Interesting Links for 01-03-2022

[andrewducker]

UK signs trade deal with New Zealand - benefits are between -0.01% and 0.01% of GDP

(tags:newzealand trade uk )

Living with a pro-covid government

(tags:pandemic uk doom Conservatives )

This is who Putin has always been

(tags:Russia politics murder war )

Transcript of the last texts from a Russian soldier to his mother

(tags:sms Russia Ukraine war sad )

Strangest Sorting Algorithms

(tags:algorithms funny )

The most racist Ukraine coverage on TV News

(tags:racism ukraine war news tv )

I don't *always* feel this way when having board games rules explained to me. But...

(tags:games rules funny comic )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

I don't have a problem with people being surprised, dismayed or shocked that a war is happening in Europe. Europe is (or is supposed to be) a wealthy, stable, democratic place where the rule of law applies, norms on the non-violent resolution of disagreements are respected. Europe is also where Europeans live.

Europe is supposed not to have wars any more. We've done a lot of work since 1945 to reduce the chances of a war in Europe. It has mostly worked.

I think it is okay that people in Europe are upset that their home, which isn't supposed to have wars, is having a war.

Less convinced that our empathy should be driven by the ethnic similarities of Ukrainians to the other Europeans.

[dewline]

Seconding that last point.

[simont]

My favourite daft sorting algorithm is the "slowsort" mentioned in the joke paper Pessimal Algorithms and Simplexity Analysis, which is similar to bogosort in the sense that it's an unnecessarily slow sorting algorithm, but has the additional constraint that at every stage it has to at least look as if it's sincerely trying to make progress. In the paper's own example, if your boss sends you to sort something in Paris with all expenses paid, what sorting algorithm do you run when you get there? With quicksort you'd only have to turn round and travel home again; with bogosort you'd be obviously wasting time on purpose and you'd get fired. Slowsort is the answer.

The algorithm is a combination of selection sort (find the largest element, put it at the top, repeat on the remaining n-1 elements) with a novel divide-and-conquer step in the "find the largest element" subproblem: you find the largest element by dividing the array in two and sorting each half. Then the largest element has a choice of only two places it could be, so it's easy to check which it is. And naturally, those recursive sorting operations are also performed using slowsort ...

[andrewducker]

That's hilarious. I love people coming up with ideas like this!

[arrctic]

those text transcripts are heartbreaking.

[andrewducker]

They really are. Young men tricked into fighting a war so old men can feel good about themselves.

[original_aj]

Twas always thus. :(