Most English speakers know the vowels as “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y”. The reason for y’s ambivalent status is because it is often used as a consonant, as in “yes”, “you”, “kayak”, and “player”. It can also be used as a vowel, as in “sky”, “psychology”, “byte”, and “city”. Less often considered…
Author: Kenneth
Cat owner, educator, learner
What does “include” mean? (2nd in a series on sovereign citizens)
They say nothing is certain but death and taxes, but some people think they can avoid at least one of these. This post is about the people who call themselves sovereignty advocates, state nationals, private men and women, etc., and whom others may call sovereign citizens, tax protestors, tax scammers, etc. In my post The…
The barber shop pole illusion explained with math
This is a well known optical illusion in which rotation appears to be vertical motion. There are several aspects of the barber pole design which make the illusion more effective, including having multiple stripes, making the stripes different colors, and using rotation. We will strip these things away in order to see what is happening…
Which side of the quotation mark does it go on?
I’m not a prescriptivist, I swear. As someone who is math-oriented (and maybe has some neurodivergent features), I like formal rules. I enjoy treating English grammar like a math problem; and, due to the circumstances of my upbringing, I am highly proficient at “standard” English. When I was younger I understood this to be a…
The conspiracy theory that revolves around wordplay
So-called “sovereign citizens” make up a collection of people with vaguely similar beliefs about government and the law. I say so-called not to deride people for calling themselves that, but rather because they often do not call themselves that. Instead, it has become a label that people in the mainstream use to describe individuals with…
Sympathy for the scammer
Recently, I’ve been watching YouTube videos on channels like Scammer Payback and Scambaiter. The idea is that a person pretends to fall for a scam, then uses the opportunity to hack into the scammer’s computer or even just make the scammer angry and waste their time. Refund scams One common type of scam goes like…
What this blog is and why it is like how it is
“Thoughts on mind” is a very literal title. This blog consists of anything I happen to be thinking about, hence the diverse range of topics and lack of cohesion. I like explaining things, so a lot of posts are my explanations of things I’ve learned. This isn’t really meant to be authoritative. I mostly write…
Is ice a rock?
I was asked this question recently, and my initial answer was “I don’t think so.” To investigate deeper, we need to figure out what a rock is: So it looks like we need to figure out what a mineral is next: Ice certainly seems to fit these definitions, such that a piece of ice could…
Does AI image generation have a real world use case?
Since 2022 and the release of generative AI like Stable Diffusion, AI-generated images have been a novelty above all else. As some have pointed out online, modern AI seems at times like a solution in search of a problem. Now, a couple years into this AI boom (or bubble), some patterns of usage have emerged….
Pedagogy recapitulates history (sort of)
Because of the way mathematical ideas build on other mathematical ideas, the order in which these ideas were discovered/invented is often the same as the order in which they are taught. All humans typically start where humanity (is thought to have) started, with counting objects and identifying simple shapes. From there, we begin making calculations….
thoughts on mind 