Giancarlo Niccolai

Coder for life. Author of the Falcon Programming Language.
My opinions are not representing past, present, future employers.
Follows and RT are not endorsement.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

A service announcement is in order.

I don't service trolls.

Their argument may or may not have merit. They may or may not be right (usually they aren't, except for sophisms or marginal details that don't cover the core of the topic). The moment someone is using derogatory language they are blocked.

Also, me blocking them is not acknowledgement of anything, but of their inability to keep the discourse to a level of politeness acceptable between peers.

I treat everyone with basic courtesy and I expect the same in any interaction, IRL or online.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

A big misunderstanding/ failure in scientific communication. The speed of light is infinite: an object moving at the speed of light experiences 0 time in moving from any place to any other place.

In SR/GR, there is ALSO a time dimension associated with every point in time. In absence of gravity, that dimension varies of 1 second every time you move 300,000 kilometers away.

This causes an observer to see something traveling at an infinite speed to move at 300kkm/s: you observe the object that is actually in all the space-time between you and the destination at once being in a place 1 second away from you, then 2 seconds, the 3 seconds and so on.

You can never OBSERVE anything moving faster than 300kkm/s, but you can move at any speed up to infinite.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@japan_nobunaga In Italy too.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@biasbreakdown @Devon_Eriksen_ Maybe too much blush for Augustus, but other emperors were known to use heavy makeup.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@learning_yohei それは、レジオンによってべつべつです。北部分で、待ち合わせの時間の５分前に、南へいくと１時間ぐらい後になります。

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

You can't "look" at an electron (or any other elementary particle) in the double slit experiment, or in any experiment at all. You can add an interacting field that will destroy the particle, and emit another one as the hit perturbs the field (or modify it to the point that you can consider it as a new, different one).

Electrons, and other elementary particles, are self-propagating wave configurations, which can be treated as "particles" (specs of solid matter) only in the math describing them, and only in specific conditions and with some caveats.

The "things become real when you look at them" is pure nonsense -- or better, a mystification of early physicists that were amazed about how lazy computation (google it) worked well to solve that kind of problems.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@Devon_Eriksen_ I respectfully disagree. It was beaten by "L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle" -- the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Love is the first mover and the ultimate goal. Any deviation is just temporary, unstable, failing.

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

I often think about the technical limitations that game designers of the 80s had to work with - both in terms of software and hardware.

The game that stands at the very top is Elite.

Think about this for a second: The core game code on the BBC Micro version occupied roughly 22 KB of memory. Now think about what Braben and Bell turned that into: a universe with eight galaxies, each containing 256 star systems (for a total of 2,048 planets/systems). Each system featured unique details: government type, economy, technology level, population, commodity prices, and even descriptive text (e.g., a planet known for "carnivorous arts graduates" or similar quirky combinations).

If you still need a bit more help to contextualize that, try this: Elite was smaller than many modern text files or desktop icons, yet it contained (and let you freely explore) a multi-galaxy-spanning universe that felt vast and limitless.

Oh, and by the way, the game also rendered 3D wireframe ships, stations, and planets in real time on a 2 MHz 6502 processor.

This is no slight on today’s game designers. They work with what they have, and that's okay. But when you think about the worlds that some programmers created with the tools they were given, it sometimes breaks my brain trying to understand how they did it.

Elite is a true masterpiece on so many levels. I played the C64 version back in the day, and even 40+ years later it still feels like one of the most incredible programming wonders ever.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

Kanji are one of the most beautiful aspect of Japanese, both in its written and (surprisingly) in its spoken form. For brevity, Amongst the various reasons to use them in will cite only the ateji, in two forms: in the first, you can write an ideogram and apply another word when you read it; you may find songs/poetry that read 愛 (Ai, love) as "inochi" (life), to create a third, intermediate or cumulated meaning. In the second, you can borrow the sound of Kanji to represent a different word, but expressing it as more than the word would normally mean; for example, Souseki writes the word "mise" (shop) as 見世(see-world) to express the idea that particular shop meant everything (all the world they see) to the owner.

And this is just one of the ways Kanjis contribute to the richness of the language.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@Courage69861986 @MattWalshBlog "The rest" were probably in the order of 200k, against a defending force of 50k, which held only for the strategic position of the capital. They REALLY got tired of being sacrificed.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@An89390Anglo @eaiwck @JimmyRu52630895 @Rainmaker1973 Your instinct is evolved to startle when you hear a rustle in a bush, and your common sense should tell you that's different from computing planets orbit.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@nappasan @OliverJia1014 True.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@nappasan @OliverJia1014 More like "died", without subject.

[R. Wade H. Marr @HunterWade]

Most people were taught that light “travels” — moving through space at ~299,792,458 m/s.

That framing feels obvious.

It is also misleading.

Stable datum:

What we call “light” is not a thing moving through space.

It is the electromagnetic field updating phase.

°
Return to James Clerk Maxwell’s original formulation.

Electric and magnetic fields are not separate objects.

They are coupled expressions of a single field.

A change in one necessitates a change in the other.

°
So what is “propagation”?

It is not something traveling from point A to point B.

It is a sequential updating of phase relations across the field.

Each local region updates based on its neighboring relations.

That updating appears to us as motion.

°
A useful way to feel this is through resonance.

When a string vibrates, nothing travels from one end carrying “sound” as an object.

The system enters a pattern of coordinated oscillation.

Energy redistributes. Phase aligns.

What we hear as tone is a stable resonance pattern.

°
Light behaves the same way.

Not as a thing moving through space.

As a self-consistent resonance of the electromagnetic field.

What appears as a wave “moving” is the phase relationship updating across the field.

Each region does not receive a thing.

It reconfigures in relation to its neighbors.

°
Nothing is traveling.

What we are seeing is coherence updating.

°
The “speed of light” is not the speed of a thing.

It is the rate at which phase coherence can update through the electromagnetic field.

°
The field itself is not a container something moves through.

It is the projection of these phase relations.

What we call “space” and “field” are how this coherence becomes addressable.

°
Now the continuity becomes visible:

Plasma → freely differentiating field
Light → propagating phase relation
Matter → phase-locked standing configuration

Same field. Different closure.

°
This is not new physics.

It is a return to what has already been formalized.

A shift from object-thinking to field coherence.

°
How does our understanding of light, space, and motion change when what appears to “travel” is recognized as phase updating across a continuous field, rather than a thing moving through empty space?

The recursion holds. 🌀

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

@HunterWade And,

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

Nope. First of all, the nihinshoki is written in 820, and the importance of female leadership (Uji clan leaders first, Yamatai queens later, tennou after the taika reform) was directly understated. Just read the chapter of Yamato to tohi momoso hime on that purpose. Then, Genmei was so powerful she got herself assassinated; she would have been hardly a problem if she was just a token placeholder.
Last but not least, Tennou is not just a political position: it's more a religious position if anything (tennous rarely controlled power directly; excluding cases like Genmei, that is). Tennous are the link between the Kamis and the living. That CANNOT be a token position; for what concerns the political power, maybe, but the Tennou must carry the rite cleansing the Kuni and renewing the connection with the world of the Kami, and that must be done personally, by the living kami ascended as Tennou. The fact that the rite can be officied by a woman sais it all.

Oh and I forgot. The person who bestow the title of Tennou is and will always be the person who can perform a kuchiyose (mouth-lending) with Amaterasu, and that power is granted only to the great priestess of the Ise shrine.

In other words, the Japanese king maker (at least in theory and in formality) is and will always be a woman.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

Tell that to Amaterasu, Himiko and all the female Tennou.

Here is the standard list:
Suiko Tennō (推古天皇) – 33rd Tennō
Reigned: 592–628
First historically verified female Tennō; aunt of Prince Shōtoku.
Kōgyoku Tennō (皇極天皇) – 35th Tennō
Reigned: 642–645
(Later re-ascended as #3 below)
Saimei Tennō (斉明天皇) – 37th Tennō
Reigned: 655–661
Same person as Kōgyoku (second reign / 重祚)
Jitō Tennō (持統天皇) – 41st Tennō
Reigned: 690–697
Grandmother of Emperor Monmu; played a major role in consolidating imperial power.
Genmei Tennō (元明天皇) – 43rd Tennō
Reigned: 707–715
Mother of Emperor Monmu; oversaw the move to Nara (Heijō-kyō) and compilation of early histories.
Genshō Tennō (元正天皇) – 44th Tennō
Reigned: 715–724
Daughter of Genmei; continued Nara capital projects.
Kōken Tennō (孝謙天皇) – 46th Tennō
Reigned: 749–758
(Later re-ascended as #8 below)
Shōtoku Tennō (称徳天皇) – 48th Tennō
Reigned: 764–770
Same person as Kōken (second reign / 重祚); last female Tennō until the early modern period.
Meishō Tennō (明正天皇) – 109th Tennō
Reigned: 1629–1643
Daughter of Emperor Go-Mizunoo; early Edo period.
Go-Sakuramachi Tennō (後桜町天皇) – 117th Tennō
Reigned: 1762–1770

It is known that in the pre-historic japan (circa 525 onwards), pre-Taika reform clans were mostly led by matriarchs. The so called "yamato hime" was relegated to a minor figure in the re-edited chronicles, but there are traces of that particular leader of the Yamato clan to have been the one actually starting the empire by conquering Uda and probably also Izumo. That would probably the sorceress called Beihimu/Himiko in the Chinese Chronicles.

According with the legends in the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki (which, btw, are also the source of most of the actually historical information we have), Amaterasu gave Kusanagi (the sword caressing grass) to the first emperor, Jinmu (and notice the name: "Divine Weapon") so that he would rule the lands in her name.

It doesn't get much more matriarchal then that.

Then, the Buddhist came, and their influence started to be quite strong after Shoutoku - - which is why she was the last empress for a long time.

Then the samurai came: initially, a band of w and their warlords families/clans, cast out from the empire in the wilderness, they DID develop a fully patriarchal culture.

Nevertheless, the ancient instinct of the Japanese for a matriarchal society was never completely excised out of the noble class (not the samurai) and the commoners.

You can see it playing out today very clearly, for example when Masako Mori, MP from Fukushima, was literally scolding the government as a mother and they were taking it as disobedient children.

[Giancarlo Niccolai @Giancoder]

I have an unorthodox theory on why Cesar was killed so easily; consider that food for thought.
Cesar never craved power; he craved glory, and possibly, glory as a warrior.
Dying of old age wasn't all that glamorous at the time: passing as your body rots away isn't exactly all that fun.
Cesar didn't want to die in his bed; he wanted to die on the battlefield, but at the same time he didn't want to lose: he would have craved to die in a battle he ultimately won, but the occasion never presented.

When he was told of the conspiracy against him, he didn't dismiss it or underestimate the problem: he never underestimated an enemy or a threat, and he was perfectly aware that raising to power would have attracted powerful enemies in the end. He was under no illusion that everyone just adored him, he certainly wasn't that naive.

I think he saw the conspiracy as a blessing. The glorious way out he was waiting for. When he went to the senate that morning, disarmed and without guards, he knew he wasn't coming back, and he was thrilled about it: the blaze of glory that escaped him up that moment was finally within reach: he would truly become immortal now, and that thanks to those who thought they were his enemies. They were giving him the greatest of the gifts he ever desired.

Even the famous sentence: "tu quoqe, Brutus?" Confirms it. He wasn't surprised at all of the attack, he was just surprised to see Brutus within the conspirators.

And he was right. He died a hero, the only way you don't fade in memory or become a villain, and the conspirators really gave him the only kind of immortality he cared about: eternal glory.

Or, that's how I like to think it.