Things you don't need to know…

I have an app on my phone: White Noise. Android, but I think it's available on iOS as well. Actually, it's also available on Windows, I have it on my MS Surface pad as well.

Lots of sounds to download, and you can combine up to 5 sounds for a really thundering effect.

a pibbur who almost falls asleep just by thinking of it. ….Perhaps not.

"Life nowadays is dominated and complicated by the remorseless Zip. Blouses zip up, skirts zip down, ski-ing suits zip everywhere. 'Little frocks' have perfectly unnecessary bits of zipping on them just for fun.

Why? Is there anything more deadly than a Zip that turns nasty on you? It involves you in a far worse predicament than any ordinary button, clip, snap, buckle or hook and eye.

In the early days of Zips, my mother, thrilled by this delicious novelty, had a pair of corsets fashioned for her which zipped up the front. The results were unfortunate in the extreme! Not only was the original zipping-up fraught with extreme agony, but the corsets then obstinately refused to de-zip! Their removal was practically a surgical operation! And owing to my mother's delightful Victorian modesty, it seemed possible for a while that she would live in these corsets for the remainder of her life - a kind of modern Woman in the Iron Corset!

I have therefore always regarded the Zip with a wary eye. But it appears that all travelling bags have zips.

"The old fashioned fastening is quite superseded, Modom [old colloquial for madam]," says the salesman, regarding me with a pitying look.

"This, you see, is so simple," he says, demonstrating.

There is no doubt about its simplicity - but then, I think to myself, the bag is empty.

"Well," I say, sighing, "one must move with the times,"

With some misgivings I buy the bag.

I am now the proud possessor of a Zip travelling bag"

[a few pages later]

… I return to contend with my own difficulty, which is, as prophetic vision had told me it would be, the Zip bag. Empty in Mr Gooch's shop, it had looked simple, attractive, and labour-saving. How merrily then had the Zip run too and fro! Now, full to the brim, the closing of it is a miracle of superhuman adjustment. The two edges have to be brought together with mathematical precision, and then, just as the Zip is travelling slowly across, complications set in, due to the corner of the sponge-bag. When at last it closes, I vow not to open it again until I get to Syria!

On reflection, however, this is hardly possible. What about the aforementioned sponge-bag? Am I to travel for five days unwashed? At the moment even that seems preferable to unzipping the Zip bag!"

Agatha Christie on the Zip revolution - writing in her 1946 autobiographical book "Come, Tell Me How You Live".

In 2010:

Zippers may have revolutionized our clothing since they were introduced in 1913, but they're also the leading cause of penile injuries requiring an ER visit for adults, according to a new study.

A study published in a recent issue of a British urology journal BJU International found 17,616 people went to the emergency room between 2002 and 2010 for genital injuries caused by zippers.

The majority of the patients were men under the age of 18, the study found. Zipper-related injuries accounted for 20 percent of all recorded penile injuries during this time. However, five women also experienced labia or vaginal harm because of zippers, researchers found.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-th…ed-to-zippers/

Originally Posted by a pibbur
I have an app on my phone: White Noise. Android, but I think it's available on iOS as well. Actually, it's also available on Windows, I have it on my MS Surface pad as well.

Lots of sounds to download, and you can combine up to 5 sounds for a really thundering effect.

a pibbur who almost falls asleep just by thinking of it. ….Perhaps not.

Thanks! Yes, it is available for ios and I downloaded it.it’s got ASMR as well.
I liked brown noise, rain on umbrella and lake waves best.
You don’t have the free version I guess? For it seems I can not combine sounds.

I always get the commercial version for apps/programs that I like and use.

a pibbur who may be stupid

ASMR also irritates the hell out of me (I listened to the first 23s of the sex education ASMR video ). It is the opposite of the soothing effect most people associate with it.

On the other hand, rain has me completely relaxed. I love myself a good thunderstorm for that reason, and a lot of wind. Bird chatter is also nice. Didn't have a braingasm yet though.

Yes, the whispering is not my cup of tea either. The other sounds are nice but not something I use to get relaxed or focused. I learned students nowadays listen to special music to stay focussed, ‘concentration music’ on Spotify.
I prefer absolute silence.

Let's look a bit closer at the shuffling of cards.

There are actually two interesting probabilities in this case,

1. What is the probability that one particular shuffle (for instance the last one I made) has happened before?
2. What is the probability that at least two shuffles have been equal (any two shuffles)?

We shall examine this by a related but much smaller and therefore friendlier case: a group of 30 people, and we will find the probability of people having the same birthday. We disregard the year of birth, and we disregard leap years, so there are 365 different birthdays.

Problem 1: What is the probability that at least one person have the same birthday as I?

In problems like this it's often easier to calculate first the probability that it won't happen. In this case there are for each person in the group 364 possible birthdays, and the probability of each of the 30 having a different birthday from me is (364/365)^30. Which is 0.920991. Now we subtract this from 1 (the sum of all probabilities), which gives 0.0790086, or if you want 7.90086%. So there are 7.9% chance that at least one among the 30 has the same birthday as me.

Problem 2: What is the probability that at least 2 among the 30 have the same birthday. We're not looking for a specific birthday, any one will do as long as at least one other person have the same birthday. As before we start with calculating the probability that it doesn't happen.

We have 365 possible birthdays for the first person, 364 for the next one, 363 for the third one and so on. Which means that there are 365*364*363*…*337*336 possible combinations. In total, there are as we saw in the first problem 365^30 possible combinations, which means that the probability for none of the 30 having the same birthday is 365*364*363*…*337*336/(365^30). If we calculate this (for instance by using Mathematica, we find that the probability of none having the same birthday is 0.293864, or if we want 29.3864%. And subtracting this from 1 we get the probability of at least 2 persons having the same birthday, 0.706316. In other words, there are almost 71% chance that at least 2 have the same birthday. Many people not familiar with probably calculations will be surprised by the probability being so high. Which of course can be the base for very profitable betting.

Now, let's return to the deck of cards. Following the same logic as in problem 1 for the birthdays would give the probability of no shuffling made by the 7500000000 people in 13700000000 years being the same as the last I did as (8065817517094387857166063685640376697528950544088 3277823999999999999/80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883 277824000000000000)^3242543400000000000000000000. Depending on how I do it, the numbers would be either prohibitively large, or the precision available for floating point calculations would be much to small. Mathematica refuses to help.

For problem 2 the numbers are a bit smaller, but I don't think I'll try those calculations either.

a pibbur who wonders if he should start a Shuffle@HOME project.

Originally Posted by ilm
On the other hand, rain has me completely relaxed. I love myself a good thunderstorm for that reason, and a lot of wind. Bird chatter is also nice. Didn't have a braingasm yet though.

Rain is relaxing (especially when it's the real thing) but bird sounds I simply can't understand. The only negative thing with Spring arriving is the damn birds chirping outside…it gets even worse later in spring because the sun rises so early here they'll start at 3AM…

@lackblogger: Ouch. I REALLY didn't need to know that. Thankfully all my jeans have buttons, and I suspect what you're writing is the reason that buttons have become the norm for male clothing.

Be glad that Anhima cornuta doesn't live where you live (this is BTW my ringtone):


a pibbur who probably has nothing against gannets.

PS. A solution:

DS.

That… sound come from the distant past.

Originally Posted by TomRon
@lackblogger: Ouch. I REALLY didn't need to know that. Thankfully all my jeans have buttons, and I suspect what you're writing is the reason that buttons have become the norm for male clothing.

All my jeans have zips.

lackblogger who thankfully has never been anything but extremely careful in that department, but does remember a friend from school who once…

Originally Posted by lackblogger
All my jeans have zips.

lackblogger who thankfully has never been anything but extremely careful in that department, but does remember a friend from school who once…

They do? All my wifes jeans have zippers, all mine have buttons. Are you sure you're not wearing the wrong jeans?

EDIT: Having googled it it seems both versions are pretty common for men while womens jeans are almost exclusively zippers, apart from vintage models. Apparently zippers was introduced in jeans in the 50's to appeal specifically to female buyers who found the buttons weren't proper… Guess that's a thing we didn't really need to know either?

A short addition to the birthday post.

I (Mathematica) made a graph showing the mentioned probabilities related to birthdays for different sizes of the group:

1. Yellow line shows the probability that at least one have the same birthday as you. Even with a group of 365 people, that probability is just above 60%.
2. Blue line is the probability that at least two have the same birthday (any birthday). As you can see already at a group size of 50, the probability is close to 1 (0.97 or 97%)

a pibbur who probably won't say more about birthdays until the 29th of December, except for occasional congratulations.

Originally Posted by TomRon
They do? All my wifes jeans have zippers, all mine have buttons. Are you sure you're not wearing the wrong jeans?

EDIT: Having googled it it seems both versions are pretty common for men while womens jeans are almost exclusively zippers, apart from vintage models. Apparently zippers was introduced in jeans in the 50's to appeal specifically to female buyers who found the buttons weren't proper… Guess that's a thing we didn't really need to know either?

Almost all my jeans have zippers. Around 3 have buttons - the reason for that is that I didn't notice when I bought them (in the USA). Fortunately, after losing 25 kg weight, I can now put them on (and taking them off) without having to open them (the buttons).

a pibbur who hums the famous tune: "All I want for christmas is my new zipped jeans. My new zipped jeans. Yes, my new zipped jeans.".

PS. From Wiktionary, zipper: "The trade name was registered in 1925 by B.F. Goodrich for “boots made of rubber and fabric,” claiming use of the name since June 1923. No longer a registered trademark." DS.

Lost 25 kg? Glad all that guitar playing paid off :-) I want to start playing too now

For some time (15 years back maybe?), it was nearly impossible to get decent male's jeans with zippers, at least in my vicinity. Some stupid change in fashion, which I hated. Zippers are one of the best thing that ever happened to humanity.

The virus doing most of the talking seems to be a myovirus, which doesn't infect humans, but bacteria.

a pibbur who claims to know a myovirus when he sees one (Admittedly he first beleved it was a tobacco mosaic virus). Unfortunately, not having an electron microscope, he actually can't see one, making the claim somewhat moot.

This music video might of course have been posted under "Currently listening" thread. It's Phaedra by Tangerine Dream, and I do listen to it quite a lot, it's actually my favourite TD piece. But for some reason, I decided to post it here in stead.



The interesting part is of course not the video (which I of course find interesting), but the music (which I of course also find interesting)

a pibbur who assumes (hopes) that at least the hidden x wil like it.

Originally Posted by a pibbur
This music video might of course have been posted under "Currently listening" thread. It's Phaedra by Tangerine Dream, and I do listen to it quite a lot, it's actually my favourite TD piece. But for some reason, I decided to post it here in stead.

loading…

The interesting part is of course not the video (which I of course find interesting), but the music (which I of course also find interesting)

a pibbur who assumes (hopes) that at least the hidden x wil like it.

I saw them in the early 80s. While the stage ’show’, being people behind keyboards, was uninspiring the music was amazing!!!!!