Google wants to kill URLs and HTTP, among other things, so they can control the web. It’s not surprising but what does bother me is just how many people buy their propaganda without a second thought. It is because many who do work for Google are smart that the company can get away with such nonsense.

Google is like a very erudite mugger. I could expound for hours on why it’s a good for society, for the world, for the very future of civilization, even, that you hand your wallet over to me forthwith. I could regale you with tales of the glories of voluntary redistribution, the thoughts of St. Louise de Marillac on the value of charity, quote Ecclesiastes on the futility of wealth, and I’d have you believing you owed me your wallet and your fealty if you let me bloviate on long enough.

That I can toss out so much knowledge and am well-spoken doesn’t mean what I am saying isn’t absolute horseshit. The same is true of Google and the statements of their apologists and propagandists. That they can summon a well-polished argument doesn’t make it true. It just means they went to schools that trained them to sell BS by the word.

But it works and they are going to win — some well-dressed, eloquent muggers will walk away with all our wallets.

This story is good, but Neptune is not really very dense.

Neither can Neptune be the answer since the bodies aren’t close enough to the dense, blue giant.

The density of Neptune is 1.64 gr/cm³ while the density of earth is 5.51 gr/cm³. Neptune is denser than water, but our planet is roughly four times as dense as that distant blue marble.

Neptune is denser than Jupiter and Saturn, though. In fact, the density of Saturn is 0.687 gr/cm³, so it’s the only one of the gas/ice giant planets that’d float in a bathtub, if you had a really damn big bathtub. (Water’s density is 1 gr/cm³.)

Neptune’s gravity is only about 14% stronger than Earth’s, so if it had a surface to stand on you’d barely be able to tell the difference.