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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I think people kind of ruined entropy with all that disorder crap. The simple conceptual explanation is that entropy represents the energy that is unavailable to do work. The more entropy a system has the less work it’s capable of doing, which ultimately means the less can happen within that system. Entropy always increases globally, because anything you do is something that happens and anything that happens means less energy available to make other things happen. The complex esoteric interpretations might have some conceptual value in specific circumstances, but like a lot of science communication the rigorous scientific definitions don’t get communicated, so now we have nebulous concepts like order and disorder floating around that just confuse people more than anything.


  • As an engineer this is a comically incorrect take. Absolute zero is useful as an absolute reference in the same way zero of anything is. Try doing anything more complex than high school physics and the practical necessity for an absolute temperature reference becomes obvious. For fucks sake they even bothered to make an imperial version. Rankine is just Fahrenheit shifted to have zero be absolute.





  • I understand why people always say things like this. It’s the not having a choice that ruins eternity. Fortunately it seems that such a fate is physically impossible in this reality. Even if you were made of the most durable possible material, you would still fundamentally be composed of baryonic matter, which means if you fell into a star, collided with a celestial object at relativistic speed, or fell into a black hole, you would surely die. There is always a way out for an enterprising immortal, and afterwards sweet nothing.


  • This is kind of a shit metaphor because if we extend it to how piracy actually works it highlights how stupid DRM is in the first place. A lock on your house has to be picked by each individual robber, unless they all show up on the same day. A cracked game would be like if only one person has to pick the lock on your house, but they don’t actually take anything they just make a perfect copy of your house without the draconian 12 step lock you installed and gives copies to whoever wants one. If you never noticed all the people sharing magical copies of your house with each other you would never know you lost anything, because you didn’t. Only your blind greed was injured by the thought that those people might have been willing to pay to use your house if only it had been locked down against those damn house copiers. On your next house you make the locks even more invasive and complex, to the point they block half the driveway or make the oven and bathroom unusable. Then that same one person spends an extra half day to pick it and makes a copy but without the crazy lock so they actually get a better house than you’re selling. Whether people like it or not, digital media has always been on the honor system, and always will be. DRM just punishes people for doing the honorable thing and paying.








  • Fire is a natural and necessary part of many ecosystemsm. It keeps parasitic insect populations down, stuff like ticks and chiggers, and some plant species rely on fire to prepare the soil for seeds and even is required for some plants to release their seeds. In dry ecosystems like the western USA it also consumes old dead plant material, reducing the fuel available for future fires and reducing fire severity overall. Many foresters and fire fighters advocate for increasing prescribed burns, essentially forest fires that we light on purpose in cooler and wetter times of the year to consume the fuel without risking a catastrophic fire that is difficult to control. I just think that’s neat.



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    2 months ago

    I’d just like to point out that while women are certainly victims of rape and their likelihood to be raped in their life is far higher, they are far from the only victims of rape. Men are also victims of rape, but often their victimhood is marginalized and ignored, forcing them to suffer in silence or find what little support they can from their romantic partner, if they are lucky enough to have one that doesn’t leave or trivialize their feelings. Women face these same challenges, but they can find support in loved ones, family members, and romantic partners, or failing that at least at women’s shelters. Support that may be nonexistent for their brother or father or partner. To make everything worse, men bear the specter of rape and the rapists who committed it. People feel the need to take precautions with male strangers, acquaintances, and even friends, which can damage their relationships with the men around them, even if those men never have or would rape anyone. All of this is fucked up. I’m not sure why I took the time to type this, but what I’m trying to say is there are reasons why some men have that perception of women. When you are starved of affection and love, see a romantic partner as the only viable means to get it, and constantly feel alienated by what you see as your only viable romantic partners, it’s easy to start resenting them. Men see women turning down with disgust more love than they could hope to be offered in a lifetime, their one goal as they drown in their loneliness, and of course they assume women have it easy. It’s wrong, obviously, on even a cursory inspection, but loneliness and depression don’t exactly encourage critical thinking and deep emotional introspection.