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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Does make me think about the story of Thales of Miletus; ancient Greek philosopher, got asked what use was philosophy if it doesn’t make you any money. Predicted good weather, and monopolised all the olive presses, made a fortune.

    For a modern example; shares in Rheinmetall (German firm who make, amongst other things, the turrets for tanks) have gone through the roof after the recent US debacle. I could have told you a year ago that Trump getting in would have meant the US abandoning Ukraine; obvious in hindsight that that would mean a boon for European arms manufacturers.

    I don’t think you need to be quick to take advantage. I think you need insight. If there’s a topic that you’re knowledgeable about and you can see which way the wind is blowing, then you can make your own boat.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus#Olive_presses



  • Man alive, all that time I wasted learning LaTeX in that case. Supports tables properly, “floats” pictures and figures about without messing up the flow of text, exceptional support for equations, beautiful printed output…

    Suffers from a completely insane macro-writing language, and its markup is more intrusive in the text than markdown’s is. Also, if you have very specific formatting output requirements (for a receiving publication, for instance) then it can be somewhat painful to whip into shape. Plain-text gang forever, though.