Codex

I dunno, I think John K managed the worst of both worlds.

That’s why I put <BAD SERIES> on, then I’m never tempted to stop and watch.

People in times of desperate oppression and violence rarely turn to the uncaring vastness of the chaotic universe for comfort.

Is it just me, or is it worrying how companies keep packing up and selling off the only parts of their businesses that actually, you know, make stuff, in favor of becoming full time bullshit peddlers?

I hadn’t read there were so many angles on the word. I had heard it came from Joyce and never dug deeper. I’m surprised that you quoted a passage from Oxford but didn’t check the OED. Joyce being Irish, the OED would better document the English he’d have been using. Merriam-Webster and derivatives are American English dictionaries.

From the OED:

Honestly, I’m just surprised physicists don’t have a gif/jif thing going on with quork/quark pronunciation.

My Lemmy is usually more like…

Guianan uses the incredible power of matter replication and atomic assembly to make chocolate cakes and fake alcohol for people. The holodeck does the same, plus generates 3d holograms with perfectly realistic fidelity, so that people can play racquetball in a pretend arena, or have a pirate adventure. I don’t think that “abusing the ship’s resources for fun” is a big problem in that era.

Not sure why you got downvoted, this is an excellent point. I’ve been an atheist for decades now but I still love to read tarot and yijing for myself and others. They’re excellent tools for self-study, brainstorming, and storytelling. I like how Jodorowsky puts it: that magic speaks with the voice of the subconscious. Manipulation of the symbolic language of dreams, as with tarot cards, can prompt the conscious mind into exploring new avenues of thought, making unexpected connections which can lead to insight.

It feels like magic in the same way (for the same reasons) that cold reading allows mentalist to trick people. In the same way that meditation and hypnosis are connected. These are tools that can be used to trick people, but you can also “trick” yourself in a controlled way to accomplish things you want.

Unrelated to the astrology discussion, I love episodes with subtle jokes like this one. That tiny smile for 2 panels. I wonder if the artist redraws each nearly identical panel in order to feel the same numbing repetition that Miles is meant to express?

Pretty interesting to consider. Astrology involves a lot more than most people know. Birth charts are a huge deal for astrologers, and where they make a lot of their money. It takes some work to compile a proper chart and people pay for them.

A birth chart starts using the precise moment and place of your birth. Then the astrologer does a lot of calculations (well, now they just use computers like everyone else, but there are books to lookup and hand calculate this stuff) to determine what celestial bodies were where at your birth.

This is where your sun sign, moon sign, and all the other detailed stuff comes from. And all of that should still be valid (well as valid as it ever was) in a space faring society. Obviously you’d need to use the local view of the sky for determining which planets and constellations to use, and the local superstitions to determine what those things are supposed to mean, but I don’t think its so ridiculous to believe that a Star Trek style humanoid alien race which has religion, language, and culture wouldn’t also have superstitions and probably, specifically, astrology.

Like how alchemy leads to chemistry, astrology is the prelude to astronomy, and both start with detailed observations of the sky. Sky watching is the basis for time keeping, and most of our advanced math started as a means of tracking time (in order to keep track of holy days, and more importantly, planting days). So i think some form of astrology could well be inevitable on the path to astronomy, physics, sociology, and other real sciences.

As to the problem of daily horoscopes. Those are based on your birth chart but modified by the current sky. That’s how you get “daily outlook for all Virgos.” In theory, you could just calculate that for the home planet and call it good.

But, we’re in the future! On a spaceship! With computers! Why not do complex, subspatial calculus to compute the exact amount of starlight from Proceon 9 bouncing off Mars and reaching the starship you’re on? If we assume Trek has solved the three body problem, so that they could calculate how much Venus’ gravity affects you anywhere in the universe, why not apply the same “logic” to whatever elusive energies are believed to power astrology?

Your daily space horroscope could include superstitions from numerous cultures in a powerful, exceedingly complex, syncretic universal astronomy.

“So you’re a Pisces? Not good, from our current coordinates, Uranus is occluded by the second sun of Chronos, you’ll find it hard to focus on relationships while the Klingon warrior spirit is filtering all your energy. I recommend embracing this, drink a raktajino, and channel the fighter’s energy into your work and overcome these obstacles. Q’pla!”

Oh oh iyo

He lives in me!

Awww, JEJ 😭 Well, as long as there’s baseball, he’ll live on in the cornfields of our cells.

Centrioles is my favorite pasta shape, the little ridges hold sauce so well.

Sometimes you need a stranger to really get that Rough Endoplasmic treatment.

All these jokes about naming variables and yet no serious suggestions that if you have a turtle2, what you really need is a turtle array. I like to block out all the memory I’ll need for the whole program up front, put it all in one big array, and then I can use clean, easy to remember numbers for all my variables!

What is this, a barn for aphids!?

Got’em! Saddam!

Super Castlevania 4 is the best of those early ones. Rondo is pretty good also but very hard. People find charms in the first 3 but they’re a bit rough.

If you prefer the Symphony lineage, the gameboy collections are very good. Not every game is brilliant but it’s amazing value.

I believe the Fahrenheit scale was originally set up for 100° to be human body temperature. We’re just built colder now I guess? I had to look up what zero was and apparently he originally set it at the coldest the air had ever been around his village, but later had to standardize it and so cooked up some brine that froze at 0°.

I would propose that 100 should be calibrated around the wet bulb temperature, which I think is around 105°F but varies with humidity. That’s the temperature where sweating doesn’t cool you off any more, so any temperature 100 or more is deadly to most people. I like 0 being freezing for water, seems sensible and is also a good “prolonged exposure to this or lower will kill you” cutoff point.

Programmers after slacking off for two days to improve their factories in Shapez2 because they already automated all their tasks.

If changing requirements mean you need to update the script, then updating the script is part of your job. QED. I don’t see the problem with a little job security.