merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Pop it in your calendars 2 minutes ago:
Pop it in your calendars? Maybe I’m using calendars wrong, but mine aren’t filled with things I should avoid doing. But, I’m willing to learn. What date should I put “Don’t Buy Subnautica 2” on?
- Comment on Pop it in your calendars 4 minutes ago:
Seeing the underwater world was so much fun. I got it to play in VR and only did that a couple of times, but I completed the original and Below Zero because the exploration and underwater scenes were just so good.
- Comment on we are creators 3 hours ago:
- Comment on we are creators 3 hours ago:
The top speed of Columbus’ ships was about 8 knots, and the average speed was about 4 knots, or 7.5 km/h to 15 km/h. Typical jogging speed is about 6 km/h to 10 km/h. So, they were a bit faster than typical running speed. But, those were the cargo ships.
Ships designed for speed were much faster. In 1852 the fastest ship was the Sovereign of the Seas which topped out at 41 km/h.
Probably for a long time the fastest transportation would have been a horse. Or, if you want a “vehicle” or some kind, a chariot. But, for at least a century a fast sailboat was probably the fastest thing around.
- Comment on we are creators 3 hours ago:
I can be anywhere on the planet within 48 hours
Challenge accepted.
- Comment on we are creators 3 hours ago:
Travel is much, much cheaper than it used to be.
- Comment on we are creators 3 hours ago:
The bigger issue is that there isn’t much point to having humans in space.
After the Wright Brothers flight, aviation took off because aviation is genuinely useful. First it was mostly for delivering mail, but that was an incredible change. Instead of a letter taking weeks to get somewhere it would take days. Places that used to be completely isolated from communication now had an easy way to keep in touch. Then with passengers aviation you had something that changes the world in a positive and measurable way.
Humans in space is extremely expensive and there really isn’t much worthwhile to do up there. Sure, you can do some science experiments about how zero gravity affects something, and learning things is useful, but there’s no obvious immediate payoff. If going into space made your bones stronger and not weaker, space travel would have developed massively because there would be a reason for millions of people to go to space for the health benefits. Or, if ballistic travel made sense economically, there might be rockets that cut the travel time from New York to Melbourne down to a couple of hours. But, having to get all that mass above the atmosphere means that it’s far too costly to make economic sense.
People talk about mining asteroids or the moon, but there really isn’t much that’s valuable up there. The moon is mostly made of
cheese[wait, my sources need updating] lunar regolith, which is composed of elements that are just as common on earth: silicon, aluminum, calcium, magnesium, iron, etc. But, on earth you don’t have to deal with the difficulty of processing it on another celestial body, nor do you have to deal with the spiky, unweathered nature of regolith that means it destroys space suits and machines.The only reason the US landed on the moon with humans in the first place is that it was in a dick measuring contest with the USSR. Now that the cold war is over, nobody’s willing to pay for something that useless.
- Comment on Anon listens to the radio 1 day ago:
Also, this announcement but first: “You’re listening to another ad-free power-half-hour on KKKK”, with that ad for the station repeated every 10 minutes.
- Comment on Viewers like you 4 days ago:
Even before that there was Walter Cronkite, then Peter Jennings.
That was back in an era where everyone watched the same “influencers”. The good part of that was that for the most part, these influencers were rigorously fact checked so the people who watched them agreed on the same set of facts, and those facts were more or less true.
On the other hand, there were times when these “influencers” were biased or even hid the truth. The bias was often something they even had trouble noticing. Like, they all believed communism was a big threat, or that police were trustworthy. As for hiding the truth, sometimes when a politician got in trouble the news would drop the story because of their deference to power. They’d also sometimes try to repeat whatever the government said as truth without checking it, or not investigate bad things the government was doing overseas because they saw that as being patriotic.
Overall, I think it was better when everybody agreed on most things, even if sometimes the news / “influencers” were biased. At least it meant that the government was more or less functional. At least it meant that people were relatively civil with each-other.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 6 days ago:
The quote in his online biography about his modeling career is a bit more detailed:
Dolph took up modeling at the famous Zoli Agency to make some extra cash. ‘A bit too tall and muscular for a model’s size 40’,
Wow. Can you imagine a bigger ego boost than being turned down to be a male model because you’re just too tall and muscular?
Being perpetually exhausted because your celebrity girlfriend keeps bringing back too many girls for the group sex session is a close second though.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 6 days ago:
Ha! It makes it sound like you’re saying that young black kids are self-important dickheads and that’s why he’s a good role model.
But, yeah, I know what you’re trying to say. Despite his social media presence, the image that kids generally see is a very positive one. He’s a somewhat stylish (in his own way) guy, who clearly has personality, and is a very accomplished scientist. I just cringe any time he comments on something not related to astrophysics.
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 6 days ago:
Yeah, but look at why he quit:
However, while preparing for the move to Boston, he was spotted in the nightclub where he worked in Sydney and was hired by Grace Jones as a bodyguard, and the two became lovers.[18] He moved with Jones to New York City, where he dabbled in modeling at the Zoli Agency but was described as “a bit too tall and muscular for a model’s size 40”.
It’s not like he said “this is too hard for me”, it’s more like he said “wait, I can have this other life instead?”
- Comment on Dolph is prime human 6 days ago:
Not the same with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
I’m not his biggest fan, but I fully respect his scientific credentials. He has a PhD from Columbia. He published at least a dozen papers. There’s no question that he’s a scientist, a manager of scientists, as well as a science communicator.
The problem is that his success seems to have destroyed his humility. It’s not that he brags about being so incredibly smart. It’s more that he doesn’t ever seem to sit back and say “hey, maybe this isn’t something where my contributions won’t be appreciated”. I think his science communication is doing more good than harm. I think he’s a great role model for little black boys who think all scientists are white, or that they’re all stuffy nerds with no personality. But, I think he’s at his best when he’s in a show where there’s a script and an editor. On social media and on free-form podcasts, he comes off as a know-it-all ass.
- Comment on >:( 1 week ago:
NASA says there are only 5 dwarf planets in the system. But, it’s all pretty arbitrary. The line between planet, dwarf planet and asteroid are all pretty fuzzy.
An alien civilization looking at the Sol system might say that it’s only got one planet, Jupiter. Everything else is so much smaller that they’re not really significant.
Another logical cut-off would be that planets had to be bigger than any moons in the system. If we went by that standard, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus and Mars could all still count as planets, but Mercury would get ditched because it’s smaller than Ganymede and Titan.
What’s funny is that we’re still using the name “planet” which comes from “asteres planētai”, meaning “wandering star”. For the Greeks what mattered wasn’t the size or the mass, it was how bright they were. That meant that a tiny object near the sun like Mercury (Hermes) got the name planet, because despite being tiny, the fact it’s close to the sun means it reflects a lot of light. And Jupiter (Zeus) and Saturn (Cronus) got named not because they’re so big, but because they’re big and far away from the sun, which means they reflect sunlight in a similar way to the much smaller inner planets. Earth’s moon might have been given the name “planet” if it had been a lot smaller and/or further away.
- Comment on But I am mighty!! 1 week ago:
And only then?
- Comment on But I am mighty!! 1 week ago:
Maybe tens of thousands of years ago, but 2000ish years ago 60ish was old age. The main reason life expectancy has gone up isn’t that old people didn’t make it to 50, it’s that young people didn’t make it to 2. If a couple has 5 kids, 3 of them die as toddlers and the other two make it to 70 the average life expectancy is about 30, but that doesn’t mean living past 30 is unusual.
Also, tens of thousands of years ago there was an ice age, but for the last 10k years light-skinned Europeans still had normal summers and worked in the fields.
- Comment on But I am mighty!! 1 week ago:
I don’t either, but my nose isn’t hairy and it would burn to a crisp outdoors.
- Comment on But I am mighty!! 1 week ago:
On the other hand, what bullshit is it that my stupid human body can’t survive being outdoors without medicinal cream. My ancestors would be ashamed.
- Comment on My parents wanted serotonin, so they had a baby. now i am forced to wage slave for the worst of us. 1 week ago:
The whole thing is pretty ridiculous. You don’t get to consent to being born. You don’t get to consent to having who you have as parents. And, legally they get to make every important decision about your life for 18 years.
Even if you have parents who actually loved you and showed it, who aren’t abusive, who did the best they could, you’re still stuck in a relationship you didn’t get a chance to consent to. Even “good” parents often mess up their kids by trying to live their lives through those kids. Like, parents who are failed athletes trying to push their kids into sports. Or, parents who miss having little kids around trying to guilt their kids into providing them grandkids.
And then there’s the whole expectation of taking care of the parents when they get old and sick. Yes, I get it, they changed their kids’ diapers when they were young. The kids are just returning the favour. But, those kids never had a choice. The parents (for the most part) chose to have kids, and chose to do that work. The kids never agreed to the terms and conditions that said they had to help out their parents when their bodies started failing.
Suicide is selfish, but ultimately, it is your life. It’s unfair that other people get an opportunity to tie all kinds of strings to you before your brain has even developed enough to understand the concepts of live and death.
Then again, we’re just animals. We only exist because a machine which exists to propagate its genes turned out to be effective at propagating its genes. Nature is brutal, and even if we don’t always admit it, we’re still part of nature. There’s nothing fair about it. It just is.
- Comment on Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day work week 2 weeks ago:
We should’ve gotten a 4-day work week decades ago
Then you should have burned down Chicago decades ago.
The 5 day work week didn’t just happen because workers deserved it. It happened because they went to war.
- Comment on the seven deadly companies 2 weeks ago:
Wait, you’re saying that The Hellbound Heart isn’t the original? Next thing you’ll be trying to convince me that Pope Greg is innocent of plagiarism, because he actually didn’t steal from Se7en.
- Comment on the seven deadly companies 2 weeks ago:
I bet you also think the original “A Christmas Carol” was the one with the muppets.
- Comment on the seven deadly companies 2 weeks ago:
That’s only 6 companies.
- Comment on (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ 2 weeks ago:
Who’s consenting?
- Comment on (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ 2 weeks ago:
The alternative isn’t “nothing”, it’s getting precious cultural artifacts out of high risk countries where there’s a high likelihood of the artifacts simply being destroyed.
- Comment on (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ 2 weeks ago:
The only opinion that should matter is that of the people the artifacts belong to.
Which people? The government? So in Afghanistan it’s up to the Taliban? If you don’t trust that the government of a country represents the will of the people, then how do you determine what the people want?
And, again, which people? Is a totem pole in a museum in Canada the property of the Canadian people? Or is it something that belongs to the Haida people, and it doesn’t matter what other Canadians want? If it is up to the Haida, it is up to the Council of the Haida Nation, or is it up to the band the original artist belonged to?
What about a Tatar artifact found in Donetsk? Who gets control over that? Is it the Russians since they occupy Donetsk? The Ukrainians because they used to occupy it? Do you have to study the blood of various Ukrainian people to figure out who has the most surviving Tatar DNA?
- Comment on (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ 2 weeks ago:
if a museum feels under threat
If you run a museum in Afghanistan and are afraid that the Taliban is going to execute you unless you destroy some blasphemous statue, are you going to risk your life to send the artifact to the British Museum, or are you just going to destroy it? Yeah, some heroes will definitely risk their lives, but most won’t.
- Comment on Checkmate, Round Earthers 🌍 3 weeks ago:
If you were standing on the Liberty National Golf Club in New Jersey about 2km from the Statue of Liberty (height 93m), from the bottom to the top it would be about 2.5 degrees.
If you were looking at the Eiffel Tower at 6000 km away from NJ, and the earth were flat, the Eiffel Tower (height 312m), from the bottom to the top it would be about 0.003 degrees from bottom to top. If you could line it up so that you could see the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower at the same time, the Eiffel Tower would appear to come up to the first 10 cm of the Statue of Liberty’s base. That’s actually a little bigger than I would have expected, but still tiny.
I wonder if, even with binoculars, someone could even resolve something that small. Ignoring everything like ocean waves interfering, vegetation getting in the way and atmospheric interference, my guess is that it would be just too small to be seen from that far away without some ultra-powerful telescope.
- Comment on YouTube "search results" 3 weeks ago:
It’s like it just gives up after about 8 results. “These 8 results don’t contain what you want? I give up. Here, just watch one of these videos instead.”
Screw you, just show me the rest of the results, I swear it’s in the top 30 results.
- Comment on YouTube "search results" 3 weeks ago:
You search for “blah”, Google gives you a bunch of bad results, and serves up 5 ads. Nothing matches what you want, so you search again “blah but not foo” and you get another 5 ads. If search were good you’d only see 5 ads, but because it sucks you get 10 ads.
If Google had real competitors, bad search results might mean people would give up and use a competitor’s search, but because they have a search monopoly, they can enshittify their results and show even more ads without losing users.
