Strange Daze: From 1,558 Hours Trapped In a Plane to The Origins of Woke

Judge for yourselves! pic.twitter.com/f0bT8O1Wsu

— 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐦 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐬 (@Wi_Lix) September 2, 2022

Massive crowd last night at President Donald J Trump rally.
This👇 makes Democrats’ knees shake. #TrumpRally pic.twitter.com/XFscfdWHwd

— 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐦 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐬 (@Wi_Lix) September 4, 2022

 Why the Solution to the Drake Equation is Scary No Matter the Answer – “Once is never, twice is always.” Until we see it a second time, we can’t assume it has happened. 95% of all galaxies we can see in space are already beyond reach even if we can travel at the speed of light. All of those must be eliminated from the Drake equation.

After that, the speed of light and the vast distance between stars means that we will never interact with life that isn’t within a few thousand light years of us. That’s pretty much just a tiny fraction of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is 100,000 light-years across. If we ignore that the bulge at the center of the galaxy is far denser than the galaxy where we are and treat the galaxy as a disk of uniform thickness 100,000 light-years across and assume we’ll accept anything within 5,000 light-years (a 10,000 light-year diameter disk), then life we may be able to detect and interact with would be limited to only 1% of Milky Way galaxy.

Estimates range from 100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Let’s go with 400 billion and assume a uniform distribution again. That leaves us with 4 billion stars at most. If we had 9 intelligent races in our galaxy, the odds say we have maybe a 10% chance of ever even being able to detect or interact with any of them. Even the closest dwarf galaxy is too far away; Andromeda is well beyond range.

This changes if we can find a way to travel and communicate faster than the speed of light. Without that, the odds of there being any intelligent life that humans will ever interact with are closely approximate zero.

If we manage to detect the second example of even primitive life that didn’t originate on Earth, that also changes things. That would mean there’s a whole lot of life out there inside our 1% of the Milky Way.

Wrath Of Gnon on Twitter: “Left, progressive, experimental, modern classroom, three times as expensive as… Right, traditional, experienced, classic classroom. Which one do you think is most conducive to concentration and learning? https://t.co/agCwbyQKx4” / Twitter

William Walker: Diver who saved Winchester Cathedral remembered – Mr Walker worked from 1906 until 1911, spending nearly six hours a day underwater, in darkness, working with his bare hands and entirely by touch.

Eventually he propped the cathedral up with 900,000 bricks, 114,900 concrete blocks and 25,800 bags of cement.

Because it took him so long to put on and take off his heavy diving suit, when he stopped for a break he would just take off his helmet in order to eat his lunch and smoke his pipe.

His grave, at Beckenham Cemetery in Bromley, south-east London, bears the words: “The diver who with his own hands saved Winchester Cathedral.”

RadioGenova on Twitter: “Lights out and candles lit in Italy due to 500% increase in energy bills. It will be a very hot autumn in Europe and beyond. https://t.co/EXS7Enan85″ / Twitter

@xtol.renTakefu V1 steel. 171mm blade. My design. Forged by Yamamoto San.♬ original sound – xtol.ren

Time-lapse footage of fungi doing their thing. Humans are more closely related to these odd organisms than we are to plants.

Source: https://t.co/YelloiNPTD pic.twitter.com/msJjldBAU5

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) October 6, 2020

Older Neandertal survived with a little help from his friends – An older Neandertal from about 50,000 years ago, who had suffered multiple injuries and other degenerations, became deaf and must have relied on the help of others to avoid prey and survive well into his 40s, indicates a new analysis published Oct. 20 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Every single frame in this montage shows a scene almost specifically designed to make concentration and learning impossible. The only way to stay calm in this school is with a stomach full of tranquilizer pills. Of course it is WEF nonsense. https://t.co/OlkFok9lfJ

— Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) September 4, 2022

The Origins of Woke – by Phoebe Maltz Bovy – The PC Dictionary highlights the fact that while the exact terminology may differ, many of the concerns of that era overlap with ours. Apparently, “writing about communities of which one is not a member” was frowned upon—a transgression that would see one accused of “cultural appropriation” today. There were gender-neutral pronouns, but it’s “tey” and “tem” rather than “they/them.” “Sex worker” was preferred over “prostitute,” “houseless” over “homeless,” “enslaved person” over “slave.” “Swapping sex partners” was to be called “consensual non-monogamy.” “Person-first” language (a person with a condition, etc.) comes up quite a bit. (“Person of differing sobriety” in lieu of “a drunk,” or my favorite: “persons with difficult-to-meet needs”—serial killers, for example.) Considering this was all before social media, the sheer Tumblr-ness of it all is striking.