Post Asx7JuJO2AIRKTk1M8 by thomasjwebb@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by thomasjwebb@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #Asx6gHehp4RY95oqy8 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T15:38:59Z
1 likes, 3 repeats
If anyone wants a horrible python program that will write integers in cuneiform sexegesimal (base sixty) using unicode so you can paste it all over the place in emails, documents and text messages I have just the thing. Use with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322 For maximum amusement. https://trinket.io/python/3023f6104c42
(DIR) Post #Asx6txcD82JY2vApoO by rlstone4dems@mastodon.social
2025-04-10T15:41:25Z
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@futurebird Having been one of your followers for a little while now, I have come to one conclusion: You are brilliant, myrmeprogandist!
(DIR) Post #Asx7JuJO2AIRKTk1M8 by thomasjwebb@mastodon.social
2025-04-10T15:46:04Z
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@futurebird Awesome! I will actually use this.I also made a horrible thing that makes numbers, but it's base-4 and shows how to say numbers in VentureΓ±o Chumash and some other languages (you can even type it in hex, like 0xF) https://thomasjwebb.github.io/baseFour/
(DIR) Post #Asx7o3MWwqL25SaQEq by SageOfHumanity@standup-comics.net
2025-04-10T15:51:34Z
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@futurebird I've just spent the last 12 minutes reading through this insanity. I am both crying and laughing at your evil genius. Thank you.
(DIR) Post #Asx89jhwhi39V4wVDE by MishaVanMollusq@sfba.social
2025-04-10T15:55:29Z
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@futurebird kinky
(DIR) Post #Asx9LhLVPZ1LbViKvo by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T16:08:52Z
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Here is a worksheet to help you decode the tablet. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NlcSv2T4K_VeES22zRWjNGxpAOgi6mro/view?usp=sharing(maybe the art teacher can help me make a clay replica.. that could be fun)
(DIR) Post #Asx9d2qAkRIVBvKVTk by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T16:12:01Z
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The answers for the last table are in the wikipedia article. There are some mistakes but the numbers are shockingly largeβ my students were impressed they did this without calculators.
(DIR) Post #AsxAFutMEbpDphM52G by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T16:19:01Z
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@futurebird I just realized I follow an archaelogist who sometimes posts about his efforts to reconstruct clay archaelogy artefacts using traditional and hypothesized methods, and I can't recall who it is! (He does archaelogy in the southeast of the USA, though. )
(DIR) Post #AsxAsPamXWHQ3K1Ryq by wordshaper@weatherishappening.network
2025-04-10T16:25:58Z
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@futurebird Seems like a thing @gizmomathboy might find useful
(DIR) Post #AsxB1OoWnpEeFFjnEm by swope@mstdn.plus
2025-04-10T16:27:35Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@futurebird How about reprogramming a CNC router to imprint a clay slab one stroke at a time?A cuneiform printer.
(DIR) Post #AsxD4aOIPryWvY7CCW by cy@fedicy.us.to
2025-04-10T16:50:15Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Interesting! I didn't realize the distinction between "π" and "π" was so that you could make multiple character digits, for 10's, 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's. It's like a base 10 numbering system rejiggered so it works in base 60. So with "16" 1, and 6 directly map to π and π, so ππ equals 16. But if you see ππππ it represents the number 1660+16 or 976 in base 10, not* 1616 in base 10. It's like base 10 for any single digit, then base 60 between multiple digits!
(DIR) Post #AsxDBINdmGdB5z0Xw0 by dylancode@mastodon.social
2025-04-10T16:51:48Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@futurebird I wonder what the uses for base-60 would be. Maybe for representing hours and minutes?I know the ancient Babylonians used base-60, but other than that I can't think of any uses!
(DIR) Post #AsxDF8NAvXfrDScXFg by cy@fedicy.us.to
2025-04-10T16:52:08Z
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No no wait, for any single digit it's a tally not a numbering system. Otherwise the digit "ππππ" would be "1119" not "39". Still base 60 between multiple digits.CC: @futurebird@sauropods.win
(DIR) Post #AsxFx7fN7BdlfuEd4y by feonixrift@x0r.be
2025-04-10T17:22:45Z
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@futurebird This is the most perfect thing I could have seen today; thank you.
(DIR) Post #AsxL2s6APMn4ttKRfs by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T18:19:54Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Someone on etsy made a replica, although, I think it's a bit larger than the original. To make one we'd need a cuneiform stylus. I wonder what kind of clay they used back in old Babylon?Seems wrong to make it of sculpy...https://www.etsy.com/listing/1331085699/babylonian-trigonometry-math-tablet
(DIR) Post #AsxL52jpow8qTiv16m by ehproque@neopaquita.es
2025-04-10T18:17:45Z
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@dylancode @futurebird i was actually taught about it in computer science, but it takes a lot of gesticulating and pointing at finger parts; let's say your fingers (minus thumb) in one hand have 12 falanxes (is that the right word in English?) so you can go through them with successive fingers of the other hand (which does include thumb). Apparently my professor's father used this to count sheep
(DIR) Post #AsxLBSRVAJxfw7Ozmy by noondlyt@hellions.cloud
2025-04-10T18:21:24Z
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@futurebird This made me chuckle
(DIR) Post #AsxLEiy6BC3q3iCsds by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T18:21:59Z
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@deilann I would like this please, those gave me a headache last time I messed with them.
(DIR) Post #AsxLUWp76NAl1dXXhA by f800gecko@mastodon.online
2025-04-10T18:24:04Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@dylancode @futurebird The Mayan calendar is equally interesting:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_calendarAges ago I read a book called 'Time Among the Maya' that was pretty good. Base 60, being divisible by 12 makes for a nice number system arithmetic-wise.
(DIR) Post #AsxN7bJESQPcBZp4a0 by pr_ret_lutz@jasette.facil.services
2025-04-10T18:43:06Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@futurebird Γ§a me rappelle ce post de @johncarlosbaez ! https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/babylon-and-the-square-root-of-2/
(DIR) Post #AsxNe2ic5McESeAEq0 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T18:49:02Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
If any unicode/python nerds want to show me how to use the unicode addresses to make the string look-up table I'd *love* that but I found working with python and unicode very annoying and just ended up using the unicode support in trinket. Which is setting a bad example for The Children.Think of the children!
(DIR) Post #AsxNpiHhstHUYr8yPo by promovicz@chaos.social
2025-04-10T18:51:08Z
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@futurebird imo, it'll be easier to code this directly than using the "unicode character database". i'd give it a try, but i have time constraints... π
(DIR) Post #AsxNxBogU3laBD8Lb6 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T18:52:32Z
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Part of the problem is there are multiple representations for some of the numbers and I've used the ones that look most like the Plimpton 322 tablet. But, that means they aren't neatly in order. And just to be annoying it seems like the unicode block doesn't have all 59 symbols as characters, so the symbol list has to contain strings. Don't even get me started on there being no zero. But, we can blame THAT on the Babylonians.
(DIR) Post #AsxO9NLPRvYFPLFdvU by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T18:54:38Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@hipsterelectron My love hate relationship with unicode is growing deeper every day. They are the toxic ex I always go back to.
(DIR) Post #AsxOBhMnyeEK5N0n5s by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T18:55:09Z
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@futurebird there must be copious archaelogical reserch into this, but I've no idea where to look. To me, it looks like kaolin based clay, with maybe a little bit of iron oxide, but surely not very much iron oxide.
(DIR) Post #AsxP0Y0qW17dqJzH72 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T19:04:12Z
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@hipsterelectron @jamiejennings I'm disturbed that when I copy these:πhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_Numbers_and_Punctuationthey seem to be ... somehow more than one character at some level... and they screw up the ligatures of everything. It's creepy.
(DIR) Post #AsxPUcQUfbC6DeK4sS by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T19:09:46Z
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@glitzersachen chr(n)is only defined up to n=256
(DIR) Post #AsxQMJqTy914EH5L4C by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T19:19:29Z
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I can't prove it but it seems like they just added the cuneiform characters to unicode as they were requested by whoever needed them for their papers and that's the order they are in. "can you add these?" ... and a bunch of new ones get tacked on.
(DIR) Post #AsxQRa2TBqJBtrCW0m by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T19:20:25Z
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@cy It's odd how they use base 10 inside of the base 60. It sounds like it'd be a big mess, but it's not that hard to work with once you get into it.
(DIR) Post #AsxQoSmwJU1y4bqeJM by mrcopilot@mstdn.social
2025-04-10T19:24:30Z
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@futurebird ... of unicode
(DIR) Post #AsxR0TUxV1JVkaAJDU by brhfl@digipres.club
2025-04-10T19:26:42Z
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@futurebird yeahhhh unfortunately that tends to often be the case with the consortium. or theyβll think theyβve fully fleshed out a block, until an academic comes along like βhey why is half of this thing missing?β
(DIR) Post #AsxS6xx7HgjhtTzkbA by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T19:39:06Z
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@raven667 I know it's a bad idea and can think of so many reasons not to do it... but my SOUL longs for them to be in some kind of more coherent order... so that the indices could be used in elegant ways. But, I guess that's why I have to write little programs like the one that I made.
(DIR) Post #AsxSYCJ81LK8EZHAGG by nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social
2025-04-10T19:44:01Z
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@futurebird @hipsterelectron Uh oh... Does your current SO know about this?
(DIR) Post #AsxSrludrl4gAB9kdk by dx@social.ridetrans.it
2025-04-10T19:47:00Z
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@SnoopJ @futurebird @hipsterelectron Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if we had chosen some other unit than the character. Word-level encodings?
(DIR) Post #AsxTHGm8Fwfb7cKmNE by nazokiyoubinbou@mastodon.social
2025-04-10T19:51:54Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@dx @SnoopJ @futurebird @hipsterelectron To some extent several languages like Chinese and Japanese (kanji) actually does this. It's... not fun. Which is why simplified systems were created (eg katakana and hiragana.)
(DIR) Post #AsxTUFilUHIFcHwxO4 by sophieschmieg@infosec.exchange
2025-04-10T19:54:30Z
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@futurebird @hipsterelectron what is the hate part?I'm quite honestly extremely impressed by the Unicode project, it made a problem that plagued my teenage internet years pretty much go away, can't even remember the last time I saw a butchered umlaut.
(DIR) Post #AsxTixqQEZJSW8XwwK by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T19:57:11Z
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@sophieschmieg @hipsterelectron The hate is mostly from how it can be very arcane and confusing to implement in some cases. Because they have expanded the number of addresses several times it's intimidating to know how to address anything. Never as simple as I think it should be.
(DIR) Post #AsxTzFWqFhm5zt9Zdw by sophieschmieg@infosec.exchange
2025-04-10T20:00:05Z
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@futurebird @hipsterelectron okay, that is fair. It's still somewhere on the top of my list of "maybe technology can actually improve the world and not make everything worse", along with end to end encrypted messaging.
(DIR) Post #AsxU0Y6OgLkZtKP6Aa by jmccyoung@mstdn.social
2025-04-10T20:00:10Z
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@futurebird The way plants and animals have a type specimen which defines their species? I think this post qualifies as the type specimen for Mastodon.
(DIR) Post #AsxUc3NTMbspbZH44m by Smoljaguar@spacey.space
2025-04-10T20:07:06Z
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@futurebird @glitzersachen Not in my copy of python (3.13), help(chr) says:"Return a Unicode string of one character with ordinal i; 0 <= i <= 0x10ffff."
(DIR) Post #AsxUouJoM9WBH0gtWK by Smoljaguar@spacey.space
2025-04-10T20:09:27Z
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@futurebird @glitzersachen also if you don't want to use `chr` you can use `bytes.decode([x])`
(DIR) Post #AsxUqSbsLb0dupsg0O by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T20:09:46Z
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@Smoljaguar @glitzersachen I'll try it in python 3 when I get home.
(DIR) Post #AsxVuqK8DoTGZjEcnA by Smoljaguar@spacey.space
2025-04-10T20:21:43Z
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@futurebird also I just found out through reading the docs that python has the library `unicodedata` and within that, there is `unicodedata.numeric` which works on cuneiform, maybe you could use that?
(DIR) Post #AsxWLB6RaUp2YAOFfs by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T20:26:28Z
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@Smoljaguar Wait. Does this mean there are default integer values for these? So I could do math on them?I'm a little skeptical because there are multiple symbols with the same meaning and some are missing...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_Numbers_and_Punctuation
(DIR) Post #AsxWkhc1r65GcFKoXg by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T20:31:05Z
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@riley @glitzersachen So python 2 is why I have been suffering. WHELP
(DIR) Post #AsxXEMI5h1pxAx9MHY by project1enigma@chaos.social
2025-04-10T20:36:26Z
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@futurebird @riley @glitzersachen Python 2 is nearly as old as cuneiform, isn't it?
(DIR) Post #AsxXd55KnhVz3JyJjU by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T20:40:49Z
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@stuartyeates I'm not an expert on cuneiform which was used for nearly 3000 years of human history over multiple cultures and across multiple languages. This means that there are multiple representations for some characters. For example you have:π and π which are both "five" when taken as numbers. Even the dead simple: π (U+12415) also appears as πΉ (U+12079)I have no idea why this is (or for those last two which one is better to use for Plimpton 322)
(DIR) Post #AsxXhM8LMANd5OPxiK by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-10T20:41:43Z
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@stuartyeates I don't understand why there aren't 59 symbols for the numbers in order either, why we must combine multiple symbols to make the numbers. But, I also feel out of my depth complaining about this.
(DIR) Post #AsxYj4u6UFbYBN8sYS by PizzaDemon@mastodon.online
2025-04-10T20:53:12Z
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@futurebird these CATCHPAs are getting harder and harderhttps://youtu.be/unseSFWjuqs?feature=shared
(DIR) Post #AsxfamD8no5jZO2Fzk by bobcromwell@dobbs.town
2025-04-10T22:10:13Z
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@futurebird I have considered putting a "Click here to render this page in cuneiform" button in the standard footer. That would redirect to the same URL with "?text=cuneiform" or similar appended, and that would trigger PHP to remap ASCII to cuneiform in the content.
(DIR) Post #AsxkKX2ZwAULeoAUd6 by IngaLovinde@embracing.space
2025-04-10T23:03:09Z
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@futurebird this makes me even more angry about "han unification"
(DIR) Post #AsxkyyPHbrGW7D4WZs by encthenet@flyovercountry.social
2025-04-10T23:10:26Z
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@futurebird @Smoljaguar not really, but you can lookup the name of the character:>>> unicodedata.name('π')'CUNEIFORM NUMERIC SIGN THREE ASH'and back:>>> unicodedata.lookup('CUNEIFORM NUMERIC SIGN THREE ASH')'π'but at the end of the day, just building a mapping like in helper_functions.py, is easiest.I do like to programatically build reverse mappings as such:codetonum = { k: v for v, k in enumerate(symbol_list) }Though not sure how to tell 620 apart from 30.
(DIR) Post #Asxp4Lss9HwmC2jT9c by bmoreinis@federated.press
2025-04-10T23:55:26Z
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@JacobVardy @dylancode @futurebird @swart Ah yes, the Polydactylism Hypothesis that the English lost their sixth fingers when conquered in 1066 by the proto-Metric French.
(DIR) Post #AsxryPuIZuXcnNGFKS by cy@fedicy.us.to
2025-04-11T00:28:31Z
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Fuck, now I had to add cuneiform parsing and generation to my stupid itoa and aton functions. itoa_cuneiform converts a number to base 59+1 one-byte digits, then converts THAT to utf-8 cuneiform symbols. #DisgustingHackconst unsigned int dumbnum = itoa59_numdigits(posinum);char dumbuf[dumbnum];const size_t dumblen = itoa59(dumbuf, dumbnum, posinum);amount whdigit;for(whdigit=0;whdigit<dumblen;++whdigit) {const S8 digit = dumbuf[whdigit];const memory cunei = lookup_cuneiform(digit);if(cunei.len + wh <= space) {memcpy(buf + wh, cunei.base, cunei.len);}wh += cunei.len;}return wh;
(DIR) Post #AsxsA07EIPVYHOpiAS by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-11T00:31:00Z
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@cy π€£
(DIR) Post #Asxst6B8bHy67CAJRQ by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-11T00:39:07Z
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@yuki2501 in helper functions.py just change this to 60 and that should fix it. I originally skipped 0 but then added it so that the indices would match up.
(DIR) Post #Asxu4KnkfoRcbf9FwG by pbinkley@code4lib.social
2025-04-11T00:52:21Z
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@futurebird that reminds me, I need to order some copper
(DIR) Post #Asy2s3czb70FSLKv8y by gbargoud@masto.nyc
2025-04-11T02:30:59Z
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@futurebirdPerl6 supports the Roman numeral unicode code points. I don't know if it supports cuneiform too but it definitely should. https://docs.perl6.org/language/unicode_ascii
(DIR) Post #AsyDcoNl66jBKB8yBs by jeffcliff@shitposter.world
2025-04-11T04:31:35.158905Z
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@futurebird based
(DIR) Post #Asz109OS2Xu2u6E520 by sewblue@sfba.social
2025-04-11T13:44:41Z
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@futurebird Oh, I would totally buy a replica tablet with the complaint about the quality of Ea-nΔαΉ£ir's copper.Though geometry is tempting too.