Category: News

This article originally appeared on 07.10.21

Dr. Daniel Mansfield and his team at the University of New South Wales in Australia have just made an incredible discovery. While studying a 3,700-year-old tablet from the ancient civilization of Babylon, they found evidence that the Babylonians were doing something astounding: trigonometry!

Most historians have credited the Greeks with creating the study of triangles’ sides and angles, but this tablet presents indisputable evidence that the Babylonians were using the technique 1,500 years before the Greeks ever were.

Mansfield and his team are, understandably, incredibly proud. What they discovered is that the tablet is actually an ancient trigonometry table.

u201cAussie mathematician cracks code of famous 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet https://t.co/f7h6oIfBDru201d

— China Xinhua News (@China Xinhua News)
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Mansfield said:

“The huge mystery, until now, was its purpose – why the ancient scribes carried out the complex task of generating and sorting the numbers on the tablet. Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius.”

“The tablet not only contains the world’s oldest trigonometric table; it is also the only completely accurate trigonometric table, because of the very different Babylonian approach to arithmetic and geometry. This means it has great relevance for our modern world. Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3,000 years, but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education. This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new.”

The tablet predates Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who has long been regarded as the father of trigonometry. Mansfield’s colleague, Norman Widberger, added:

“Plimpton 322 predates Hipparchus by more than 1,000 years. It opens up new possibilities not just for modern mathematics research, but also for mathematics education. With Plimpton 322 we see a simpler, more accurate trigonometry that has clear advantages over our own.”

“A treasure trove of Babylonian tablets exists, but only a fraction of them have been studied yet. The mathematical world is only waking up to the fact that this ancient but very sophisticated mathematical culture has much to teach us.”

People were understandably excited by the news.

u201cA 3,700 year olf Babylonian tablet revealed as the world’s first trigonometry table https://t.co/AQlpsndM92u201d

— The Conversation (@The Conversation)
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Some mathematicians actually think studying the Babylonians back then could help us improve the way we do trigonometry today.

Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322 will make studying maths easier, mathematician says http://ab.co/2vuEzuLu00a0 | @abcnewspic.twitter.com/U10wQ7ZA42

— ABC Australia (@ABC Australia)
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“With Plimpton 322 we see a simpler, more accurate trig. (with) clear advantages over our own.”n@n_wildberger: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/24/mathematical-secrets-of-ancient-tablet-unlocked-after-nearly-a-century-of-studyu00a0u2026n#TOK

— Roo Stenning (@Roo Stenning)
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Of course, there were the haters…

Find someone who loves you as much as this guy dislikes a hypothesis about Babylonian math: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/ancient-babylonian-tablet-may-contain-first-evidence-trigonometryu00a0u2026pic.twitter.com/c5yO8LmjhE

— Miles Brundage (@Miles Brundage)
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But all in all, Twitter users were pretty impressed with the Babylonians’ skills.

And they figured it out 3,700 years ahead of me…and counting.

— Marty (@Marty)
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And we’re over here trying to figure out how to do trig with our TI-83s… man I love it when the ancients show what real intelligence is.

— Kenny Hayse (@Kenny Hayse)
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Congratulations to Dr. Mansfield and his team on their incredible discovery… and for making trigonometry exciting!

This article originally appeared on 08.12.21

Imagine deciding to take up a hobby that usually requires many years to perfect at age 35, and three years later ending up in the top 30 in the world at the highest international competition for it.

That’s what happened to a 38-year-old math and physics teacher from Diepenbeek, Belgium. According to Netherlands News Live, Mieke Gorissen has jogged 10km (a little over six miles) a few times a week for exercise for many years. But in 2018, she decided to hire a running trainer to improve her technique. As it turned out, she was a bit of a natural at distance running.

Three years later, Gorissen found herself running her third marathon. But not just any old marathon (as if there were such a thing)—the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics. And not only did she compete with the world’s most elite group of runners, she came in 28th out of the 88 competing in the race.

With the heat and humidity in Tokyo, even completing the race was a major accomplishment. (Fifteen women competing did not finish the marathon.) But to come in in the top 30 when you just started focusing on distance running three years ago? Unbelievable.

In fact, Gorissen could hardly believe it herself. A video of her reaction upon hearing her results has gone viral for its purity and genuine humility. “No,” she said when a reporter told her she came in 28th in the race. “That’s not possible.”

Then she burst into tears.

Her emotional disbelief is so moving. “I was already happy to finish the race,” she said through sobs. “I do think I have reached my goal and that I can be happy.”

“I also think I lost a toenail,” she added, laughing.

Even after the English translation ends in the video, it’s clear how much this finish meant to her. A remarkable accomplishment for a 38-year-old who knits and reads for fun and who has only run two marathons prior to competing in the Olympics.

See on Instagram

According to her Olympic profile, she’s glad she got started with distance running later in life. “If I started running in my teens, it wouldn’t have been good for me,” she said. “I wasn’t really happy then, I would have been too hard on myself and I would have lost myself in it in a way that wasn’t healthy. It came at exactly the right time.”

Congratulations, Mieke. You’ve given us all the inspiration to set new goals and dream bigger than we ever thought possible.

Here’s another positive trend in America that you probably won’t hear on your local TV news, where if it bleeds, it leads. A new report based on FBI data found that violent crime among those ages 17 and under dropped 78% from 1994 to 2020.

The study found a big drop in youth violent crime in 2020 and although some of that can be attributed to the pandemic, violent crime rates were already trending in that direction.

“In 2020, there were an estimated 424,300 arrests involving persons younger than 18—38% fewer than the number of arrests in 2019, and half the number of arrests 5 years earlier,” according to the study. “Less than 1 in 10 (8%) of these arrests were for a violent crime.”

u201cThe estimated number of youth arrests for violent crime, which includes murder, robbery, and aggravated assault, continued to decline in 2020 and was down 78% from its peak in 1994, according to a new report from @OJPgov’s @OJPOJJDP. https://t.co/zLXq3a150Nu201d

— OJP (@OJP)
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The report may come as a surprise to a lot of Americans, who are inundated with news stories about crime every night on the news. A study by HuffPost and YouGov found that the average American is woefully uninformed about the state of crime in America.

The 2020 poll found that only 10% of Americans correctly believed that crime had fallen over the past decade, while 57% incorrectly believed it had risen.

“If you report crime increasingly, then people will often think it’s increasing,” Vincent Schiraldi, a senior fellow at the Columbia University Justice Lab, told NPR. “But there’s been about a two-thirds decline in the number of kids locked up. At the same time, we’re actually treating the kids when they screw up, rather than just throwing them in these facilities that often exacerbate the crime.”

u201cYouth arrests for violent crime in 2020 is down 78% from its peak in 1994, reaching a new low, according to a new @OJPgov report. Read more: https://t.co/gjf7NB1JKgu201d

— Coalition for Juvenile Justice (@Coalition for Juvenile Justice)
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News of the positive trend should encourage politicians and judges to push for rehabilitation programs instead of long prison sentences for young people.

“These data reflect an encouraging trend—one that has in fact been developing over the last three decades—and offer a welcome counter-narrative to claims that youth crime is on the rise,” OJJDP Administrator Liz Ryan said in a press release. “They also give us reason to be optimistic about the course of juvenile justice reform, particularly efforts in many jurisdictions to replace harsh punishments with personal development opportunities and to design programs that build support into accountability.”

The data also gives researchers more information to make smarter decisions on policies affecting young people.

“The continuing decline in youth arrests overall, and for violent offenses in particular, gives us important information about the volume and nature of arrests that should be considered when developing strategies to support youth and reduce their justice involvement,” NIJ Director Nancy La Vigne said in a press release.

The drop in youth violent crime mirrors the trend in violent crime in America over the past 30 years. In 1991, 758.2 out of 100,000 people were the victims of violent crime. This number dropped by almost half by 2019 (380.8). There has been a slight uptick in violent crime during the pandemic.

The recent increase in violent crime in America has been characterized by many on the right as the result of criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning cities. However, red states have seen some of the highest murder rates of all.

A positive trend with America’s youth bodes well for the country’s future. When young people are less violent that means the adults of the future will probably commit fewer crimes as well.

It has appeared that Baby Tate is set for a huge breakout for some time and with no less a music industry titan than Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds backing her, that eventuality is looking closer than ever. Both Babies stopped by The Tonight Show to perform Babyface’s new single “Don’t Even Think About It,” which prominently features Baby Tate. She straight-up steals the show, standing front-and-center in a floor-length aquamarine feather boa jacket with her face beat to the gawds, rapping and showing off her impressive singing chops backed by Babyface and The Roots.

The timing is impressive as well. While the duo is ostensibly there to promote Babyface’s upcoming 11th(!) studio album Girls’ Night Out, with the longtime R&B legend ceding the spotlight to Baby Tate, fans will undoubtedly find themselves encountering her own mixtape, Mani/Pedi, which drops this Friday, September 30 on Warner Records. It could very well be the catalyst to that expected breakout after she spent over a year promoting it with singles like “Pedi,” “S.L.O. (Slut Him Out),” “Dancing Queen,” and “Ain’t No Love” with 2 Chainz. Fellow Atlanta native Kali is also set to appear on the project, which features 14 tracks and follows Tate’s 2020 EP After The Rain.

Baby Tate is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After months and months of waiting for some sort of good news regarding the status of Lonzo Ball’s knee, the Chicago Bulls apparently got that on Thursday afternoon. Ball, who has not played since the midpoint of last season due to a knee problem that has kept lingering, underwent a previously-announced “arthroscopic debridement of his left knee” on Wednesday.

Ball said his hope was that he would be able play this season, and on Thursday, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that there’s optimism about whether or not that will be the case, even if the expectation is that Ball is going to have to miss a few months while he works to rehabilitate the injury.

Back when the procedure was announced, the team stressed that Ball would need 4-6 weeks before he gets evaluated and decisions start being made. Ball underwent a procedure to fix a torn meniscus in January, which was the start of the issues that have kept him off the floor ever since.

Ball’s recovery from his knee problems have been defined by initial optimism followed by major setbacks, so expectations will assuredly be tempered. Regardless, Ball’s ability to initiate the team’s offense and provide much-needed perimeter defense were crucial to Chicago’s success at the start of last season. In his first season as a member of the Bulls, Ball averaged 13 points, 5.4 rebounds, 5.1 assists, and 1.8 steals in 34.6 minutes per game.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the January 6th Committee, which was forced to postpone its latest public hearing this week due to Hurricane Ian. But one big decision the group of lawmakers are currently wrestling with is whether to subpoena Donald Trump in their investigation. Seth Meyers weighed in on the debate on Wednesday night, and while he thinks it would be a terrible idea to attempt to put the former president on the stand, he’s also very much looking forward to it.

“On the one hand, it would be great to get him under oath on camera so you could make him answer questions in front of the American public under the threat of perjury,” said Meyers. “On the other hand, he’s not going to answer questions under threat of perjury.” As he explained:

Putting Trump on the stand is as good an idea as putting a chimpanzee in a school play: He’s not going to stick to the script! ‘Yeah, the beginning was fun when the monkey came out in a costume. But then it got weird and scary.’ Trump can’t even answer softball questions from his friends on Fox News without going off on deranged tangents.

Meyers shared some highlights from Trump’s recent off-the-rails interview with Sean Hannity — an interview in which he claimed that he can declassify documents with his mind, suggested that the FBI may have raided Mar-a-Lago in search of Hillary Clinton’s emails, claimed people in New York City are walking into stores and swinging axes around, and swore that protestors had planned to topple the Lincoln Memorial (which weighs 76,000,000 pounds). The Late Night host might be onto something with his theory that Trump may have started watching House of the Dragon and accidentally mistaken it for the news.

Can you imagine that guy sitting down for a televised congressional hearing? It would take days. The networks would have to preempt all their programming just so Trump could ramble about statues or axe murderers or windmills or toilets that don’t flush. Although it would be nice to get him under oath about the toilets he’s always talking about.

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 2:20 mark.

The investor behind the controversial AI rapper project FN Meka has come under scrutiny recently for his own music as Rolling Stone has revealed that the music manager’s band “frequently used the n-word” in its lyrics.

Before getting involved with Factory New, the digital record label that pushed virtual artists such as FN Meka, Anthony Martini — who is white — co-founded a hardcore band called E.Town Concrete in the mid-90s. The band released four albums from 1997 to 2004 and won a local following in New Jersey. Martini, the band’s frontman rapped and scream-sang in the vein of similar bands of the era. However, his lyrics were often peppered with instances of the racial slur according to Rolling Stone‘s report, which listed songs such as “4 the Fame,” “End Of The Rainbow,” “Hold Up,” “Justwatchastep,” and One Life To Live” from the band’s first album as examples. The second album — and the last to use the slur — included “Dirty Jer-Z,” “First Born,” “Guaranteed,” and “Shaydee.”

However, despite releasing two more albums and an EP without using the n-word, Martini apparently continued to recite the lyrics during live performances as recently as 2018. At a more recent appearance in Long Beach, California earlier this month, he censored himself; it’s worth noting that this was after the FN Meka flameout, which brought scrutiny to the avatar’s recitation of lyrics containing the n-word. Somewhat ironically, Martini himself addressed the controversy surrounding FN Meka in a statement to The New York Times earlier this month, saying, “If you’re mad about the lyrical content because it supposedly was A.I., why not be mad about the lyrical content in general?”

Although FN Meka’s lyrics and performance were later revealed to be the work of a Black rap artist from Houston, Factory New’s marketing claiming that the lyrics were written by an algorithm sparked criticism among industry professionals who questioned that algorithm, the racially-ambiguous, inhuman-looking avatar, and the fact that seemingly no other Black people were involved in its creation. The artist who initially voiced FN Meka also claimed he was never paid after performing a handful of the character’s early songs.

The FN Meka project received increased scrutiny when Capitol Records announced it had “signed” the imaginary rapper, drawing a backlash that prompted Capitol to step away from the project. FN Meka’s accounts have since been mostly cleared or made private.

Before the promotional tour for Don’t Worry Darling turned into a white hot supernova of drama, the film’s now-embattled director, Olivia Wilde, revealed that Chris Pine’s character is based on the highly controversial right-wing guru Jordan Peterson. While talking to Interview magazine, Wilde didn’t hold back her thoughts on Peterson and the angry weirdos who hang on his every word.

“We based that character on this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community. You know the incels?” Wilde said to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was conducting the interview. “They’re basically disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women.”

Considering Peterson is a thought leader for men who are heavily invested in exerting masculinity, you’d assume he’d handle the criticism with stoic resolve. Instead, Peterson literally cried when Piers Morgan asked him Wilde’s remarks. Via Mediaite (which has also posted a Fox Nation clip):

“Is that you? Are you the intellectual hero to these people?” Morgan asked.

“Sure. Why not?” Peterson replied as his voice cracked. “You know people have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men. You know, what a terrible thing to do that is?”

“I thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice,” Peterson cried.

After Peterson composed himself and made a joke about hoping Pine can match his wardrobe, he started crying again when Morgan asked why he got emotional earlier.

“It’s really something to see — constantly how many people are dying for lack of an encouraging word,” Peterson said about his “lonesome” male audience who are rejected by “very picky” women. He later called himself a “net force for good.”

(Via Mediaite)

Steve-O is the working man’s Tom Cruise. The Jackass legend puts his life — and his balls — on the line for our entertainment. There was the time he snorted wasabi, and wore a jellyfish as a hat, and the “Poo Cocktail Supreme,” which hopefully speaks for itself. I would rather not describe it, thank you. It’s been “a life of terrible decisions,” Steve-O told Yahoo! Entertainment to promote his new book, A Hard Kick in the Nuts, including a 2017 stunt that led to the “most horrific five days of my life.”

“The time when I laid down in a bit of rocket engine fuel and had to have skin graft surgery on 15 percent of my body… That story was so epic that footage is so, like, I like to think iconic,” the now-sober Steve-O said. “My overdeveloped need for attention outweighs my desire for comfort. I didn’t go to the hospital for five days and it was the most horrific five days of my life.” But, he added, “I absolutely don’t regret that.”

Steve-O does have some regrets, however. “Wasting first responders time, those are gonna be the stunts I regret,” he said.

A Hard Kick in the Nuts (which has a great book cover) is available now.

(Via Yahoo! Entertainment)

The second Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, the one in Los Angeles, went down a couple days ago and among the many artists performing at the show was Miley Cyrus, who joined Def Leppard, Foo Fighters, and Patrick Wilson for a rendition of Leppard’s “Photograph.” Now Cyrus has revealed that there was actually a personal reason she performed that specific track.

Yesterday, Cyrus shared a brief recording of a voicemail message Hawkins sent her. He says, “What up, Miley? It’s Taylor. Heard you’re movin’. Wah! I’m listening to ‘Photograph’ by Def Leppard. You could kill that one.” As for the last thing he says, it sounds like, “Make Chaney learn that,” seemingly a reference to bass player Chris Chaney, who has performed with Cyrus on multiple occasions.

Cyrus wrote in her tweet, “A personal request from the legend himself. #TaylorHawkins my friend, my idol…. My neighbor. Growing up on a farm I never could see the light of another house nearby, but living by Taylor for the years that I did out in LA were some of the most fun times of my life.” She continued in another tweet, “I miss Taylor so much like everybody else. It was such an honor to celebrate him last night and perform w @DefLeppard [black heart emoji] So lucky to have known him not just as a superstar but to have spent time watching him just be a dad and a husband!”

Find the full tribute concert setlist here.