I don’t think I’d be able to agree with that last sentence. Like if our universe is contained within another one and there’s no way for us to “escape” the constraints of this universe to test that, it wouldn’t be less true, it’s just not knowable through any real means. Best we can do in that regard is either choose to believe it or not or leave our mind open to the possibility that it may or may not be the case.

It’s kinda like your other point except applied to things well beyond our senses and any additional ways to measure things via science. Whatever is going on outside of this is still going on whether we know about it or not.

Though in all the thinking about it, entertainment is one of the top reasons I can think of for why we might exist. It’s the only non-circular one that has occurred to me (ie, the others tend to beg the question “if this is for something else, then what is that something else for?”, and we circle back to where we started, just with a bigger picture of what’s up). Though circularity doesn’t imply it is wrong or incorrect, it’s also possible we are in an arbitrarily deep set of nested simulations, each trying to reveal information about the sim one layer up to the simulants in that layer while those one layer above them watch to see what they figure out.

And this isn’t an anti-science stance, I just think that there’s a bunch of things that are unknowable (to us with our current limitations, at least, as another part of my pet idea is that we created this to entertain ourselves). And, no, despite my name, I don’t think spirituality can give any answers, though it can make a lack of answers more comfortable, and philosophy does have much wisdom to offer (which is more why I chose this name because enlightenment is real, though it doesn’t turn you into some all-knowing guru and has many forms).

Woah there, where are you getting this idea that any of this has meaning from? Reality being coherent doesn’t imply any kind of meaning. I can’t even think of a theoretical way to determine if we’re here for a reason (other than cause and effect) or if we’re just here.

In my experience, the paper wasp description applies to the yellow jackets. They are fairly common around outdoor eating areas around here, especially near the garbage cans. I find they mostly just check out the food, though they will check you out, too, and will sometimes get right into your face, but I’ve found a good way of reclaiming your space is to slowly push them away. You probably won’t even make contact with them while you do so because they react fast.

Though I’ve also noticed that they (and bugs in general) are more interested in some people over others and I’m lucky to be on the low interest to bugs side of the spectrum.

In addition to what the other commenter said, there’s some luck of the draw, too. There were three forms of it, having to do with how you were infected. Bubonic was one, associated with sores and boils on the skin, caused by flea bites. Pnumonic was a lung infection, which could spread directly via droplets. And septemic was the blood infection version, usually happening as one of the others progressed.

Bubonic only killed about 40-60% of those who showed symptoms, while pnumonic and septemic killed 90-100% of those who showed symptoms.

So to get infected at all, you needed either to be bitten by an infected flea, share air with someone who has pnumonic, or share fluids with someone that has bubonic (specifically the pus from the sores) or septemic (the blood, though maybe other fluids too).

Some managed to avoid these entirely. Others could have had lower exposures to the point where they didn’t develop symptoms. If someone gets infected but the infection doesn’t get established enough to become stable, they often don’t get treated any differently from people who weren’t infected at all. Those death rates only apply to those that they knew had it (though sometimes death rates are given per population rather than infected, and those tended to vary wildly in infected areas, from like 50% to 80%).

With viruses, at least, asymptomatic infection seems to be far more common than we would have thought. Both ebola and covid antibody studies showed that the antibodies were found in many who never got sick, implying they were exposed but their immune system beat it before symptoms showed up.

Bacteria isn’t necessarily the same, but it’s possible that something like this is a factor and those might have even developed some immunity. Plus, natural selection would select for people who are just less susceptible to it while it’s out there killing off a significant part of the population.

I guess you’re forgetting the time Elon Musk smashed his cybertruck window while demonstrating how indestructible it is?

Or the time that guy who was told his submarine design was stupid because fibreglass is strong under tension but still took it down to the bottom of the Atlantic multiple times until it crushed him along with some idiots that must have thought it was fine because it had been down and back before?

Didn’t some politicians drink Flint water to try to “prove” it was safe?

The sai one looks practically unusable, too. Thinking of the usual angle I use to cut pizza, the crossguards will get in the way.

I see this as a great taste, horrible execution. Especially because the one executed the best would have been better as a katana rocker cutter (which the staff isn’t, as a stick with a cutter in the middle is completely different from a single curved blade, to disagree with the other commenter).

A good set would have been katana rocker cutter, sai cutter (with a longer center blade and a smaller circular blade), a staff dough roller, and I guess nunchuck grain thrasher or maybe parmesan cheese and crushed pepper shakers. But I’ve always been a function over form kinda guy and hate artistic choices that completely ignore function.

Or maybe they are bright and colourful to distract from all the bodies.

Digital should be the better for either one because both can be normalized to a normal exposure, in which case over should still be more accurate (assuming a static scene). With film, you open the shutter and then allow light to hit the single piece of film, which makes up your full data for that image. Digital could record time data with the light data and essentially keep a record of the full exposure, which can then be averaged and normalized to the length of the exposure.

As long as no pixels get blown out by the exposure, linearly scaling brightness would handle the normalization. Though one of those “take 30 pictures real quick” would also work if you average them together, maybe add a little positional correction if the first frame and last frame are far enough apart that the spacecraft has moved significantly in that time.

What’s the context here? Like should you care about it to learn it or do you mean if you should oppose any resources being directed towards anyone learning it?

If it’s the latter, it doesn’t matter. Plenty of animals survive fine without understanding any of those topics you listed, and more importantly, the rest of us get along fine despite those animals not knowing any of it and we’ll be fine no matter how much you know.

But for the second one, geology (and its related fields like paleontology) is basically the evidence of natural history on this planet. Everything we know about pre-recorded history comes from geology, from what we know about how the planet formed and how the planet and life on it evolved. We can use various dating methods to determine the approximate age of layers of rock, and then determine that anything embedded in that rock is at least that old (though with some exceptions, since there are processes that embed newer rock in older rock). We know that dinosaurs existed because of geology, that there were once insects with wingspans greater than a meter, and that they predated grasses and flowers.

They also let us determine more information about recorded history, which can sometimes be more political or religious than historic. Thanks to geology, we know that, while most areas on the planet have experienced major flooding at various times, there has never been a worldwide major flooding event during human times. But we do know that the sphinx is in an area that saw flooding since it was built and that the Sahara was once lush instead of barren during human times. It’s been used to determine a timeline of how we spread through the world, and to understand that we (homo sapiens) weren’t the only or even the first humans to do so.

Or, on a more practical side, geology can be used to get an idea of what resources are under the ground without needing to dig them all up first. It also can tell us how stable the ground is in a given area, like should buildings be designed to withstand major earthquakes to survive 100 years? Or should the entire valley be avoided because there’s an active volcano that might not erupt tomorrow but might so so next week. Or even understanding that this volcano is one you don’t want to be anywhere near when it goes off, while this other one will be a cool tourist attraction when it does.

And it’s currently being used to figure out if there was life on Mars or if it was even possible in the past.

Personally, I like understanding the world a bit more. Instead of rocks just being rocks, they are a sign of what was, of how much the world changes over timescales we can only imagine. That cliff needed to be deep underground at one point or it would have only been a hill, and that mountain rose up because it was pushing against other rocks and ended up going up, maybe with those rocks or instead of them. This canyon exists because glacial lakes would form as each glacial period came to an end and eventually the ice holding that lake together would melt or break, allowing that water to flow and it carved out this massive channel maybe in a matter of days or hours as that water swept everything on its way to the sea.

I think they meant all those coasts that are man made. Still think we should have said no when they wanted to extend Florida so far out.

There were people that raged at others wearing masks because they felt entitled to see their faces or some stupid shit.

I’ve thought for a while that Tolkien was a great world builder but a meh storyteller. His big thing was breaking that new ground. Not that I would do any better, but many other authors since have.

Rowling doesn’t have the breaking new ground. I don’t get why her shit got so popular in the first place. I lost interest when the first movie was basically going down a list of pre-Tolkien fantasy tropes like it was a checklist.

Have you met people? There’s stupid fucks out there who take pride in being disgusting assholes who don’t wash their hands.

Not to mention his wow raiding consisted of a lot of screaming at people for fucking up and IMO any success was despite him not because of him.

Afaik in Canada, you aren’t even breaking any law until you try to leave the premises without paying. Perfectly legal to grab shit from the shelves and stuff it in your pockets as long as you take it out and pay for it before you leave. If you wanted to fuck with their loss prevention people, do that looking as shady as you can, like furtive looks around as you shove things in your clothes, then just pull it all out at the register.

Note that they can ask you to just leave and ban you from the store without needing to charge you with anything (after which returning at all could get you a trespass charge), so it’s more of a funny prank to think about and then not bother doing because there’s nothing to gain.

Yeah, microplastics, too. And “pollution” being still broader than the list either of us have given so far. A car goes by smelling like gas? They are running their motor too rich and you’re literally inhaling unburnt gasoline. A car whose exhaust stinks but not like gas? Running too lean and now you’re inhaling various nitrogen compounds that aren’t great for inhaling. Ratio is correct? Still inhaling more CO and CO2 than normal, but everyone is doing it so there might not even be a control population to compare the effects against.

Oh also all the food additives that get tested for acute safety but not so much chronic (as in “will it kill you or make you obviously sick if you eat it once or a few times?” gets studied but “will eating it twice a week for 30 years have any long term effects?” is ignored).

Though even that is complicated by 50 or so years of nuclear weapons testing, which likely also increased cancer rates. Not to mention all that lead everywhere. Produce gradually losing nutrients because farming mostly just focuses on the big three with fertilizer and the others are being mined out of the ground and sent to landfills, septic tanks, waste processing facilities, cemetaries, and crematoriums also doesn’t help (though I’m not sure waste processing and crematoriums remove those nutrients from the cycle like the others, since the one could produce fertilizer and the other might be sending it out into the atmosphere where it could eventually end up back in the soil).

There’s so much chaos that it’s hard to isolate causes, which then makes all the causes kinda “hide in plain sight” because they can perpetually blame the others and shit only gets worse over time.

The point is that you can’t observe anything without some kind of interaction. Even just looking at something requires bouncing light off of it.

We’re used to our observations seeming passive because light is often hitting the things anyways, but the double slit experiment forces the point because the subjects of the experiment are so small that even just using ways of observing them affects the outcome of the experiment.

If propaganda worked on everyone, why is there anyone trying to counter it?

The RJ plugs are my least favourite. Still snags but the plastic bit that snags is feeble enough to break off easily, and then the plug doesn’t have anything holding it in to the port. And those covers usually make it harder to fit it through holes intended for ethernet cables as well as make it harder to unclip it from the port.