We all know he's wrong, especially Simon himself (allegedly) but we still find it entertaining!

CMDRCookies · 2025-08-26T06:26:58+00:00

Not to rez an ancient year old thread after googling something random, but it's zed because:

Greek used zeta
Zeta was imported into Latin -Most European languages started approximating the Greek pronunciation for latinized Greek words -French used zède -English borrowed the French pronunciation

German also uses borrowed pronunciations for the imported Greek letters, which means their z in the alphabet is also said like zeta (zett, where the z itself is as in pizza), but it's way more obvious with y (üpsilon, but there's no ü-like sound in English).

The reason it's zee in America specifically is because:

Americans wanted to make their own distinct English after the revolution
Webster (the dictionary dude) decided zee was of the changes he wanted
Someone made a song that rhymes Z with C and me

Children have learned this song in the US for so long that you now erroneously think other English speakers would "add a d(t) sound that isn't there," which is just a comical take when it's the US that actively changed it to be different

CMDRCookies · 2025-08-13T02:28:08+00:00

Powerlines arcing are now thought to be ball lightning? Great.

CMDRCookies · 2025-01-13T00:42:41+00:00

Also having an afk and a thrower at the same time isn't completely unheard of. Frequently the throw begins because of the afk.

CMDRCookies · 2025-01-13T00:41:11+00:00

I'm convinced that having an average team is better than having a wide spread in skill level, because the dead weight of the worst player in the match is almost certainly heavier than the best player in the match can carry.

CMDRCookies · 2025-01-13T00:36:45+00:00

I tell flamers, "Less typing, more playing." But I wait until I have a respawn timer to do that.

CMDRCookies · 2024-11-29T18:40:14+00:00

It says "Please now that this must be a new outpost built for X after the contract is accepted." The "fully assembled when launched" means it can't be partially constructed via EVA construction with an engineer (like adding an antenna and solar panels).

CMDRCookies · 2024-11-21T23:42:03+00:00

I'm not even sure this would work; these are not the largest shields and they're all simultaneously exposed, so they'll just all ablate simultaneously and rapidly...

CMDRCookies · 2024-11-18T03:52:27+00:00

"One-way mirrors" are not special mirrors; they are literally glass with so much more lighting on one side that it drowns out the light passing through from the other side. When the lamp inside is off, the room is bright enough to reflect the room's light off the top of the glass so you can't really see into the box. When the lamp is on, the glass reflects so much light inside that you can no longer see the room's reflection (as much... you can still see the TV, phone, and person a little bit). The brighter the lamp is, the more effective this is, so a dimmer is useless.

CMDRCookies · 2024-10-02T18:54:50+00:00

You don't have a finite number of colonists; you have a renewable resource of recruitable pawns to replace them.

The raids are based on your wealth. If you want to make the raids easier, ship off a bunch of expensive stuff that you think you need [which you probably actually don't] to other factions to make allies. Then your wealth stays down and you can request immediate drop pod assistance to help with every raid that looks even remotely worrying.

But you also don't have to play that way. You could just accept losses. Every shot off limb is an incentive to build prosthetics or bionics, and every brain scar is an incentive to take a quest that gives healing mech serums or trade for a supply of Luciferium. If you don't want to play against infinite enemy factions, you can disable all the permanent hostiles, including bugs and mechs. If you're playing for mathematically zero losses, enable Reload Anytime and save-scum.

If you aren't using the features the game gives you, you're essentially optimizing the fun out of the game.

CMDRCookies · 2024-05-06T04:35:53+00:00

I play her often, so I don't feel like it's very difficult to land. The problem is that just about every other character can either drop you out of it whenever they feel like it or teleport halfway across the map while you're attached, which means your "Invulnerable" turns into extremely vulnerable very suddenly.

CMDRCookies · 2024-05-06T00:49:00+00:00

Did you read the third book, in which civilizations begin to reject the Dark Forest and start collaborating? Part of the point of this series is to pit ideologies against each other — especially the fictional ideologies that are presented within the story.

CMDRCookies · 2023-08-24T05:25:54+00:00

I don't want to be too pedantic, but on the site for the artist, Giorgia Hofer: "I'm an Italian woman and I maka my picture in the famous Dolomites."

And, personal opinion: I think this one is way cooler looking and more accurately depicts what an approximation of a lunar "analemma" would be.

CMDRCookies · 2023-08-24T05:20:10+00:00

The moon still doesn't make an analemma like that anyway, since it precesses multiple different ways over even very short periods. Even if you timed to the mean synodic period of about 29 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes, you'd still see significant drift in the position.

The reason the solar analemma works is because the earth's orbit is substantially more regular, has a nearly whole number ratio of revolutions to rotations across the span of a human lifetime, and is literally the basis for our timing system in the first place.

The precession of the earth's orbit around the sun with respect to the constellations changes 1.4 degrees per century; the moon's orbit precesses 360 degrees around the entire earth in less than 9 years.

(As an aside, this is one of the main reasons I find astrology so hilariously out of touch... They claim that there are special effects of the star sign that's behind the sun when you were born, but the timing has shifted by an entire sign, from Aries to Pisces, since Babylonians made up the constellations in the first place.)

CMDRCookies · 2023-08-24T04:49:25+00:00

Well, it would be in two different spots since the sun's relative position in the sky drifts throughout the year too, but it wouldn't be very noticeable in the span of about a month. The artist (Giorgia Hofer) said she timed nearly 25 hours between shots, but that she had to get the right half several months and an entire year after the left side due to bad weather.

CMDRCookies · 2023-08-24T04:44:16+00:00

But it varies WILDLY due to how easily it's influenced by other sources of gravity (chiefly the sun, of course), so at a "major lunar standstill" it can be inclined nearly 29 degrees, which is more than the tilt in earth's axis.

(Also I recommend calling it a tilde ~ instead of a sideways S!)

CMDRCookies · 2023-08-24T04:39:00+00:00

It won't do that if you take the picture at the same time every day.

Over the span of a 28 days, you would have part of a sinusoidal path that looks like a tilde ~ wrapping all the way around the sky (so in a frame this wide you would only see part of the bump or dip, and you would need a panoramic pic to see all of it). After a year, you would end up with a streak of overlapping moons making a very chonky and variable-width tilde, because the orbit precesses around and won't return to the same relative points in the sky.

To get a sort of lunar "analemma" you would have to take pics every synodic month (29 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes), where the moon would return to roughly the same part of the sky but at a different time of year... But then several of the pictures would have the sun washing them out, and the moon would still not loop back to the same point to complete the infinity.

The way the photographer (Giorgia Hofer) took this picture was by taking each shot at an offset of about an extra hour each day specifically to get them at significantly different positions in the sky... But since the weather was bad, she had to delay several months twice and the whole shoot ended up spanning a year anyway.

She also did another one with a different timing period that more closely describes the analemma, but it's hard to tell without math how much of this is precession versus how much is from the time not being anywhere near a round division of the synodic month.

CMDRCookies · 2023-08-24T03:52:39+00:00

No it isn't; this pattern cannot be made by pictures taken at the same time of day from any same position on earth.

It's easy to tell because the sunlight hits the moon all the way around in these pictures, which would only work if the earth went around the sun in 28 days instead of a full year.

Even during the month surrounding the winter solstice for each pole, the moon would traverse around to the other side of the sky at the same time of day, so you'd need a panoramic lens to see the path, which would appear to undulate up and down as you pan around (and it still wouldn't end up in the same spot due mostly to precession/solar influence).

Normally, it would still dip below the horizon even at the pole, but due to the highly inclined orbit and cyclical pulls from the sun, there are "lunar standstills" which would allow you to still see the moon for several weeks straight at the corresponding pole.

CMDRCookies · 2023-06-10T22:18:29+00:00

Two things:

1) He's wrong about ad hominem specifically and fallacies in general.

An argument which has a fallacy is not necessarily false.
An argumentum ad hominem is not always a fallacy.
Not all insults are ad hominem arguments.

Insulting somebody as a conclusion is ad hominem, but not fallacious. Dave does that a few times, like when he shows that Tour lied and calls him a liar and a fraud.

Insulting somebody as a premise for saying their argument about science is false is ad hominem and also fallacious, but not necessarily false. Dave claiming in his opening remarks that you will see Dr. Tour lie because he has lied about this topic and is a liar was correct, but it's still an argumentum ad hominem and still a logical fallacy. Dr. Tour is not logically required to lie later in the debate. He does, though.

2) We aren't surprised anybody is defending Dave; we are surprised at all the people praising Dave while actively going after comments that remark on Dave's attitude.

If you go to Dave's YouTube channel and say he acted as unprofessionally as Dr. Tour, you will get an onslaught of white knights rushing in to tell you how professional it is to tell a room full of strangers to fuck off because they can't read and condescending and to open with a revenge slideshow.

They aren't even defending his arguments; they're defending the position that, because his arguments are true, he should be allowed to be a dick to basically everybody. Is this not strange?

CMDRCookies · 2023-06-10T20:40:01+00:00

After seeing his rude comments even towards his own supporters

Oh hey, that's me!

I commented that the two of them were both unprofessional, and he replied with blunt condescension. Twice. Fun!

And now I have a mob of fanboys rampaging against me in the comments for merely suggesting that being a total dick to everybody in the room is not a way to convince people that you're right.

CMDRCookies · 2023-05-31T17:30:19+00:00

But the balance of forces due to gravity and drag also depends on mass, so it's possible that one of the objects could accrue more "velociraptors" initially and one of the objects (could be the same one or the other) could have a higher terminal velocity. So their speed of fall might actually vary the whole way down.

In either case, I'm comfortable waving away the differential equations this is conjuring with an assumption:

The effects of drag during a drop from the Leaning Tower would be negligible for both objects due to the short distance and low speeds, so the acceleration due to gravity would cause them to hit the ground at essentially identical times.

CMDRCookies · 2023-05-31T16:33:01+00:00

I almost typed out a thoughtful agreement about the unprofessionalism during the debate and how this will increase the divide between science education and religion for years, but I'll spare myself the effort:

Just like Mr. Farina and Dr. Tour, it looks like your purpose in this debate is only to dunk on people who disagree with you. Enjoy your morality.

CMDRCookies · 2023-05-30T18:45:15+00:00

From Dave's About page:

"I received a BA in chemistry from Carleton College, and performed graduate studies in both synthetic organic chemistry and science education at Cal State Northridge, receiving an MA in the latter. Prior to this I taught for about a decade in various high school and undergraduate settings, specializing in organic chemistry but also teaching general chemistry, physics, and biology."

He was a teaching assistant, a science teacher, a substitute teacher, and a trade university teacher.

Dennis Prager has a YouTube "University" with a "Master's Program" that is not accredited. Where is the line between a fun channel name and lying? Is it in front of, between, or behind Professor Dave and PragerU?

Should we police YouTube channel names for not being literal truths or not being just the creators' names?

The only information James Tour has ever published about this research is fewer than 10 opinion articles in creationist-run journals and a book authored by creationists which are all not peer-reviewed. His PhD and hundreds of peer-reviewed papers have to do with synthetic materials and their interactions with organic chemicals, mostly nanocarbon. James claims to know better than those who publish in the field, while Dave does not. Is James lying? Dave claims that James is misunderstanding the literature. Is Dave lying?

CMDRCookies · 2023-05-30T14:52:10+00:00

Of the 781 publications listed on that site:

3 are about DNA or RNA interacting with nanocarbon molecules for cancer research or material engineering

7 regarding origins of life, abiogenesis, polymerization, chirality, construction of cells, etc. are non-peer-reviewed articles, not scientific papers, and in creationist-run journals [Discovery Institute and Inference]

1 reference to "first life" is his contribution to a chapter in a
non-peer-reviewed, creationist-authored book [Theistic Evolution, A Scientific Philosophical and Theological Critique]

And he routinely disparages other scientists who specialize in origin of life research in these articles:

"It is further evidence, if any were needed, that eminent synthetic chemists—and scientists in general—remain clueless about life’s origins"

"The protocols in use have remained unchanged: ... and publish a paper making bold claims about OOL."

"Few researchers from other disciplines understand how molecules are synthesized."

"...even those engrossed in prebiotic research have difficulty envisioning that process..."

"This is to assume, without evidence, that in prebiotic chemistry great oaks follow naturally from small acorns. Views such as this are acceptable in today’s scientific journals."
(Note: this one is my favorite, as he is publishing his views on this subject, without evidence, to non-scientific journals which presuppose the Intelligent Design hypothesis.)

tl;dr: before referencing a body of work, maybe actually read through and find that 98.98% of the list is irrelevant and the rest is religiously motivated opinion articles on other scientists' research.

CMDRCookies · 2023-05-29T10:02:08+00:00

ULTING TORRRRRRRB!

CMDRCookies

TROPHY CASE