WoodScientist

@WoodScientist@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I figure out where flies are entering my house?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  You could recreate the experiments of Jan Baptist van Helmont to determine if your house is the one place on Earth where life spontaneously generates from inanimate matter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is it like being drunk? How much control do you have?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Things get really weird when you start chasing infinities of probabilities. There is a non-zero chance of nearly anything happening. In theory, you could turn around right now and find the literal historical Genghis Khan standing behind you, complete with all his memories, having instantly been assembled just then through random molecular motions. In theory, you could be walking down the street, and a blue London police call box could materialize in front of you, and out could walk a man who honestly believes himself to be the literal Dr. Who. Ever feel nostalgia for the events of your childhood? There’s a non-zero probability of the entire Earth spontaneously rearranging itself to recreate that long-gone setting, including placing everyone back in age-appropriate forms.

  The probability of such absurdities is so low that “astronomical” doesn’t even begin to convey how remotely small they are. So low that if the universe was maxed out on population, and everyone sat there watching until the heat death of the universe, that the odds of any one person observing such a thing would be less than 1%. But according to Many Worlds, any possible quantum interaction does occur.

  Which means that there’s a universe out there where you have a magic light switch. Every time you flip the switch, in addition to the light turning on, a gold bar appears in the middle of the room. Again, the gold bar was simply assembled by random chance from particles in the environment. In this universe, one day your light switch just started making gold. At first you were astonished, so you tried it again. In most universes, the second time did nothing. But in some, it happened again. And in some particularly rare universes, it’s worked the dozens of time you’ve tried it. You showed your loved ones just to prove to yourself you’re not crazy, and the light switch still made gold. You brought in outside experts, even bringing in physicists and chemists from your local university to observe. And damnit, even in front of them, the light switch still makes gold! They examine the light switch but cannot find anything out of the ordinary with it. As far as repeated testing has shown, you have a magic light switch that makes gold, the one seemingly supernatural oddity in an otherwise completely rational universe. According to Many Worlds, there is a universe out there where this happened to you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is it like being drunk? How much control do you have?⁩ ⁨⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  the first time I ever blacked out I tried to convince my mom that my dugout (block of wood for holding weed and pipe) would open the hotel room door…

  According to the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics, there is a universe out there, where, when you attempted to open the hotel room door with your dugout, through random molecular interactions, it actually did open the door’s locking mechanism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The land before time⁩ ⁨⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Work that grocers have passed onto their customers that they used to do themselves:

  • Gathering the groceries from the shelves.
  • Bagging the groceries.
  • Checking out the groceries.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Patrick Stewart Reflects on 'Star Trek' at 60: Why He Wants More Spinoffs⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  What if it was primarily from the perspective of the new Lower Deckers?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Patrick Stewart Reflects on 'Star Trek' at 60: Why He Wants More Spinoffs⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Fuck it. Let’s take this in a strange direction.

  Give me Star Trek HGN. It’s a live show featuring a guy in full Ferengi make up hawking actual items you can buy, each either an actual piece of Trek merchandise or some oddity or curio that can be passed off as some interstellar artifact.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨someone said we were bringing back corn⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Copper⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, levitating via magnets, for some reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨good idea, no downsides⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I propose the most practical option possible:

  Simply isolate the washing machine completely from the building. Levitate it entirely off the ground, suspended in the air via a massive toroidal superconducting electromagnet, 3 meters in diameter, cooled by liquid helium. (Which will need to be regularly topped off. It tends to slowly leak through solid walls.)

  The noise would be greatly reduced. As the machine thrashes about, it will do little but disturb the air around it. Little noise will be generated, except from the sound of the machine’s own parts acting against each other.

  Though, if you really wanted to optimize this for this setup, a different design is in order? Perhaps a non-standard design would better handle internal vibrational damping? Have you considered calling local stores and asking if they have any spherical washing machines in stock?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨good idea, no downsides⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There has to be some hippy out there selling organic fabric softener in a wooden cask.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨good idea, no downsides⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s why you prepare a hallway with like 20 of these alcoves. When one machine breaks, you simply pump it full of cement and plaster it over. It just becomes part of the wall. It remains there, entombed forever, like some latter-day washing machine Pompeii. Or maybe you don’t plaster over them at all. Maybe you proudly display them. “These are the washing machines of my ancestors…”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Before the revolution⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Stranger things have happened. I could see a timeline that goes like:

  1. The election in 2028 is blatantly stolen by Republicans, establishing a mask-off dictatorship.

  2. After a decade, they’re eventually ousted by a popular front consisting of civil society advocates, leftist organizers and activists, and religious movements.

  3. As the regime falls, the religious movement takes over everything and establishes an overt theocracy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No. You don’t. A copy that can be remotely deactivated is not something you own. If you can’t use it if the company were to go bankrupt, then you don’t own it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you a time traveler lost from 1993?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So you can own your game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know how to make you understand the value of owning your own things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Games came on multiple disks back in the day. Why not now?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horror story⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s a fun one. We find an archive. Stored in a form durable enough to last eternity, we find a vault, the last remnant of some long-forgotten Martian civilization.

  They include the usual history, culture, historical artifacts, etc. But what shocks our explorers most of all? The biological archive. DNA sequences, freeze dried tissue samples, etc. Their language, once cracked, reveals the truth.

  This isn’t just a library or archive to remember the Martians. They knew they were on a slowly dying world. They never got rocket technology, though they did master advanced biology before the end. So they included everything needed to revive them, to actually bring them back from the dead.

  Then we have to figure out what to do. This isn’t the dodo bird or some other species we, humanity, are responsible for killing off. The Martians died of natural causes a billion years before our ancestors crawled out of the water. We have no ancestral moral debt to the Martians.

  Sure, we could bring them back. But think through the implications of that. Mars is their world, the very planet we were planning to colonize. Will they want it back, maybe ask to live on Earth in the millennia it takes to teraform it? And even then, we’ll now have a literal alien civilian right on our doorstep. Do we really want to open that Pandora’s Box?

  I was introduced to the concept of the moral dilemma of bringing back extinct aliens from Isaac Arthur, and it’s a scenario I truly love.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are we so afraid of cockroaches?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t want advanced ubiquitous robotics to put people out of work and to enrich the wealthy. I want advanced ubiquitous robotics so it becomes practical to fill my home with a small army of tiny robots that can crawl through the walls and kill any roach, bedbug, or termite they see.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nvidia CEO: Society has no choice but to change. I used to play in the streets. When cars came along, you obviously can’t play in the streets now⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m in the US. Kids still play in the street.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the evolutionary advantage of very long hair on human heads?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is the fun aquatic ape hypothesis. It’s a fun one, along with the stoned ape hypothesis. But unfortunately there’s not a lot of actual evidence for either of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much money do you think Superman could make if he offered his services to NASA as a launch vehicle?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  *100 percent of net profits to be donated to fund superhero sponsorship programs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much money do you think Superman could make if he offered his services to NASA as a launch vehicle?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I disagree. I think Superman would ask for a simple salary of $120k/year for his services.

  I mean, the dude still has to make a buck, right? He has to pay rent like anyone else. I see nothing morally wrong with him being compensated a reasonable salary for his efforts. There are moral issues with charging someone for a rescue. And maybe he’s such a goodie-two-shoes that he would avoid charging for that. But Superman billing NASA isn’t the same thing as Superman handing a thousand dollar invoice to someone he just rescued from being run over by a car. One is taking advantage of someone in their most desperate hour. The other is just helping the government save a buck. NASA is perfectly capable of hoisting things into orbit themselves. All Superman is ultimately doing is saving the government some money.

  Now, I can imagine Superman being too humble to charge, say, half the cost of what a launch would otherwise make. He would probably feel really bad charging millions of dollars for what to him is nothing more than a light workout.

  So instead, I think Superman would just ask for the most reasonable thing possible, the right of every hard working American man - an honest pay for an honest day’s work. And what are the services of Superman worth? Well, surely his services are worth at least as much as the director of NASA makes per year. A search suggests this is about $240k/year. And Superman will certainly be doing as much for NASA as Jared Isaacman is. So why shouldn’t he ask for a relatively modest $120k/year salary for his services, half of Jared’s salary?

  As far as secret identity, I’m sure the NSA figured that shit out ages ago. They just have an agreement with him to keep that under wraps. In fact, with superheroes willing to work ‘in the system’, they’ll go as far as to manipulate social media algorithms to suppress the spread of secret identity reveals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's honestly fine, you're overthinking it!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Price is also a major factor. Restaurants won’t balk at paying thousands for an industrial grade dishwasher if it can replace or greatly reduce the demand for a human dishwasher. Even at low restaurant wages, it doesn’t take long for a $6000 dishwasher to pay for itself. On the other hand, if the only dishwashers available cost that much, if there were no dishwashers at a consumer price point? Most people would just go without one in their home.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's honestly fine, you're overthinking it!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Quick, someone call Alec to do an hour-long YouTube video investigating this!

  www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKI-5kTBAGwlm_CbFv…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Schools being too soft lately⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You know, I don’t have kids of my own, and this is going to sound incredibly out of touch, (cause it probably is.) But like…how are the kids doing?

  In the world I inhabit, I don’t interact much with kids beyond brief interactions when they’re tagging along with their parents. I don’t really have a lot of 14-18 year olds I know that I can sit down with for a heart-to-heart conversation. By “how are they doing,” I mean, how are they handling, what are their thoughts on The Situation? The creeping fascism. The potential climate apocalypse. Ever-widening inequality and a keen awareness of just how unaffordable basic shit like home ownership now is. The worry/potential of mass AI-induced unemployment. The threat of the everpresent surveillance state. Etc.

  Like, seriously, it’s hard enough to stay sane in this world as an adult. I’m more than twice the age of a high school graduate. I’m no great bastion of mental resilience myself, but I’m definitely more capable of handling things now than when I was a teenager. So if it’s hitting adults this hard, damn. How is it hitting the kids? I graduated high school in 2006. Back then, it was hard enough finding your foot as an adult and an independent human being. But then, there was still a clear and reasonable path to home ownership. Fascism wasn’t even on the radar. Neo-nazis were cringe weirdos that even the Republicans in power wanted nothing to do with. Climate change was far enough away that a reasonable and hopeful case could still be made. Rights, prosperity, and democracy as a whole were or at least seemed on the rise.

  For anyone with a lot of present experience interacting with a variety of kids in that age bracket (enough to get a general sense of the common approaches/attitudes), just how are kids handling all this? Are they doing alright? I think I’m mainly thinking about 14-18, high school age. Old enough to really comprehend the magnitude of these issues, but still firmly in the vulnerability of their teenage years.

  I don’t know. Maybe I’m just looking on the past with rose-tinted glasses. Maybe back then I just didn’t pay as much attention to the troubles of the day. There were plenty of civil rights abuses in the post-9/11 era, and they never really stopped. But even by objective measures like housing cost to income ratios, the cost of education, etc., it’s clear that things are going to be objectively much more difficult for the class of 2026 than the class of 2006. And I worry for them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Seriously. What happens if you set fire to the backrooms? Or are they just entirely made of material incapable of propagating fire?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would Asian countries treat American passport holders in the event of a collapse?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  *Heterosexual

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Looking for a career change? Then look no further!⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sometimes pirate crews started as mutineers. A merchant or navy ship has a captain that severely mistreats his crew. Eventually they get sick of him and maroon him somewhere or throw him overboard. At that point, everyone on that ship has probably already committed a capital offense (especially if it’s a navy ship), so they literally have nothing to lose by becoming pirates at that point. If they’re ever caught, they’re already dead. Initially on the boat are just the folks who happened to be there at the time of the mutiny. But some filtering happens over time. Those who don’t actually want to be pirates eventually slink off at one port stop or another. And new recruits are found via quiet conversations in port taverns. A lot of recruiting probably happens through personal contacts, “oh, we’re going to port X? Why I have a cousin there that might be interested!”

  Also, often pirate ships started off as privateers. A privateer is just like a pirate, except legal. Let’s say Britain and France are at war. Britain issues letters of marque to any ship with captain and crew willing to raid French shipping. This is a way for the British crown to target French shipping at a fraction of the cost of having the Royal Navy do it themselves. (It’s the Age of Sale equivalent of German U-boats raiding British shipping during WW2.) If such a privateer is caught by the French, they’ll still be treated like pirates. But as far as the British are concerned, what they’re doing is completely legal. They can go steal a French and ship then sail into any British port and unload their plunder. It’s all completely legal and a culturally accepted part of warfare. As long as the captain had their official letter of marque, the harbormaster in any British port would let them participate freely and openly. As far as how these privateers got going? Simple capitalism. Some people with cash to invest would invest in a boat and crew, and attempt to make a profit from the conflict.

  And that’s all well and good, except what happens when the war ends? Those letters of marque were only good during wartime. And privateers don’t get military retirement benefits. There’s no pension or these folks. (Not even whatever pitiful equivalent existed for Navy sailors at the time.) Men who were risking their lives sailing the seas, plundering commerce in Britain’s name? Well they’re now all out of a job. And even if what they did was legal, it still carried a stigma. Job prospects may be quite poor for a former privateer, and it certainly won’t be as lucrative. So, quite predictably, after the wars ended, often times the privateers just kept doing what they were good at. So many pirates were simply privateers that had been cut loose by their respective governments.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Be The Sunshine ☀️⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Frankly I don’t see how reverse passing is any more dangerous than forward passing. If anything it’s less dangerous as it requires less road distance.

  Is this one of those things that just feels dangerous, so therefore it must be?