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AbouBenAdhem @lemmy.world
Posts 16
Comments 1.3K
The way the best love stories work is to make the audience wish they could be the character on the screen.
  • If that were the case, the perfect love story would be a movie about a couple winning the lottery, building their dream house, and living happily ever after without a hint of conflict or unhappiness.

    But most people don’t actually want to experience the things that happen in romantic stories: the main characters in Pride and Prejudice spend most of the novel making mistakes and suffering from the consequences, and the main characters in Casablanca, Titanic, and Gone with the Wind experience increasing distress before parting forever.

  • Can we see an object twice at the exact same time at far distances?
  • Not using special relativity (the object would have to travel faster than light in order to overtake the photons it’s already emitted)—but using general relativity, some of the photons could be bent and/or redshifted by a massive object en route (aka gravitational lensing).

  • Can cats see color or what do they see-in the alternative?
  • Except that a rose/red filter would pass wavelengths centered around red, while a magenta filter would block wavelengths centered around green. So a magenta filter would let in proportionally more blue. (Or to put it another way: rose-tinted glasses would tend to make your vision monochromatic instead of dichromatic.)

  • Can cats see color or what do they see-in the alternative?
  • They are dichromats—with red and blue receptors—as opposed to most humans, who are trichromats with red, green, and blue receptors. So in terms of colors, they can distinguish roughly the same colors as a human looking through a magenta filter.

  • The roof or your mouth should really be called the ceiling of your mouth
  • roof

    | ro͞of, ro͝of |
    noun (plural roofs | rufs, rʊfs |)

    1. the structure forming the upper covering of a building or vehicle.
    2. the top inner surface of a covered area or space; the ceiling: the roof of the cave fell in.
    3. used to signify a house or other building, especially in the context of hospitality or shelter: helping those without a roof over their heads | they slept under the same roof.
  • Why do humans find predators cute?
  • Also, mammalian and avian predators are perceptive enough that they could tell we were acting like prey if we reacted to them the way we do to snakes and spiders. Alert attention without fear or aggression is probably the safest way to interact with such predators without provoking them—natural selection doesn’t care why we behave that way, as long as we do it.

  • East Asia meets Europe in Lower Austria: Archaeologists perform genetic analysis of Early Middle Age individuals
  • almost none of the mothers had local ancestors: they must therefore have come from other regions and other communities. However, there were hardly any genetic connections between Mödling and Leobersdorf. [...] the women that became mothers in Leobersdorf apparently came from communities that also descended from East Asia (possibly from the center of the Avar realm), while in Mödling they were of European descent. Yet they did not differ in status or wealth. "Status symbols such as belt fittings depicting griffins, and their culture and customs were the same. Most likely both considered themselves Avars"

    Hmm... if these assortative marriages weren’t based on class, culture, or (perceived) nationality, could they have been based on language?

  • Agnotology (the study of deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt)

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    The country of Georgia gains admittance to the EU, but due to a mixup, membership is granted to the US state of Georgia instead.

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    Is it possible to conceive of a universe macroscopically similar to ours in which matter is NOT fundamentally composed of oscillating waves, or would any such universe be logically contradictory?

    Say we have all the empirical evidence from 19th-century science prior to the observation of the wavelike diffraction of matter particles, plus 21st-century math and theory to construct an alternative explanation.

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    Maybe prehistoric cave paintings were actually the worst paintings of their time, because bad artists were forced to practice in caves where no one could see them.

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    oakland-observer.ghost.io Empower Oakland Principals' Circle of Funding Powers Recall-Focused Slate

    Three independent expenditure committees are driving a secondary series of committees run by a close-knit group of political operatives associated with the Thao recall and Empower Oakland*. Together they make up the bulk of the money being spent on candidates in the Empower Oakland endorsement slate...

    Empower Oakland Principals' Circle of Funding Powers Recall-Focused Slate
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    Trying to build viable third parties by voting for them in presidential elections is like trying to build a third door in your house by repeatedly walking into the wall where you want the door to be.

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    Non-language-using animals must think humans are the worst songbirds ever.

    To clarify: I’m not suggesting animals think all sounds are songs—just that songbirds and humans are the only common animals that combine sounds into arbitrary sequences where each individual sound doesn’t have a single fixed meaning.

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    Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester

    The Elitzur–Vaidman bomb-tester is a quantum mechanics thought experiment that uses interaction-free measurements to verify that a bomb is functional without having to detonate it. It was conceived in 1993 by Avshalom Elitzur and Lev Vaidman. Since their publication, real-world experiments have confirmed that their theoretical method works as predicted.

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    oaklandside.org Lake Merritt’s iconic pelican, Hank, is ready for her closeup

    A short documentary about her, her caretakers, and her fraught future premieres this Sunday at the New Parkway Theater.

    Lake Merritt’s iconic pelican, Hank, is ready for her closeup
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    phys.org Same species, different sizes: Rare evolution in action spotted in island bats

    A University of Melbourne researcher has spotted a rare evolutionary phenomenon happening rapidly in real time in bats living in the Solomon Islands.

    Same species, different sizes: Rare evolution in action spotted in island bats
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    Emerging niche clustering results from both competition and predation. (My take: more species can coexist in an ecological niche if they have distinct predators.)

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    If whales are ignorant of conditions on land, they probably think humans are an endangered species.

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    "Are Oakland community ambassadors making a difference?"

    oaklandside.org Are Oakland community ambassadors making a difference?

    Ambassadors are meant to improve public safety, de-escalate conflict, and help keep the city clean. Are these programs working?

    Are Oakland community ambassadors making a difference?
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    Compared to fountain pens and ballpoints, "Sharpies" are actually the least sharp pen type.

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    "Phones" were named after the Greek word for "sound", but modern phones are used in silence as often as not.

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