More like.......Dr. Never.......amirite boys

there are two competing sects on this website - one that uses the word "spicy" to mean "neurodivergent" and one that uses the word "spicy" to mean "sexual content." i do not like either of them

I use spicy to describe food

my food is mentally ill and I’m putting my dick in it

Twilight

WAIT

I JUST REMEMBERED HEARING AN ELON MUSK QUOTE WHERE HE TALKS ABOUT HOW HE BELIEVES CHESS IS "TOO SIMPLE" OR WHATEVER AND HE SAID HIS FAVORITE GAME WAS A GAME CALLED "POLYTOPIA"

I JUST REMEMBERED THAT IVE PLAYED POLYTOPIA

It being Elon's favorite game (or at least one so important to him that his biographer dedicates a lot of time to it) is.....really really funny.

Basically, imagine Civilization, but as a mobile game. So like if Civilization Revolution was even more dumbed down (that's a Civilization insult. That's devastating. It's devastated right now). For what it's worth, it's not a bad game. On the contrary, from what I could tell in the little bit of time I played it, it's a perfectly competent game with good design. But it's not a deep game by any means. I played through it once, won easily on my first go, then saw that the other playable characters had barely any differences between them.

Like, not to imply you can judge a book by its cover, but here's what it looks like

I came across an article by Dave Karpf discussing this exact thing, and I think it describes it wonderfully

i had a dream there was nuclear site-wide discourse on here over a post that was like "if youre sucking a blonde man's cock youre sucking on a clitoris 🗣" it was so real i feel like im still there

Does anyone have this

i have them all

In terms of science communication and space exploration advocacy, Elon Musk has sent us back into the fucking Stone Age.

It’s hard enough to encourage the public to see the value in space exploration, especially when the problems facing society right now are so intense that space exploration seems frivolous and needlessly expensive by comparison (keyword “seems”) but now that this clown is the face of the future of space, it’s doubling, hell, tripling down on the idea that space exploration is a fantasy for bored billionaires that would rather fuck off to mars and escape the problems of earthly society (problems that they had a starring role in creating) rather than spend a penny of their wealth to help remedy them. Tale as old as time for a science communicator. Heard it a million times. But now it’s so much harder to get people to understand the other side of the coin because the nightmare scenario is already here and his name is elongated muskrat

To add a little bit of context as to what that value actually is… The thing I hear the most in this conversation is “we need to take care of this planet before we start thinking about other ones.” Yes, I agree. The well-being of our planet and it’s people should be out top priority. But we can’t properly take care of our planet if we don’t fully understand it.

The Earth does not exist in a bubble. It’s part of a dynamic and ever-evolving solar system, and galaxy and universe. He have to look at the earth in that context to be able to know and care for it. To care for a planet, we have to know how planets work. When doctors treat patients they look at the medical record, they look at family history, they look at symptoms and compare them to known diseases to find a diagnosis.

How did the earth form? What was it like in the past? Why did it change? That’s the medical record.

We’ve got the earths siblings in the neighborhood. Why is Mars a frozen desert? Why is Venus a molten hell scape? Could those things happen here? That’s the family history.

What kinds of things are floating around our neighborhood? Could they affect us? All this is necessary to diagnose the Earths problem, to anticipate the direction it’s going, and to help it heal.

And the minute we get an asteroid scare, that’s when folks start asking why we weren’t looking up 🙄

As a science communicator at a well known establishment, 10000x this. We have a student program that talk about Earth systems and how missions like Landsat were so useful to understand our own planet better FROM SPACE. I could go on and on but just, like, reread OP's thoughts, they're perfect.

In terms of science communication and space exploration advocacy, Elon Musk has sent us back into the fucking Stone Age.

It’s hard enough to encourage the public to see the value in space exploration, especially when the problems facing society right now are so intense that space exploration seems frivolous and needlessly expensive by comparison (keyword “seems”) but now that this clown is the face of the future of space, it’s doubling, hell, tripling down on the idea that space exploration is a fantasy for bored billionaires that would rather fuck off to mars and escape the problems of earthly society (problems that they had a starring role in creating) rather than spend a penny of their wealth to help remedy them. Tale as old as time for a science communicator. Heard it a million times. But now it’s so much harder to get people to understand the other side of the coin because the nightmare scenario is already here and his name is elongated muskrat

To add a little bit of context as to what that value actually is… The thing I hear the most in this conversation is “we need to take care of this planet before we start thinking about other ones.” Yes, I agree. The well-being of our planet and it’s people should be out top priority. But we can’t properly take care of our planet if we don’t fully understand it.

The Earth does not exist in a bubble. It’s part of a dynamic and ever-evolving solar system, and galaxy and universe. He have to look at the earth in that context to be able to know and care for it. To care for a planet, we have to know how planets work. When doctors treat patients they look at the medical record, they look at family history, they look at symptoms and compare them to known diseases to find a diagnosis.

How did the earth form? What was it like in the past? Why did it change? That’s the medical record.

We’ve got the earths siblings in the neighborhood. Why is Mars a frozen desert? Why is Venus a molten hell scape? Could those things happen here? That’s the family history.

What kinds of things are floating around our neighborhood? Could they affect us? All this is necessary to diagnose the Earths problem, to anticipate the direction it’s going, and to help it heal.

And the minute we get an asteroid scare, that’s when folks start asking why we weren’t looking up 🙄

As a science communicator at a well known establishment, 10000x this. We have a student program that talk about Earth systems and how missions like Landsat were so useful to understand our own planet better FROM SPACE. I could go on and on but just, like, reread OP's thoughts, they're perfect.

why be radically exclusionary abt queerness when you could be radically inclusionary instead. let's inflate the numbers. let's become the majority. the sky's the limit

"we can't let just ANYONE call themselves queer!!" what are you talking about. I'm steepling my fingers and gleefully cackling every time we Get Another One and you should be too. lock in.

Is there a word for that like, “bright darkness” you get in winter?? When it’s been snowing or it’s supposed to snow past sunset and the sky isn’t Dark Enough. One of my favorite things

Thanks to @raindropwindow and a handful of articles, it’s called snow albedo, skyglow, snowglow, or just light scattering! It’s the result of moon- or artificial light reflecting off ground snow, low clouds, or ice crystals.

that nsfw snow…

what the fuck are these donations man

WELL THIS JUST POSES MORE QUESTIONS

The really funny part is "I Can Eat Glass" this isn't even the only popular 1990s Internet meme that involved collecting translations of a specific, slightly incongruous phrase. "Oh my God! There's an axe in my head." is another prominent example, just off the top of my head.

Have you ever looked closely at a car windshield?

The edge of the glass is painted where it is glued to the car but it has these small dots between the clear and painted glass.

These are there for a reason. When the sun hits the glass the painted areas and the clear areas will absorb heat at different rates. This causes the glass to expand and contract differently putting stress on the glass.

These dots help the glass to warm up more evenly over a larger area so the glass does not suffer stress that could cause it to spontaneously explode.

Fun fact: the Tesla cybertruck doesn’t have these.

Yes, the glass will spontaneously crack or explode in the sun.

shoutout to the guy who ran for "class president" (not a real role at this school) in 7th grade and just put up posters everywhere about how he would bring steam powered rail back. no other policy. hope you're doing well.

"The trolley problem makes you ethically complacent because it releases you from a third option" the Trolley Problem is a fucking thought experiment, idiot, and a real-life comparison to matters where you DO NOT HAVE A THIRD FUCKING OPTION.

Shut the fuck up, oh my god.

(via @cicadahaze )

I feel like they did pick a third option. When given a messy decision, where good and evil isn't black and white, they will break down and scream at clouds, rather than make a decision.

But in practice, this means no lever is pulled, simply by inaction. You don't have time to think, and only one of two things is going to happen, however you dress it. Choose to walk away, or waste time cursing god for putting you there. In the end, the result is the same.

The trolley problem speaks to what is in someone's heart, when all the chips are down, and you've got a terrible decision to make. We all know that the objective correct decision is to flip the switch to save the most lives. But could you really make yourself do it, if you were in that situation? Could you choose who lives and who dies, even for the greater good? Is that even your decision to make? And that's why it's such a good thought experiment.

But is it the objectively correct decision? I think most people would instinctively agree. It’s the most harm reduction, after all. But then you look at it more- is personally killing one innocent more moral than watching as five people die?

We look at variations- what if the single person is someone you love dearly? What if the single person is the sole scientist working on life saving research? What’s the most moral option to you? What do you think is the most morally correct? Which do you hold more responsibility for?

There’s the- I did not name or come up with this- fat man variation. You’re standing on a bridge over some train tracks. There are five people tied to them and the train is coming. You are the only one who can do something. You’re too small and too high up to do anything, but next to you is a man of the perfect size and weight to stop the trolley. All you have to do is push him off the edge and into the path to save those five. Is it more moral to murder him, or to let the five die? How different does it feel now? Is there an objectively correct option here?

And another one of my favorites. You are a surgeon. There are five people who desperately need organ transplants fast, or they’ll die. You do not have matching organs available to you. However, there is a perfectly healthy person in your custody whose organs would match all of the patients. He does not want to die to save them. Is it more moral to take his organs and kill him, or to let the five die?

That one has a very different result than the original trolley problem, doesn’t it? Sure, there’s other factors that we’ve created in the medical field, but ultimately, the medical field has decided that it is NOT more moral to save the five by killing one. The “objectively correct” decision would be to let the five die. When people and places do take organs by force, it’s horrifying.

What people see as the “objectively correct” decision changes completely based on context. It would also change based on moral philosophy. Utilitarianism, if I remember correctly, would always say that saving the five is more moral than saving the one… even in the organ donor problem. Some moral philosophies would say that inaction would not be a moral wrong, and that the moral wrong would be to personally take a life.

The trolley problem is wonderful. It makes you uncomfortable, it forces to you to make a binary choice, and more importantly, it forces you to think about why you made that choice. It questions underlying assumptions. If an option is “objectively correct”, why is that? If you’re so uncomfortable that you need to search for another option, why? What moral concepts are motivating that?

I love the trolley problem.

yeah the point of the problem is to force you to defend a position and say why pulling or not pulling the lever, or pushing the man, or not doing so, or whatever other variant is the best option given a binary choice. You can come up with a lot of reasons to defend either choice, it’s not a binary “this is why someone would pull the lever”, but you have to be honest with your consequences. People complaining there isn’t a third option are missing the point because they’re not answering the question.

Let’s use a physics example since the notes seem to like this metaphor. You are asked to give the rate at which something is accelerating down a slope. Complaining that the problem excludes the third option is like answering this physics problem with “well who put it on the slope”. Sure, it might be meaningful in a bigger picture, but it does nothing to answer the question in front of you. Every number in existence is a valid answer (though many are wrong), but “why is it on the slope?” isnt an answer.

However, by criticizing the problem people manage to avoid actually defending their positions. “I think 5 people dying is preferable to me killing 1 person” is a lot harder to say than “I shouldn’t have to make this choice”. What these people miss is that in life, you will be faced with hard choices, and even though it might not be fair that you have to make them, “this isn’t fair” is not its own choice.

comic book trend that honestly irks the fuck out of me is when an existing character comes out as gay and they invent a new character to be their partner. like theres nothing wrong with it per se its just that the new boyfriend/girlfriend character is always jarringly bland and uninteresting, especially when compared to the latent homosexual potential that definitely already existed in the story. like there’s something so deeply unsatisfying about introducing a new side character as a girlfriend for karma in new mutants 2019 when she’d been having dramatic hand-holding adventures with dani the whole time. it implies such a definite hesitancy to ever make characters gay For Each Other, and the result of that hesitancy is that you don’t get any of the long-term slow-burn relationships that heterosexual characters get (like between batman and catwoman or whatever). instead you get New Relatable Millennial Queer Partner that you have to fight tooth and nail to give a fuck about. nobody’s doing it like rictor and shatterstar anymore nobody’s doing coming out reveals that hit like that

Chaunacops is a genus of lophiiform fish ( anglerfish )

Also called the sea toad or coffin fish

her whimsical and inviting nature…

nothing funnier to me than when AI does math wrong. like I get why it happens, it's a language model that's treating the numbers you feed it as words rather than integers and then giving you an answer based on how those words typically appear in a block of text instead of actually performing a calculation. but the one thing computers are genuinely incredible at. you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did, look at it it's got hallucinations