Today I Learned

From the pdf:

> After the Sun, the closest star to us is a small Red Dwarf star, Proxima Centauri. It is too faint to be seen without using a sizeable telescope. It is 4.24 light years away, so in our model, which is 1:1 billion scale, it is 40,140 kilometres away. This is approximately the distance around the circumference of the world from Melbourne to Melbourne.

That's extremely nerdy, I love it.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/s/vMRsaTdMn0

(it's not a solar system because Sol is our star, specifically; we're the only Solar system)

>TRAPPIST-1 is a cool red dwarf star[c] with seven known exoplanets.

>Up to four of the planets – designated d, e, f and g – orbit at distances where temperatures are suitable for the existence of liquid water, and are thus potentially hospitable to life.

The red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 has an estimated lifespan of pretty much the entire lifespan of the universe. If any of those planets are habitable, and humanity goes there, we could live there until the end of the whole universe, no worrying about our sun going out in about 5 billion years. It could be our forever home.

The planets in the TRAPPIST system are extremely close to each other, so the night sky on any of them would be awe-inspiring, with multiple bodies bigger than our moon rising and setting every night.

> > > Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to incentivize said advancement.It originated in a 2010 post at discussion board LessWrong, a technical forum focused on analytical rational enquiry. The thought experiment's name derives from the poster of the article (Roko) and the basilisk, a mythical creature capable of destroying enemies with its stare. > >

> > > While the theory was initially dismissed as nothing but conjecture or speculation by many LessWrong users, LessWrong co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky reported users who panicked upon reading the theory, due to its stipulation that knowing about the theory and its basilisk made one vulnerable to the basilisk itself. This led to discussion of the basilisk on the site being banned for five years. However, these reports were later dismissed as being exaggerations or inconsequential, and the theory itself was dismissed as nonsense, including by Yudkowsky himself. Even after the post's discreditation, it is still used as an example of principles such as Bayesian probability and implicit religion. It is also regarded as a simplified, derivative version of Pascal's wager. > >

Found out about this after stumbling upon this Kyle Hill video on the subject. It reminds me a little bit of "The Game".

You can choose anywhere on earth, pick a decade, and hear music from that time and place. Pretty neat.

Back in school I heard the story that Haydn wrote the "Surprise Symphony" because he was sick of people sleeping through his music, and wanted to startle them awake. It seems like this was a myth.

From the Wikipedia article:

> In Haydn's old age, his biographer Georg August Griesinger asked him whether he wrote this "surprise" to awaken the audience. Haydn replied:

> No, but I was interested in surprising the public with something new...

Why do all the cool stories from history end up being made up?

https://www.uapress.com/product/

From Wikipedia: In 1958, while he was an airman first class, his commanding officer recommended him for an early honorable discharge. "In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy," chief of information services Colonel William S. Evans wrote to the Eglin personnel office. "Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members."

Link to the site

The map contains exact locations of homocides from the 2000s to now. You can zoom in far enough to see the neighborhood the murder(s) happened in. I'm sorry that the site is primarily in Norwegian, but you should still be able to zoom around. Wonder of there's a global map that's that detailed.

!

https://byebyepaywall.com/en/

This tool allows you to view URLs behind the paywall and open them in various archive and paywall bypass services. Just enter a URL in the field above and click on the desired service!

The linked tools allow you to view content that is hidden behind paywalls by showing a cached version of the page. It is important to note that we do not offer an illegal service and that the responsibility for using these services lies with the user. This way you bypass some paywalls that are present on sites that have poor paywall protection integrated.

I first heard about it as being used to mark gauges on a 1770s submersible so the operator could read them in the dark.

Unfortunately the wiki isn't built out much.

Idk how many other games you can do this with but I thought it was interesting.

The EFF soon created a crossword, overlaid it on top of the monkey, and featured it on their website.

> > > August 2014 – Photographer David Slater sent a copyright takedown notice to the Wikimedia Commons over a photograph of a Celebes crested macaque taken on one of his cameras, which at the time was being operated by the macaque, resulting in a "monkey selfie". The Wikimedia Foundation dismissed the claims, asserting that the photograph, having been taken by a non-human animal, rather than Slater, is in the public domain per United States law.[277][278] Subsequently, a court in San Francisco ruled copyright protection could not be applied to the monkey and a University of Michigan law professor said "the original monkey selfie is in the public domain."[279] > >

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey\_selfie\_copyright\_dispute :

> > > In September 2015, PETA filed a lawsuit against Slater and Blurb, requesting that the copyright be assigned to the macaque and that PETA be appointed to administer proceeds from the photos for the endangered species' benefit.[6] In dismissing PETA's case, a federal district court ruled that a monkey cannot own copyright under US law.[7] PETA appealed. > >

> > > In May 2018, Condé Nast Entertainment acquired the rights from Slater to make a documentary film related to the monkey selfie dispute. The project was being overseen by Dawn Ostroff and Jeremy Steckler.[55] > >

The weight of the trees was so great that the ones on the bottom got squished and became coal. That’s where coal is from. Bonus fact: the whole time this was happening, sharks were hunting in the oceans. Sharks are older than trees and fungus!

> Some cephalopods are able to fly through the air for distances of up to 50 metres (160 ft). While cephalopods are not particularly aerodynamic, they achieve these impressive ranges by jet-propulsion; water continues to be expelled from the funnel while the organism is in the air. The animals spread their fins and tentacles to form wings and actively control lift force with body posture. One species, Todarodes pacificus, has been observed spreading tentacles in a flat fan shape with a mucus film between the individual tentacles, while another, Sepioteuthis sepioidea, has been observed putting the tentacles in a circular arrangement.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod#Senses

Didn't even knew there was a shrek book, much less that he had laser-eyes. wtf the book looks better than the movie

"Original Shrek smells so bad that trees lean away from him as he goes by, and he’s so ugly that he can cook food just by glaring at it, with an eye-laser effect that looks exactly like a colored-pencil version of Superman’s heat vision. Shrek also breathes fire and blows smoke out of his ears for fun."