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Cake day: July 3rd, 2024

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  • It is amazing foundational science fiction story. Once you’ve read it, you’ll see many of its ideas and themes in many other great works of science fiction literature. Perhaps the most recognizable is as the inspiration for the Ewoks from Star Wars. (In my personal opinion inspiration is a bit of a stretch, Ewoks are pretty much a direct copy.)



  • There are lots of ways to fill a 2D space with a single non-crossing path. I’m sure counting the ways could be interesting to some. I guess you’d prefer a zig-zag oriented orthogonal to the sides, rather than the corners. This orientation fills the frame of a photo a little better though given the perspective. You could also make a spiral. I think the Hilbert space filling curve is way more interesting, but probably would make for a confusing photo.


  • Have you? Several of the first few cars I drove did not have power steering and without any doubt or hesitation I can say they were not as safe to drive. And having been personally struck by a vehicle at slow speeds I’m pretty confident that your argument there doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. I’m not saying they can’t be driven. I’m saying that they are less safe, the same way cars without anti-lock breaks are less safe. Both require extra training and practice to operate safely in an emergency situation, training that is increasing difficult to get because most people drive cars that have had these essential safety features for their entire lives.






  • Wolf314159@startrek.websitetoScience Memes@mander.xyzI c it!
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    14 days ago

    A pinhole camera has no lens. The effect here is like a pinhole camera, but a pinhole camera is nothing at all like a lens. Pinholes diffract light. Lens refract light.

    EDIT: Of course you can’t resolve an image through diffraction. That’s not how pinholes cameras work. Diffraction negatively impacts image resolution, but it absolutely happens when light passes through them. But, although lens do use refraction to resolve an image, that same process also has unintended negative effects on image resolution (spherical aberration, chromatic aberration, etc.). I didn’t bring up any of that because it was ultimately a distraction from the important part: narrow gaps diffract light, lens refract light, and pinhole cameras do not work like lens.


  • I think our brains are pretty good at ignoring or abstracting/simplifying things we see that we don’t understand, almost too good. That’s just magic, optical illusion, or hallucination. Getting high is like chemical circuit bending. I feel staring into the void alone won’t be enough drive one mad, it’s when the void stares back and forces awareness, or knowing, that one has to worry. The non-euclidian architecture of R’leyh is just unsettling, but the stare of a multidimensional being can’t help but bend your circuits beyond their limits.

    There was that one short story though about FTL travel, wherein the conscious passengers must be asleep for the journey through hyperspace (or whatever that story called it). Some people stated awake through the trip and came out the other side mad. The hyperspace itself wasn’t enough to break their brains though, it was just that an instantaneous trip from the sleepers’ perspective, became an infinitely long (in time) trip from the waking conscious perspective. At that point, what they saw didn’t really matter, it was a forced perception or awareness without the solice of “not knowing” that broke their brains.

    None of this is science, just rambling nonsense.