Dec 12

Not Making Light

Claims Frank at Frankly Curious:

If someone were to head to the farthest visible galaxy, it would take 13.3 billion years traveling at the speed of light to get there.

No, not entirely correct. If they were traveling at the speed of light, they’d get there instantly — from their perspective. This is why reasoning about things moving at relativistic speeds is so difficult.

You’ve heard I am sure the old standard tale about one of a pair of twins being sent away from earth at relativistic speeds (99% of the speed of light or whatever) while one remains behind? The twin who leaves earth spends five years away but when she returns 35 years have passed on earth. This is similar, except if you move actually at light speed,* time ceases passing for you altogether as relative to the outside universe, thus the length/distance to anywhere definitionally becomes zero. From your perspective, you’d arrive anywhere the same moment you left.

From the view of a photon, it is emitted and is instantly absorbed elsewhere, no matter how far away in its relativistic frame it appears to be from ours — even if it’s 13.3 billion light years away.

*Nothing with mass can move at the speed of light. Photons have no mass, so they can pull off this cool-ass trick.

Dec 12

Heard Anew

This was my friend Tia’s favorite song when I knew her.

I have not listened to it in 20 years. Lyrics are great, better than I remembered. I understand so much better why she liked it now. Hindsight without time travel is a curse, but better than the alternative.

For readers tired of me writing about her, I have to. The void retreats before the word, and creation is a spell.

Dec 12

Weird Musc

I’ve gotten so much more muscular so quickly that my arms constantly feel weird. I’m always like, what’s all that crawling around in there? I assume as I did in the army I will get used to it, but for now it’s weird, but a good kind.

Dec 11

Change Out

Absolute truth. You see this in people’s non-reaction to climate change. It is naïveté and Pollyanna-ishness on a scale that is almost unbelievable. I wonder how much fiction affects this and by what method. Is it because there most disasters look like a fun adventure, with nearly always some happy ending?

Buncha people are going to learn about reality the hard way.

Dec 11

Level With You

I hate anything that says it’s “next level” or it’s going to take me there or has anything to do with “leveling up” or the like. I do my level best to avoid hearing that or reading that. Just no. Corporate speak makes my skin crawl, but particularly that phrase and its variants.

Dec 11

Comedy

Oh wow, this is a beautiful project.

Was today trying to remember some of the works Tia and I read to each other. This was one, at least part of it. We liked the prosody of the Mandelbaum translation. We also read aloud a lot of Robert Frost, Adrienne Rich, and she loved Edna St. Vincent Millay (I read that whole linked poem to her at least twice), whom I had never read before meeting her. It wasn’t just highfalutin stuff, though. Not at all. Plenty of Dave Barry and song lyrics and errata and abstracta we made fun of (such as reading part of Little House on the Prairie, but trying to change it in real time to match our new title: Little Crack House on the Prairie!).

Dec 11

Passing Is Passing

I did this at about the same age when I calculated I could never do homework or turn in the folder crap, and still pass my classes if I aced all the tests (which I did, except math).

From that day on I never did homework, and told almost all my teachers in advance that I did not and would not do homework. Still passed every non-math class handily.

Dec 11

Pensive

Exactly. The Mac Pro is “so expensive” according to everyone, when in reality in its market segment is a damn good deal.

In a different market segment, the previous company I worked for had the fastest non-supercomputers in the world available to customers (IBM Power9-based Power System E980s for reference) — and the customers still were asking for something quicker as it wasn’t enough. There are tons of people who will pay, and pay dearly, for performance.

Being able to encode 8K faster than real time. Holy hell. That is something.

Dec 11

Therapist Off

The one who does not — therapy exists to perpetuate itself. While people do sincerely believe they are being helped (and maybe some are), mostly therapy intensifies and increases manias and fixations, surfacing negative emotions, thus requiring more therapy.

Be suspicious of that for which the treatment never leads nor can ever lead to any cure.