I once went down the rabbit hole of thinking about how the targeting works on the TNG kind of transporter. Like they need to know to the molecule where your body ends and the rest of the universe begins. And you want it to identify clothing, because you don’t want to end up nude on the other side. Plus it needs to identify what creepy crawlies are a part of you and which were just randomly wandering by. We don’t want any of those pesky Fly problems now do we? This might sound easy, but is actually extremely hard. The human body is very complex and like a ship of Theseus what is part of the body is a bit nebulous and can change. All of the microbiome in our gut is essential for us to stay alive. And more importantly we don’t want to leave behind a puddle of crap every time we transport. Plus what happens if we come out the other end, do our intestines just implode? Or does the transporter fill them with air, leaving you to fart uncontrollably until you die?

And how does it know what clothes are? If I’m wearing shoes, does it know where the shoes end and the floor starts? What if I’m wearing skies? What if I’m barefoot on a carpet? What if it’s a leather carpet? What if I’m wearing shoes made by folding carpet around my feet?

The only thing that makes sense is a super powerful AI system that can real-time scan every molecule and figure out what’s what. And it doesn’t only need to be smart, it also needs a lot of real world knowledge. It needs to know what is “logical” to include in every situation. This means it has to be an AGI, has to be superintelligent (at a minimum speed wise) and would most likely be sentient. Them being used for this one and only purpose is really cruel.

This leads me to the conclusion TNG style transporters are basically slavery and put a whole different spin on the morality of the people in that universe. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

That’s not how orbital mechanics work

Maybelline

Akshually cheetahs don’t live in the jungle, they live on the plains. It would be pretty hard for them to run super fast in the jungle. Like a lot of cats they prefer to be in a more open terrain with not a lot of trees like plains, hills, deserts and mountains.

They strip away everything that actually helps people, so in that way it’s really small.

Most anti-cheat doesn’t take kindly to running in a VM as well, so if that’s the reason it won’t work.

Worf worked in security and got to be first officer of the Enterprise. After that became Strategic Operations Officer on DS9, which is command even though it’s still ops related. As a bonus he became first officer on the Defiant as well.

It’s one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?

Sounds like the perfect plan to have Trump change the law so no woman can hold a high office ever again. It’ll blend in nicely with their proposal to not let women vote ever again.

No, Mars lost 99.999% of all of it’s water. The part that remained is stored frozen inside. As soon as you take it out, it will be gone forever.

You can try and use and recycle it as much as you can, but once you lose it, it’s lost.

I really wonder what it could possibly be? Trump has every lawsuit imaginable waged against him, he has broken just about every law and proven himself to be a terrible human being. Even if Putin has video of him raping kids (which given Trumps connection to Epstein seems likely), I don’t know at this point it would matter? His followers would just say fake news or not even care. And he’s already elected as supreme leader, president for life, dictator or king, however you want to state it.

Putin will probably have him killed if he doesn’t follow the plan, but I have a feeling Trump wants to follow the plan regardless.

I think it was naive of us thinking there’s no way someone would be willingly become a cuck for Putin, he must have some leverage. But I feel at this point, Trump just really really wants to be Putins main bitch.

I may have brain damage, but I can’t see this image without hearing Morpheus’ voice in my head screaming: “NEEOOOOO WAKE UP NEEEEOOO!”

It’s a variation on the default post causes masturbation copy-pasta. I think there are at least a couple dozen variations and most of them are glorious.

PLEASE put an NFSW tag on your post.

I immediately started masturbating furiously in the bus in front of 43 people. They realized what was going on, opened Lemmy to this post and all 43 started to fap furiously too. Even the 64 year old Malaysian nun on the front seat couldn’t contain herself - her entire arm was up her vagina as she screamed with pleasure.

I was so horny that my phone flew out of my hand & broke through the window, letting in a relentless tide of horny pigeons who were instantly fucked to death by the passengers. The nun shoved an entire pigeon family up her v. Now there is a bus full of exhausted passengers, dead pigeons and buckets of cum and squirt, all because you posted this.

My first experience in an airplane was quite different actually. In my mind as a child an airplane was this amazing thing that just flew, I had seen pictures of how it looked and thought it was a static thing that people sat in as it flew around.

The reality was quite different, the thing was a bit scoffed up and looked used. I kept thinking how the seats look like the seats on a bus. Not dirty exactly, but used looking and the kind of material you don’t see stains too well and cleans easily. The noise was a lot to handle, not just the roar of the engines and the sound of the air going past, but all of the groins and creaks. And it wasn’t static at all, everything was shaking and moving around, panel gaps showing. I saw the wings go from hanging down to pointing up as the weight of the aircraft hung from the wings. In my mind metal was hard and shouldn’t move as much as it did. Getting on and off was just a ramp that was shoved near the plane from the gate, with a gap in between a flap was laid over. It looked nothing like the high-tech environment I imagined. And flying through the air wasn’t as I imagined, at those speeds it’s more like being under water than going through nothing as I imagined. The plane reacts to currents in the air, getting pushed to the sides and up and down, not the perfectly straight and stable ride I imagined.

So in the end I decided a plane is very much like a bus and that makes sense as it does pretty much the same thing, carry a bunch people from a to b all of the time.

The only thing that surprised me was at take off how much power the thing has. In a bus the engine is usually very underpowered, just enough to get up to speed in the most efficient way. With an airplane the power to weight ratio is crazy, it’s more like driving a really fast car than a bus. But other than at take off, it’s pretty much a bus.

Honest question: Do people think stars look like the star shape because of diffraction spikes in refractor telescopes? I thought the star shape pre-dated any refractor telescope. And I don’t know how many people would have seen refractor images back in the days to make it so culturally engrained?

The post-processing used in astronomical observations is a really interesting topic. I’m following the debate around the black hole images with great interest. I don’t know enough about the specifics to have an opinion, but it is very interesting and has overlap with some of the things I do for work.

It will be called the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony according to the history books.

The fight is over mate, we lost

How can a regular person block shipments of arms or dismantle AIPAC? That’s not possible.

What does boosting voices of soon to be dead people do to stop them from dying? What does organizing or donating do?

Trump has promised Israel everything they need, no questions asked, no limits. And they already have so much, they don’t really need a lot more. They can already destroy Palestine, they can already destroy parts of Iran and Lebanon. They just need the extra stuff and funds to do it quicker and destroy more of those countries.

And don’t think for a second Trump and their cronies won’t block any money flow from the US to anywhere near there and divert it to Israel instead. And block organizations in the US from doing anything. Israel is already blocking aid for Palestine even from organizations like the Red Cross. What are small organizations going to do?

Plus the time to act has come and gone. Time is up, this is going to happen within months. We can’t organize, lobby for policy change, set up aid and demonstrations. It’s done, there is a deadline and that means death for a whole lot of people.

All we can do at this point is look with shock and horror as the far right grips the world and destroys a lot of the things we hold dear.