I do oft wonder about the Dzhanibekov effect, and what the inertial effects (direction/strength/duration/curves/etc) would be like at each location on the spinning object, and if Earth’s Large Low-Velocity Provinces (LLVPs) or Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces are sufficient tributary oscillation to trigger a flip as some interpretations of the evidence suggest has happened to earth before (most recent suggestion I heard, this may have happened 700,000 years ago, iirc ~ or was it 700 million… I forget), … and in that moment, would there be locations that experience an effective loss of local gravity for seconds?

If such is going to happen (or just a magnetic flip, or a corona mass ejection, or a X100 flare, or a meteor bombardment, a rogue planet flyby perturbing orbits, or whatever other calamitous disruption to the pleasant habitability of Earth), to be safe, I think I’d rather have a spaceship to fly away instantly in, than stay home. (I guess humans should not have been industrially sabotaging and suppressing that arc of human made technological arc of innovation for a century or two.)

Bosses are dumb. Use that to score extra vacation. Don’t rock the fucking boat.

No, no. It’s absolutely true.

Scientists have known for years that the Earth’s gravitational field is remarkably stable, except when I fart.

At precisely 8:47 PM, I unleashed a fart of such extraordinary magnitude that NASA immediately detected a gravitational anomaly.

For exactly seven seconds, gravity simply gave up.

Cars floated. Birds were suddenly extremely confused. Somewhere in Ohio, a man watched his refrigerator slowly drift toward the ceiling.

NASA scrambled to identify the source.

“Where is this coming from?”

The technician checked the instruments.

“Sir… Georgia.”

A long silence followed.

“Dear God.”

At exactly seven seconds, gravity returned.

Scientists are now studying the event.

I have been asked not to fart again.

I have declined to comment.

If the result is I’m staying home for the day I’m happy to spread it along.

This is the best thing I’ve seen on the internet all week. A whole 8 days!

That’s absolutely right; the only problem is that those chief-idiot are so rich that they control most of what the Internet means to the vast majority of people.

That’s just how people are, unfortunately, as evidenced by the fact that platforms like Twitter or Reddit, for example, are still used by the masses.

Sorry, idiots are popular with idiots so the idiots vote for the idiot and now the idiot is in charge.

Thousands of articles of misinformation isn’t power. It’s a reminder on what to avoid and fact check.

In the past there were gatekeepers. That sounds like a bad thing. In some ways it was. But, at least Walter Cronkite wasn’t allowed to go on a rant about the chemicals turning the frogs gay.

This is something I realised growing. Information and actual knowledge are two separate things.

The former is withour filter and the latter is under scrutiny for proper verification. In the hands of layman, it can be impossible to properly determine.

The current LLM mania is just an extension of that ‘validation through evidence’ that has been on-going.

A TV with 100 channels of content and 1 billion channels of static.

Unlimited amounts of an audience for everyone 🙃

It does provide nearly unlimited access to knowledge. But, the Internet user needs to bring their own ability distinguish knowledge from strongly held ignorant opinions.

If you’re an eye surgeon you can probably use the Internet to find out the newest techniques in eye surgery. You probably have enough knowledge of your own to spot fraudulent things, and to know where the real information can be found and how it can be vetted. OTOH, if you’re an eye surgeon, you might know nothing about farming, so you might not be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you’re not careful you might come away believing some crazy farming-related conspiracies.

Where this approach falls apart is where the argument they’re making is convincing enough that it might appear legitimate to a less informed reader than you. The reader may not engage with the comment, but, if there’s no counter-argument, instead go away believing it may have some validity.

Obviously thus doesn’t apply to the more blatant forms of trolling, but even that distinction can be blurry.

the more co2 we put in the atmosphere, the more carbonated the oceans will become

Flat Earther: Sheesh, looks like somebody’s never heard of the Great Jurassic Shake-Up

Nazis were a product of their material conditions. They emerged from the Holocaust of WW1 and gave birth to the Holocaust of WW2.

Terror of the outside, the foreigner, and the radical didn’t begin with Nazism. And it sure as hell didn’t end with them.

So what is to be done? Just wagging your finger at folks 80 years in the grave isn’t cutting it.

Especially when the term has become so polluted and distorted with ideological baggage that it ends up being used like this.