arctanthrope

what do you call it when you put the seed in the pot if not “planting”?

I don’t understand why they removed Denethor’s Palantir from the movies, it’s like the whole point of his character, without it nothing he does makes sense

I think equally important as teaching these things to begin with is letting students know when they’re being taught a simplified model, and that serious academic discourse of the subject is still evolving and/or involves much more nuance (which is pretty much always). some people who do pay attention in science classes nonetheless think that what they learned is gospel and never re-examine it, or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge when said nuance is relevant because it seems to contradict the simplified model they’ve cemented in their brain as the whole truth. the kind of people who say things like “I know there’s two genders because I learned it in high school biology” and apparently never considered why there would be collegiate and post-graduate studies on biology and gender (or why those are two entirely different fields of study) if we all already learned everything there is to know in high school.

ever heard of the Lone Ranger?

live SpongeBob reaction

apparently Nolan’s solution for how to visually depict a “wine-dark sea” is to just make everything in the entire world a shade of gray

yes, I know, and I did. what I had read was not to smoke for at least three days, I decided to do four. I asked the doctor like two weeks in advance if there was anything else I should do, he said no, it should be fine. everyone was aware of everything and all the doc’s instructions were followed. obviously I didn’t go in stoned

apparently smoking weed regularly can make anesthetics less effective too. when I had to get put under recently (nothing serious), I was aware about that and told them ahead of time. they gave me a dose that apparently was supposed to put me completely out, and I just sat there for at least a full minute, fully conscious but incredibly relaxed, before they realized they would have to give me more. and then I definitely started to wake up in the middle and had just the briefest, vaguest awareness that they were moving around me before I was out again, so I assume they gave me more at that point. and then when I woke up after they were like “wow, already?”

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins be like

I kinda feel bad for deep sea fish who get filmed by submersibles for nature documentaries. imagine you’re just chilling doing whatever the fuck you do down there, and suddenly a fucking robot whale monstrosity is shining the brightest light anyone in your entire evolutionary line has ever seen directly into your eyes. that shit is more Lovecraftian than anything that lives down there

one more cup of coffee - Bob Dylan

https://youtu.be/zul4Ln-0md0

“Cloak of Feathers” by The Sword https://youtu.be/AlCJ1BsfMWc

“of owl and of raven, of peacock and dove, of swan and of sparrow, woven with her love. face hidden in shadow, beneath a hood of quills, the pinions of her raiment conceal all her ills.”

I do that and I have a BS in mathematics. and in 4th grade I literally used to write “I hate math” at the top of my math homework. as much as primary education systems want it to be, computation speed is not mathematical aptitude. you can memorize multiplication tables up to 20, that’s not gonna help you understand Cantor’s theorem

you might enjoy this video (Angela Collier - the most important material in science) https://youtu.be/1eUI38MpiYo

can’t choose life if you don’t have a choice *taps forehead*

this isn’t new, “making smaller marks on a rock” has been mankind’s method for expanding data storage for thousands of years

edit - hmm, needs workshopping I guess. maybe something like: “over thousands of years, humans have refined data storage from its most primitive beginnings as marks on rocks, to its most advanced novelty, different marks on different rocks”

he’s canonically a track athlete iirc

exactly, the real Luddites weren’t opposed to technology, they were opposed to wealthy factory owners using technology in a way that eliminated or cheapened their labor to extract more profit. what Sanders and most others are citing as threats posed by “ai” are actually perfectly in line with the Luddites, but they’re not allowed to say so because the actual history of the Luddites has been smeared and propagandized to make them look like unreasonable morons who are scared of things they can’t comprehend

the square-cube law is the fact that a larger object has a lower ratio of surface area to volume than a similarly-shaped smaller object; i.e. as the scale of an object increases linearly, its surface area increases as a square function, and its volume increases as a cubic function.

thermodynamically, this means an object twice the size has 4 times the heat transfer (which occurs at the outer surface), but 8 times the heat capacity (since heat is stored throughout the volume). so it’s heat loss is by raw numbers greater, but lower as a percentage of the total, i.e. the internal temperature is more stable

yeah we just call them “rich assholes”