Esteban

“In the mid-1990s, a new employee of Sun Microsystems in California kept disappearing from their database. Every time his details were entered, the system seemed to eat him whole; he would disappear without a trace. No one in HR could work out why poor Steve Null was database kryptonite. The staff in HR were entering the surname as “Null,” but they were blissfully unaware that, in a database, NULL represents a lack of data, so Steve became a non-entry. To computers, his name was Steve Zero or Steve McDoesNotExist. Apparently, it took a while to work out what was going on, as HR would happily reenter his details each time the issue was raised, never stopping to consider why the database was routinely removing him.”
― Matt Parker, Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

“People stepping up and down should not be a problem, and even the 1-Hertz sideways back-and-forth movement of humans walking should not have been a problem, as everyone is likely to be stepping at different times. For anyone pushing with their right foot, another person would be pushing with their left, and all the forces would pretty much cancel each other out. This sideways resonance would only be a problem if enough people walked perfectly in step. This is the “synchronous” in “synchronous lateral excitation” from pedestrians. On the Millennium Bridge, people did start to walk in step, because the movement of the bridge affected the rhythm at which they were walking. This formed a feedback loop: people stepping in sync caused the bridge to move more, and the bridge moving caused more people to step in sync.”
― Matt Parker, Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”
― Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage