What mindset? That people should follow the law?

If I setup a picnic table on the sidewalk but it's too long and blocks 3/4ths of a lane of traffic, how seriously do you think people would take it?

Do you think someone might yell at me? Call the cops? They can just drive around, or take a different route. No problem, right?

If you're not sure, put it in a savings or stable short term investment account , like a money market account or a short term CD account. That way the money is doing something while you make sure you're doing what you want, there's no real risk, and you can pull the money out whenever you want. You might lose some interest if you pull out of the CD early.

You mentioned wanting to learn the piano for love of it, rather than for professional reasons. If you're looking at a school the semesters might line line up with a CDs investment cycle, which means you might be able to avoid loosing out on interest. A proper credit union will likely have an account specialist who can help you get things sequenced. They won't give you financial advice, but they can help you get things timed and setup right.

It's super important to do what you love. The point of money is, in part, to help you do what you love. Sometimes that's by providing security, and sometimes by creating opportunity.

If it's the love that's driving you it might be worth it to look if you can audit then classes, or follow a different path that costs less money. You don't get the degree but you might be able to get the same education.

I forgot that you can't teach kids, and that what you have to do is just let them realize the personal utility of proactively emptying the dishwasher.
You should just have kids, never teach them anything and get irritated at them when they don't figure out how to do things when you want.

Because the flip side of expecting a kid to contribute is being required to teach how to do it and the habits to actually do it.

I feel like that's very similar to what I said, including the bit about being routine in most other regards.

People who spend a lot of time thinking are prone to having thoughts, and sometimes those thoughts are less common.
The more abstract the topic you're working with, the more accustomed you'll be to hearing things that don't make sense at first.

Might just be me, but in general the more educated people I've met have been more likely to qualify as odd ducks, and the mathy folks tend towards the upper edge.

I had hoped I was making it very clear that it's not a case that all mathematicians are weirdos or even difficult to talk to, because they're not.
Thinking about complicated things all the time results in complicated conclusions, so you'll end up talking to people with very detailed thoughts if you're talking about work. Probably perfectly normal thoughts on cooking beyond a bias towards using their analytical ability where others might not.
My point was not that they're all weird, but that the bar is higher because you deal with more people who have thought about something much more than you have.

My point with the paper wasn't that it's weird to have fun, or that the title was bad. It's that it was complicated and an example of the field requiring you to deal with profoundly unfamiliar ideas and terminology, potentially quite regularly. To some people "that sounded like gibberish" is a sign you dismiss it. In this case, it means you need to do more research to catch up to the terminology.

The two that I was thinking of were erdos and diffie. I'll concede to featuring some of the more notable characters because their stories are more fun.

The idea being described was a paraphrase of platonic realism and structuralism taken to an extreme to match simulation theory. If the universe is a simulation it means there is, "somewhere", an equation or algorithm describing our physical reality. Needing that equation to be evaluated to give rise to our universe is an odd perspective since the existence of the equation would be sufficient. An equation describing the motion of a point in a circle doesn't need to be evaluated to describe that, nor does it need to be written down.

It's a notion that I thought fit well with my point of "agree or disagree, it's not delusional, and it's not obvious"

Oh, every single one of those is legal except paying anyone else, like UPS, to do it.

I don't want them to do that one in specific because it gives them actual, as opposed to pretextual, justification to send postal marshals to raid and seize mail in ballots.
Sueing a secretary of state is fine, but an excuse to legally seize ballots would have immediate consequences on the election beyond what a lawsuit would.

While it's not true that intelligence is correlated with mental problems, advanced mathematics tends to attract or create odd ducks.

There are multiple mathematicians in the modern era who are well regarded, technically homeless and just showed up at people's houses to collaborate on some math. One, who coined the phrase "another roof, another proof", was a staunch proponent of mixing amphetamines, coffee, and 70's antidepressants.
People didn't notice John Nash devolved into a deep schizophrenic break for a long time because it's not weird for advanced mathematicians to be talking about very complex unintelligible ideas. Scary Wheels and Super Shrubs is an example of a good title and not-transparent description.

Another was the uni-bomber.

There's plenty of perfectly well balanced mathematicians. You just can't help but get some weird ideas when your life's work is to think outside the box about very complicated things all the time.

If you go deep into math work, you'll meet people who think the universe is a simulation. You'll meet others who think that's silly, because the universe is clearly actually an abstract embodiment of the platonic ideal of mathematics. 7, blue, and cat are all equally real or not real, and we don't need a simulation as the equation defining structure is sufficient to give rise to what we experience, and requiring it to be written or executed is just an odd affectation.
You'll just nod and concede the appeal because it's not the first time someone has shared that idea with you.

So when the mathematicians start saying the ideas are getting odd, you know it's not just "I don't understand therefore it's weird".

I have a lot less sympathy. Sometimes people have plenty of love and support and they just do weird messed up shit, or stuff like think the confident Internet guy has good dating advice.

Not everyone who does stuff like this was failed by the system. It's not falling through the cracks if you pull yourself through the hole.

They're not time sensitive in the sense that the first class monopoly law means.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/39/320.6

The delivery window needs to be measured in hours for it to qualify.

As for the postmark requirement, that would entirely depend on the state. Usually the law is written in such a way that it's dropbox, hand it to clerk, or received by postal service. The postmark requirement is because it's usually not permitted to give the ballot to someone outside of your home, but the postal service is an exception because they're part of the government. There's no provision in the law for accepting the word of a parcel service for when they got a ballot.

States could change that but they'd run into the first class mail restriction.
The best bet would be to permit a "moving drop box" where a municipal clerk could bring the box to your house. Make it like an ice cream truck playing patriotic music.

If we look at the law, ballots don't qualify as anything other than 1st class mail, which the USPS has a legal monopoly on.

It's one of the handful of things that can actually get you in trouble with the postal marshals. They raided the credit reporting agencies at one point for sending credit reports via scheduled courier when they were neither time sensitive, heavy , expensive or short notice.

The airplane thing is a bit off. The requirements of a bomber haven't changed in more than 50 years.
It's not like the US doesn't have the ability to use drones.
They're different tools for different jobs. Drones are currently most useful for asymmetrical fighting. If you're trying to blow up a piece of infrastructure a bomber is more efficient if you have the ability to field one.

It's criticizing using a jackhammer when electric box cutters exist. There are places you wouldn't use either if given the choice.

They're plenty of places in the US working on m battery technology as well. Car companies keep working to make existing product lines more efficient, in no small part because the people in charge of the government just decided to make it harder for people to use different vehicles and get off gasoline.
Battery research isn't just car companies.

A cultural sense of momentum around a state of affairs that's lasted several generations is one thing, but it's not like we're all running around in the 1800s.