eightpix
@eightpix@lemmy.world
Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.
- Comment on I'll share a troubling fact with you if you share one with me 4 weeks ago:
No accusation intended. Related my experience and seeking yours. Thanks for sharing what you have read about it.
Then, help me out if you feel inclined. Point me in the direction of some solid sci-fi, written in another language, with good translation to English. I’m always looking for the next read. I could Google it. But, instead, I’m looking for a recommendation from a strong critical eye. As guidance, I’m a pretty big fan of space epics, political intrigue, and/or social
Also, thanks for the language on attenuation. I’ve done a bit more reading on it, and I’ve seen the math. What I’ve learned is that most regulated radio transmissions in the Western hemisphere are capped at 50 kW. There are several transmitters that are in the 150 kW range, and, back in the 30s, there was that one titanic tower in Florida that kicked out 500 000 kW.
- Comment on I'll share a troubling fact with you if you share one with me 4 weeks ago:
I guess we are going to have to disagree. The writing style and, as I perceived it, motivations within the text were clearly not of the Western tradition. It’s true, in lending the benefit of doubt, I may have enjoyed it more precisely because I disregarded standard writing mores, tropes, and conventions because it was a translated work.
I’m curious: Did you also try Murakami’s 1Q84? I found that I had to suspend expectations there in much the same manner.
I think I’d agree with you wrt. short species lifespans after developing telecommunications, space flight, and highly concentrated energy sources. The leap in capacity for attendant social distortion — and extortion — has brought us to the brink of global destruction many times since Signal Hill in 1901. The Kardashev Scale comes to mind here. The leap from about Type 0.73, ostensibly where we are now, to Type 1.0 is fraught.
As for the communications we have sent, the early ones were low-power and, over a distance of 100 ly, would significantly degrade against background EM radiation. At a range of 50 ly, where our first, more powerful and higher fidelity digital transmissions have reached, there are relatively few star systems — about 1300 (source). This source uses data from 1991, so there may be more, but not many, that are magnitude 6.5 or brighter.
- Comment on I'll share a troubling fact with you if you share one with me 4 weeks ago:
I’d read that David Brin reviewed something similar in '83, but I didn’t chase it down to Saberhagen.
In following the links provided in the Wiki article, for the Berserker Hypothesis, there is the following:
The Berserker hypothesis is distinct from the dark forest hypothesis in that under the latter, many alien civilizations could still exist provided they keep silent. The dark forest hypothesis can be viewed as a special case of the Berserker hypothesis, if the ‘deadly Berserker probes’ are (e.g. due to resource scarcity) only sent to star systems that show signs of intelligent life.
So, silence is survival in the Dark Forest. The Berserker Hypothesis seeks and destroys.
And, for my part, Cixin Liu’s second book was a really solid read. The first book, Three Body Problem, suffered all of the hallmarks of the pains taken to establish a story and a world. The last book, Death’s End, while mostly good, also suffered in needing to bring the grand story to a close.
- Comment on I'll share a troubling fact with you if you share one with me 4 weeks ago:
Here’s one more:
Dark Forest Theory as a solution to the Fermi Paradox.
- Comment on I'll share a troubling fact with you if you share one with me 4 weeks ago:
I’m glad someone put the prions in here. As a biology student, there was only one thing more terrifying than retroviruses — prions.
- Comment on I'll share a troubling fact with you if you share one with me 4 weeks ago:
Heres two:
The ratio between cells of your body that belong to you vs. cells on or in your body that are microorganisms is about 1:1 — slightly favouring the bacteria.
If the Sun were destroyed, we would not know about it until more than 8 minutes after it happened.
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 1 month ago:
Humanity may be forced into radical openness.
This is, as far as I can tell, tangentially related to this form of dialectical behavioural therapy (RO-DBT).
- Comment on Do you skip Star Trek intros when streaming? 2 months ago:
Yes. Almost every time.
- Submitted 3 months ago to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world | 8 comments
- Comment on Do other languages have similar acronyms to 'tbh', 'imo', 'smh', etc? 4 months ago:
In Korean, “Hahaha” sounds more like “kh- kh- kh-”, represented by, “ㅋㅋㅋ”
- Comment on 1st Family Hurricane. 4 months ago:
When they were handing out the disaster lunchboxes, I heard a person in line say, “they had better offer alternative milk” as though offering oat, almond, and soy like they were at Starfucks was the priority in a hurricane. I get it. Some people can’t process lactose. My partner can’t. Nor can she handle gluten. She, at the same time, realizes that her dietary needs might play second string to 230 km/h wind and a legit deluge. She took her white bread and cheese sandwich, milk and cereal, banana, and Oreos and dealt with it. She was more concerned with all of us being alive at the end of the day and wanting to help the staff get home to their families.
- Comment on 1st Family Hurricane. 4 months ago:
Amen.
- Submitted 4 months ago to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world | 7 comments
- Comment on The justices of the supreme court ruled that Trump was immune and effectively above the law while being president. What is now stopping Biden from bringing a gun to the next debate? 4 months ago:
Wait, maybe the justices just gave Biden the authority to do just that.
…
Naw. See, if he did, that’d delegitimize the presidency and cause a constitutional crisis.
But, if a Republican President does it, it’s an exercise in upholding American freedom and the true authority of the office. See the difference?
- Comment on So, this, now, needed saying. 4 months ago:
Should the UNSG also have said nothing?
- Comment on So, this, now, needed saying. 4 months ago:
I’ll print more legibly in the future.
- Comment on So, this, now, needed saying. 4 months ago:
That’s just how I process information. Pencil in hand and post-its are easy to find in my house. They end up in notebooks with more writing. Better, by far, than on back of some envelope or on my kids’ school work like my parents used to do.
Also, made you look.
- Comment on So, this, now, needed saying. 4 months ago:
Ding ding. Correct.
- Submitted 4 months ago to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world | 12 comments
- Comment on If I put a gallon of 10% cider vinegar in a shallow pan and let 1/2 gallon evaporate, will that make it double its strength? 9 months ago:
Cellular respiration, the Krebs cycle, oxidative phosphorylation, citric acid cycle, glycolysis… I miss having these processes in my head. I was such a biology nerd once.
- Comment on Pretty cool fan made intro to a non-existent show 10 months ago:
I would watch this in an instant. Sisko is, by a wide margin, my favourite Star Trek Captain.
A frontier, postwar Commander. A broken space station.
A crew that actively hates, seeks to misunderstand, and undermine each other.
Oh, and the first stable wormhole/celestial temple of the TimeLords.
Then, a war against a vastly superior force of the ultimate spies.
He takes on the whole impossible thing and makes everyone he meets better people.
A student of history, betrayed by the only woman he loved after the the death of his wife, a single father, a mentor, a detective, and a builder.
Sisko is absolutely amazing. Picard, what, came back from being Borg and lived a lifetime in a few minutes once?
- Comment on America is on the brink in the first trailer for Alex Garland’s 'Civil War' 11 months ago:
Tick tock… actual or A24? Which comes first?
