Toss up : a coworker who I would have counted as quite intelligent said we haven’t been to the moon because “it’s impossible to launch a rocket to the moon and land on it because rockets go in a straight line. Trying to time the shot of the rocket, and get to the moon at the exact moment when the moon gets to the right spot would be astronomically impossible. The odds of pulling that off at the speed you would be traveling and the distance you travel… Well the odds are effectively zero.”
"Also you can’t catch up to the moon because the moon is traveling faster then our rockets can go "
Either that or a prochoice individual who voted for Trump…
How does this person think things like ICBMs work? They just go straight up and away from the earth and can’t turn?
When he used both arguments in the same conversation. I shrugged and stopped talking. Nothing to gain by continuing the conversation
No, you must go back and tell him that the moon moves at a very predictable rate and once you get close enough it will even pull you in.
Also I’m pretty sure the ISS moves a lot faster than the moon but we still manage to dock spacecraft with it. I’m pretty sure it’s a bit smaller than the moon and docking can require higher precision than landing on a surface. Even Boeing managed to do it.
The first argument is more or less understandable (still wrong): you can’t just propel yourself upwards at your earliest convenience to reach the moon, you have to play around with orbital mechanics.
If your friend’s idea of a moon-worthy vessel is an unsteerable rocket with infinite fuel and a chair strapped to it… well the odds are effectively zero.The second argument? bro, last time I checked the moon was still orbiting Earth
The friend should play Kerbal Space Program. It will be a fun way to show that yes, it’s really hard, but it is possible to play around with orbital mechanics and get to the moon.
And then it will show that an unsteerable rocket with infinite fuel and a chair strapped to it is also possible, just really really hard.
I imagine the latter isn’t too hard, you just have to get it right just before leaving the atmosphere (quick saves help); however, isn’t landing (not crashing nor rolling around) on the Mün without steering straight up impossible?
Though I can see some rocket landing on a planet with an atmosphere…
Depends if you’re trying to get to the moon, or get to the moon safely.
How does this person think guided missiles work? “Well the plane moved so we missed.”
"Also you can’t catch up to the moon because the moon is traveling faster then our rockets can go "
- Not true so discussion over right there
- Even if its angular velocity was faster than a rocket its radial velocity is nearly 0 so all you would have to do to intercept it is to lead it. No different than shooting a moving target at long ranges.
If you really want to confuse most folks tell them why shooting stuff into the sun is actually VERY hard to do.
Okay im curious. What about shooting something into the sun is very hard?
The earth has a lot of angular momentum, in fact the planets combined have more than the sun and planet formation may actually be necessary to “bleed off” angular momentum from protostellar discs for star formation, but I digress. So if you were to aim directly at the sun you’d miss it wildly as the tangential motion of the earth would be added to your motion. Even worse it would miss the sun, go around it, and orbit back to where you came from. A bad thing if you were trying to toss, say, radioactive waste into the sun. To hit the sun you have to bleed off all of that angular momentum by using rockets (very expensive) or do what NASA usually does and use gravity assists swinging by planets to gain or lose energy. The Parker solar probe had to do a bunch of swings past Venus to lose enough angular momentum to get close to the sun.
I was assuming rockets were an option like going to the moon. Cost wasnt something i thought we were factoring in thats not really a factor in just trying to send a space ship at the sun and having it get there. It doesnt have to be moving fast (relatively) to get there so you just need good aim and to keep it on track.
Cost should be its own problem separate from the objective. Assume 0 costs, how hard would it be?
It requires a LOT of energy to counter the earth’s orbital motion. Hitting the moon is different because the moon is traveling with the earth and you are going outwards. Energy is always part of the equation since orbital mechanics is all about energy. You can’t ignore it by saying “Assume 0 costs, how hard would it be?” then we could just say it can approach the speed of light since we are ignoring any energy costs.
“It doesnt have to be moving fast”
But you will be moving fast, you are starting at an angular speed of 30km/s. The Apollo missions with their massive engines reached 11 km/s. Now think of someone wanting to dump hundreds of tons of nuclear waste into the sun and the energy that would require.
Maybe this explains it better:
the one where the democrats are the ‘party of slavery’ because of what the parties stood for in 1860. yeah that’s why I’m voting for Lincoln and the union this year dumbfucks
They might want to look up how the parties flipped during the civil rights era.
And yet California—a solidly blue state—just voted by public referendum to uphold slavery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_California_Proposition_6
Yeah, the problem here is calling them the party of slavery, when both parties are blatantly in favor of it.
I wonder why so many Democrats left the party during the civil rights movement? I wonder why David Duke left the Democrat party? I guess we’ll never know.
My mom was playing Jeopardy on her Alexa and one of the questions was about a state in Mexico. Her boyfriend, who was very drunk, adamantly insists that it’s a trick question because “Mexico doesn’t have states.” It’s literally called the United Mexican States. Two of my aunts are from Mexico. It took like two hours to get him off the subject.
Confidently ignorant people really bother me. Even if I thought that I would’ve thought “Is that true?” and spent a second googling it. It is amazing how some folks are devoid of even the slightest curiosity but are blindly overconfident.
i got into an argument with my in law about a 60$ sticker to block the ‘waves’ on my phone. for my health. and my phone will still work… it was a hologram sticker.
well, they do sell ones that work. you can measure them blocking all em radiation from exiting out the back of your phone… instead blasting all of it into your head. significantly more of it too, since the normal reaction of a phone that loses signal is to boost its own in order to find a tower.
But blocking any of it is useless because none of it is going into your head, the wavelength of the radio waves is too large to penetrate skin or bone, it bounces off harmlessly like am/fm radio waves. It’s in the nonionizing range of the em spectrum, unlike ionizing em waves like X-rays, gamma rays, radon emissions, etc that do penetrate human bodies and can cause protein or DNA damage.
actually no, some of it gets absorbed. that’s why there are SAR values available for all cellphones. it measures how many watts of heat get absorbed per kilogram of brain.
since it’s non-ionizing though, the only effect is a slight heating. like microwatts of heating. 15 minutes in direct sunlight is equal to millions of phone calls. but we do measure it!
No question it causes a little heat when it bounces off and the heat is absorbed, but if that heat gets to the point where you’re causing damage cooking yourself with a phone the phone is seriously malfunctioning and broken.
the problem is, apparently, that we just don’t know what sort of effect that heating has when it happens inside the body.
you know, never mind the radio spectrum part of what the sun puts out.
I’ve got the new ones that also block radiation, they’re on sale for 120$
Whether 12:00:00 is a period of time and could be AM or PM, or whether it was a point in time i.e., the meridian, and was neither AM nor PM.
I feel like there’s not much to fight about. I can understand the latter perspective, but from a practical point of view it just makes sense to consistently assign it to AM/PM rather than creating an unnecessary edge case (lord knows there are enough of those with date/time systems). Also this is all made moot by the superior system: the 24-hour clock (now THERE’S something I bet you could have a good argument about!).
Indeed, the minute (sorry) difference it what made the argument so dumb. In the end it came down to the implementation of the systems we were working withm which were… not good. My favourite thing about 24-hour time is to be able to use 00:00 and 24:00. And the worst thing is notation in systems only going up to 23:59:59.
12:00:00 exists in both AM and PM. I have my lunch at 12 PM.
Obligatory mention: Full Body Workout Every Other Day?
Or if you’d prefer it in video form: https://youtu.be/eECjjLNAOd4
Holy butts, that was the good kind of bonkers
Whether the saying is “if they think that, then they’ve got another think coming” or “if they think that, then they’ve got another thing coming”.
That one always gets me. The phrase means that the person is wrong about something, and circumstances will compel them to reconsider their position or opinion. The word “think” refers to a cognitive process, such as reconsidering their position or opinion. As for the alternative, what’s the “thing” that’s coming? Their latest Amazon order is out for delivery?
Comeuppance.
Yeah, that’s what I’ve always figured, since the implied threat of violence/retribution seems like a very American attitude.
What? No, just via circumstances. As in, the situation will have consequences you failed to predict.
I feel that “another thing coming” has mobster vibes, and a comeuppance is a deserved punishment.
Okay, well, it doesn’t.
I’ve always interpreted the other thing coming as a threat or an unpleasant surprise. Ie, the consequences of thinking the thing they think.
After a cursory search it seems like both are acceptable. “Think” appears to be the original phrase, but “thing” is more common today, especially in America.
The moment I knew that I had to break it off with my ex was when a comment about tea-cup saucers turned into an accusation that I “always had to be right”.
We were having cake for dessert:
Her: “Can you grab plates?”
Me: Grabs a couple of small plates.
Her: “No, those aren’t for cake. It’s the really small ones.”
Me: “Okay, but FYI the small ones are actually teacup saucers. You can tell the difference because they have the indent in the middle so the teacup doesn’t slip around.”
Her: “You just always have to be right, don’t you?”
What followed was a truly bonkers argument where I found myself accused of “lording my intelligence” and told that I had to be right in everything.
For the record, I told her I literally didn’t give a shit what she wants to eat cake off of. I’m the guy that would happily use a Tupperware lid as a plate if it was the closest thing to hand. I was just pointing out an “interesting fact” (in my mind at least).
you’re right. Saucers (despite the English name) are meant to drink beverages, therefore they are small glasses, not small plates
How dare you point out something. Stop hurting her feelings by pointing out anything she doesn’t know. “I would’ve pointed out you were about to drink soap but then I’d ‘Always need to be right’.”
That is essentially the vibe I got from that argument. We didn’t last much longer after that.
Understanding each others’ definitions is key to communication, so I’m with you on this one. I’ll often get accused of “you know what I meant!”, when I really didn’t and was honestly asking for clarification.
Kids, don’t take ontology classes even if your friends say it’s cool.
“you know what I meant!”
This is why I’ve learned to repeat what I thought someone said back to them so they can confirm if they communicated it clearly or not.
“Bring it to me.”
"Which one? I see 5 of them here.
“Oh, I meant the blue one.”
I can’t remember the specifics (both because it was dumb and because it’s so embarrassing I think my brain is trying to protect me), but from what I recall I got into a heated argument on the internet with someone because I felt that fans weren’t cheering hard enough for a band I liked at a concert.
…yeah, I know. I’m grateful, though, because it was so colossally stupid and pointless that I had a come-to-Jesus moment and swore off internet arguments entirely. I can only imagine the countless hours of my life it’s saved me in the intervening years.
ugh. gotta be the one about jesus preaching pacifism. The person said the turn the other cheek was not to be taken literally but a thing he says after he admonishes a disciple for cuting off a soldiers ear and healing the ear but then he says his fight is yet to come and he will need to be armed and armored for it. that he feels is literal and not prose at all. smh.
Let’s give more money to billionaires, they will make us rich too.
Ah, trickle-down economics. A tale as old as time.
Anytime I enter one with a purist/gatekeeper. You just can’t reason with them and they absolutely refuse to see the other side of the argument. They must always believe that their direction is the direction for all things regarding X fandoms or general hobby.
Or people who are pedantic.
“The sky is blue.”
“No it isn’t! It is red at sunrise and at sundown.”
“Ok comic book guy.”
Whether if something is deceptively [a trait] does it mean it’s the inverse of the trait or more of the trait than it appears, ie: if you call something deceptively shallow, does that mean it is shallow, but looks deep, or that it is deep but looks shallow. Hours of arguing with my family and checking numerous sources, we came to the conclusion that the phrasing can be used either way.
Goddamit. I was so certain it was the inverse, and now here I am debating myself
You can thank me later
You’re debating whether not-3 is the same as “less than three”.
It’s => but not <= so it’s not ==.
🤔🤯
I think if something is described as deceptively shallow it means that it looks deeper than it is. IMO
An event that happens biweekly could occur at the same frequency as an event that happens bimonthly.
Shouldn’t that be semi-monthly? Rounding months to 4 weeks, of course.
Or maybe that’s just me wanting bi and semi to have consistent meanings. Bi is two, semi is a half.
Probably should be, but isn’t. Bimonthly can mean twice a month or every two months.
When I started studying computer science, my father asked me what I learned, so I told him about Turing machines, trying to explain the whole thing, that they are a mathematical model for computers etc. But he didn’t believe me and insisted that a Turing machine was an actual piece of hardware built by Alan Turing. As much as I tried making it clear that Turing machines are a theoretical model, he was trying to explain to me that they are not. A week later when I met him he spent some time “fathersplaining” the life of Alan Turing to me. He had probably tried to read about Turing machines online (this was before Wikipedia), didn’t understand a single word, and so read Turing’s biography instead.
He was probably thinking of the Bombe, which broke Enigma’s encoding.
So dumb.
Hour argument, that the final cliff fall scene in Predator 1 was two different jumps in the 2 cuts.
Can see in the first one he is rotating. Second cut is a straight plumb drop into the water.
How were the rotational moments counteracted?
They weren’t, it’s two different jumps/takes.
2 friends came up with some hair-brained arguments that you could stop rotating on the way down. (눈_눈)
The only way would be air resistance, and hands/arms is not going to be enough to create drag to counter the rotation.
I hate when people get into minute arguments about what is visually happening on screen versus the story that’s being told. It can be a single jump narratively but two jumps in production. (I’ve never seen the movie.)
I was not invested in the outcome of the argument, just seeing how far they were willing to take being wrong about aerodynamics/physics. Quite far it turns out.
Jackie Chan: Always shoot the punch twice.
