tunetardis
@tunetardis@lemmy.ca
- Comment on What's your favourite era for video games? 1 week ago:
Aw man that’s a good list!
- Comment on What's your favourite era for video games? 1 week ago:
In terms of consoles, I got the most enjoyment out of Super Nintendo. I think that’s in part because my kids were still young at the time and we played a lot of coop mode games on it before they got older and their tastes started diverging from mine.
It was the golden age of platformers I guess, and the focus was still solidly on game mechanics over production. I especially liked Bomberman. The gameplay was just perfect the way the challenge scaled naturally even as you got upgrades or added a 2nd player. Literally a blast!
- Comment on Remember when the body washes contained literal micro plastics and were advertised as such? 2 weeks ago:
I remember ads claiming it was cutting edge nanotechnology! And I thought oh cool, you mean like there are tiny robots running around in the shampoo? But no, it was microplastics.
- Comment on If we took material like rock from space and got it back to Earth enough times, would Earth grow as a planet? 2 weeks ago:
This happens naturally in the form of meteors streaking through the sky. Each one of those is adding a tiny amount of mass to the planet.
But you’ve got me wondering about something now. When a large asteroid hits the planet, it obviously adds its own mass, but it also kicks up a lot of debris into space. Some percentage of that will reach orbital escape velocity and never come back. But I honestly don’t know if there is a net mass increase or decrease after such an event? We’re generally concerned about other more pressing matters in such a scenario!
- Comment on Ever notice mammals never seem to come in green? 2 weeks ago:
From what other posters are saying, it may be the other way around? This is, most mammals cannot see green, so it doesn’t matter from a camouflage perspective among mammals. Humans (and primates in general) are an outlier in this repect.
Bird of prey can, though, so there’s that.
- Comment on Ever notice mammals never seem to come in green? 2 weeks ago:
Wow, that is fascinating!
Makes me wonder about the other direction, going into the near infrared as opposed to UV. I remember from a class in remote sensing that many plants are actually most reflective in that band (more so than in green, even). NIR air photos are often used by biologists to get an indication of the health of a forest. But I have no idea whether animals also reflect NIR? It may be that most animals cannot see in that band in the first place, so it would not offer any camouflage advantage.
- Comment on Ever notice mammals never seem to come in green? 2 weeks ago:
Great read! That explains a lot.
I’ve been deep diving a bit myself and found this article that explains another thing that’s puzzled me over the years. Some birds have crazy vibrant coloration that almost glistens, like peacock feathers. Outside of the zoo, I’ve noticed it a bit in common grackles. They look black on first glance, but when you study them closely, they have this kind of purple sheen around their heads. Apparently, it’s still melanin at work here, but it’s structured in a very special way.
- Comment on Ever notice mammals never seem to come in green? 2 weeks ago:
Right? I guess that’s what puzzles me the most about it. It must be really hard for mammals to become green since you would think it would confer an advantage in many environments you find them in.
I guess there are a lot of mammal species that kind of make themselves scarce during the broad daylight hours, so maybe green camouflage is less relevant if you’re only out between dusk and dawn?
- Comment on Ever notice mammals never seem to come in green? 2 weeks ago:
Yeah fair. I had painted glass fish in my aquarium at one point and discovered the “paint” came from feeding them dyed food and eventually faded away when I gave them normal food back at home. They are naturally transparent for the most part which, frankly, I thought was cooler. I did have a gourami that was legit green though, as far as I could tell.
- Comment on Ever notice mammals never seem to come in green? 2 weeks ago:
Ha!! You really had to go down the “rabbit hole” for that one I bet! Awesome.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 64 comments
- Comment on The more air conditions in an area the hotter becomes around it. In turn increasing the demand for AC. Talk about infinite money glitch. 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, I’m a big believer in shade trees! The one in our front yard has grown tall enough to provide blessed relief from a blazing afternoon sun. The only problem is the dude next door, who’s heavy into solar, is worried it’ll block his panels. And I’m a believer in solar too, so I don’t know what to say. Maybe we can come to some sort of compromise…
- Comment on People are out there right now trying to correct every grammar mistake on the internet. 2 weeks ago:
The Internet needs to be capitalized.
- Comment on The more air conditions in an area the hotter becomes around it. In turn increasing the demand for AC. Talk about infinite money glitch. 2 weeks ago:
That’s why we need passive daytime radiative cooling. In theory, it could completely eliminate the urban heat island, but it still seems to be mostly at the pilot project stage so far. I did read somewhere that you can DIY with some packaging tape (which somehow has the right properties?) over a reflective backing. Maybe I’ll experiment a bit this summer.
- Comment on It must confuse English learners to hear phrases like, "I'm home", instead of "I am at home." We don't say I'm school, or I'm post office. 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, one context in which a subject is not required even with proper English grammar is in imperatives, which makes sense given the implied urgency. If “Watch out!” had to be something more long-winded like “You must watch out!” you’d probably be dead.
- Comment on It must confuse English learners to hear phrases like, "I'm home", instead of "I am at home." We don't say I'm school, or I'm post office. 2 weeks ago:
I’m at Steve’s house.
I’m in Steve’s backyard.
I’m at Steve’s backyard barbecue.
Yeah, English is pretty f’d up.
- Comment on It must confuse English learners to hear phrases like, "I'm home", instead of "I am at home." We don't say I'm school, or I'm post office. 2 weeks ago:
It wouldn’t surprise me if this subject-dropping was introduced into English by non-native speakers? English is actually a bit peculiar as languages go in its wanting to put a subject in practically every sentence. It’s raining. It’s about time. What is the “it” here referring to? Linguists will tell you’re looking at a subject placeholder that doesn’t convey any special meaning but simply completes the grammar. And people learning English from other languages don’t need this fail to see the point. So they just start saying “About time we dropped that stupid it!” and then even native speakers start thinking yeah, why not ditch the subject if we don’t really need it?
- Comment on Why do Americans measure everything in cups? 4 weeks ago:
Well since we’re nitpicking, a kilogram is a unit of mass, not weight. So unless by “kilo” you meant kilonewton…
- Comment on ‘It’s got nasty’: the battle to build the US’s biggest solar power farm 4 weeks ago:
Maybe with a solar concentrating array, but these are photovoltaics are they not? So shouldn’t be a problem. I suspect this is just your typical nimby backlash to any large project. There’s plenty of that where I live too, alas.
- Comment on Could a bird propel a skateboard by flapping its wings? 5 weeks ago:
I don’t see why not, though I bet it can’t go as fast as a turtle on a skateboard?
- Comment on The United States has its first large offshore wind farm, with more to come 1 month ago:
I looked up 11 MW offshore wind turbine and it came back with this one. Not sure that’s the model they’re using, but it says the diameter of the blades alone is 200 m. Picture a 60-storey building and maybe add another 10 or so for how much bottom clearance the blades have and you’re basically looking at 12 moving skyscrapers. That would indeed be a sight to see!
- Comment on The United States has its first large offshore wind farm, with more to come 1 month ago:
Is 132 Mw considered large? I thought that would be sort of middling. The nearest wind farm to me puts out somewhere around 200 Mw iirc? What is impressive is that they can generate 132 with only a dozen turbines. That’s 11 Mw per turbine. Those things must be absolutely huge! The ones near me generate maybe a quarter as much power. So maybe it’s the first large turbine wind farm?
- Comment on Why does the film press talk so much about box office income? 2 months ago:
Ok sure. The grapevine effect. I’m trying to think of how often I’ve seen a movie on a friend’s recommendation. I guess it happens from time to time?
One thing though is that those same entertainment people love to talk about the opening weekend. Isn’t that a bit quick for the friend effect to kick in? I realize that in this day and age of social media, word can spread rapidly. But I for one am not the sort who would just drop everything to go see a movie immediately based on a friend recommending it hours earlier.
- Comment on Why does the film press talk so much about box office income? 2 months ago:
I try not to read too much into it. The box office income is obviously important in terms of what sort of films may get produced in the future. If a movie flops, it will be unlikely to get a sequel, but more broadly, the whole industry may pivot towards one genre or another depending on recent successes.
But I often wonder about entertainment columnists who write things like “They really liked this film over in China but not in North America.” How good an indicator are box office sales of how much people really enjoyed a film? The reason I ask is based on my own viewing habits. When I feel like going to a movie, I look at what’s showing and think ok, that looks pretty interesting. I might read a review or watch a trailer, but at the end of the day, I’m taking a risk that I will like it. I may or I may not. And either way, it is unlikely that I would see it again at the theatre.
So I guess what I’m saying is that for me, at least, a ticket purchase is not an automatic vote of confidence that I think this film is great. But maybe I’m not a typical moviegoer, introvert that I am? Maybe the normal pattern is you see it with a couple friends, and if you like it, you gather more friends and see it again and again? If that’s more the way it goes, I can understand why box office sales would truly correlate to a film’s worthiness. But if more people are like me, it could just be that the movie was really hyped up and people decided to go see it even if they come out of there going wow, that sucked. But they still paid for the ticket regardless, which reflects well on box office sales.
- Comment on Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns 2 months ago:
Ah ok, that’s fair.
- Comment on Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns 2 months ago:
A bit of googling and I came across a company called solarfold that seems to make a pre-wired solar array that unfolds out of a standard shipping container across a pair of rails.
- Comment on Solar Panels Spread Across America's Heartland as Farmers Chase Stable Returns 2 months ago:
Where I live in Ontario, there seems to be quite a bit of solar going up. The article mentions that ideally, the panels would be deployed on land that is marginal from the standpoint of agriculture. I’m not sure how much that is the case? I get the impression that proximity to power corridors and transfer stations is the main driver of where the solar actually goes.
The article mentions concerns about food security if too much agricultural land is given over to solar. I seem to recall similar arguments being made about corn diverted to make ethanol, and can’t help but think solar would still be a better use for the land than ethanol production?
I wonder if they could design a solar farm that would be relatively easy to move? Then you could put your panels on fallow land and rotate them around every year. Just a thought.
- Comment on Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet 2 months ago:
Good Lord, if the US nuclear arsenal is that antiquated, I shudder to think of where the Russians are at. Please don’t short-circuit and accidentally launch…
- Comment on So You Think You Know Git? - FOSDEM 2024 2 months ago:
Uh…I know enough to get in trouble with it?
- Comment on Bard becomes Gemini: Google launches their most powerful LLM, Ultra 1.0 2 months ago:
At least it appears to be available in Canada now…