The sum of the digits of the square of 49 (2401) is the square root of 49.
49 is the first square where the digits are squares. In this case, 4 and 9 are square numbers.
It seems that 49 is an age of squares.
I find myself increasingly OK with this.
It is interesting, although really quite disillusioning, reading through the series of posts I've done on my birthday (follow the links back from last year for 22 years now) and seeing the trend in recent years. The world has got more worrying. A lot more. I hate this.
So I've tried to find joy where I can get it. I'll give you an example. I looked up the number 49 for this, the same as I always do, and apparently 49 is the smallest discriminant of a totally real cubic field. Now, I'm sure that there are maths people out there who understand this. But to me, it is impossible to read this without putting on a mock Valley bro accent: yeah brah, this field is todally real, yah? And that made me smile. Bill dropped a birthday message on me at half seven this morning. Yesterday, I remembered a throwaway joke line that popey dropped on me in 2015 and I literally laughed out loud in my own living room at the thought of it. Two days ago Jess and I went to see Murder on the Orient Express on stage at the Alexandra Theatre. Tonight I've been for beers with Bruce and Matt. My D&D group are about to confront Harazos to let them perform a ritual they've made up. Everyone in my team at Barnardo's was really nice about my birthday. None of this helps fix the world crashing down around us, but all of it certainly makes it easier to cope with, because all of it is a little bit of joy, of niceness, in the midst of unjoy and unniceness. Thank you, all of you.
This has been not a great year. There's been ups and there's been downs. I'm still a lot better off than almost everyone -- I'm not under threat, I'm not more under threat than I was before, I can afford to do what I like as long as what I like isn't too extravagant. But it has nonetheless been tough. Maybe 2025 will be better, although to be honest I doubt it. And I have this sense of regret, not about the world getting worse, but that the idea that the world might get better has basically gone away. When I was younger, the thing was that the world would get better, year on year, as time passed. And I am 100% sure that this was a thing that I got to think because I was privileged to not be being screwed over by the world. But I still had that thought, that things were OK today and would be slightly more than OK tomorrow, and at some point that went away. Things probably won't be better tomorrow. If they're the same, that probably in itself is a victory. This isn't really my tragedy; it's for people younger than me, who haven't experienced this change, who assume that things getting steadily more grey and sad and worse is just the way the world is; that's just normal.
So I look for little bits of joy. Hopefully you have some little bits of joy yourself, as I do. Happy birthday to you, even if it's not your birthday. Eat some cake.