I dont think Ive ever even pretended to think they are, for me children, especially babies and toddlers, give me a pretty bad case of the uncanny valley effect and look eerie and cause discomfort, as well as anxiety since Im even less sure than usual what they’re going to do and dont want someone’s kid getting hurt because of something I failed to notice. I dont hold it against them or hate children for it, its not their fault after all, but I do try to avoid being around them where practical.

If they’re calling a brain their original processor, these robots could be a result of successful transhumanism rather than conventional robots, ie, they could be humans that have made themselves into robots, rather than robots built for some specific purpose. In that case, they might create child robots and grow them over time to reproduce, just because they find that mode of reproduction familiar and wish to continue it.

Similar story where I work, manufacturing a type of x ray emitting tool. Never seen anyone having problematic readings on the dosimeter badges, but when I was hired I did get told that they had only once had an incident, where one of the engineers had been for some reason repeatedly testing a prototype by directly holding the sample the x ray was firing at in his hand. Not sure what happened to him

Annnd now I feel stupid, because apparently the tablet itself has a firmware option to rotate the display, I just didnt see it mentioned in any of the guides I found on it on the maker’s website (they said to flip it in windows), and didnt see it when checking through the display options before.

Unfortunately the games I need the edge of the screen for don’t appear to capture the cursor, not sure why. After a couple more hours of googling didn’t find me a way to do exactly what I was hoping, the solution ive ultimately found, though it is pretty janky and more clicks than I’d prefer to get set up, is to use some software called dual monitor tools that lets one make a hotkey that locks the cursor to the current display or unlocks it, set to lock when the program is opened, set the program to run on startup, set my tablet to extend the display so that I can rotate it as needed, and then whenever I want to actually use my drawing app, I unlock the cursor, get the app set up on the tablet display, set up OBS on my main display, make OBS capture a stream of my tablet display and then fullscreen preview that stream on my main display, and then move the mouse to the tablet display and use the hotkey to lock it there. I was hoping to find something a bit more convenient, and I have to imagine this is probably somewhat inefficient with my computer’s resources to stream itself to itself, but it does at least seem to get the effect I was going for.

1442? surprised its not 1444

echidna I understand, but why cat?

If you’re actually curious, or someone else reading this is, you never can get a rocket, or anything with mass, to the speed of light either, not just faster than it, but you can get arbitrarily close. However, you never notice anything stopping you going faster than your current speed, there’s no point where your rockets stop working or anything, rather, time and space stretch and squeeze such that neither you nor anybody else see you going faster than light. If you have a magic rocket that somehow has infinite fuel and can fire forever, you can actually get anywhere as fast as you want, from your perspective.

Alpha centauri is famously about 4 light years away, but you can get there in 2 seconds, from your perspective, if you go fast enough. But, everyone on earth will see slightly over that roughly 4 years go by in the time that for you is just 2 seconds. (You’ll see them move slowly too at first, since they’re moving relative to you just as fast as your ship is moving to them, but when you slow down, you’ll see them seem to speed up until you’ll have seen them do 4 years worth of stuff by the time you stop). Meanwhile on your ship, you don’t see yourself crossing that 4 light year distance in less than the allowed time either, because space itself is squished kinda, so that the distance to alpha centauri is shortened to the point that if you’re getting there in 2 seconds, it’s now less than 2 light seconds away, from your perspective, and you’re not moving faster than light to cross that distance in that time. People outside will also see your ship compressed like this too.

This isn’t just a regular optical illusion either, space and time really are different for the people on and off the ship (and indeed very slightly different for everyone anywhere). Nobody has the “correct” view of the universe, because everyone’s perspective is equally valid.

I imagine any explanation of the expansion of the universe for people that are not themselves studying astronomy is going to be simplified in a way that gives the average person the basic idea but not the complete picture to avoid confusion when explaining the concept. Ive not studied astronomy, but I did get most of the way through a physics degree, and know that at least there, a lot ideas are explained in that sort of way to people without much knowledge of the subject, especially the more confusing concepts. I wouldnt be surprised if thats the case for most fields of science. For a different example as an analogy, its common knowledge that you cant move faster than light (ignoring the whole expanding spacetime stuff), but it isnt always explained why this is the case, leading to questions from some people like “what happens if I fly a spaceship to the speed of light, and then turn on the rockets to try to go faster?” which have easy answers or just dont make sense as a question if one has had the behavior of objects at high speed explained, but which seem reasonable enough questions to ask if all youve been told is that the speed of light is just some cosmic speed limit. People cant reasonably blame you for finding an incomplete explanation you’ve been given, well, incomplete, and then asking questions that come to mind as a result.

Dont we see other galaxy groups though? Im no astronomer, but I do recall the universe having some degree of structure above the scale of individual galaxies, with groups and clusters of them forming larger groups or filaments surrounding voids of space with fewer galaxies in them.

Edit: quick search in wikipedia brings up a list of a few groups and clusters known, of which the local group is merely one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_galaxy_groups_and_clusters

I think you have an unrealistic estimation of how much most people understand the topic of communism, if you think not labelling different types of communism as the same ideology is living under a rock. More than half the country doesn’t even realize that socialism and communism aren’t complete synonyms, and a good fraction think paradoxically that center right liberalism is somehow communist.

Basically, I think you’re doing this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/average_familiarity_2x.png

In what sense is this semantics or bad faith? I meant this sincerely.

As I understand it, “real communism” is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.

Not sure why nobody would expect an italian inquisition of food, they literally have a unit in one of their law enforcement agencies trained to do things like find fake extra-virgin olive oil. Ive seen people jokingly call it “the italian food police” even. If anybody was going to run a food inquisition, itd be the italians

Stargate is the best “star-” franchise imho.

I’d argue that our civilization is more capable of solving it’s own problems than it ever has been, just because we are are far better at identifying them, communicating them to the rest of the world, and analyzing the effects of what we try. Just because we have not solved all our problems does not mean that people in years past would have been able to do so and we’ve somehow lost that ability.

The moon’s day length is so long that it wouldn’t make any sense for any crewed mission to use it, they’re going to need their own lights on an arbitrary 24 hour cycle anyway, so there’s no reason not to have every future crewed mission there use the same one

I used to be pretty excited about 3d printed homes, but an argument I’ve seen, that’s made me a lot more skeptical of them, is that much of the work of building isn’t putting up the actual walls, it’s all the wiring, plumbing, installing windows and climate control and insulation and roofing and whatever else like that that turns a building from essentially an artificial cave into a more livable space. A 3d printer that prints you walls out of concrete or whatever is only doing the easy part for you in that case, and not necessarily even in the most efficient or desirable manner. Not to say that the idea of more efficient ways to build housing cheaply isn’t interesting to me, I just think that it’d be something more boring, like a a bunch of improvement to modular prefab construction. 3d printing is an awesome technology, but it’s not a good option for everything

Basically any interest of mine, doesn’t matter what it is, I’ll easily end up rambling on and on about it if the conversation goes there. I tend to end up rambling to people I know about geckos a lot, with varying degrees of interest on their part.

This reminds me of something I sometimes wonder about lotr: does the ring make you more evil, or does it just make you more like Sauron? If you’re already even more evil than Sauron and you put on the ring, does it slowly turn you ever so slightly more good, to align with Sauron better?