shtetl

Scott Aaronson, from shtetl-optimized fame, describes his work as on the boundary of math, physics and computers.

Even someone who hadn't left their shtetl for generations would have heard tales of other nations, e.g.

To make it concrete - my great great grandma was born in shtetl, in the pale.

Brains are optimised to maintain friendships with approximately the population of a shtetl, but is there a connection to the blog's subject matter?

That is I know Scott Aaronson from Shtetl optimised not from any particularly memorable scientific accomplishment, which he might well have.

I can’t imagine they’re much fun at parties (or in communes, shtetl-optimized or not).

It’s a shtetl and it’s all transactional.

We fight with archives in Eastern Europe that are staffed to this day with corrupt former KGB members who would rather stonewall you than give you your great-grandfather's shtetl records even when you are willing to pay them for access.

Taykh = river, as in Yez 47,12/nathaniel silber (shtetl = … ) Tonton = pork (osaka slang) So, an algebraic exercise for me, a geometric one for you, and a quantum for both?

This is a very silly tangent, but it's actually remarkable how early cameras became an economical (albeit slightly luxurious) way to preserve personal histories: I have pictures of ancestors from the 1870s and 1880s, despite living in a one horse shtetl in the middle of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Actualization Theory & Meaning of Life (“Why Quantum Mechanics?” - Shtetl Optimized, Jan 26th/27th, 2022) (1).

They both list the other blog as recommended reading (although Shtetl-Optimized still links to Star-Slate-Codex rather than Astral-Codex-Ten).

Shtetl Optimized is just about the only science-related source that is simultaneously correct, accessible, timely, and widely read.

His blog, Shtetl-Optimized[1], is also a good read (and I think the book appeared there first).