Paul Cowan
4.3K posts
Paul Cowan
@funkwit
Melbourne⇒Sydney, HoE @ Big Picture Medical, ex-Google/Airtasker (though not speaking officially for ANY of them, duh, what is wrong with you?). He/him.
Sydney, Australia Katılım Ocak 2008
422 Takip Edilen784 Takipçiler
@BrianNorgard @gkamstra If Trump wanted this he’d make it happen in less than a year.
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The next Louisiana Purchase? Here’s an idea: the United States acquires the Baja California Peninsula from Mexico for $1 to $5 trillion.
Every Mexican citizen living in Baja receives dual U.S.-Mexico citizenship, plus a $50,000 investment account.
Then America gets to work: world-class infrastructure, deep-water ports, desalination, nuclear energy, housing, universities, and industry. Tijuana and Mexicali could become major reindustrialization zones.
In return, the United States gains nearly 1,800 miles of some of the most spectacular coastline on Earth and the chance to build the great new economic region.
Is this a crazy idea? Of course. But so was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
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@The_Traveler333 @BestMovieMom She was 24. Reading comprehension is perhaps not Sir's strong suit.
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Margot Robbie was actually drinking real 20-year-old Dom Pérignon while filming her iconic bathtub scene in The Big Short. She later admitted the hardest part was remembering her lines after getting a little tipsy.
The role was originally written for Scarlett Johansson, who was supposed to explain mortgage-backed securities instead.
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@jimifloydrix @AskMichaelTaiwo No, I mean coasting in preliminary games, before your spot is assured. With a structure like this, a team guaranteed to make R32 might be incentivised to play a "B-team" or rest in their last group/seeding game because they'd have an easier run being seeded (e.g.) 5th than 1st
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@funkwit @AskMichaelTaiwo Yeah mislabeled cause in my language we call'em sixteenth and eighth (consistent with quarter and semi in fact: 16 8 4 2)
Coincidentally each round you play a team 16 8 4 spots away in ranking
On your 2nd point: if you get an easy opponent don't you have more incentive to coast?
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Back in November, before a ball was drawn, FIFA announced the rule. The world number one and the number two go into opposite halves of the bracket. Number three and number four too.
At the time that was Spain, Argentina, France and England, in that order. However the results fell, the top four could not meet before the semis.
They borrowed this format from tennis. Sinner and Alcaraz, the two best male tennis players in the world right now, don't meet in the round of 16. They meet in the final or they don't meet at all.
And it makes sense for FIFA and the other sporting bodies.
The biggest teams don't cancel each other out in the round of 32, they survive to the games the world is actually watching. Bigger games, bigger numbers, bigger money.
Now the fun part. The same table that built this bracket is already being rewritten by it.
England beat Argentina, England climb. Spain beat France, Spain climb. And nobody loses a point doing it.
In World Cup knockouts, the loser's total doesn't drop. The winner simply takes. So, the rankings made these semis. These semis will remake the rankings. Interesting.
Why am I writing this? I have seen too many ArgenFIFA agenda and it is starting to get nauseating so I felt I should educate the TL a little about how these things actually work.
FIFA@FIFAcom
Top of the table 📈 For the first time ever, the four @FIFAWorldCup 2026 semi-finalists are the top four teams in the FIFA/Coca-Cola Men’s World Ranking 👏
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@jimifloydrix @AskMichaelTaiwo Biggest issue with this (besides labelling R32 as R16 etc): better teams face harder opposition (e.g. 1st must play 17th, while weaker 9th gets 25th). You want to reward the higher finisher with the easier run, which reduces chance of incentives to "coast" once spot secured.
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@AskMichaelTaiwo I would aim for a bracket that looks like this (assuming the top team won every time)
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@mrtonymartin @HaemAus I choose to believe that every time you get a venesection done you yell NOT WITH THE GOOD SCISSORS.
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Hey there, fellow Haemochromatoids.
Don't forget to venesect.
Good pies at the blood bank.
Yes, I've had three glasses of water.
@HaemAus
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@Dante1141709 @hell_line0 Imagine being such a fucking idiot in public.
Bravo.
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@hell_line0 You… You realize your example would totally justify it? Right?
Females have no bananas and are given one (the same as the male) then it’s equality, but if you give females MORE without giving the other part at least the same, then it’s unequal!
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I don't post much here, I know, and I never shill for people.
But Claire Stapleton is one of the most delightful people to have ever passed through Google employment, and commands the English language like no one else. This is going to be a TREAT, I'm certain of it.
claire stapleton@clairewaves
hello x--just dropping into the famously calm, nourishing discourse here to say my book is out this summer. drama, death, executives, and mass revolt--with light romp energy--inside google. info + preorders below. love and light to all :)
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@_thekennyshow @hasumpstuffedup @peteguley @philschultz11 @Upthemightypies How is this a bad take from @hasumpstuffedup ? He's explaining the rule and what the umpires are instructed. He didn't write the rule, and possibly doesn't even like it for all we know. If you think the rule sucks, that's the AFL's fault, it's not a "bad take" from him.
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@hasumpstuffedup @peteguley @philschultz11 @Upthemightypies Not sure I’ve heard a worse take from your account. It’s a terrible rule change on the run
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Hodge correct
If you touch the ball to prevent it going out for a lasoo FK, you must make a clear active attempt to keep it in
Just taking possession and letting momentum carry you over isn't doing that
Hate the rule if you want but Umps instructed to pay this
#AFLCrowsBlues
7AFL@7AFL
"The new rule is if you actually attempt to touch it, you've gotta try and keep the ball in." 🗣️ Luke Hodge following Nick Haynes' insufficient intent call
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@Jeffersek6g @DomCometti So to be clear - if your daughter or sister or mum was (let's say) sexually assaulted in the coal mines, you'd believe that 'comradeship' should take precedence and no-one should say anything. Fascinating character you are.
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@funkwit @DomCometti Called comradeship. Something loners like you wouldn’t know about.
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For the, “Albo is a traitor for arresting Ben Roberts Smith” crowd purely because he is a veteran. What do you say to the 20 fellow soldiers who testified AGAINST him? Are they traitors also?!
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@Jeffersek6g @DomCometti Did a lot of war crimes in the coal mines did we?
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@DomCometti Yep. Even working in underground coal the rule was what happens underground stays underground. If you cant stick up for your mate next to you in the army then we are screwed as a nation. If the government goes after its own veterans then why would anyone want to fight for it?
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@EsdaileTon53863 @TheHarrisSultan @DrewPavlou I would have gone with "Note to SAS troops don't commit war crimes" but you do you mate
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@TheHarrisSultan @DrewPavlou There in lies another possible problem of DEI personal in the military The 4 SAS members who gave evidence against BRS should be dishonourabley discharged Media personal are also a huge problem in particular the ABC for altering live footage Note to SAS troops leave cameras behin
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Ben Roberts-Smith was just arrested on alleged war crimes charges.
Miscarriage of justice. He served his country. If we were ever invaded we would need men like him to fight to save Australia.
How can we be so ungrateful?
Free Ben Roberts-Smith.
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@JdubAndrew @Math_files The difficulty of proof isn't in proving that it will tend to TREND downwards. The difficulty is showing that there can never ever be a loop. One counterexample of a loop (A-B-C-...-A) would disprove, and your observation (though astute) does nothing to show that.
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@Math_files Here is the proof: every odd number multiplied by 3 and adding 1 will be an even number, however only half of even numbers divided by 2 will be odd numbers. Therefore the limit will always go to 1 since there will be more even numbers produced than odd.
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People often say mathematicians are not afraid of anything—except one thing: the Collatz Conjecture.
It is one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in mathematics.
Here’s how it works:
Pick any positive number.
If the number is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1.
If the number is even, divide it by 2.
Now repeat this process again and again.
For example, start with 7:
7 is odd → 3×7 + 1 = 22
22 is even → 22 ÷ 2 = 11
11 is odd → 3×11 + 1 = 34
…and so on we get:
7 → 22 → 11 → 34 → 17 → 52 → 26 → 13 → 40 → 20 → 10 → 5 → 16 → 8 → 4 → 2 → 1
The surprising claim is this: no matter which number you start with, you will always eventually reach 1.
It sounds simple, but no one has been able to prove that it is true for all numbers. That’s why it remains a mystery.
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@aakashgupta "Google Assistant [was] trained on General American and Received Pronunciation English."
This is simply untrue. Assistant was absolutely trained on Australian English specifically. I know because I was part of the training data and spent many hours providing samples.
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This trick works because Australian English runs a systematic vowel shift that breaks every voice AI on the planet.
“Bean” for “been.” “Todie” for “today.” “Feesh” for “fish.” Linguists call it the Australian Vowel Shift. Front vowels raise, back vowels front, diphthongs compress. The pattern is so consistent you can reverse-engineer Australian pronunciation from written English using three rules.
Google Cloud’s speech-to-text hit a 35% word error rate on accented speakers in 2025. One in three words wrong. Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant were all trained on General American and Received Pronunciation English. The 80%+ of English speakers whose vowels don’t match the training data just have to repeat themselves.
A human decodes “have you bean to spice lightly” in seconds. The $200B voice AI industry still can’t.
jenny lewis@jennylewis
i’ll teach you how to do an australian accent. say this out loud exactly as it’s written have you bean to spice lightly
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@HestonChurchill @SSharkansky @Math_files I just regret my chosen example, because the reverse (increasingly long sequences of 0s, separated by single 1s, is the much more elegant 0.101001000100001 which is the infinite sum of 1/(10^1) + 1/(10^3) + 1/(10^6) + 1/(10^10) + ... which I think we can ask agree is much nicer!
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The Feynman point is a famous pattern in the digits of π. It refers to the sequence 999999, which appears starting at the 762nd decimal place of π.
The name comes from the physicist Richard Feynman. He jokingly said that if this sequence occurred earlier in π, he would memorize π up to that point and end the recitation with “…nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, and so on.”
This amusing coincidence became known as the Feynman point and is a fun example of surprising patterns appearing in the digits of π.
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@HestonChurchill @SSharkansky @Math_files Extremely silly but clear counterexample: 0.01011011101111011111... (that is, a number whose decimal representation is a sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... ones each separated by a single zero) is an irrational number but won't contain any sequence of two zeroes!
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@SSharkansky @Math_files As irrational numbers are infinite, it seems surprising to me that there wouldn't be.
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@und675 @dollllfears @MrMediocrePass It literally says "use a registered psychologist, social worker or occupational therapist" in your screenshot.
You're giving someone advice about psychology and therapy, when they are referring to psychiatry. They're different things, which even your own screenshot makes clear.
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@realRick_AUS @gaymilkisgay Under Keating as treasurer? They peaked at about 17.5%.
In that same time window, New Zealand's peaked at about 20.5%, and the UK's at over 16%.
Amazing, Keating's influence, to have caused such high interest rates across all those countries. Unbelievable.
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Good afternoon Australia,
There were 0 interest rate rises under the LNP government from 2013 until 2022.
We have seen 13 interest rises under the Anthony Albanese’s led labor government since 2022.
Enjoy.
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