I'm not going through anything bad right now, I just feel like listening to some ugly-cry type of breakup albums.
My picks:
My friend and I are considering finishing a prototype of a Reddit app. We've already agreed to the following features on first release (if we keep going).
What are some features/ideas that members of this community would really like in a Reddit app?
I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.
Bookmarkable meta post with links to all previous topics
Today's topic is the dual nature of light and matter, the wave-particle duality. It is a central concept in quantum mechanics that - as is tradition - violates common sense. I will first discuss the duality for light and then, in the next post, for matter.
In what terms can we think of light so that its behaviour becomes understandable to us? As waves? Or as particles? There are arguments to be made for both. Let's look at what phenomena we can explain if we treat light as a wave.
Let's start with an analogy. Drop two stones in a pond, imagine what happens to the ripples in the pond when they meet each other. They will interact, when two troughs meet they amplify each other, forming a deeper trough. When two crests meet they do the same. When a crest and a trough meet they cancel out.
Now if we shine light through two small openings and observe the resulting pattern, we see it's just like ripples in a pond, forming an interference pattern. When looking at the pattern formed on a screen placed at some distance from the openings, we see a striped pattern Light can be described as an electromagnetic wave, with crests and troughs. It sure seems like light is wavey! The wave nature of light allows us to describe phenomena like refraction and diffraction.
When we shine light on some metals, they will start tossing out electrons. This is called the photoelectric effect. How can we understand this process? Well we know light is a wave, so we imagine that the wave crashes into the electron that is chilling out near the surface of the metal. Once the electron has absorbed enough of the light's energy it will be able to overcome the attractive forces between itself and the positively charged atom core (remember, an electron has negative charge and so is attracted to the atom cores). So a higher intensity of light should make the electron absorb the required amount of energy more quickly. Easy, done!
However, there's something very peculiar going on with the photoelectric effect. If we shine low frequency light on said metal, no matter how intense the light, not a single electron will emerge. Meanwhile if we shine very little high frequency light on the metal, no matter how low the intensity, the electron will emerge. But how can this be? A higher intensity of light should mean the electron is receiving more energy. Why does frequency enter into this?
It seems that the electron needs a single solid punch in order to escape the metal. In other words, it seems it needs to be hit by something like a microscopic billiard ball that will punch it out of the metal in one go. The way physicists understand this is by saying light is made up out of particles called photons, and that the energy a photon carries is linked to its frequency. So, now we can understand the photoelectric effect! When the frequency is high enough, the photons in the light beam all individually carry enough energy to convince an electron to leave the metal. When the frequency is too low, none of the photons individually can knock an electron out of the metal. So even if we fire a single photon, with high enough frequency, at the metal we will see one electron emerging. If we shine low frequency light with a super high intensity at the metal, not a single photon will emerge.
So there you have it! Light is made out of particles. Wait, what? You just told us it's made out of electromagnetic waves!
So, maybe light is just particles and the wave are some sort of emerging behaviour? This was a popular idea, one that Einstein held for some time. Remember the experiment where we shone light through two small openings and saw interference (commonly known as the double slit experiment)? Let's just take a single photon and shoot it at the openings! Because light is particles we'll see the photon just goes through either opening - like a particle would. Then all the non-believers will have to admit light is made out of particles! However, when we do the experiment we see the photon interfere with itself, like it was a wave. Remember this picture which we said was due to wave interference of light? When a single photon goes through the openings, it will land somewhere on the screen, but it can only ever land in an area where the light waves wouldn't cancel out. If we shoot a bunch of photons through the openings one at a time, we will see that the photons create the same pattern as the one we said is due to wave interference!
So it would seem light acts like a particle in some cases, but it acts like a wave in some others. Let's take a step back and question these results. Why are we trying to fit light into either description? Just because it's convenient for us to think about things like waves and particles - we understand them intuitively. But really, there is no reason nature needs to behave in ways we find easy to understand. Why can't a photon be a bit wavey and a bit particley at the same time? Is it really that weird, or is it just our intuition being confused by this world we have no intuitive experience with? I would love to hear your opinions in the comments!
To add one final helping of crazy to this story; if we measure the photon's location right after it emerges from the slit we find that it doesn't interfere with itself and that it just went through a single slit. This links back to my previous post where I described superpositions in quantum mechanics. By observing the photon at the slits, we collapsed its superposition and it will behave as if it's really located at one spot, instead of being somehow spread out like a wave and interacting with itself. The self interaction is a result of its wavefunction interacting with itself, a concept that I will explain in the next post.
We learned that light cannot be described fully by treating it simply as a wave or simply as a bunch of particles. It seems to be a bit of both - but neither - at the same time. This forces us to abandon our intuition and accept that the quantum world is just fundamentally different from our every day life.
Next time we will talk about the dual nature of matter and try to unify the wave and particle descriptions through a concept known as the wavefunction.
As usual, please let me know where I missed the mark. Also let me know if things are not clear to you, I will try to explain further in the comments!
The photoelectric effect is actually what gave Einstein his Nobel prize! Although he is famous for his work on relativity theory he was very influential in the development of quantum mechanics too.
So I'm doing my GED at the moment and I'm in the same couple of classes this gal. It's only 3 months into the semester and we won't be in the same classes next semester anyway. Nevertheless, despite it only being 3 months we quickly became acquainted and within the last month or so we've become friends. Last week however, her boyfriend broke up with her and today he kicked her out of his apartment - so she's homeless. And in order to not live on the damn street she's going back to Norway (she's only been here in Denmark for a bit over a year) to live with her family until she can find somewhere to live here - she still has another semester to go until she's done with school here, so it need only be temporary.
She's leaving tonight and so I asked if she wanted to meet after school today. We did and talked for a couple of hours at a cafe - and it was pretty nice despite her situation being total shit. I'm a really empathetic person in general and I feel all sorts of compassion for her. Simultaneously, despite barely even knowing her (today was the first time we actually hung out, come to think of it), I am gonna miss her like crazy... This is mostly about her because of how much it sucks for her and how bad I feel for her, but I can't help but feel like shit too even though I barely even know her! I can't tell if I have a crush on her or if I just like her as a friend, but who cares anyways - she's gone now and I might not see her again...
Just had to get this off my chest I guess. I just wish so bad that she didn't have to leave - that I could've gotten to know her more and spent more time with her.
I'm also trying to follow some advice from a psychologist, because I have borderline personality disorder and basically it means I feel feelings a lot more intensely than the average person. I also haven't been a very social person historically speaking so I find it difficult to navigate relationships and situations like this. So the advice I'm trying to follow is particularly this bit: Instead of ‘I love you with the passion of a thousand fiery suns’ it might be nice to do a small gesture. But it's difficult to not write her on messenger and just say something like "I'm gonna miss you :(" - I know it's stupid to do that and she doesn't feel the same way I do because it's only been like 1 month of actual friendship, but it's genuinely how I feel.
Wasn't sure if this belongs in ~life or here, so I figured I'd just go with this one. Just had to get this off my chest so that maybe I'll not be dumb and write her something that the overly attached girlfriend meme could have written. I used to be super clingy and it's driven people away in the past so yeah. Anyway, thanks for caring if you read this whole post :)
Hello everyone,
Today we cover equilibriums and phase changes. Through that we will get a basic understanding of how things like pressure, temperature, density, volume, etc. are related.
The previous chapter can be found here: https://tildes.net/~science/8ao/. I highly recommend that you read it before continuing.
A collection of all topics covered can be found here: https://tildes.net/~tildes/8al/.
"Equilibrium" is fancy word for "balance". A system is in equilibrium when it is in balance with the surrounding systems. Any system will naturally attempt to be in equilibrim, and will adapt its physical properties to do so.
A phase change is the transition of matter from a state (solid, liquid, gas, or plasma) to a different state. This happens due to a change in internal energy, changing how a material is bonded.
Now that we have it summarised, lets dig a bit deeper.
A system always tries to be in balance with its surrounding systems. We maybe don't think about this a lot, but we are all very familiar with this principle since we observe it every day.
If you have a cup of hot cocoa, it will cool down until it has reached ambient temperature. At this point, the cocoa is considered to be in "thermal equilibrium". If we fill a balloon with air, it will expand. It will do so until the air inside the balloon has the same pressure as the air outside the balloon. At this point, the balloon is considered to be in "barometric (pressure) equilibrium".
Just like when we talk about energy, there is a relationship when we talk about equilibriums. We have something we call (you may remember this from basic chemistry) an "ideal gas". An ideal gas is a good way of looking at this principle. Since the temperature, volume and pressure have a direct relationship.
Pressure-volume-temperature diagram for ideal gases.
In the diagram above we can see that if we change one of the three variables, then one (or both) of the other two variables has to change too. For instance, if we heat some air in a canister, the air will try to expand. But being unable to change in volume, it will instead increase pressure. [1]
Any material has a set of phases. The ones we'll discuss are the solid, liquid and gaseous phases. Unless we control the material's environment very carefully, materials will always follow this order when energy is added. Solid becomes liquid, liquid becomes gas, and vice versa. For instance water; ice (solid) becomes water (liquid), water becomes steam (gas). So each of these transformations is a phase change.
So when water is solid (ice), the molecules are in a grid. The molecules do not move around much, maybe a little bit where they stand. But they all still stand in a grid.
When the water gets heated up, the molecules will start to move. Molecules have a natural attraction to each other due to subatomic forces like the van der Waals force. So the molecules will no longer stay in a grid, but they will still keep each other close due to this attraction. So a material that sticks together but freely moves around is called a liquid.
Once the material overcomes this natural attraction, the molecules can go anywhere they want. And that's when we get a gas. Or steam, in the case of water. All of this applies even for materials we don't usually imagine would melt or evaporate, for instance steel.
Here is a visual representation of the three states.
Now comes the fun part. Ice is water that is at 0 degrees Celcius or below. Liquid water is water that is 0 degrees and above. But wait! Does that mean that water can be both solid and liquid at the same temperature? Yes, indeed. A material requires a certain amount of internal energy to become liquid. That is why internal energy and temperature is often used interchangeably, but is not exactly the same.
The water molecules in ice will use the supplied energy to get excited and start moving around. This continues until the solid-liquid water reaches a point where all molecules move around. At that point it has completely become a liquid. While water is in solid-liquid state, the amount of internal energy dictates how much is liquid and how much is solid. The exact same thing happens with water at 100 degrees. It can be steam or liquid, but not fully either until it reaches a certain amount of internal energy.
Here is a diagram of this process.
Another fun tidbit that makes water special: Water has a lower density as a solid than it has as a liquid, when both are at 0 degrees Celcius. This means that per unit of volume ice weighs less than (liquid) water. Therefore ice floats on top of water. This is the only material that behaves in this way. And thats extremely important to our existince, since it helps regulate heat in the ocean.
We have learned a few new things today. But there is one really important wrinkle to all of this. A system always will try to be in balance. And this we can exploit. Pressure is a type of "pushing". So thats a type of work! And an increase in thermal energy can lead to an increase in temperature. We remember that from the ideal gas. So if we cleverly organize our system, we can create work from heat! This is the basis behind most heat engines (simplified a ton). We supply thermal energy to some gas or fluid, and extract work from this gas or fluid.
A classical example is the steam engine. We have water inside a closed system. When we heat up the water, it will turn into steam. And this steam will want to be much less dense than water. As a consequence, the pressure inside the water tank increases drastically. We release a small amount of this steam into a closed piston.
Here is an animation of this in action.
The piston suddenly gets a high pressure level. As we remember, it will want to be in equilibrium with its surroundings. Currently the pressure inside the piston is much higher than outside the piston. As we remember from the ideal gas law, a higher volume will mean a lower pressure. So the piston will be moved, as the steam expands to reach a pressure balance. The movement from the piston will drive something, like a wheel. The steam is removed from the expanded piston, and the piston will return to its closed position.[2] Then the process is repeated again and again, to have the piston continously move something.
All that from a bit of water in a tank and some supplied heat.
Next time we will talk about another important property. Entropy! In the previous topic I had a lot of questions regarding the quality of energy types, and what specifies heat from work on an intrinsic level. Entropy is the big answer to this. From that we will also cover the heat death of the universe, which would be a good introduction to "a laypersons introduction to nihilism" if we have any philosophers here.
[1] For solid and fluid materials (as well as non-ideal gassess) this becomes a lot more complicated. If we ever do a "layperson's intro to fluid mechanics" we will cover it then.
[2] This described design is very inefficient and very simplified. Usually the piston is made so steam is supplied in turns supplied to either side of the piston. Then the work will both removed the steam that already performed work as well as move the piston. That way you can have continous movement in both directions.
See for instance this image.
"How could a low-budget, black and white movie from the 60s possibly scare be that scary." I thought to myself as I was purchasing my ticket for the movie. I was going to see the movie, because I had always heard that it was a good movie. I thought that this movie couldn't possibly be scary, so it had to have other merit to have it be considered a good movie.
I left the cinema that day quite spooked. I was amazed at with all of it. The true horror weren't the wondering ghouls, but the interaction between the people inside the house. It was a social experiment more than anything else. What would happen if six people were placed inside a house, with a wounded child, and impending doom closing in on them? This is the question answered by the movie. A power struggle between Ben and Harry, about the safest place in the house to hide, led to the death of Harry. Everybody sided with Ben, and in the end he only survived the longest because he hid in the cellar as Harry had suggested from the beginning.
TL;DR
I found the fighting between the survivors in the house to be very spooky.
Deimos and I were discussing the use of "ask" topic tags this week, and we agreed it might be a good idea to get a consensus on these.
At the moment, Tilders are using four "ask" tags on topics:
ask
ask.survey
ask.recommendations
ask.help
(There may be more "ask" tags created in the future, but these four are what we're all using at the moment.)
Anything that's a question gets tagged with "ask". Some specific types of question will then get tagged with "ask.survey" or "ask.recommendations" or "ask.help", depending in the type of question being asked.
"ask.survey" is for questions about preferences and favourites. "What's your favourite horror movie?" "What's the best place you ever visited?" "What's your favourite type of holiday?" The asker is collecting data about people's likes and dislikes (even if they're not going to publish the results in a report later!).
"ask.recommendations" is for questions asking for recommendations. "What's a good browser to use?" "What book should I read next?" "Which brand of phone should I buy?" The asker is looking for people to recommend things to them.
However, Deimos and I wondered about "ask.help". One interpretation we came up with was that "ask.help" is for questions looking for a specific answer, where it should generally be possible for people to think "yes, this is the right answer to the question". This would include questions seeking help learning about an academic topic, such as happens in /r/AskScience and /r/AskHistorians over on Reddit. Another interpretation we came up with was that "ask.help" is for questions looking for guidance on doing something, like a "how to" type question. This would be more like the types of questions in /r/Help and like the Help menus in software and the F1 key - helping people get things done.
What do you think about the "ask" tags? In particular, what should the "ask.help" tag be used for? In general, are the existing "ask" tags okay? Do we need more "ask" tags? Do we need different "ask" tags?
I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.
Bookmarkable meta post with links to all previous topics
Today's topic will be light emitting diodes, better known as LEDs. As the name suggests, we'll have to discuss light and diodes. We will find out why LEDs can only emit a single colour and why they don't get hot like other sources of light. Let's start by discussing diodes, in case you are already familiar with diodes note that I will limit the discussion to semiconductor (p-n with a direct bandgap) diodes as that's the type that's used in LEDs.
A diode is an electronic component that, ideally, only lets electric current through in one direction. In other words it's a good resistor when the current flows in one direction and a really good conductor when the current flows in the other direction. Let's look a bit closer at how diodes function.
Diodes are made out of two different semiconducting materials. In everyday life we tend to classify materials as either conducting (metals being the prime example) or non-conducting (wood, plastics, rubber). Conductance is the flow of electrons through a material, a conducting material has a lot of electrons that can move freely through a material while an insulator has none. Semiconducting materials fall in between these two categories. They do conduct but not a lot, so in other words they have a few electrons that can move freely.
We are able to change a semiconductor's conductivity by adding tiny amounts of other materials, this is called doping. As an example, we can take silicon (the stuff that the device you're reading this on is made out of) which is the most well-known semiconductor. Pure silicon will form a crystal structure where each silicon atom has 4 neighbours, and each atom will share 1 electron with each neighbour. Now we add a little bit of a material that can share 5 electrons with its neighbours (how generous!). What will happen? Four of its shareable electrons are busy being shared with neighbours and won't leave the vicinity of the atom, but the fifth can't be shared and is now free to move around the material! So this means we added more freely flowing electron and that the conductivity of the semiconductor increases. An illustration of this process is provided here, Si is chemistry-talk for silicon and P is chemistry-talk for phosphorus, a material with 5 shareable electrons. This kind of doping is called n-type doping because we added more electrons, which have a negative charge, that can freely move.
We can do the same thing by adding a material that's a bit stingy and is only willing to share 3 electrons, for example boron. Think for a moment what will happen in this case. One of the silicon atoms neighbouring a boron atom will want to share an electron, but the boron atom is already sharing all of its atoms. This attracts other electrons that are nearby, one of them will move in to allow the boron atom to share a fourth electron. However, this will create the same problem elsewhere in our material. Which will also get compensated, but this just creates the same problem once more in yet another location. So what we now have is a hole, a place where an electron should be but isn't, that is moving around the crystal. So in effect we created a freely moving positive charged hole. We call this type of doping p-type. Here's an illustration with B the boron atoms.
So what would happen if we took a n-type semiconductor and a p-type semiconductor and pushed them against one another? Suddenly the extra free-flowing electrons of the n-type semiconductor have a purpose; to fill the holes in the p-type. So these electrons rush over and fill the holes nearest to the junction between the two semiconductors. However, as they do this a charge imbalance is created. Suddenly the region of p-type semiconductor that is near the junction has an abundance of electrons relative to the positive charges of the atom cores. A net negative charge is created in the p-type semiconductor. Similarly, the swift exit of the electrons from the n-type semiconductor means the charge of the cores there isn't compensated, so the region of the n-type semiconductor near the junction is now positively charged. This creates a barrier, the remaining free electrons of the n-type cannot reach the far-away holes of the p-type because they have to get through the big net negative charge of the p-type near the junction. Illustration here. We have now created a diode!
Think for a moment what will happen if we send current* (which is just a bunch of electrons moving) from the p-type towards the n-type. The incoming electrons will face the negative charge barrier of the p-type and be unable to continue. This means there is no current. In other words the diode has a high resistance. Now let's flip things around and send electrons through the other way. Now they will come across the positive charge barrier of the n-type semiconductor and be attracted to the barrier instead. The electrons' negative charge compensates the net positive charge of the barrier on the n-type and it will vanish. This destroys the equilibrium situation of the barrier. The p-type holes are no longer repelled by the positive barrier of the n-type (as it no longer exists) and move closer to the junction, this means the entire barrier will fade and current can move through. We now have a conductor.
Now let's find out how we can create light using this method. When current is applied to a diode what happens is that one side of the diode is at a higher energy than the other side. This is what motivates the electrons to move, they want to go from high energy to low energy. If the p-type semiconductor is at a higher energy than the n-type the electron will, upon crossing the junction between the two types, go from a high energy level to a lower one. This difference in energy must be compensated because (as @ducks mentioned in his thermodynamics post) energy cannot be destroyed. So where does the energy go? It gets turned into light!
The energy difference between the p-type and n-type is fixed, meaning a fixed amount of energy is released each time an electron crosses the junction. This means the light is of a single colour (colour is how we perceive the wavelength of light, which is determined by the energy of the light wave). Furthermore, none of the energy is lost so there is no energy being turned into heat, in other words the LED does not get warm.
So now we know why the LED is so power-efficient; it does not turn any energy into heat, it all goes into light. We now also know why they only emit a single colour, because the energy released when an electron crosses the junction is fixed.
I think next time I will try to tackle the concept of wave functions in quantum mechanics.
As usual, please let me know where I missed the mark. Also let me know if things are not clear to you, I will try to explain further in the comments!
*) Yes, current flow is defined to be opposite to the flow of the electrons, but I don't want to confuse readers with annoying definitions.
Hello everyone,
@wanda-seldon has been giving us an introduction to quantum physics. For now, she will be given a short break to prepare new stuff. In the meantime I will be covering some classical mechanics, more specifically thermodynamics. In part 1, we need to work our way through some of the more dry concepts, so we can understand and appreciate the horrifying implications of the fun parts. So I promise, this will be the most verbose one.
Some of you may have briefly seen a version of this posted, that was due to me misunderstanding the schedule with @wanda-seldon. If you saw that one, I will mention I rewrote nearly all of it to be more readable.
Now, on today's agenda: The basics of heat, work and energy and how it's all related.
Previous posts can be found here: https://tildes.net/~science/8al/meta_post_for_a_laypersons_introduction_to_series
If @wanda-seldon in her posts mention "energy", it's most likely in the context of energy operators, which is a concept in quantum physics. I'm not going to pretend I understand them, so I will not be explaining the difference. We will cover what energy is in classical mechanics. So keep that in mind if you read something from either of us.
What is heat? Using a lot of fancy words we can describe it as follows. Heat is an energy that is transferred between systems by thermal interaction. And what is work? Work is an energy that is applied in a way that performs... work. The combined energy in a system is called internal energy. This type of energy can be transformed or applied to other systems.
These are a lot of new words, so lets break that down a bit.
A system is just a catch-all term for something that can be defined with a boundary of sorts. Be it mass, volume, shape, container, position, etc. A canister, your tea mug, the steam inside a boiler, your body, a cloud, a room, earth, etc. They are all systems because you can in some way define what is within the boundary, and what is beyond the boundary.
In theory, you could define every single nucleid in the universe as an unique system. But that would be counter-intuitive. In thermodynamics we tend to lump things into a system, and treat it as one thing. As opposed to Quantum stuff that looks at the smallest quantity. Calculating every single water molecule in my coffee would be pure insanity. So we just treat my mug as the boundary, and the tea inside the mug as the system. And just so it's mentioned, systems can contain systems, for instance a tea mug inside a room.
Energy is some quantifiable property that comes in either the form of heat, work. It can be transferred to other systems, or change between the different energy types. An example of transfer is my coffee cooling down because it's in a cold room. That means heat has been transferred from one system (my mug) to another system (the room). Alternatively you could say my hot coffee mug is warming up the room, or that the room is cooling down my coffee. Thermodynamics is a LOT about perspective. An example of transforming energy types is when we rub our hands together. That way we convert work (rubbing) into heat. It's really not more complicated than that. An interaction in this case is just a system having an effect on a different system. So a thermal interaction means it's an interaction due to heat (like in the mug example).
This brings us to an extremely important point. So important, it's considered "law". The first law of thermodynamics even. Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change forms.
Your battery charge is never really lost. Neither is the heat of your mug of coffee. It just changed form or went somewhere else. The combined energy of all types that is residing inside a system is called internal energy.
Let's say we have a system, like a room. And all windows and doors are closed, so no energy can leave. In this system, you have a running table fan connected to a power line, getting energy from outside the system. The table fan is making you feel cool. Is the fan cooling down the room, heating up the room, or doing nothing? Think about it for a moment.
The first thought of many would be to think that this fan would cool the room down, it sure makes you feel cooler! But it's actually heating up the room. As we remember, internal energy is the energy inside a system (room, in this case). The fan is getting energy from outside, and uses this energy to perform work. The fan accelerates the air inside the room, and this accelerated air will evaporate some of your sweat, so you feel cool. But as we remember, energy cannot be destroyed. So we are importing energy into the system, increasing the internal energy. Some of the work from the fan is also directly converted to heat, since the motor of the fan will get hot.
So if we are not getting rid of any of this excess energy, we are increasing the internal energy. And therefore actively increasing the temperature of the room.
To use a more tangible example: Simplified, this phenomena is why green house gases are bad. Lets define earth as a system. Earth gets a lot of energy from the sun. And a lot of this energy will be reflected and sent back to space. Green house gases will reflect back some of this energy trying to leave earth. So instead of having a roughly equal amount of energy enter the system (from the sun, from us doing stuff, etc) that leaves out in space, we have an increasing amount of energy on earth. This, as a consequence, increases temperature.
Now, what are the maybe not so obvious implications of this?
Waste heat, from supplied energy or inefficient work is a constant headache in engineering. If we cannot remove enough heat, we will actively heat up objects until they are destroyed. Thats why good cooling systems are important in cars, computers, etc.
Now this was not so bad. In the future we will cover phase changes, equilibriums, entropy, the heat death of the universe and briefly touch upon engines. So thats most likely two more parts after this. After that @wanda-seldon will take over again.
I plan on doing one main part per week, but if something is asked that warrants a small topic I might do smaller ones inbetween.
Something unclear? Got questions? Got feedback? Or requests of topics to cover? Leave a comment.
apathetic.
hardly wanna move, too
depressed to drink
pathetic.
see a demon's hand
on your closet door
forget it.
possession and a hell-
bound sentence better
than remembrance.
my uncle got so fucked
up that he passed, guess
it's genetic.
exhausted
tryna make depression
beautiful, poetic.
tired of this dance
between lethargic,
apoplectic.
brain on sober
tweakin every minute
schizophrenic. all
the thoughts i'm
barely eatin tryna live
up to aesthetics.
tired of my fucking
skin, a serpent's wish
to shed it.
i saw all the flags
drenched in red
how prophetic.
baphomet in
female form, they said
you'd be angelic.
my single dying wish
you'd be a little
sympathetic
-.
don't come
don't come
to my funeral.
don't cry
don't cry
at my funeral.
just know i
thought you
were beautiful.
even with your
knife at my throat
beautiful
.
where to go
no one's home,
honey can i call?
every day
feed the night
it's insatiable
i never thought
i'd come to say it
maybe its your fault.
i cant believe ive
come so low to say
that its your fault.
-.
i hope you kiss me,
hope you hold me,
when i see you in hell.
cuddle closely
and console me
when i see you in hell.
girl dont push me
will he? wont he?
boy how many pills?
all his poems,
magnum opus, testa-
ment and will.
if i cant know you
lay beside you
then somebody will.
dont wanna own you
or control you, you
do what you will.
i'll just sit here in
the cold, alone, and
write my will.
bottoms up a
litre wine a couple
hands of pills
okay
okay
what in the actual fuck
so i'm a southern boy myself. ever since i was a little kid my mom tried so hard to make me into a little cowboy. i was bought cowboy boots, cowboy hats, and boot-cut blue jeans. even at my young toddler age, i detested all of it lmao.
i was always a city boy.
i loved the idea of big cities like new york, los angeles, chicago, etc. hell, i even fantasized about spending my days in dallas of all places when i was in school daydreaming.
my music tastes trended as far alternative as my style in clothes and girls - in middle school i listened to everything from Shinedown to Disturbed to A Day to Remember to Dimmu Borgir (spooky!)
when i was in higschool - everything from showtunes (Phantom of the Opera) to Eminem to more metal (We Butter The Bread With Butter) to indie rock (Mumford and Sons)
but never in my life was country even a blip on my radar.
sure there were one or two songs you pick up that you get to know like
"Pretty Good at Drinking Beer" x Billy Currington
(my stepdad is a country musician. it's hard not to pick up something here and there.)
i just discovered a new genre of music (new to me).
i just discovered a new sound.
i just discovered my new favorite song.
and it's country.
Hank Williams III - "Ghost to a Ghost"
like oh my God
i just earlier this week discovered something called "Outlaw Country". i'd somehow managed to go my whole life without ever coming into contact with this.
will you listen to this fucking song??
it's the same classic country instruments that we've heard for decades.
paired with dark, angsty, grungy, emo lyrics.
with an incredibly metal breakdown serving as the chorus.
with a terrifically orchestral and bluesy viola/violin backing the entire song.
WHAT IN TARNATION!?
why did no one ever tell me there was an entire subgenre of emo cowboys running around talking about sleeping on the blacktop, relationship struggles, and popping hella pills
i now listen to country music and i'm never admitting it to my parents lmao.
if you didn't catch the link earlier, this song is a fucking work of art and literally brought me from awe to tears to fuck yeah! all in the span of six minutes in public in this cafe.
i think i've looped it back 7-8 times in a row now.
i'm floored.
what did you lot think?
do you listen to outlaw country?
please pass on any recommendations you have
C:
int main(void)
{
puts("test");
return 0;
}
Go:
package main
import "os"
func main() {
_, err := os.Stdout.WriteString("test")
if err != nil {
_, _ = os.Stderr.WriteString("fail")
}
}
Ruby:
10.times { |n| puts "test_#{ n }" }
XML:
<html>
<body>
<h1>test</h1>
</body>
</html>
Saw a pic on Lil Peep's subreddit that listed out a song of his for every mood you could have.
I thought the list was a pretty good showcase of his work, and served as an awesome introduction to Peeper.
Copy my template or make your own and comment below with links of your favorite artist! Show off the range of their work and showcase some of your favorite tracks in the comments downstairs!
A Peep song for when:
(Don't wanna kill the whole list? * = must hear.)
you're overthinking - Overdose ft. Lil Tracy
you're heartbroken - nothing to u
you're really lonely - Praying To The Sky
*you feel hype as fuck - Witchblades
*you have a crush - Star Shopping
you miss your ex - Gym Class
*you're going through shit - Lil Jeep
you're in love - Worlds Away
you hate yourself - OMFG
you're high af - White Wine ft. Lil Tracy
*you're in a toxic relationship - (also leave pls) "Wake Me Up"
your ex moved on - Love Letter
you're gettin freaky - sex (last nite)
no one wants you - Not The One
you don't give a shit (in a good way) - Save That Shit
everything's falling apart - Nose Ring
you got hurt - driveway
they mean the world to you - High School
you're mad at the world - Life
you thought they loved you - Beat It
you want to scream and pull your hair out - Move On, Be Strong
*you're fresh out of a relationship - Awful Things
welcome to Peeper! what'd you think? what'd you love, what'd you hate? let me know!
TLDR at the bottom
I played Far Cry 5 some time ago, and remember it as a good, albeit conventional, open-world FPS which freshened up the Far Cry formula and simplified it, for the better of the game. I also remember that while I enjoyed myself through it's entirety, the endings (as I immediatelly replayed the final mission to see the other ending) left such a sour taste in my mouth that it ruined the rest of the game's experience for me. I immediately uninstalled it and promised myself to never touch the game again. Both endings had completely ruined it for me. I wasn't there for the story, I was there to enjoy myself while hunting and exploring in rural Montana and occasionally killing people who deserved it (the cult is evil, the game makes this very clear).
Then you get to the end, after dispatching of Joseph's lieuteants; Faith, John and Joseph in missions, that were started through terrible scripted sequences of you being hunted down. And as it turns out, no matter what you choose (engage Joseph in combat or walk away), you can't save your friends (in fact if you walk away it is implied that you kill them yourself because of sheer bad luck) or kill Joseph, for that matter. Your silent protagonist listens to his boring and frankly infuriating monologues after locking you into cutscene, even though you came to the mission wielding an array of very deadly weapons, ranging from assault rifles to rocket launchers to a shovel. But Far Cry 5 doesn't care, you get locked into a cutscene and you are disbarred from shooting the prime antagonist, the man that admitted to you personally that he smothered his infant daughter, the man who leads the cult which kills, kidnapps, tortures and most likely rapes the inhabitants of Hope County. And you don't even get to shoot him in his fucking arrogant face, you just get to listen to his monologue. You totally could! You still have your guns, actually, you pull them out immediately after the cutscene if you choose to engange in a boss fight! But it's a game and nothing makes sense.
So Joseph shows you that he somehow captured your allies again, even though, to even engage him, you have to liberate the entire county from the grip of Eden's Gate, so realistically, there shouldn't be anyone left to capture your friends. The cultists are all dead, killed by bullets or your shovel.
Ultimately, you get to pick between taking three of your friends, leaving the rest behind and driving away, only for the driver to turn on the radio, where it just so happens to play the song which was, during the story, implanted in your brain to send you on a murderous, uncontrollable rage. Or you fight Joseph, who, after the fight ends (WHERE YOU STILL DON'T KILL HIM) reveals, that he was right all along, just as atom bombs start falling from the sky. And even then, Joseph, on his own, manages to overpower all your friends and kill them, because for some reason he's the only one not affected in any way by the atom bomb that just detonated in the distance (it is implied that it was another country that dropped the bomb, not Eden's Gate, but then, who would bomb some random county in Montana in the US without any strategical value?), locks you and himself into a bunker (which had a very capable, armed to the teeth, inhabitant living in it, which Joseph somehow kills off screen even though he marched in there unarmed) probably to brainwash you. Of course, the only right choice would be to take the secret ending, but that means not playing the game at all, and still puts the atom bombs into question and if they would still explode, and all the inhabitants of Hope County at the mercy of an evil doomsday cult.
As it turns out, in the world of Far Cry 5, the world is on the edge of starting world war 3, however, no one tells you this, there are only tidbits you hear on the radio if you drive to areas you've liberated. So everyone who turned off the radio didn't hear those. You could say that the world itself is a bit of foreshadowing, considering that everyone and their grandmother were building bunkers, but I thought that was another jab at the classic US rednecks the game parodied a lot, I missed that entirely. Apparently when you take drugs in the game, the hallucinations also hint at a looming world war, but I didn't take the drugs at all, so, barring the bunkers, the hints were too small to be noticed and gave the player something to think about.
The ending sparked a lot of discussion and speculation(one even going as far as claiming that the protagonist is Jesus) on the internet, mutiple discussion on Reddit and other sites, most people seemed to very much dislike the ending because precisely it felt that everything you did in the game was for nothing, which is an ending you can pull off (See Spec Ops: The Line) but the game has to earn with a very good plot and fitting gameplay. My major problem with Far Cry 5 is that it didn't feel earned at all. There was too much of a disconnect between gameplay and narrative (narrative which on it's own wasn't good enough for such a conclusion) to warrant such a bleak ending and pull it off in a way that didn't send the player into a salty rage. There are also theories floating around the net saying that the entire atom bombs ending was one big hallucination, considering your (and your allies) exposure to Bliss at the start of the boss fight. Honestly, I think Ubisoft could've saved some grace if the post-launch content and the DLC were maybe more focused on apocalyptic content (perhaps one big DLC which turned Hope County into a Fallout-esque desert), I actually thought that such content was part of the game, considering that the main menu changes massively after the atom bomb ending. It would've really saved the game: A classic WTF into oh no you just did not! into Oh they actually didn't. You could've even had most of the characters survive, because there were bunkers everywhere in Hope County. Instead we got lackluster post-launch DLC and content, as all three of the DLCs had a very mediocre reception.
The pcgamer article I linked makes a lot of points about how to make the game better, and ultimately I agree with them. It would've made a lot more sense if the entire plot had more gravitas from the beginning, if it were pictured more clearly that the world is in fact going bonkers, but also if the characters were a bit more realistic, both the villians and allies. You can't make a parody of rural America, structure the entire thing as a fun, wild, action-packed ride and then suddenly start dropping atom bombs and declare world war 3 at the end. People will feal cheated.
I'm interested in what the community here on Tildes thinks of Far Cry 5 and if we could get a discussion going.
TL;DR: Summing up, I don't think Far Cry 5 did enough to pull off the ending it gave us. For me and a lot of other people, it even went so far as to ruin the entire game, as everything I did was completely invalidated, all the time I spent on the game and with the characters I've grown to like (they were caricatures, but lovable ones) felt wasted, because there wasn't a single thing I could've to save anyone (except get the secret ending and don't play the game at all and even then, everything is still open). What are your thoughts?
So I've just finished watching the new season. I had low expectations going in, given how the writers had to cut out their main character at the eleventh hour, but I still can't help but feel disappointed.
Soo many plot threads left open. No repercussions for any of the shit that went down over the last 5 years. The good journalist ends up dead, Claire Underwood commits murder literally in the oval office while secret service is right outside the door and then... nothing. That's it. That's what we get for series a finale. I mean, what?
I've also been quite pissed off how they tried to turn Claire into a feminist icon. Claire is a monster. She is at least as bad as Frank. She wanted to literally start a nuclear war to deflect attention away from herself.
Don't get me wrong, having a feminist message is ok. It's good. It's even timely. But not with Claire fucking Underwood for fucks sake! In the first episode where that female soldier asks her if she even has a plan so that more soldiers won't end up dead, Claire snarks at her with "you wouldn't ask me that if I was a man". Really? This fresh recruit, this soldier who you will be sending to her death is asking you - someone who never held any public office before - whether you have a plan and your response is fuck patriarchy?
How about that scene where she fires her entire cabinet and fills it with an all-female cast? Forget about real life, it's not even realistic in the show's world. Remember how hard Frank had to fight, how many people he had to cross, bribe and even murder just to replace a single seat in earlier seasons? Where was the senate? Did everyone else just roll over; how come nobody fought her on this? It felt like the writers really, really wanted to play out their deepest, guilty-pleasure Hillary 2016 fantasies out on the show and the script suffered for it.
If they just left things at the last season's finale where Claire looked into the camera with "my turn!" it would have been a much more powerful moment, certainly better than this disorganized, directionless mess we got.
So yeah, that's where I'm at. How about you?
I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.
Spintronics
Quantum Oscillations
Quantisation and spin, part 1
Today's topic will be a continuation of the topics discussed in my last post. So if you haven't, please read part 1 first (see link above). We will be sending particles through two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses and then we'll put the particles through three of them. We will discuss our observations and draw some very interesting conclusions from it on the quantum nature of our universe. Not bad for a single experiment that can be performed easily!
We will start simple and rotate the set-up of the last post 90 degrees so that the magnets face left and right instead of up and down. Now let's think for a moment what we expect would happen if we sent silver atoms through this setup. Logically, there should not be in any difference in outcome if we rotate our experiment 90 degrees (neglecting gravity, whose strength is very low compared to the strength of the magnets). This is a core concept of physics, there are no "privileged" frames of reference in which the results would be more correct. So it is reasonable to assume that the atoms would split left and right in the same way they split up and down last time. This is indeed what happens when we perform the experiment. Great!
Let's continue our discussion by chaining two Stern-Gerlach apparatuses together. The first apparatus will be oriented up-down, the second one left-right. We will be sending silver atoms with unknown spin through the first apparatus. As we learned in the previous post, this will cause them to separate into spin-up and spin-down states. Now we take only the spin-up silver atoms and send them into the second apparatus, which is rotated 90 degrees compared to the first one. Let's think for a moment what we expect would happen. It would be reasonable to assume that spin-left and spin-right would both appear 50% of the time, even if the silver atoms all have spin-up too. We don't really have a reason to assume a particle cannot both have spin up and spin right, or spin up and spin left. And indeed, once again we find a 50% split between spin-left and spin-right at the end of our second apparatus. Illustration here.
So it would seem silver atoms have spin up or down as a property, and spin left or spin right as another property. Makes sense to me. To be sure, we take all the silver atoms that went up at the end of the first apparatus and right at the end of the second apparatus and send them through a third apparatus which is oriented up-down (so the same way as the first). Surely, all these atoms are spin-up so they will all come out up top again. We test this and find... a 50-50 split between up and down. Wait, what?
Remember that in the previous post I briefly mentioned that if you take two apparatuses who are both up-down oriented and send only the spin-up atoms through the second one they all come out up top again. So why now suddenly do they decide to split 50-50 again? We have to conclude that being forced to choose spin-left or spin-right causes the atoms to forget if they were spin-up or spin-down.
This result forces us to fundamentally reconsider how we describe the universe. We have to introduce the concepts of superposition and wave function collapse to be able to explain these results.
The way physicists make sense of the kind of behaviour described above is by saying the particles start out in a superposition; before the first experiment they are 50% in the up-state and 50% in the down-state at the same time. We can write this as 50%[spin up]+50%[spin down], and we call this a wave function. Once we send the particles through the first Stern-Gerlach apparatus each one will be forced to choose to exhibit spin-up or spin-down behaviour. At this point they are said to undergo (wave function) collapse; they are now in either the 100%[spin up] or 100%[spin down] state. This is the meaning of observing in quantum mechanics, once we interact with a property of an atom (or any particle, or even a cat) that is in a superposition this superposition is forced to collapse into a single definite state, in this case the property spin is in a superposition and upon observing is forced to collapse to spin up or spin down.
However, once we send our particles through the second apparatus, they are forced to collapse into 100%[spin left] or 100%[spin right]. As we saw above, this somehow also makes them go back into the 50%[spin up]+50%[spin down] state. The particles cannot collapse into both a definite [spin up] or [spin down] state and a definite [spin left] or [spin right] state. Knowing one precludes knowing the other. An illustration can be seen here.
This has far reaching consequences for how knowable our universe it. Even if we can perfectly describe the universe and everything in it, we still cannot know such simple things as whether a silver atom will go left or right in a magnetic field - if we know it would go up or down. It's not just that we aren't good enough at measuring, it's fundamentally unknowable. Our universe is inherently random.
In these two posts we have broken the laws of classical physics and were forced to create a whole new theory to describe how our universe works. We found out our universe is unknowable and inherently random. Even if we could know all the information of the state our universe is in right now, we still would not be able to track perfectly how our universe would evolve, due to the inherent chance that is baked into it.
Well that was quite mind-blowing. Next time I might discuss fermions vs bosons, two types of particles that classify all (normal) matter in the universe and that have wildly different properties. But first @ducks will take over this series for a few posts and talk about classical physics and engineering.
As always, please feel free to ask for clarification and give me feedback on which parts of the post could me made clearer. Feel free to discuss the implications for humanity to exist in a universe that is inherently random and unknowable.
Observant readers might argue that in this particular case we could just as well have described spin as a simple property that will align itself to the magnets. However, we find the same type of behaviour happens with angles other than 90 degrees. Say the second apparatus is at an angle phi to the first apparatus, then the chance of the particles deflecting one way is cos^2(phi/2)[up] and sin^2(phi/2)[down]. So even if there's only a 1 degree difference between the two apparatuses, there's still a chance that the spin will come out 89 degrees rotated rather than 1 degree rotated.
feels like we should probably have one of these in here since it doesn't appear we've had one of these as a community in ~creative in awhile--if ever.
i've spent the better portion of my day today working on a census form for the kryfona kingdom, which is one of the many countries in my fairly large worldbuilding effort. the first page actually came out really well, i think, so that was time well spent. i've considered making a post about some of its more intricate detail since i think some people on here might enjoy that, but for now i've opted to just make this general thread since i dunno how well it'd go as a discussion topic. maybe if y'all think it's worthy of one? idk.
anyways, what creative things have you been working on recently?
Hey, we made it to week 20! Here we've got this week's user-voted record: Washing Machine by Sonic Youth!
Washing Machine is the ninth studio album by the American experimental rock band Sonic Youth, released on September 26, 1995 by DGC Records. It was recorded at Easley Studios in Memphis, Tennessee and produced by the band and John Siket, who also engineered the band's previous two albums. The album features more open-ended pieces than its predecessors and contains some of the band's longest songs, including the 20-minute ballad "The Diamond Sea", which is the lengthiest track to feature on any of Sonic Youth's studio albums.
Taken from @Cleb's pitch:
I listened to this fairly recently and after my previous experience with Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation, Sister), which I thought was mostly just okay, fine, whatever, I did not expect to get as much enjoyment out of this album as I did. Yeah, it's Sonic Youth going even less no-wave inspired than before, but I think they fit far better into that groove of noisy-ish alt rock without the no-wave coming in at times. Maybe I just think the writing is cooler. All I know is it made me finally able to say "I appreciate Sonic Youth."
Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Washing Machine. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!
If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.
For those that don't know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual challenge to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the month of November. That translates to roughly 1,600 words a day. More info on NaNoWriMo here.
I first tried it two years ago though I fizzled out at around 10,000 words and moved on to another WIP. Last year I didn't formally participate though I made an effort to write something every day. Not sure about my word count.
This year I'm doing a series of short stories in a shared setting since I've been doing more short form writing as of late and I've been mulling over the idea for a few weeks now. It's a nice way to experiment with different settings and themes within a "singular" work. I've made some notes on plot hooks, settings, characters, and ideas I wanted to explore, so it's only a matter of writing the stories now. Maybe I'll even share excerpts as I go along.
So has anyone else made plans to do it this year?
i finnally found some shit i lvoe
fuggg i hate to post this much because i'm certain my shit gets annoying. i bet there's hella people on here who view my posts as "fluff" and want it gone but highkey idgaf.
i know tildes likes to be open to discussion and likes to look deeper into things - ain't my fault i don't get that many comments ¯\(ツ)/¯. i tried writing more secretive and intricate shit people could pick apart if they want, but those weren't received as well as some of my more blunt posts.
though that one poem i did where i referenced rocky horror did really well.
i dunno.
i just hope my shit belongs here 😂 but i guess if i've been allowed to make over thirty posts in the past three months that means i'm in the clear.
dont be afraid to keep me in check, and dont be afraid to comment on my stuff.
i invite your questions, your critique, your thoughts in general. i may be fucxed in the head, but i'm an artist above all else (is that true?). if you want to dig into my shit or have any ways i can improve on my work, i'd be so glad to know you have no idea
i write my stuff to express myself but that does no good if no one's listening lmao so i want to write shit people like. i welcome all feedback.
anyway i'm ranting again and i'm only tipsy. imma finnish this drink (kuinka voit?), then imma find a beat and ride on some shit.
y'all know the drill.
say it with me.
esskeeetiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit,
i'm actually crying right now. i found a beat that sounds just like the kind of shit i want to make and everything is just rushing to me. this is insane.
this is the blues moderna i want to make. i feel like Taj Mahal
ain't nothing truer in my heart
than missouri blues
remember driving through St. Louis
sitting next to you
remembering the times you said you loved me
guess it wasn't true
told me you'd love me forever
now i'm feeling all confused.baby where'd you go and why'd
you take my heart away from me
now i write pathetic songs and
can't stop thinking pitifully
wonder if you talk me good
or speak on me in mimicry
i can't stop hating myself
and looking at me criticallymirrors are the worst friend
a man could ever have
when a pretty blonde girl went
and tore his heart in half
when he's sure he's lived the best
years he'd ever have
what good is any man, girl,
without his better half?take me to the delta where
a man can sing in peace
laughing at me, drunk
when i'm just tryna find relief
can't afford the therapy,
for shit you did to me
i'd let you take my life if
you just killed me in your sheets(chorus)
baby please
tell me that you care a-bout me
promise you don't laugh at me
tell me that you'll come on close and hold me-.
baby hear me howlin' at your back door
wonder what you're not talkin to me for
hoping that you answer and take me home
take me back before everything went wrongtake me back to days when i still loved good
it was us against the world but girl we endured
our thoughts were caked in sin although our hearts pure
we got all cuddled close and smoked a backwoodtake me back to days when you still liked me
and my body wasn't cause for anxiety
wanna go back to twenty sixteen
eyes blue, hearts black, minds pristinebaby hear me howlin' at your back door
wonder what you're not talkin to me for
hoping that you answer and take me home
take me back before everything went wrong(chorus)
baby please
tell me that you care a-bout me
promise you don't laugh at me
tell me that you'll come on close and hold me
i feel like if i write any more on this one imma ruin it. i don't like that.
peep the inspo
(iit's not rap. it's blues. actually peep the inspo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4YPMiFaPWo (oooooof jesus christ, 1:13!!!!!!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iqTRNUOsFI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0_eRVroLqs
i fucxing hate dallas, i fucxing hate texas.
I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.
Spintronics
Quantum Oscillations
Today's topic will be quantisation, explained through the results of the Stern-Gerlach experiment which was first performed in 1922. This topic treats a much more fundamental concept of quantum physics than my previous topics.
In 1922 physicists Stern and Gerlach set up an experiment where they shot silver atoms through a magnetic field, the results of this experiment gave conclusive support for the concept of quantisation. I will now first explain the experiment and then, using the results, explain what quantisation is. If you would rather watch a video on the experiment, wikipedia provided one here, it can be watched without sound. Note that I will dive a bit deeper into the results than this video does.
The experiment consists of two magnets, put on top of each other with a gap in the middle. The top magnet has its north pole facing the gap, the bottom magnet has its south pole facing the gap. See this illustration. Now we can shoot things through the gap. What do we expect would happen? Let's first shoot through simple bar magnets. Depending on how its poles are oriented, it will either bend downwards, upwards or not at all. If the bar magnet's north pole is facing the top magnet, it will be pushed downwards (because then north is facing north). If the bar magnet's south pole is facing the top magnet, it will instead be pushed upwards. If the bar magnet's poles are at a 90 degree angle to the two magnets it will fly straight through, without bending. Lastly, if the bar magnet's poles are at any other angle, say 45 degrees, it will still bend but less so. If we send through a lot of magnets, all with a random orientation, and measure how much they got deflected at the other side of the set-up we expect to see a line, see 4 in the illustration.
Now we'll send through atoms, Stern and Gerlach chose silver atoms because they were easy to generate back in 1922 and because they have so-called spin, which we will get back to shortly. We send these silver atoms through in the same way we sent through the bar magnets; lots of them and all of them with a random orientation. Now what will happen? As it turns out all the atoms will either end up being deflected all the way up or all the way down, with nothing in between. 50% will be bent upwards, 50% downwards. So silver atoms seem to respond as if they were bar magnets that either bend maximally up or maximally down. In the illustration this is labeled 5.
If we were to take only the silver atoms that bent upwards and sent them through the experiment again, all of them would bend upwards again. They seem to remember if they previously went up or down rather than just deciding on the spot each time if they go up or down. What model can we think of that would explain this behaviour? The silver atoms must have some property that will make them decide to bend up or down. Let's call this property spin, and say that if the silver atoms chose to bend up they have spin up, if they chose to bend down they have spin down. It seems that these are the only two values spin can have, because we see them bend either maximally up or maximally down. So we can say the spin is quantised; it has two discrete values, up or down, and nothing in between.
We have found a property of atoms (and indeed other particles like electrons have spin too) that is quantised. This goes against classical physics where properties are continuous. This shows one of the ways in which physics at the smallest scales is fundamentally different from the physics of everyday life.
Next time we will investigate what happens when we rotate the angle of the magnets used in the experiment. This will lead us to discover other fundamental aspects of physics and nature, quantum superpositions and the inherent randomness of nature.
EDIT: part 2 is now up here.
As discussed in the last post, I am trying something different for this post. Talking about more fundamental quantum physics that was discovered 100 years ago rather than modern physics. Did you like it? Let me know in the comments!
Yesterday @talklittle posted the topic Halloween game sales are live. What are your Horror/Halloween-themed recommendations?. There have been some good recommendations and whatnot. If you like horror games and weren't aware of the ongoing sales, go check out the comments for some recommendations.
Being the meta-killjoy that I am, I started this sidebar about the top comment. tl;dr: I don't think this type of content engenders Tildes's discussion forward community.
Fell free to read the whole thread of comments for some civil discussion on the matter, but I do want to open this up to all of Tildes: should this type of comment be policed on Tildes?
Also: do you think this type of comment is good? Do you agree with me that it's retroactive to Tildes's goals? Am I just a big killjoy? Given that the comment I'm calling into question is the top comment of that topic, I'm probably David in this arena but I want to hear it from everyone else.
today's different -
or at least, this part of it.
a lot of the posts i been making the past couple months have been out of this empty kinda want to write something.
as per the usual, i came to starbucks to work on some shit, but i felt something in my chest, got some inspo, and here we are again lmao.
fair warning ahead, this is one of my more...idk, "brazen" posts. i dunno, superficial as hell save for one or two bars. enjoy it or not - love you anyways.
peep the inspo at the bottom
esskeetit.
seeing all these people walking
round arm in arm
while im sitting in my house in
the dark - pop bars
crash cars - cop cars
hella sirens in the distance
blood in the moonlight glistens
bishy getting distant
what's going on in your
head causing dissonance?
what's weighing up with suicide
in equivalence?
still hooked on to
the past in imprisonment?
keep looking back at
what you had and you're missing it?-.
fuck that - cut that
sideswipe - bone crack
i wouldn't go back
despite all the flashbacks
i still got hopes
want my life back
i do this shit 'cus
my soul went bad
layin in a bed full of
pressed pills and porn mags
filling up a pool with
self-hatred and cognac
pistol labeled "lovers"
and the bullet "no contact"
wanna ski slopes 'til
my eyes go all black-.
i don't hate that girl
i hate my self
don't hate this world
i hate my self
spent red candles
on my shelf
lost 21 grams when
i weighed myselfave satani
my fear and my secrets
my tears and my blood
my devotion and regrets
my love and disdain and
my pain and forgiveness
these things are my own
and my self is my weakness
so bring my destruction
and make me a demon
bishop.
inspo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p09lM19FpU
bonus: https://youtu.be/DxvLc2a6Iao
Halloween has always been one of my favourite events of the year. I loved dressing up (though we always had to wear a winter coat over our costumes), I loved going trick-or-treating with my friends, and I loved sorting through our pillowcase of loot at the end of the night. I remember entire streets decorated as graveyards and how lively it was with kids everywhere. A few houses down from us, a neighbour set up a haunted house in their garage every year, and it ended with a warm hot chocolate with little marshmallows. We always planned to hit that house when we started getting cold.
When my partner and I starting handing out candy, we were in a relatively newly developed neighbourhood, and had very few kids. We handed out full sized chocolate bars and chips, the best prizes when we were trick-or-treating! We took turns answering the door and just loved to see the costumes. We counted Darth Vaders and witches and whatever was popular that year. It was always a lot of fun.
We stopped handing out candy about two years ago, mostly because I didn't want to get Nestle candy, which was the nut-free stuff that we usually got, and because it felt wasteful. There are a lot of drives right after Halloween where people basically dumped pounds of chocolate (either trading them to their dentist, or using them to make Halloween art). At work, every parent would bring in bags of candy to share. It was honestly just too much, especially considering the individually wrapped plastic. I've also started noticing that everyone is starting to sell plastic "Halloween candy reusable" bags, and I just really dislike that.
We're always looking for an alternative because I still really want to take part in Halloween again. This year, we again decided against handing out candy, and I'm already missing seeing the little trick-or-treators and their costumes, and their joy in getting a little treat.
I've been using Jimmy Joy (used to be called Joylent) for a few years. I think it's a great meal replacement for when you don't have time or just don't feel like cooking. On the other hand, it's just a mix of oats, rapeseed, and vitamins. And it doesn't taste that great. So I wouldn't go 100%.
I would love to hear your thoughts? Also, which brands do you prefer? I'm in Europe, so unfortunately original Soylent is not available for me.
So, I am far from the most experienced, or the most knowledgeable, or the most active amateur radio operator out there, but it is something that has piqued my interest none the less. Before I got into the hobby, I always assumed that the FCC just game amateurs a small bucket of useless spectrum and that was it. Maybe you could fly an RC plane, but surely that is about as cool as it gets.
It turns out I was dead wrong. Amateurs are allocated bands all across the RF spectrum - more or less. Bands from way below the AM broadcast frequency to way above the microwave frequencies used by our cell phones and wireless routers. Also, you are allowed to legally transmit at up to 1.5 kilowatts of power! That's 3,000 times as much power as your average walkie talkie! :) Also, importantly, the license exam only costs $15.
At many of the lower frequencies, the signals bounce off the ionosphere and you can make contact with people all over the world (propagation gods permitting). At the higher frequencies, you lose that "skip propagation," but more bandwidth is available. There are analog voice repeater networks, digital packet networks, mesh networks running on modified commercial WiFi gear, and even a handful of old school packet BBSes. There are some LEO satellites which run voice repeaters which allow you make international contacts, and sometimes even the International Space Station will participate in events. Lots of cool stuff going on. This hobby is kind of a bottomless rabbit hole of possibilities.
I got my technician license about a year ago, and I have been most interested in the data networking end of the hobby. Despite being a pile of hacks, APRS is still very cool, and sometime soon I hope to set up an AREDN node of my own. Every once in a while I'll call into the local repeaters and shoot the breeze.
So there's my story. Are there any other hams out there?
I’ll go first:
I had this thought a few years ago, and for me it was my desire to write and perform music. Yes, I wanted to be a “rock star” in a way. I had a bit of skill, and some song ideas, while at the same time the idea of putting my soul out in front of everyone scared the crap out of me. I have major stage fright.
So.. being the nerdy control freak that I am, I started my own Open Mic night at a friend’s bar. For many weeks I drove all of my audio gear there, I hosted lots of amazing people.. and eventually I performed. I played and sang my three songs. People loved it, but all the while my lips turned blue due to lack of normal breathing, and I certainly never made eye contact with the crowd more than once. That night I felt like I accomplished my goal, and learned my limits. Mission accomplished, I am now ready for the theoretical end.
Would you have any regrets in a similar thought experiment?
i think i've stopped writing for myself recently.
i've been looking at my writing as "art" instead of self expression.
as if things have to have a certain depth, air of mystery, or room for interpretation in order for them to be valid.
i'm getting wine drunk and writing for me tonight.
this is a poem about love, drugs, and crashing cars. that's all.
tildes suggestion: ability to hide the amt of votes on a post.
"The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can."
- Seneca the younger
turned into a wino
'least im still alive tho
90 on the highway
drive into the signpost
fuckin on the yayo
stoic like im cato
i loved you to the nines
and you fucxed me over tenfold
choked me til my eyes closed
baby got a blindfold
didn't think youd hurt me
gave you all the control
used to be my handhold,
only wanted billfolds
tonight im gettin fucked up,
baby, where'd my gun go?
-.
used to be so cute
starin at your rosy cheeks
now i'm kissin on the
wine glass to the left of me
broken mirror shows the
shattered pieces of what's left of me
i dont even hate you
but baby, i am dead to me
-.
i recommend listening to this song before you jump into this next part if youre going to read it. i borrow the flow here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmFkCNvfojg
plus, it's a damn good song.
hope he treats you well,
i'll see you in hell
wonder if you hate him,
wonder if you yell
wonder if you stress him
til his troubles swell
wonder if you make him
hide inside his shell
wonder if his money
towers high enough
if you ever got a
lexus to feel good enough
if you ever make him
dinner when his day was rough
if you ever drop your
bullshit and just show him love.
all i ever needed
was a cuddlebug
i swear i tried
my hardest, never good enough
tried to build a home
tried to show you love.
i was never good enough.
all the screaming, all
the fighting i got used to.
just wanted you to smile
cus deep down i really missed you
all it ever came to
was lies and "i hate you"s
i can still hear it
"you look like i abused you."
i felt my eyes going
wide, i was never fine.
dreaming 'bout a better
life almost all the time
'bout a day when we
were married, i could call you mine (&&)
had a home in missouri
everything was right
but any time i tried to
love you, you pushed me away
any time i tried to
hold you, told me "go away"
tried to build a better life for
us every day
then i guess you got your
lexus, made your getaway
claiming that you love me (this block isnt mine)
but you don't mean shit,
claiming that you had me
but you never did,
claiming that you love me
but you don't mean shit,
claiming that you had me
but you never did
pushed me to the side,
made me fade away.
vision fadin' black
i wont be okay
im stuck on this shit
each and every day
if i kill myself,
the dreams will go away.
This is a broad question, but I don't really want to narrow it down because I feel like we see unethical issues across so many industries. I want to be able to buy clothes knowing that I'm not supporting child/slave labor just as I want to be able to buy a videogame knowing that the people who created it had time to go home to their families each night. And if the clothes were made with child labor and the game did have a horrible development crunch? Well, those aren't places I want to put my money, even if I'm interested in the product.
Price and convenience used to be the kings of my spending habits, and I was solely interested in products on my own terms. I have no doubt that I have bought many items that have supported the suffering of others. Now, I am much more concerned with a product as it exists in context, and I'm willing to pay more for companies that do things "right." The problem is that this context isn't always available. Most companies are not exactly upfront with their shady practices, after all. How do I know if, say, the bluetooth speaker, quinoa, or dinnerware that I'm looking at was responsibly produced?
What are some ways can I make more informed decisions about what I choose to buy so that I can lessen harm (be it personal, environmental, or otherwise)?
How can I find out which companies support practices that are in line with my values? If anyone has any insight into particular industries, that would be especially valuable.
i'm slightly bored and ~creative hasn't had a lot of posts recently so i guess i'll toss some of my lot in here. here's some of the mediocre stuff i pen up more or less without editing in my off time. i have plenty more of these, but most of them require so much context that it'd be a pain in the dick to post them, so they're not likely to see daylight here any time soon. anyways
(note: now hopefully with less formatting fuck ups, lol.)
No, you don’t matter—
you don’t matter, matter, matter…
like a symphony of voices in
the night, their uproarious cacophony
of noise inescapable,
rumbles—shaking. No sleep
to be found, no—you don’t matter…
Sleep is impossible, escape is…
impossible. Draw your mental curtains
in every window and bolt every lock shut—
shut in… shut in with the noise, no you
don’t matter, matter, matter—
Why do you shut yourself in? Why
do you shut yourself inside if you matter?
The voices tremble with fury—but peaceful
they are compared to the noise, echoing, booming—
If you did matter you wouldn’t hide!
You wouldn’t refuse to face the music, oh
if you mattered you’d admit that you’re crazy.
If you mattered the voices wouldn’t be. The
thoughts wouldn’t be. They wouldn’t be, no—
you don’t matter, matter, matter…
some symphony of voices the voices can be—
rattle like a rattle, regurgitating the same sound—
endlessly, on loop. Never enough to deafen the
thoughts, the thoughts never enough to silence
the voices. If you mattered you’d be free
of the voices, you see. Just another crazy
person you are. All alone, you and me...
Always, when meeting, be skeptical.
Be cynical, so when the deal falls through
you can pretend you never wanted
what was offered to you in the first place.
Pretend it doesn’t hurt every time
to tear everything down from day one when
you know it’s irrational action—
when you know if you could just be “normal”…
Go through the process a hundred times
over, stay up every night thinking
why it has to always be this way
and why you’re like this, why you’re so crazy—
never change, always an amorphous
blob of a person, never able to
fit into anything, to be what
you truly want to be, deep down. Normal.
Such is the life of an internet
vagabond—a sacrifice to the great
altar of the untreated mental
illness—crucified by their loneliness.
A dragon always cares for time,
for often he knows that it does rhyme.
And always grows up with the fable,
of the dragon that was able.
For ‘once in time’ a dragon ruled,
and ‘once in time’ that dragon fooled.
So ‘once in time’ that dragon lied,
and ‘once in time’ that dragon died.
And now a dragon lives with fears
of the changes time endears,
and hopes that time will one day cease
and leave his life alone in peace.
But no more is it ‘a’ dragon alone,
instead it is all which to fear is prone.
In face of time, no dragon is steady.
In face of eternity, no dragon is ready.
Dragons will not hail to a tyrant—
that much must be made clear
and shouted for the world to hear.
For a dragon enslaved and martyred—
on the altar of Bira, their blood spilled—
can never by any man be killed.
Yet dragons long have been enslaved—
by despot, by tyrant, by foreign power—
and it seems always the dragon should cower.
But soon, one day soon, the dragon
will rise from their ashes, from their grave
and find a dragon world to save.
Revolution means nothing
if you don’t act.
If you don’t let the hillsides ring
with upstart revolutionary zeal
you are no true revolutionary—
you are no better than a tyrant king!
You can’t be a revolutionary
if you never let the proletarians sing.
I'm focusing mainly on an office environment, but other spaces such as a laboratory, shop, factory, operating room, brothel, etc are fair game.
What layout do you prefer (open floor plan, cubicles, individual offices, group offices, etc)?
What kind of lighting do you prefer (natural sunlight, artificial lighting, dim lighting, no lighting, etc)? Does this relate to whether you choose a dark or light theme in software and websites?
What kind of desk do you prefer (sitting, standing, escape pod, etc)?
What kind of chair do you prefer?
Do you use headphones, earbuds, or nothing?
Do you eat at your desk, go out, or eat in a common area?
In an effort to get more content on Tildes, I want to try and give an introduction on several 'hot topics' in condensed matter physics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.
I had a different topic planned as a second post, however it turned out I had to explain a lot more concepts that I anticipated so that it would no longer fit this format. Then I got busy. Now I finally found a topic I think I can do justice in this format.
Today's topic will be quantum oscillations.
Quantum oscillations are periodic fluctuations in some materials' properties when it is exposed to a strong magnet. As the name suggests, this effect arises from quantum physics. Nevertheless, I think it's relatively easy to give a feel on how it works. In the rest of this post I will focus on one kind of quantum oscillation, the oscillation of a material's resistance (with the very fancy name Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations), because electrical resistance is a concept most people are familiar with. However, there are many other material properties that fluctuate similarly.
Let's start from the basics, electrical resistance. Electrical resistance tells you how hard it is for an electrical current to flow through a material. Related to this is conductance, which instead tells you how easy it is for a current to flow through a material (so it is the inverse of the resistance). Now, something funny happens to some metals' conductance when you expose them to a strong magnet.
Let's think for a moment on what we expect would happen. Would the conductivity be affected by the magnet? Perhaps a stronger magnet would increase the conductivity, or reduce it. What we most certainly wouldn't expect to happen is for the conductivity to go up and down as we increase the strength of the magnet we aimed at the material. Yet, this is exactly what happens. In this picture we see the conductivity (expressed on the vertical axis) plotted against the magnetic field (expressed on the horizontal axis). The conductivity is going up and down like crazy!
One of quantum physics core principle is quantisation (who'd have thought). And as it turns out, this quantisation is at the core of this behaviour. For the purpose of this post, quantisation can be thought of as energies at which the electrons are allowed to have.
Normally, when electrons are in a metal, there are no real restrictions on what energy they are allowed to have. Some electrons will not have a lot of energy and won't move, other electrons will have a lot of energy and be able to move freely around the metal.
However, when metals are put in a strong magnetic field the energies of the low energy electrons are allowed to have changes drastically. The electrons are only allowed to be at certain energies, with a wide gaps in between these energies. Crucially, the exact values of these energies change with the strength of the magnet.
This means that at some magnet strengths, the allowed low-energy energies will nicely line up with the energies the free-flowing electrons have. This means some of those electrons will interfere with the free flowing electrons, making it harder for them to flow freely*. This interference in electron flow means less conductance! Then, when we change the magnetic field so that the energies are no longer aligned, the free flowing electrons no longer get caught and will be able to move freely, so that the conductivity goes up again. This pattern becomes more pronounced as the magnetic field strength increases.
These oscillations were first noticed in bismuth by Shubnikov and de Haas in the year 1930. It was direct evidence for the quantum mechanics underlying nature. These days quantum oscillations are a popular method to extract information on a metals, alloys and semimetals' properties. These techniques have been used to, for example, further our understanding of high temperature superconductivity.
D Shoenberg - Magnetic Oscillations in Metals (1984)
*more technically: the probability of scattering is proportional to the number of states into which the electron can be scattered, which is given by the number of available states near the energy surface of the material.
There was a brief (an oh-so-brief) period in youtube history where all types of non-corporate content thrived. I'm referring, if memory serves, to the timespan from around 2011 - late 2014.
This was after youtube initially got big, but before Google decided that it wanted to step in and maintain the cultural status quo rather than redefine it. Ad revenue paid creators fairly-ish in most cases, and the talk of the town was machinima assfucking it's segment of poor souls that signed into it, rather than youtube pulling the same moves universally as it did a few years later.
(Suffice to say I have no love for the platform).
It's important to note that at this time, Youtube was a bit like a small-scale television enterprise, before it dreamed of deliberately becoming one. Youtube had everything from animations to product reviews, news to reality programming to VFX extravaganzas.
One of the most incredibly important innovations of the time, and one that's been all-but-lost, was the birth (and subsequent heat-death) of youtube news channels.
These channels mirrored cable news, but without the influence of corporate sponsors getting in the way, and without the ravenous need to appease political parties and harebrained cable tv viewers. They were biased - good god were some of them biased - and they weren't perfect, but they were set up in such a way that, had youtube not fucked it up (sigh...) they might've someday dethroned CNN, MSNBC and Fox.
With the next election coming up and shaping up to be a small-scale repeat of 2018s (you're kidding yourself if we're every going to go any other direction than further down at this point - after all, it works!) it's important to remember that there was, for a beautiful gleaming moment, a chance for not a corporation, but a community, to rise up and redefine the way people received news in a way that hadn't been seen since the conception of the newspaper.
Instead, youtube squandered it. Real events and engaging content don't generate views. People can't sit and watch hours of current events like they do for whatever-the-hell youtube trends nowadays (list videos and toy openings, I guess?), and why would they? If you get on youtube to watch today's news, you're not going to stick around for yesterday's. So youtube's 'algorythm', a word I've come to absolutely detest, doesn't favor them just like it doesn't favor basically anything else that once made youtube great.
The icing on the cake: rather than embrace even a tertiary aspect of the community, they went for the safe option and the ad revenue. No Phillip Defranco for you, we'll show you Jimmy Kimmel. No TYT, we'll fill trending with clips of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. The only real survivor of the era was infowars.
Here's to you, youtube news. Dead and gone, but not forgotten.
[seen on reddit but no discussion - if it's not okay to seek out better discussion here after seeing something fall flat on reddit, I am very sorry and I'll delete promptly]
I've had some experience in this realm for a while now, but I'm having a little trouble with one issue in particular. Before I divulge, I'll present my thoughts on best practice and and what I've been able to implement:
-Djava.awt.headless=true -Dhudson.slaves.NodeProvisioner.initialDelay=0 -Dhudson.slaves.NodeProvisioner.MARGIN=50 -Dhudson.slaves.NodeProvisioner.MARGIN0=0.85
THIS IS A GAME CHANGER (more-so on k8s clusters when the ecs plugin isn't used... hint, it's shit).
NOW FOR MY QUESTION!
Has ANYONE actually been able to setup a proper jenkins user on ECS that actually works for both a master and ephemeral jenkins-agents so that they can mount and use the docker.sock for builds without hitting permission issues? I'm talking using the ecs plugin and mounting docker.sock via that.
I have always resorted to running jenkins master and agents as root, which means you have to chmod files (super expensive time and cpu for services with tons of files). Running microservices as root is obviously bad practice, and chmod-ing a zilliion files is shit for docker cache and time... so I want to get jenkins users able to utilize the docker.sock. THIS IS SPECIFICALLY FOR THE AWS ECS AMI! I don't care about debian or old versions of docker where you could use DOCKER_OPTS. That doesn't work on the AWS Linux image.
Thanks! And happy Friday!
Some of you may have heard that Google+ will be shutting down in August, 2019. Though much criticised (including by me), the site offered some compelling dynamics, and I've reflected a lot on those.
I'm involved in the effort to find new homes for Plussers and Communities, which has become something of an excuse to explore and redefine what "online" and "social" media are ("PlexodusWiki").
Part of this involves some frankly embarrassing attempts to try to define what social media is, and what its properties are (both topics reflected heavily in the recent-changes section of the wiki above).
Tildes is ... among the potential target sites (there are a few Plussers, some of whom I really appreciated knowing and hearing from there), here, though the site dynamics make discovering and following them hard. This site is evolving its own culture and dynamics, parts of which I'm becoming aware of.
I've been online for well over 30 years, and discovered my first online communities via Unix talk, email, FTP, and Usenet, as well as (no kidding) a computerised university library catalogue system. Unsurprisingly: if you provide a way, especially for bright and precocious minds to interact with one another, they will. I've watched several evolutions of Internet and Web, now increasing App-based platforms. There are differences, but also similarities and patterns emerging. Lessons from previous eras of television, radio, telephony, telegraphy, print, writing, oral traditions, and more, can be applied.
I've got far more questions than answers and thought I'd put a few out here:
What does online or social media mean to you? Is it all user-generated content platforms? Web only? Apps? Email or chat? Wikis? GitHub, GitLab, and StackExchange?
Is social networking as exemplified by Facebook or Twitter net good or bad? Why? If bad, how might you fix it? Or is it time to simply retreat?
What properties or characteristics would you use to specify, define, or distinguish social or online media?
What emergent properties -- site dynamics, if you will -- are positive or negative? What are those based on?
What are the positive and negative aspects of scale?
What risks would you consider in self-hosting either your own or a group's online presence?
What is/was the best online community experience you've had? What characterised it? How did it form? How did it fail (if it did)?
What elements would comprise your ideal online experience?
What would you nuke from orbit, after takeoff, just to be sure?
Are you or your group seeking new options or platforms? What process / considerations do you have?
I could keep going and will regret not adding other questions, but this is a good start. Feel free to suggest other dimensions, though some focus on what I've prompted with would be appreciated.
This is a sort of continuation of a previous topic I posted. This weekend I will be wiping and reinstalling my computer and encrypting all of my drives in the process. In doing so, I will have to choose secure passphrases. As such, I have some questions about how best to do this:
I have three drives that will be encrypted. Is it okay to have the same passphrase for all of them, or should I have different ones for each?
In looking up info on this topic, I came across this article which recommends something called a Diceware wordlist. The premise is that you roll dice which match to a list of 7000+ words. You then string six or more of these words together which become your passphrase. Is this a sound way to generate one?
Rather than using the Diceware wordlist, couldn't I roll my own password of the same type using six "random" words of my choosing? I feel like that would be easier to remember, but am I weakening security in doing so?
If the Diceware method is to be trusted, does that mean I do not need to pepper my passphrase with digits, mixed case, and special characters? Or should I add these anyway?
I'm also considering changing over passwords on a lot of my online accounts based on this method. I like the idea of using a single passphrase as a root, but how do you modify it so that it is different for each account? Would I do something like [dicewarewords]tildes, [dicewarewords]spotify, [dicewarewords]ubuntuforums, etc.? I feel like it would be too on-the-nose, and it would make it easy to guess my other passwords if one were compromised. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of using a password manager to generate a random string for me. I'd like to still be able to login even without my password manager.
For people that have used something like this, how do you then deal with password restrictions on sites? I know that no matter how great I set things up I'm still going to have to make exceptions for sites that that either require or forbid numbers, mixed case, or special characters, have character limits, or make me change my password frequently.
Reading, watching, playing, tinkering. Do you still go out or do you stay home? Do you brew a hot drink or make a sandwhich for yourself?
i like to save this wiine for special occasions because shit's a german specialty that i like to share with people but i only really talk to one other person in this whole fuuuuucking state so i spent it all on me.
out here wildin rn
i aint posted a new piece in a week(ish) so im doing two
but i post "qulaity" so im okay riiiiiight?
dont @ me if u aint catch tha links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVww5r4Nk0
https://i.imgur.com/LKIwWHa.png
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p09lM19FpU this here song issssss
IMMA PLAY DEPRESSING
MUSIC TIL YOU
COME AND
HOLD MEWENT AND BUILT A COFFIN
BUT I KEEP ON DRILL-
ING HOLES TO
BREATHEIN HOPES I'LL SEE A PIGEON
WITH A NOTE THAT YOU
WROTE ON IT'S
FEETSAYING THAT YOU'RE SORRY
WE FUCKED UP AND
YOU'LL COME HOME
TO ME-.
DOPAMINE
UNKNOWN TO ME
BLACK AND WHITE
A KEATON SCENETHERMOS FULL
OF KEROSENE
XANNY ON
DELIVERY"DADDY WILL YOU
CARE FOR ME?"
I TRIED YOU WERE
NOT THERE FOR MESAW MY GRANDAD
BARELY BREATHE AND
THEN YOU TURNED
ABANDONED ME-.
SORDID SCENES IN
SPOILED DREAMS WHEN
I THINK THAT YOU'VE
COME ON BACKBRAIN AT REST I
FEEL MY FISTS
AS THEY POUND HARD
AGAINST THE BEDFUCK A LABEL
DON'T CARE IF
IT'S ABUSE, I
WANT IT BACKASKED ME IF
I'LL MISS YOU
HOLY FUCK I GUESS
I GOT IT BAD.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
FROM WALKIN' HOME
AND TALKIN' LOADS
TO NO MORE CALLS
LIVING ALONETO TEETH AND CLAWS
AND FRACTURED BONES
TO TOTALED CARS
AND BROKEN HOMESLET IT GO
LET IT GO
DON'T HOLD BACK THE RIVER
LET IT FLOW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgvdbbuMQ_k
haha i'm really okay
Nothing very major has changed yet, but I'm working on adding a couple of open-source contributions to the site and could use some help and input related to them:
First, I've just deployed a rework of the "theme system" (for the display themes that you can select in your settings) that @Bauke has been brave enough to work on. As some of you know, the site originally only had two themes - Solarized Light and Solarized Dark. Because of this, the theme system was built around those themes and meant that the Solarized colors had to be used in all other themes as well. This is why, for example, the new default theme (with the white background) still uses Solarized colors for links/alerts/etc., even though the contrast and appearance of some of them isn't very good on white.
This rework will allow every theme to have completely custom colors (as well as other possibilities), but the first stage was just deploying a refactor to convert the existing themes to this new system. If you've ever tried to refactor CSS, you know that it's not much fun and there are a lot of subtle things that can go wrong. So as of right now: nothing should look different yet, and if you notice any issues with colors or other appearance changes, please post here to let me know.
This is mostly just to make sure that nothing's been messed up during the transition to the new system, and once it seems safe we can start making more interesting changes like adjusting colors, adding more themes that diverge from that Solarized base, and so on. But for now, we're just looking for issues in the existing themes to make sure everything survived the transition intact.
@what has also been working on a contribution that will add the ability to save/bookmark topics and comments. It's close to being ready to deploy, but I thought I'd ask for some input about what term to use for the function before it goes live, since it will be more hassle to change it afterwards if necessary.
"Save" has the benefit of being short and also used on other sites like reddit, Facebook, and some others. I think it's slightly misleading though, because you're not really saving the post, just a link to it. If the author deletes it, you won't have it saved.
"Bookmark" is probably more correct, and used by some sites including Twitter. However, it's longer and may be confusing to some people if they think it's related to browser bookmarks.
Any preference on either of those, or are there other options (like "favorite") that might be best?
I was recently reading a reddit post about a 15 year old speaking out about climate change. In the comments there was a depressing amount of people dismissing her thoughts, opinions, and arguments simply because of age (and possibly because of the topic, but most stated reasons were age). In my own opinion I think young people should have just as much consideration given to their arguments as older people, if not more. They are the ones that are going to live in the world the older generations are leaving behind, and they want to make it a good place to live in. Admittedly, I am biased towards giving her a stage. I myself am still pretty young, especially here on Tildes. Maybe I only view it this way because of that. It's hard to tell, which is why I want some other viewpoints. Do you think younger people should be given consideration, despite their age?
I've been running Linux for a little over a year now and, after a recent conversation on Tildes, I decided that I need to wipe and re-install so that I can enable full-disk encryption.
Thus, right now I'm shopping around for a distro and trying out different live environments to find something that works for me. My question isn't necessarily for right now though (my hardware is old enough that I'm definitely going to need to use a lightweight distro, which severely limits my options). It's more for the future, in that I plan to replace this computer in a year or two with something up-to-date, which means I'll be able to run any distro under the sun! Any!
So, I'm curious to hear from people who have found their "forever distro." What do you run for your everyday use, and why? Also, what's your level of technical expertise? I am very far from a power-user at present, but I'd like to be somewhere closer to that when I replace my computer.
Edit: What I'm asking below is actually already an option, I guess I'm just bad at reading :-/
As of right now, when you choose a theme, a theme cookie is created which takes a simple string value (white, light, dark or black).
It's straightforward and it works well, but for someone like me who set his browser to delete cookies at the end of his session, it's a little inconvenient to have to go into my settings to set a theme everytime I log on Tildes.
It's a low-priority request, obviously, but maybe you could consider it? I do understand that it makes sense to have it as a cookie since a user may prefer different themes on different devices.
In the meantime I think I'll just write a script to set my theme to black automatically.
