Latest Posts by serialport0 - Page 5

Desert Pixie (Melanis leucophlegma), family Riodinidae, Peru

photograph by Cler Drive

Ominous positivity

Virtue doesn't have to be complicated. Nor does it have to be a grand gesture. For example, a virtue could be simple, like doing one thing at a time or cleaning up one mess before making another. If you want a measure for approximating integrity, consider that how you do one thing tends to become how you end up doing everything.

A pure philosopher has no other touchstone for truth than our natural understanding, not theology.

The current season is always superior to the previous season because it resolves the previous one like an unfinished musical chord.

I was today years old when I learned that there were two cities named Thebes (one in Greece and one in Egypt)

what? no, i'm not a vampire. watch i can literally go in the sun (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp) (-1 hp)

And God said, "Behold! I have created the fourth primordial force: the weak interaction!"

And the angels all clapped and nodded politely, and there was a long silence; and finally Verchiel, the Angel of Grace, spoke up and asked, "Er, what exactly does it do, O Fashioner?"

And God said, "What do you mean, 'what does it do?' It's the fourth fundamental force of the universe."

And Verchiel said, "You mentioned that. Um. But it's just that the other three sort of have a brand, you know? Gravity helps build large-scale structures, acts over vast cosmic distances, shapes time and space. The strong force is secret, hidden, binding together quarks and all that. Electromagnetism, very cool stuff, somewhere in between. We're all big fans of the whole magnetic monopole double bluff, very clever. But, er. What does this 'weak interaction' do?"

And God said, "It mediates radioactive decay. Sort of."

And Verchiel said, "Radioactive decay? All radioactive decay?"

And God said, "No. Just some kinds."

And Zephaniel, the Chief of the Ishim spoke, and he said, "A whole independent force just to mediate some kinds of radioactive decay?"

And God said, "Well. Not totally independent. Technically it's related to electromagnetism."

And Zephaniel said, "Wait, it's not even a real force?"

And God said, "It's totally a real force. It's just that it's one aspect of a combined electromagnetic and weak force. An electro-weak force, if you will."

And Metatron, the Celestial Scribe, scratched his head at this, but said nothing.

And Cambiel, the Angel of Transformation, said, "Maybe you can walk us through it from the top."

And God Sighed an immense Sigh, and said, "All right, fine.

"So the way it works is that all of space and time is permeated by a field that has imaginary mass."

And Cambiel said, "Imaginary mass, O Generous Provider?"

And God said, "Yes, imaginary mass. It's tachyonic, d'you see?"

And Sarathiel, the Angel of Discipline, said, "Wait a minute, I thought we agreed nothing was going to travel faster than light? All that 'c' business and the whole Lorentz transformation thing. What's happening with that?"

And God said, "Let me finish. The field is tachyonic. The particles in the field all move slower than light."

And Sarathiel had to think about this for a second.

And God said, "The point is, a field with imaginary mass has a non-zero vacuum expectation value."

And this really gave Sarathiel trouble, since he had never been very good at math.

And God, seeing this, went back to explain. "Most fields, like the electromagnetic field, have no effect when they are at their lowest energy state. It's like they're not there at all. If you give a field imaginary mass, then it vanishes only when it's at a very high energy state, and at a low energy state, it has a nonzero value everywhere."

And Sarathiel nodded, but he was confused, because he didn't understand why God would create such a thing.

But Verchiel thought he saw where God was going with this, and he was amazed.

"Truly, you are cunning beyond measure, O Only One Certainly Sound and Genuine in Truth! Only now do I understand your design! For in order to make the universe homogenous and isotropic, it is necessary that all large-scale fluctuations in temperature and mass must be evened out early in the history of the cosmos; and therefore, you have designed a field which will rapidly expand space after the Big Bang, many orders of magnitude in brief moments, and then swiftly and spontaneously decay as it gives up the energy it began with, giving rise to radiation and particles of all kinds as it does, which will condense into the material universe! It is a wonder to behold."

And God said, "What? No. I mean I did, but this isn't the inflaton field I'm talking about. This is something else."

And Verchiel said, "Wait, it's not?"

And God said, "No, I'm going to use a different field to drive cosmic inflation. The properties of this field are totally different."

And now Verchiel was also confused, and lapsed into silence.

And God said, "Like I was saying, this field is a scalar field with imaginary mass, and it does spontaneously decay to a ground state with a non-zero value. But it's not the inflaton field. Instead it combines with the W1, W2, W3, and B bosons."

And Metatron began to flip back through the pages of the Heavenly Record trying to figure out where he'd lost the thread.

And Zephaniel said, "The what bosons?"

And God said, "The W1, W2, W3, and B bosons. I'm sure I mentioned them. You know, the massless bosons?"

And Zephaniel said, "I'm pretty sure we only talked about the W+, W-, and Z0 bosons. All of which you said were going to have mass, O Owner of All Sovereignty."

And God said, "Yes, but this is how they get them, you see. Once this field acquires a nonzero value everywhere, the massless bosons interact with it and get mass. Well, some of them do. They turn into the W+, W-, and Z0 boson. And the photon."

And Zephaniel said, "…and the photon, O Accepter of Invocation?"

And God said, "Well, I did say I was going to unify the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, didn't I? This is how. Above the critical temperature--right now I'm thinking 10^15 K, but I'm open to feedback on that one--electromagnetism and the weak force act as a single unifying force. Below that temperature, the field gets a nonzero value, you get three massive bosons to mediate the weak interaction, and the photon pops out seperately."

And Zephaniel said, "That seems… a bit overly complicated, doesn't it, O Reinstater Who Brings Back All?"

And God said, "No, it's exactly what we need. Look, that way the W and Z bosons have something to do, but the weak interaction still only travels short distances. Gravity is still the star of the show on cosmic scales, as it were. But now quarks and leptons can swap their flavor!"

And Zephaniel said, rather weakly, "Their… flavor, O Source of Good?"

And God said, "It's this new quantum number I'm trying out, to give the three generations of matter more unique identities."

And Cambiel said, "Three generations of matter? Now I'm really confused."

And God said, "I'm sure I mentioned this. You've got the lightest quarks and leptons, and then two heavier versions of each that can decay into the lighter versions."

And Cambiel said, "What do they do? New kinds of chemistry, is it?"

And God said, "Well, no. Mostly they just decay in a couple microseconds. Or even faster."

And Zephaniel began to rub his temples, and Cambiel sniffed.

And Cambiel said, "This all seems a bit ad hoc to me. Not really the stuff of an elegant and obviously ordered Creation. Why not have four generations of matter? Why not a trillion?"

And God began to grow irritable, and said, "Well, that's not really up to you, now is it? We're going to have three generations of matter, and the electroweak force, and that's that!"

And Zephaniel said, "As long as we are unifying fundamental forces, perhaps we could somehow also unify the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction, or even gravity."

And God hesitated saying, "Well, I haven't decided about that yet. I'm not sure I want gravity to be quantized, you know? Seems to take some of the geometric elegance out of general relativity."

And now it was Zephaniel's turn to sigh, and he bowed his head. "As you wish, O Possessor of Authority of Decisions and Judgement."

One of the reasons black coffee is posited to be beneficial is because it upregulates glucoronidation, which is a phase II metabolism reaction involving the covalent addition of glucuronic acid—triggering an elimination and detoxification mechanism for lipophilic compounds. Additionally, since glucuronides are charged, this also triggers the excretion of the parent compounds in urine and bile. tl;dr black coffee triggers enzymes, increases metabolism, burns fat, and causes the body to excrete various things that are posited to potentially harm us in some circumstances.

Bruckner Expressway, South Bronx, 1958

NYC Municipal Archives

staging changes to my post.

commiting my post.

pushing my post to the remote repository.

2 mutuals approve my changes.

my post is merged into the main branch.

4 issues immediately created.

When God closes and locks a door, I reach for the lockpick set I purchased on Amazon dot com.

Today I learned that in 36 BCE, Roman statesman Marcus Varro wrote one of the earliest descriptions of germs, going on to say,

"...there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose, and there cause serious diseases."

The germ theory of disease would not be widely accepted for another 1,900 years.

The percentage of people from the world population capable of following a written argument is probably very small.

first century: honestly off to a little bit of a slow start here like. jesus was obviously doing some big stuff, thats why its called the first century. han dynasty is neat but spans a longer time period so i cant give it too many points for that. 6/10 i’d say

second century: idk anything about the second century. not memorable, 4/10

third century: beginning of the mayan classic period. big fan of elagabalus. setting of (most of) romance of the three kingdoms. 6.5/10 honestly pretty good

fourth century: another one thats kind of, idk. council of nicaea i guess and wikipedia says this is when stirrups were invented. late classical vibes. 5/10

fifth century: fall of the roman empire! sexy! drama! attila the hun! not much else going for it honestly, but still like maybe 6.75/10 just for that. big fan of the huns

sixth century: sui dynasty is a pretty big deal, that’s about it. 5/10

seventh century: a lot going on. islam. tang dynasty. first written attestation of old english and (depending on exactly which inscriptions you wanna count) old japanese. hight of classic maya civilization. 9/10 love this one

eighth century: pretty much the beginning of japanese literature, man’yōshū etc. start of the islamic golden age. dresden codex. 8/10 would be higher but seventh century is a hard act to follow

ninth century: the invention of algebra, you gotta love that. we’re really on a roll now, 8/10

tenth century: this one always tricks me, the turn of the millennium happens at the end not the beginning. i know its the same with the twentieth century but that one’s in living memory so its different. song dynasty. “dark ages”. i like it but somehow it just doesn’t stick in my mind like the last couple. 6.5/10

eleventh century: norman conquest, heian jidai, 7/10 for sure

twelfth century: genghis khan is born, does some sweet ass steppe politics and power plays, 8/10

thirteenth century: a personal favorite of mine. the mongol conquests. half the known world. biggest contiguous empire. walk from one end to the other with a gold plate on your head. letter to the pope. im as big a fan of this century as temujins empire was thicc. 10/10 perfect score.

fourteenth century: i have nothing of interest to say about the fourteenth century. 5/10 by default

fifteenth century: ThE ReNaIsAnCe 7/10 love me some leonardo

sixteenth century: lots of genocide, 3/10 probably my least favorite. there’s lots of genocide in all the ones after this too but its not part of their aesthetic gestalt for me and thats what I’m basing this on

seventeenth century: sort of, wizard-astronomer with a big ass telescope vibes. calculus. 7/10

eighteenth century: american revolution, french revolution, haitian revolution, lots of drama. also i love townsends eighteenth century cooking, 7/10 

nineteenth century: overhyped fashion design, “lol what if the bad guys actually did conquer the world” edgey bullshit. marx was neat, also darwin. 5/10

twentieth century: dramatic, lots of twists and turns, very high concept. absolute masterpiece. 10/10.

twenty-first century: technologys gonna get so fucking crazy it could be great or terrible. honestly this coronavirus stuff will not be more memorable than the spanish flu in 100 years, in fact i bet less. trump’s bullshit will all just be like, idk weird facts to tell people about at parties like. ?/10 we shall see

Hachiko, the loyal Japanese akita. In 1924, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University brought him to live in Shibuya, Tokyo, as his pet. Each day, Hachiko would wait at the train station for the professor's commute home. This continued until 1925, when the professor died of a cerebral hemorrhage. For nearly 10 years—from then until his death on March 8, 1935—Hachiko would return to the train station, exactly as the train arrived each day, waiting for the professor to return.

TFW when people try to remove information from Wikipedia but it just gets put back up with ten extra citations.

do you ever think about how machine learning basically started in the 1940s and 1950s but they just didn't have the hardware at the time to implement it in a robust way

Vegetarians/vegans are so annoying when they're like, "There's no way to ethically kill an animal." Like, dude. Have you seen how animals kill each other in nature? Venomous snakes watch their prey cripple from venom, or sometimes Grizzly bears eat their prey alive (there are endless examples)💀💀 Be happy that the animals we eat are shot or have their throats slit!!

I've seen posts going around claiming that petting animals is basically tricking them into thinking they're being groomed, and it's bugging me because, like, there's no trickery afoot. Petting and scritching are grooming activities. They help to dislodge loose fur and foreign objects and more evenly distribute protective oils, among other things. Primates are social groomers, and the human impulse to scritch is the legacy of our primate ancestors. We see an animal we like, even a dangerous one, and the monkey brain says "groom that thing".

The Giant Squid Nebula

Somewhere out there is a guy with a bear trap on his head because it’s been on there for years and if he took it off now people would be like “Hey, you got rid of the bear trap! What prompted this?” and he won’t have a perfectly rational answer.

Mordor by Dmitry Yakhouski

Syllogistically, of course, time waits for an island

people don't change as much as you think they do. they mostly become what they already were.

Nature

Radiative cooling and indoor light management enabled by a transparent and self-cleaning polymer-based metamaterial - Nature Communications

Transparent roofs offer a solution for harnessing natural light in sustainable buildings. Here, authors demonstrate a polymer-based metamate

New material lets through 95% of visible light (compared to 91% for ordinary glass), but still blocks infrared (so has a strong cooling effect) and is opaque:

It's also superhydrophobic so is essentially self-cleaning.

Your ability to describe the world affects how you think about it. If the language and idioms you know are constrained to a particular window, that window will act as a constraint in shaping not only how you see the world, but also how you experience the world.

"If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria"- Friedrich Nietzsche

do you know how some dogs go insane if you leave them in silence for too long? i think sometimes people are sort of like that