Spectral line Updated 2025-07-16
A single line in the emission spectrum.
So precise, so discrete, which makes no sense in classical mechanics!
Has been the leading motivation of the development of quantum mechanics, all the way from the:
Asian fetish Updated 2025-07-16
All interests are based on fetishes.
The fetish of beauty. The fetish if intelligence. The fetish of kindness.
What's wrong with the fetish of Asianess?
Whenever Ciro's wife starts with "the Asian fetish talk", Ciro reminds her of her own claimed "tall person fetish", and they call it quits.
Asian fetish is much more than sex. It is about the culture, the history, the language. It is the same fetish that makes great mathematicians an Artists do what they do.
When Ciro Santilli was at École Polytechnique, he had to do a presentation for his stupid English courses that all students were forced to take, no matter how good their English was.
The topic was likely something like "pick a country", and Ciro was delighted when he managed to pick "China", after it had gone around a table with many many people before him.
The PowerPoint presentation Ciro made over the weekend was so amazing (and making it was actually fun to make, Ciro actually remembers it a bit!), drawing partly from stuff his wife then girlfriend showed him, that at the end the one of the other students asked him if he had lived in China.
It is a shame Ciro couldn't find the presentation when he wrote this line many many years later. Anything that is not in a BLOB-free monorepo, will disappear, heed my words. But he's certain about two things which it contained:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish#History_of_origins
In the United States, women of East and Southeast Asian descent are sometimes stereotyped as subservient, passive, mysterious, villainous in nature, and hyper-sexual.
subservient, passive, mysterious are understandable. But Hyper-sexual and villainous? OMG have these people never seen real Asians?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish#Pornography:
Several studies have implied that Asian women are over-represented in the American pornography industry. Asian women make up perhaps 20% of all female performers, despite being roughly 2.5% of the U.S. population. Asian men also appear to be considerably over-represented, at 10% of male actors.
Video 1.
How my boyfriend CHEATED with another Asian girl by Jenny Tian
. Source.
SQL TRIGGER Updated 2025-07-16
SQL's implementation of database triggers.
This feature is really cool, as it allows you to keep caches up to date!
In particular, everything that happens in a trigger happens as if it were in a transaction. This way, you can do less explicit transactions when you use triggers. It is a bit like the advantages of SQL CASCADE.
SQL window RANGE Updated 2025-07-16
rm -f tmp.sqlite
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite "create table t (id integer, val integer)"
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
insert into t values
  (0, 0),
  (1, 5),
  (2, 10),
  (3, 14),
  (4, 15),
  (5, 16),
  (6, 20),
  (7, 25),
  (8, 29),
  (9, 30),
  (10, 30),
  (11, 31),
  (12, 35),
  (13, 40)
EOF
Show how many neighbours each column has with val between val - 2 and val + 2 inclusive:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
SELECT id, val, COUNT(*) OVER (
  ORDER BY val RANGE BETWEEN 2 PRECEDING AND 2 FOLLOWING
) FROM t;
EOF
Output:
0|0|1
1|5|1
2|10|1
3|14|3
4|15|3
5|16|3
6|20|1
7|25|1
8|29|4
9|30|4
10|30|4
11|31|4
12|35|1
13|40|1
val - 1 and val + 1 inclusive instead:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
SELECT id, val, COUNT(*) OVER (
  ORDER BY val RANGE BETWEEN 1 PRECEDING AND 1 FOLLOWING
) FROM t;
EOF
Output:
0|0|1
1|5|1
2|10|1
3|14|2
4|15|3
5|16|2
6|20|1
7|25|1
8|29|3
9|30|4
10|30|4
11|31|3
12|35|1
13|40|1
There seems to be no analogue to HAVING for window functions, so we can just settle for a subquery for once, e.g.:
sqlite3 tmp.sqlite <<EOF
SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT id, val, COUNT(*) OVER (
    ORDER BY val RANGE BETWEEN 1 PRECEDING AND 1 FOLLOWING
  ) as c FROM t
) WHERE c > 2
EOF
which outputs:
4|15|3
8|29|3
9|30|4
10|30|4
11|31|3
The best articles by Ciro Santilli Updated 2025-07-16
These are the best articles ever authored by Ciro Santilli, most of them in the format of Stack Overflow answers.
Ciro posts update about new articles on his Twitter accounts.
A chronological list of all articles is also kept at: Section "Updates".
Some random generally less technical in-tree essays will be present at: Section "Essays by Ciro Santilli".
Microwave Updated 2025-07-16
Micro means "small wavelength compared to radio waves", not micron-sized.
Microwave production and detection is incredibly important in many modern applications:
Calculus of variations Updated 2025-07-16
Calculus of variations is the field that searches for maxima and minima of Functionals, rather than the more elementary case of functions from to .
SMEG, cannot determine exact model.
2020-11: started sparking by itself once every 5 minutes. Knob controls dirty in hole, but can't find out how to access. Seems slightly glued insulated around edges.
£112.99
Buying October 2023 as an immediate backup phone after the Google Pixel 3a (2020) touchscreen died, and Motorola Moto G6 Play (2018) wouldn't connect to giffgaff.
Still working checks: May 2024.
Minetest Updated 2025-07-16
github.com/minetest/minetest Written in C++, which is, a plus.
Good Minecraft clone. On Ubuntu 21.10 did:
sudo snap install minetest
which installed 5.4.1, and it worked, except it had no sound, to an error:
ERROR[Main]: Audio: Global Initialization: Failed to open device

There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.