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ex hard coal mine, coal coke production site – essen, germany // 08-2022

So I recently stumbled on the Wikipedia article of the Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch theorem, which is an algebraic geometry thing that I'll hopefully learn some day once I actually have the prerequisite knowledge =w= But at the top of the article was this letter, which I thought was a wild thing to have at the top of a Wikipedia article about a niche abstract math thing - here's a translation:

Witches' Kitchen 1971 Riemann-Rochian Theorem: the latest craze*: the Diagram

is commutatif**! To give this statement about f: X->Y some approximative meaning, I had to abuse the listeners' patience for nearly two hours. In black and white (in Springer's Lecture Notes) it seems like it will take up to about 400, 500 pages. A gripping example of how our thirst for knowledge and discovery indulges itself more and more in a logical delirium far removed from life, while life itself is going to hell in thousandfold ways - and is threatened with absolute annihilation. High time to change our course! (6.12.1971) Alexander Groethendiek

* "der letzte Schrei" is a reasonably common German idiom meaning "the latest craze", but here it could alternatively be translated non-idiomatically as something like "the last cry". I think its more fun to imagine he means the idiom. ** I'm assuming this is a weird old-timey spelling probably taken from french but googling it I can find no examples of anybody using this spelling in english besides this letter

Note that this is 20 years before all of this happens:

hildegunst-taillemythes

Not only his letters but a lot of his notes are like this ! Recently, there was a seminar on him at the BNF (French National Library) and we could look at some of his writings. There were a lot of littles drawings and the mathematical ones were especially cool :D

(also, he has a very peculiar writing style, and I love it)

agentnoun

I've been quiet for a bit while I work on my TTRPG inspired by Mad Men, titled Elevator Pitch, and I think it's turning into something genuinely interesting and also kinda fucked up. It started out pretty trad, found itself turning into something of a storygame, and now it's... something else.

Let's see:

You can never roll dice for free. Ever. Every die roll requires you to pay a price in one way or another from limited resources, some of which are hard to replenish, and others are impossible to. There are no free rolls. Period. No exceptions.

The game incentivizes players to burn up their characters' personal lives to fuel their careers, but not the other way around. You can achieve personal growth, you can make positive changes to your life, but even if you do everything right, the process of doing so risks your character having a meltdown, which might lead to them being retired from the game (a career-ending meltdown, this game's version of "character death"). That's right: if you want a character arc that follows an upward trajectory, you have to risk the character being removed from the game to do so.

Player characters are divided between Creative and Accounts teams, and the game incentivizes those players to be in conflict: there are certain limited resources that can only be used once each, and if one "team" uses it to make their own job easier, the other doesn't get to. The irony, of course, is that they should be working together, but each side will want to make their own jobs easier and in doing so might make the other side's harder.

The game even incentivizes an outright adversarial relationship between the Director (GM) and the players. This game is, at its core, a word game, where the specific phrasing of character aspects is the core of the game, and where you need to negotiate about that wording with the GM to get things done. But the GM has their own incentives to push back and force the players to make concessions--the GM is told directly to put the screws to 'em. (This has stumbled into something funny: the core gameplay of this game is making pitches to the GM and negotiating to get them accepted. That was completely accidental.)

Much of the above is accepted to be really bad ideas in TTRPG design and play, especially encouraging genuinely adversarial play between players and GM, and between groups of players who are ostensibly working together.

And yet here I am, doing it on purpose.

Wish me luck!

frantzzisselerthings

frantz Zisseler, 2024.

boarfan82

I wish I could have warm fur. Like her.

limesquares

i couldnt resist her Enchanting Shape

ari-zonia

Actual facts from Studio Orange_Juice games

QP goes on a quest to make the world remember pudding because everyone but her forgot it existed

Marie Poppos are Mass Produced Humans

Nath gives up her arms and free will to become an Ultimate Living Weapon. Under her own free will.

Yuki is a Persona user. Her Persona is Shifu Robot from SUGURI

Suguri became a living weapon and it made her lifespan extend to the point she is over 1000 years old, and it turned her eyes red

Tomomo created the 100% Orange Juice world, Kai, and the Poppos so she could be the final boss

Marc shoots down ex-guild members under orders from the Guildmaster thinking she’s making the sky safe to fly, when she was making it so only the Guildmaster could fly

Krila believes red bean paste is a delicacy of nobility

Kyousuke was created for an April Fools dating sim game, he then became a canon character

Kyoko and Kyousuke are twins in 100% Orange Juice and 200% Mixed Juice, while being unrelated in other games because they are from two separate games

Sora became a living weapon because she wanted to see the clear blue sky she was named after

Sweet Breaker sealed everyone’s memory of pudding because she thought it created conflict

Saki, QP, Sweet Breaker, and Tomomo are four of the six Sweet Goddesses

Krila worships a God of Darkness that is implied to be Yuki, she also believes Fernet is a Goddess of Light

Santa is a bunny girl named Aru, no one questions this

One of Kyousuke’s main ways of giving himself power is stripping off his shirt, again, no one questions this

Almost everyone in Flying Red Barrel is named after alcohol (or ingredients) made in barrels

Kai was specifically designed to be the most bare-boned generic protagonist, for the sole purpose of being the protagonist

Krila’s full name is Krilalaris

There’s so much more, and this only really covers SUGURI, QP Shooting! Dangerous, Flying Red Barrel, and 100% Orange Juice

worldsandemanations

Mirror of Souls" created by UK artist Olly Jeavons

eka-mark

How cool is it that a category object in the category of groups is the same thing as a group object in the category of categories (or even in category of groupoids)? There's just no obvious reason why swapping the words "groups" and "categories" should lead to equivalent definitions. I guess this is one of those cases in which category theory validating all the things you would want to be true.

I've been reading this short expository article, which explains the relationships between these and crossed modules, all of which are apparently incarnations of (strict?) 2-groups. I don't understand crossed modules at all yet, but I'm looking forward to working out for myself what the smallest finite strict 2-groups are, concretely. Maybe later this year I'll be able to read Baez & Lauda's notes on 2-groups.

It's crazy that category theorists use the term "2-group", though, since that has long meant something totally different in group theory: a 2-group in the original sense is a group whose elements all have order a power of 2, which is a completely unrelated concept.

frantzzisselerthings

Frantz Zisseler, 2024.

sannehtahaua

Lexember 31

-gaš- TRAN: a : to use means (as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces b : magic rites or incantations c : to cast a spell : enchant

Gašë’- magic, the supernatural force that is wielded by sorcerers/witches/mages/wizards. Called by many names the most common of which are: Gašë’(it is cast), ša'e(it makes/shapes), and wig'e(it changes).

-gašnëc- glamour, a magical seeming, illusion. -gatšunut-,-gatšuntaa- to put magic in/on, to enchant an object. This is done by way of carving,painting a spell onto the object. A magician using the magic symbols to enchant an object basically casts the spell while carving the symbols, this imbues their will into the object and allows it to persist after their concentration wanes. -gašn- to speak magic, to say the words that cause magic in the world.