Should definitely be in the “penguins” zone.

I feel like the thing we are all missing is this: what on earth is the writer of the second note doing in a classroom where the kids have to have the ABCs plastered on the wall?

I think you need to reread the post. The pasta is very clearly the lesser of the two by value.

*Royal Institution

Faraday’s lab was at the RI.

Definitely read the book. The book is about the existential elation at discovering a solution to a dire problem, so knowing a poorly-communicated version of every solution will likely ruin the book for anyone serious about the hard Sci-Fi.

All good! I still appreciated it, but I felt like I was missing some level of implied depth.

While Webb, by contrast, presumably talks more often out of his ass? Or was there some other organ which you were implying was from whence the subtitles should be flowing?

You know shit’s fucked when The King In Yellow, the very manifestation of the idea that knowledge can kill, is having to defend the value of education.

Every day we stray further from god toward lost Carcosa

If you didn’t have plate tectonics, you’d have a lot of problems with the atmosphere, and there’s a decent chance that life wouldn’t evolve, as the energy differentials generated by tectonic activity are those which life hangs onto, from nutrients, to oxidation, to geothermal heat.

I do rather appreciate when idiots out themselves. Gives me another user to tag.

Again, I think you’re replying to the wrong person. I never disagreed with any of this. I literally learned all of this years ago. I appreciate your attempt to educate, but I’m unclear on its purpose. The dude claimed that the speed of light is defined based on the meter, and that that makes it a tautology. That is simply, provably false. Then the dude tried to move the goalposts. Never did I say that our measurements are anything less than relative. Never did I suggest that our derived units are not based on fundamental constants the nature of which can be only guessed at. Now, you’ve said that the statement I made didn’t tell the dude “how to make use of” dimensionless units, which is a complete non sequitur. If you feel that that lecture is an important one when a dude demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what c even is, that’s your own affair, and I invite you to give this lecture a few comment levels up to the guy who thinks that c is defined based on the meter.

I was unaware that the person to whom I was replying, who claimed to be intimately familiar with the complete works of Feynman, needed instruction in how to “make use of” a fundamental constant of nature. If that is something you think is necessary, perhaps you should see to their instruction in such matters, as you are so confident in your faculties of condescending instruction.

Furthermore, I am acutely aware of the existence and nature of dimensionless constants, thank you very much.

That may be, and I’ve been meaning to dig into my copy of the Lectures, but that’s moving the goalposts. You said that it was a tautology because it was defined by the meter, and the meter was defined on it. That statement is demonstrably false.

c is a measurable constant, not some unit that is arbitrarily defined. Like Boltzmann’s Constant, or the ground state hyperfine transition frequency of the Cesium-133 atom… it just… Is.

Therefore, it is a useful tool to define units. You claim it is a tautology because we write it in units of meters per second, while the meter is defined based on c. This is easily disproven, as you can represent the speed of light in any unit of velocity. It is a fundamental constant, derivable through experiment without any units a priori.

The fuck do you mean “they both died because of it”? Are you suggesting the horse-drawn cart that crushed his skull in the street was involved in some conspiracy by Big Uranium? Or perhaps you are suggesting that the horse was suffering radioactivity-induced delirium?

Excellent catch. You can also see that both major ticks say 6’

Sounds like you would enjoy either “The Hungry Gods” or “Children of Strife” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. If you choose to read Children of strife, you really need to read the first three Children of Time books first, though.

True, though any engineer capable of the delicate manufacture of a positronic brain should be a master of cable management.

Are you sure that his bodily systems aren’t heat-sunk with water as a coolant?

Still a better system than Boston, having navigated both MANY times. To call Boston’s streets a “system” is an insult to the very concept of order.