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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: March 4th, 2024

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  • Yeah that’s the boring answer, it would just break apart. But even without physical limitations, mass has the property that it can’t be accelerared past c with a finite amount of energy, and I think it’s interesting to see why that limit is more fundamental than the structure of matter. No matter how you mess with forces using simple machines, the energy calculations always come out the same.



  • First question: two reasons that wouldn’t work: the stick would just break, obviously, but if it was a super duper stick, the torque required to accelerate the end past the speed of light is directly related to how long the stick is, so any increase in speed from a longer stick will be offset by the need to apply more force at your end. Therefore the energy required to flick a stick to the speed of light does not depend on the length of the stick, you are simply creating a reverse lever of sorts. It’s still an infinite energy requirement, assuming the stick has mass.

    The second question is a lot easier. The light is traveling directly away from you at all times, there is no sideways motion.


  • I used vapes to quit cigarettes, and then patches and gum, and now it’s been close to 3 years since I last smoked. Changing the flavor depending on my mood was I think really good to dissassociate tobacco taste from the nicotine addiction. In my area there was a shop that made everything to-order, had a bunch of crazy recipes that changed every week and you could step the nicotine down to any %. He shook it up right there, it was a chill place too with games and vending machines while you wait. No judgement, very personal. Every time I came in he constantly tried to ask if I qualify for some discount or another, ‘are you a member of the local church?’, ‘are you a firefighter?’, and I’d have to keep saying no until he just picked a random one to apply lol.





  • I think people like to see marketing as an art when in reality it is more of a science. Ads are engineered to be cost effective, and the design simply follows from that incentive. By taking up any of your attention, even if it’s in the background, even if it’s a small patch on an athlete’s uniform, it will help the product sell. If it didn’t, advertisers wouldn’t have put it there.

    They have more data than you, they are smarter than you, and all they care about is selling their product. You are a tool to boost profit, even if you don’t directly give them money, your attention is all they need.

    Like, this comic is actually a good example of how an anti-consumption response to an ad can actually help sales. If she never knew about Dragon Marrow, she wouldn’t be opposed to it, but you will inevitably just give Dragon Marrow free marketing every time you talk negatively about them. You may drive a majority of people that hear you complain away from it, but maybe one or two of your friends decide to try it anyways, people who would not have heard of it until you complained.

    Attention is the goal, not a specific emotional response. You can’t outsmart an ad by watching it.



  • Yeah spot on. ‘Granite’ is a wide category of rock. The Vietnam memorial is also apparently granite, I just learned that today. It looks nothing like the reflecting pool, it’s much darker, almost black. The specific types of granite, maybe even the specific quarries, was chosen by each architect for it’s texture and color. Congress paid extra to keep the original granite floor while replacing everything else about it in 2009.

    It will never be restored, I don’t think it’s possible. Our generation will have been the last to be able to see the original intended art piece.





  • No bid contract to a friend of Trump’s in the hotel pool industry. The idea stemmed from Trump seeing the park service scrape algae off the top because of ongoing filtration issues. That’s it. He just wants to hide the algae. It’s so dumb, and as far as I understand it, pool paint is nearly impossible to remove.

    Hey did you know that darker colors reflect less sunlight? They turn a substantial portion of light into heat; I wonder if that will affect the algae. I also wonder how he ever thought something on the bottom of the pool was supposed to hide the surface. That’s not how occlusion works.




  • Links are not primary sources, there are no primary sources in this article, as opposed to Thrush’s. Every link in there besides nyt goes to a msnow article that does the exact same thing as this article: just summarize somebody else’s news gathering. If NYT is a hack, msnow is the hack’s hack. I actually do agree with you that nyt is trash, but that’s not the point, the point is that a lot of articles in this community are just copping stories from journalists that actually do the work. And every click on msnow is another death blow for some aspiring journalist that won’t be able to find a job.