Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋 @bibliolater@qoto.org

Did you know that once we ditch fossil fuels, the number of ships crossing the ocean would fall by 40% because that’s how many are just carrying coal, oil and gas?

Sunrise from Glastonbury Tor. Photograph taken this morning.

UK economy flatlined last quarter revised figures reveal
https://www.cityam.com/the-uk-economy-flatlined-last-quarter-revised-figures-reveal/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Top Stories in Business @top-stories-in-business-FlipboardUK

Reminder that one of the most important times to wear a mask is right now during holiday season travel. Transit hubs are high risk as many people travel while they are sick. A high quality mask like an N95 will help protect you and help ensure you don't miss out on valuable time with loved ones.

The number pi has an evil twin! It's a number called ϖ with many properties similar to π. There are even mutant trig functions connected to this number, called sl and cl.

So maybe while you were studying trig in high school, some kid in another galaxy was having to memorize all the identities for these other functions.

I doubt it. Just as pi and trig functions are connected to the circle, this number ϖ and its mutant trig functions are connected to a curve shaped like the symbol for infinity, ∞. But this curve is just less important than the circle. I'm not enough of a cultural relativist to believe there's a civilization that cares more about the shape ∞ than the shape ◯.

This ∞-shaped curve is called a 'lemniscate', and ϖ is called the 'lemniscate constant'. I'll show you the lemniscate in my next post.

A civilization will probably only get interested in ϖ when it gets interested in the lemniscate.... or the deeper math it's connected to. On our planet, it was Bernoulli, Euler and Gauss who discovered this math.

(Why does unicode even have the symbol ϖ? Here's why: it's a script version of the Greek letter pi, sometimes called 'varpi' or 'pomega'.)

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The ice at Santa's workshop is thinning away... #NorthPole 🎁🧑‍🎄

Check out my blog from November 2022 for more on this graphic: https://zacklabe.com/blog-archive-2022/

22 Dec 1668: d. Stephen Day first printer in the British American colonies #otd in Cambridge Massachusetts (Library of Congess)

How many countries are there in 2024?
https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/how-many-countries-are-there?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into SCIENCEFOCUS.COM @sciencefocus-com-sciencefocus

📚🖋️ #JohannesGutenberg is commonly perceived as the inventor of #printing, yet, #Asia pioneered printing centuries earlier. From the #DiamondSutra of 868 CE from #China to #Korea's metal movable type predating #Gutenberg's Bible by 80 years, Asia's innovations laid the groundwork for global information exchange. Inspired by a visit to the #GutenbergMuseum in #Mainz, I explored the fascinating history of printing in this article:

🌍 https://www.fabriziomusacchio.com/weekend_stories/told/2024/2024-12-22-chinese_and_korean_bookprinting/

#WeekendStories #histodons

I guess I'm on a bookstore kick this week so here are some more cool book store photos. This time it's Old Capitol Books in Monterey, CA. It's a pint sized used bookstore.

I shot these with with an ultra-wide angle so the shop looks a lot roomier than it really is. In reality, it's about the size of a studio apartment and the photo of the storefront shows almost the entire store.

#photography #bookstore #books

Spotify is a creepy, and grossly unethical, platform at this point. it rips off musicians and rewards huge companies -- and itself. Apparently what it's doing is legal, however.

This is great reporting, from a new book by Liz Pelly. A compelling read.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/