"on both sides" because "on either side" to me meant it may be duo of 1-13zeros-6661 and 1666-13zeros-1.

More for those who don't click the link, other Belphegor primes numbers are with the following number of zeros in both ends (and 1 to cap off the ends): 0, 13, 42, 506, 608, 2472, 2623, maybe more.

"to either side" or "on either side" commonly means "on both sides"

"Either" has two meanings:

- verb-wise, it separates different options (you can have either X or Y)

- noun-wise, it refers to two similar groups (there was no light on either side of the bridge, or, conversely, the bridge was lit on either side)

Indeed. "On either side the river lie / Long fields of barley and of rye" —Tennyson

(Native speaker) i read either in the sense of logical or, so one side alone (tegardless of which side) or both sides at once.

Interesting how varied the ohrasing can be read, though!

> Belphegor (or Baal Peor, Hebrew: בַּעַל-פְּעוֹר baʿal-pəʿōr – “Lord of the Gap”) is, in the Abrahamic religions, a demon associated with one of the seven deadly sins. According to religious tradition, he helps people make discoveries. He seduces people by proposing incredible inventions that will make them rich.

Huh. Would feel right at home in our industry.

> According to some demonologists from the 17th century, his powers are strongest in April.

Any demo days or other significant VC stuff happening in April?

> The German bishop and witch hunter, Peter Binsfeld (ca. 1540–ca.1600) wrote that Belphegor tempts through laziness. According to Binsfeld's Classification of Demons, Belphegor is the main demon of the deadly sin known as sloth in the Christian tradition. The anonymous author of the Lollard tract The Lanterne of Light, however, believed Belphegor to embody the sin of gluttony rather than sloth.

Yeah, hits too close to home.

Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor

Can’t spell “demon” without “demo”. Cue the church lady.

Startup > trapt (archaic) us

> Any demo days or other significant VC stuff happening in April?

Lots of tech companies plan elaborate demos for April 1st, for some foolish reason. It certainly gets very busy on HN keeping up.

How was this never mentioned in Unsong? Not a single time?

IDK, I guess Scott Alexander didn't do his research thoroughly enough. Still, UNSONG is already pretty much a fractal of references and callouts to such things.

On that note, how is it I've never seen anyone connecting the famous "God of the gaps"[0] with a demon literally named "Lord of the Gap"?

(In case no one really did, let history and search engines mark this comment as the first.)

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

Makes sense, with laziness being one of the three virtues of a great programmer.

Sounds like the patron saint of LLMs

It also works with no zeros, or all sorts of other number of zeros. Dude basically just added zeros until the number got cooler.

The palindromic Belphegor numbers https://oeis.org/A232449

Indices of Belphegor primes: numbers k such that the decimal number https://oeis.org/A232448

wow, evil pi.

very interesting, thanks for sharing.

Does the decimal expansion of pi contain it?

Yes