credit price, which is fantastic for child rights - people just wouldn’t be able to afford to mistreat their children.

Apart from silly stuff like “but what if you forgot to raise the threshold in line with inflation”, the main objection is that with upfront money the government definitely receives the money, whereas if credits are a debt then it’s possible for someone to have a child and then lose their job and be unable to pay for the child they’ve already had. But we could just execute those people so I’m not sure I see the problem.

I learn so many interesting ideas now that I talk to policy greens ever, it’s great.

[tilt-me-just-right]

Okay, that’s the new most outrageous thing I’ve heard all year.

[steel-song]

What, why? Maybe I didn’t get it right.

[tilt-me-just-right]

So many reasons. I’ll probably miss a few, but here are some: Has to strike a tenuous balance between “gameable” and “excess bureaucracy” - if you pay less if your child gets more income, you can pay them for a sham job and get it kicked back or just enjoy the savings. Simultaneously requires amazing predictive power (not all disabilities and other limitations on income are knowable in advance, even as well-understood risks!) and has no short term incentive against short term thinking (if your kid is still a small child they can’t be expected to earn any money yet; why not have three kids in three springs and worry about paying for them later?) Involves executing people for losing their jobs. People lose jobs all the time for all kinds of reasons, most of which we don’t want to disincentivize any more strongly than we have to - that opens up a lot of potential employer abuse, fraud, and just unnecessary background terror that you will die immediately if you have a financial problem, instead of needing, say, the social services credits pay for. Completely ignores variance in beliefs about what will cause children to do well: many people believe mixed-caste children are not at a disadvantage! Many people believe their partner is so wonderful that their genes must be wonderful too! Many people believe that a controlling parenting style will get their kid best-behaved and best-educated! Ties people’s lives carelessly into the state of the economy. Credit numbers have to be selected well in advance of those children growing up to take jobs. Nobody can perfectly predict the job market, and unemployment rates fluctuate accordingly while the credit numbers adjust. If purple employment crashes because there’s more research into automation I might have fewer grandchildren and have to move into a smaller place, but at least no one will actually kill me for not guessing that the self-driving car could put my son out of a job when he’s twelve. There is a perfect natural yoke between parental income and parental genes that, sure, doesn’t have the fine-tuning we might invent for a sci-fi eugenic utopia, but it’s at least solid without micromanagement. At least it doesn’t require killing parents for guessing wrong about something it’s insane to imagine they should have known.

[fill-the-unforgiving-minute]

Wait, that wasn’t a parody? There are people that actually believe that “make taking out loans for a credit normal and then execute parents who can’t make the payments” is good policy??

[steel-song]

should I tell greenfriend their idea is bad? :(

[mathematically-awry]

I think you probably should. I am guessing your greenfriend is relatively young? When I was younger I also had rather outlandish policy ideas, and I am glad that people challenged me on them.

You know your green friend better than I do, of course, but in general you can expect greens to not take offense when their ideas are questioned. Debating ideas on their merits and not taking it personally is a green virtue.

[regolo54]

Hyperbolic & Impossible

[fill-the-unforgiving-minute]

I’ve been kind of quiet on here lately. For one thing, everyone’s been talking about politics, which is a subject I have little knowledge about and less interest in. For another - well. Let me ask you something.

Imagine you have a brother. 3 years younger, the baby of the family, treasured for his very existence. 

Imagine that brother chronically unable to hold down a job. Fired for being late once too often, quitting because it’s too hard to wake up on time in the morning, letting down every neighbor and family friend who gave him another chance. Apparently happy to sit on the couch, play video games, and receive welfare for the rest of his life. Certainly a credit was out of the question.

When he gets a new girlfriend, your parents are ecstatic at first. He’s going out and doing things! With real people! He even comes to family dinner sometimes, maybe he gives a shit about us!

Then spring hits. He’s never actually had a proper girlfriend in spring before. Maybe they aren’t careful enough, or maybe they’re just stupid. She gets pregnant.

He’s flat broke. She’s almost as broke. The thought of an abortion makes her sick.

(Imagine, while you’re imagining things, that you’re in Tapa. The worst-case scenario is – bad.)

You have been working since you were 3 and a half. You have some savings. So do your parents. They aren’t enough for a post-market credit. And no one in their right mind would give your brother a loan. 

So I ask you, imagine your brother, in this situation, coming to you, tears in his eyes, begging you to help him out, to save him, to take out a loan on his behalf and he’ll pay you back, he swears, he swears, this won’t be like the other times. What would you do? 

…sorry for the overshare. I’ve been pulling a lot of extra shifts for over a season, and I’m just really tired. You know?

[mathematically-awry]

That is a terrible situation to be put in. I am so sorry, for you and your brother and his girlfriend. (I gather than you are talking about your own experiences.)

I believe a person in your situation should be able to say no without feeling guilty about it. As much as you may love your brother and want to prevent him from suffering, it is an absolutely enormous imposition for him to make the demand he is making.

[healthesick]

Look, I’m not a caste freedom person or anything. The current system basically seems fine. But maybe we could let mixed-caste kids choose which caste they want to go with. It’s not like any of the other options are less arbitrary.

[tilt-me-just-right]

I don’t disagree. Choose when, though, and how irrevocably? And interfaced how with population control?

[mathematically-awry]

Interfacing this with population control isn’t the hard part. We’d use a casteswap system; two intercaste kids living in the same country, who want to swap castes, would be allowed to do so. This does mean that each kid is assigned a caste from birth, but there’s no way to avoid doing that without opening up caste imbalance problems.

The reason it’s hard is the “when.” Swaps could not be allowed very long after age 4, because people would then use this to game all kinds of legal things (military service and credit prices are two examples, but there are a lot, see this essay [ooc: link is to essay mentioned in post]). Furthermore, schooling is caste-specific, so casteswaps at age 4 or 5 severely disadvantage kids who lack the educational background necessary to pursue careers in their new caste. On the other hand, requiring kids to choose before age 4 or so makes them susceptible to parental pressure, because kids are still heavily under the influence of their parents at that age. There would be lawsuits about “intercaste 6-year-old angry about having casteswapped at age 3 because his parents made him do it,” and variations.

Under ideal circumstances, I think casteswaps make sense. Mine, for example; I am a math-loving purple child of two greens and a half-green purple, who could have tutored me enough to get me into a good green university. I wish casteswapping had been an option for me. But I recognize that, unfortunately, in practice, casteswaps would be too prone to abuse.