"Wish I understood all of this better, and thank you for the explanation! Wish I had an animation to help me visualize more of this (guess I should go looking)."
--I'm back on Slashdot after a long absence, hence I may be unaware of any changes in Slashdot memes. That said:
Where's the car analogy for this?

Stravinsky allegedly said something like:
If you tell me I can compose anything I want I don't know where to start, but if you tell me it must be for tuba, triangle, and bass drum, and must last for 5 minutes I can begin composing immediately.

In other words, at least in the arts, constraints - as long as they are not too restricting - can be very helpful.

I was wondering when did Slashdot become a subsidiary of the National Enquirer?

Let epsilon be a non-zero positive infinitesimal; let n be any positive real number which is is finite and not an infiniteslmal; then h = n / epsilon is a positive infinite non-standard number, and h * epsilon = n.

http://faculty.webster.edu/cor... "YOUR FLAW" by Viennese writer, poet, and actor Karl Kraus, translated from the original German:

That flaw of yours, that vent - I love it, dear;
it’s part of you
and ranks with me among your finest features.
When I find out that others have it too,
I look for it and almost see you near
and love all similarly wanting creatures.

If I, for want of you, that want should miss - were we to part –
where would I better find my consolation.
than in that flaw I love with all my heart?
And when you're gone, with such a want as this
the homeliest would win my admiration.

Yet if there came the fairest of the fair,
and flawless she,
my thoughts of you would linger and keep haunting.
No matter what her charms and virtues be,
her fault would be the flaw that wasn't there –
I would not want her if your want were wanting.

None, except that on the UK stock market (at least) it used to be a thing - and apparently still might be - that a sufficient number of investors thought that a smaller price per share was a *good thing* that companies used to split their shares to reduce the price per share, allegedly to increase their liquidity. From my point of view the only practical effect of this was to make it more complicated to calculate the capital gain for tax purposes in the three months I spent working on a special project for an insurance company's accounts, but as I'm neither an investor nor an accountant, just someone with a mathematics degree, what do I know? https://www.informdirect.co.uk/shares/share-split-and-subdivision-explained/

Assuming the YouTube video hasn't been tampered with, the balls were drawn from two cages into a sort of tube, and that didn't happen in exact numerical order, then they fell - physically or possibly as a simulation - into another device which rearranged them into numerical order.

Yes. I was wondering what on earth is the point of having US Space Force personnel actually in space, as opposed to on or under the ground, other than staging re-enactments of scenes from Starship Troopers and Star Wars, but presumably not from Star Trek?

You are Zaphod Beeblebrox, and I claim my ten dollars!

The Samsung N220 netbook also had that option.

For an economy that is "crap" France seems to be doing not bad: per capita GDP is about 75% of the USA (which I suggest is quite a lot better than you'd get in a truly "crap" economy), and in a list of the per capita GDP of 229 countries France comes in at 41, not hugely behind the USA at 19. CIA publication

Why do people apparently think that Magna Carta has any relevance to those of us - the large majority - who aren't barons or clergy?

Magna Carta - Wikipedia:

... First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.

... The political myth of Magna Carta and its protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century. It influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the American Constitution in 1787, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States. Research by Victorian historians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, rather than the rights of ordinary people, but the charter remained a powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries. Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it as "the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot"....