Impronoucabl

joined 2 years ago
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago

Merit as a musician can only take you so far. In any creative career, the big famous artists aren't just good at doing their craft, they're also very good at making business deals to sell them. And even that's not always enough to become a superstar, you also need luck - your breakout/masterpiece needs to coincide with the latest trend, and preferably early in your career - a one-hit-wonder might be enough, but maybe not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

For the same reason that saltwater can remain separate from fresh water, or even hot water and cold water - diffusion is typically a slow process, particularly if you do not stir, or otherwise mix the substances.

Consider this: drop a single drop of food dye into a glass of water. There's no way the entire glass immediately turns into the relevant colour, it takes time for the molecules to move about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Superconducting magnets don't heat up naturally, not without breaking. All we'd need to do, is engineer an isolated environment for the magnet, and there'll be no chance of it heating up, except maybe for an intense solar storm overwhelming it's magnetic shield.

Unlike earth, where there are multiple potential sources of heat, in space the only one of note is the sun. So yes, you can't remove heat via conduction or convection, but that also means that you can't gain heat from it. If anything, that simplifies the design.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The energy requirements for keeping a magnet out of the sun at all times, is probably considerably less than powering a conventional electromagnet for the equivalent duration.

We've already achieved this on the extreme end via the new horizons probe, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (5 children)

We could maybe make superconducting magnets strong enough to create a field to reduce the charged particles, but then you have to keep them powered

The superconducting magnets you describe, do not require ongoing power, only ongoing cooling. Which in space, is more manageable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

LCDs are designed to filter out extremely specific types of light, and in a specific direction.

It's true that the changing optical properties of each crystal could affect the albedo, but whether white or black is more effective is beyond my knowledge. It might even be neither, but green instead.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No, and not because the effect is in any way small.

It is because a phone screen producing white light, looks white because it is actively generating white looking light. Compared to white paint, which looks white not because it generates its own light, but reflects other light, these are two different mechanisms for making things look 'white'.

Your phone has a brightness setting, to keep 'white' the exact same shade of white despite whatever viewing condition you have. A white paint does not, and as a result, looks different depending on the amount of light in the room.

So in your hypothetical, a white phone screen won't reflect less light as you presuppose - it'll generate more heat internally - unless you cover the screen with white paint.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (19 children)

Interesting concept, but not very scalable. It's basically a reversed dam - when it's full, there's 0m head of water. Then with excess energy, you lower the level inside, storing the energy in the water outside. E.g -2m head. Water then flows in to equalise head, and doing so, regenerates electricity. Adding depth to supercharge pressure differentials is a good idea, although I wonder how they limit the flow rate, or otherwise prevent cavitation shocks each cycle.

Could be useful as a private industrial battery, but a dam would still be better on an infrastructural level.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

The comic is out for preorder now as a hard copy too! (it's already available free online)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Before an instance does something malicious, how do you know it will be malicious?

Even if everyone there running it, & participating is pure of heart, how can you be assured that haXXors won't simply break in to take advantage of that trust you've given them?

Banning bad instances is a reactive stance that only applies after damage has been done. Can you convince the corporate overlords to take that risk? And it only increases as the fediverse gets more popular, and more instances get trusted.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Yes and no.

Decentralized IDs exist, but will almost never be accepted by any large reputable institution.

Why trust every indie site to be 100% truthful, and definitely not full of malicious haXXors?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Paraphrasing a bit from the scientific source:

If the population of Canada used email signatures for a year, ~30 people in developing countries will suffer a premature death within the next 100 years.

That 100% should have been in the article in some clear form or another.

I'm not against the points of the article, I'm against it being so poorly written that AI slop is just as good.

 

Thinking of starting up a Gallifreyan blog of sorts.

What are some quotes we'd like to see translated?

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

I'm not dead.

Random Prompt: red. RED. REEEEEEEED

Here is your task:

#Write a description without describing how something looks.

Some tips:

  • Lean into stereotypes, assumed knowledge, and relatable interactions.

  • Other senses (Sound, smell, touch, etc) are your friends.

You don’t have to post your piece, but if you do, I’m happy to provide some basic feedback. I encourage others to do the same, so we can all learn from each other.

Bonus: If there’s a particular thing you want to work on, let me know in the comments, & I’ll see if I can tailor future tasks to accommodate our needs.

 

Released on a Creative commons v4 non-commercial license by me.

Notes

  1. Based heavily on Sherman's Circular, with minor modifications.

  2. Use capital letters to to stop vowel attachment

  3. Some punctuation marks are original, but most follow Sherman's

  4. Numbers are new, mostly because Sherman's style is very impractical for typing maths out. To get a value, just add (number of lines) with (3 x number of dots).

1
Unfurled Phone (Sherman's) (media.discordapp.net)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

After several days, I must say, the 'L's and 'C' look very similar.

 

Taking a bit of a breather, here's the next exercise!

Random Prompt: Frying pan

Here is your task:

#Write a piece as to be unsatisfying as possible.

Some tips:

  • The goal of this is to practice build tension, even if there's no way to satisfying release it.

  • Focus more on the how/now than the payoff later.

You don’t have to post your piece, but if you do, I’m happy to provide some basic feedback. I encourage others to do the same, so we can all learn from each other.

Bonus: If there’s a particular thing you want to work on, let me know in the comments, & I’ll see if I can tailor future tasks to accommodate our needs.

 

Continueing on in the spirit of self improvement, here's the next self help exercise!

Random Prompt: Surfing dinosaur

Here is your task:

#Write a three (or more) person conversation without any dialogue tags.

Some tips:

  • If giving each speaker a distinct/unique voice is too hard, try giving them unique tone, or positions instead.
  • Alternatively, start with dialogue tags, then remove them in the edit.

You don't have to post your piece, but if you do, I'm happy to provide some basic feedback. I encourage others to do the same, so we can all learn from each other.

Bonus: If there's a particular thing you want to work on, let me know in the comments, & I'll see if I can tailor future tasks to accommodate our needs.

You have two weeks until the next task. (If you're not done by then, don't worry, I'll keep checking old threads.)

 

A great resource from one of the most successful authors, I would highly recommend anyone writing fiction to watch. It's a long listen, and some parts are focused on sci/fantasy, but it's one of the most useful writing tips on the internet regardless. There's even some publishing tips too.

 

In the spirit of self improvement, let's kick off a new community with a writing exercise!

Random Prompt: Backyard Scientist

Here is your task:

#Write a description (or scene) without any adjectives, or adverbs.

Some tips:

  • Use stronger verbs
  • Use specific names

You don't have to post your piece, but if you do, I'm happy to provide some basic feedback. I encourage others to do the same, so we can all learn from each other.

Bonus: If there's a particular thing you want to work on, let me know in the comments, & I'll see if I can tailor future tasks to accommodate our needs.

You have two weeks until the next task. (If you're not done by then, don't worry, I'll keep checking old threads.)

 

So a while back, on a bus ride to/from home, I wrote down a terrible piece of writing (linked)

Let's dive into why it was so bad.

  1. It wastes the reader's time.

Multiple times in the piece, the same information is conveyed with no additional nuance, context, or subtext.

Repetition to emphasise a point is one thing, but doing it for no benefit is another.

  1. It assumes the reader is dumb.

There's one especially guilty quote from the piece.

Bob had seen faces before.


Because humans are such good pattern-finding machines (as compared with actual computing machines), many explicit descriptions can be inferred from astoundingly little text.

Tom Scott has a great video on "the hidden rules of conversation", and one of the ponts he makes is the 'Maxim of Quantity' - Give as much information as required, and nothing more.

"Alice" & "Bob" are both common english names, and as such, we expect them to be normal english speaking humans, conversing on Earth, without any prompting. Any text that affirms that convention is unneccessary.

I would call this technique of bad writing 'exposing the subtext', but don't think it is universally bad. It could be useful in more complicated, longer works, if the reader is not expected to keep track of multiple (possibly changing & conflicting) POVs.

  1. It tells us one thing, but shows the opposite.

She thought about it for an moment, and then shouted at Bob. Angrily. Very angrily. She said “Because my feelings are telling me to say this.”

Adverbs in general are bad because they tell instead of show, and 'very' is possibly the least desciptive adverb in the English language.

'Angrily' is the telling word here, but the pause before the actual shouting is showing us that Alice is not - anger is not an emotion that causes you to think further before acting.

Furthermore, her dialogue is not written in an angry tone. Good dialogue should convey the tone by itself, but in this case the anger only comes from "shouted" - another telling word. The tone itself is neutral - and therefore calm.


Feel free to discuss &/or tear it to pieces.

 

An old article I wrote

 

I'll update the sidebar later.

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