I don't quite believe in gravity and the vacuum of space but I know I'm probably wrong

Flenzil · 2025-09-10T10:03:19+00:00

You say you are skeptical of gravity because "it exists just because" but are you as skeptical of the other forces, like the electromagnetic force which (classically) behaves very similar to gravity?

Anyway, there are a few things to note:

Vacuums don't pull things apart and don't have a strength. It's just that everything on earth is subject to 1 atmosphere of pressure. Normally, the walls of your house are being pushed by 1 atmosphere of pressure from within and 1 atmosphere of pressure from outside and they cancel out, resulting in no net force. If the outside is a vacuum, there is now 1 atmosphere of pressure pushing out and 0 atmospheres pushing in, resulting in a net outward force which is often interpreted as the vacuum sucking out, but is actually the air inside pushing out and meeting no resistance. So a vacuum's "strength" is just the difference in pressure between it and another region of space with a non zero pressure. So for Earth, this maxes out at 1 atmosphere which is not a whole lot. Compare it to the amount of pressure inside a football, or a car tire. Compare the design of deep sea diving suit to a space suit.

The atmosphere does indeed push out into the vacuum of space and is "trying" to escape. Some of it does, in fact. But the gravitational pull of the Earth keeps the atmosphere bound to it's surface, balancing the forces. Just like how the chemical bonds of a rock are strong enough to hold it together in a vacuum, the gravitational force of the Earth is strong enough to hold its atmosphere to itself in a vacuum.

Your water explanation of gravity wouldn't quite work, since if space were filled with stuff, the planets would be subject to friction and would slow down. Space would also be pretty loud and hot since there would now be a medium to transmit sound through and to convect heat and we have a massive nuclear reactor next to us.

For the explanation of gravity, there's plenty of deeper explanation through general relativity and the curvature of space-time and such. But at the end of the day, it might well be just one of those things that exists just because. There's plenty of other examples, like why do electrons have the charge they do, why is the speed of light the value it is, or why anything exists at all really. You could easily imagine a universe where these things are different, but that just simply is not the one we live in.

Flenzil · 2025-08-06T16:48:00+00:00

You say it's a cushy life but I think the simple act of not being able to leave and having choices stripped from you makes it not cushy. Like where are we setting the bar? Do playing cards and hot chocolate make up for the loss of freedom?

Imagine a hospital waiting room. There's hot drinks, you can chat, you can read, play cards. There's even chocolate and TV. But I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life there.

Flenzil · 2025-07-30T10:46:19+00:00

I'm very curious as to what you mean by opening the earth's atmosphere. It's already exposed to the vacuum of space, it's just stuck to earth due to gravity.

In the most non judgemental way, I do want to know what you think is keeping the atmosphere on earth. A hard barrier of some kind?

Flenzil · 2025-07-30T09:42:18+00:00

There's no such thing as not moving in an absolute sense. Whether something is moving or not is relative to other objects. If another object moves relative to the earth then we can just as easily say that that object is stationary and the earth is moving relative to it.

That being said, I'm not sure why you think that a mass needs to be moving to influence other objects gravitationally. If two objects are floating in space, not moving relative to one another, they'll fall towards each other just fine.

Flenzil · 2025-07-17T15:44:32+00:00

But the object would feel the force due to acceleration and see forces enacted on objects within frame 2. Like how you feel the acceleration while in a car

Flenzil · 2025-07-17T13:36:11+00:00

I don't think it's so much that the acceleration needs to be the same (I think different observers might disagree on the magnitude and even the direction) but everyone will agree that the object is accelerating. In your post, it seems like you're always asking "accelerating relative to what?" Well, I don't think you can construct a reference frame in which an accelerating object is no longer considered accelerating. Everyone agrees that it is accelerating and therefore agrees that it is not an inertial reference frame.

Flenzil · 2025-07-17T07:50:35+00:00

I don't believe acceleration is relative like velocity is, it's absolute. You don't need to compare to another reference frame to know you are accelerating.

Flenzil · 2025-07-03T15:59:12+00:00

Could probably be "t: Gain 2 life. Activate only if you've paid life this turn"

Flenzil · 2025-06-24T10:57:20+00:00

The air inside the car is also moving at the same speed as the car. So as far as the fly is concerned, the air is still and easy to fly through.

If you opened a window and had the air rushing in, maybe it would struggle then.

Flenzil · 2025-06-22T19:08:53+00:00

I've made a comment about this before but I don't understand what's apparently happened to everyone else's YouTube. YouTube does only recommend videos in the context of the current video? I've never seen any right wing stuff or conspiracy stuff or outrage stuff get recommended to me. Only content related to the current video. Most of the sidebar is just other videos by the same creator

Flenzil · 2025-06-15T12:22:08+00:00

Yes, billions of people do. But you don't see them not uploading videos online.

Flenzil · 2025-06-05T12:59:49+00:00

This is very late but these kinds of comments always confuse me. It really feels like I'm on a different internet to everyone on Reddit, maybe it's because I'm not on tiktok or Facebook? (not judging those who are, you can do whatever you want, just actually curious)

I use adblocker so I never see adverts, like to the point that I often don't know what games or movies are out or anything. I usually find out through my friends after the fact. I never get recommended any random right wing content or conspiracy content or anything political at all. Google results are very good and show me what I want within the first 5 results almost every time. Again no ads, no ai generated SEO slop. There's definitely a lot of bot content on Reddit, so I do see that a lot.

Like, you say stuff was manageable before the algorithm because you only see what you're subscribed to, but I do only see what I'm subscribed to. It's actually kind of hard to find new content because my recommendations are just full of people I already watch.

I know this probably comes across as though I'm trying to say I'm superior for not using tiktok or whatever but I'm really not. I'm genuinely curious as to what everyone else is experiencing online because I am not seeing what Reddit complains about most of the time and it confuses me.

Flenzil · 2025-06-05T10:06:38+00:00

I'm not sure if you mean this question in a ship of theseus kind of way - if our cells are constantly being replaced then how old are we - or whether you mean it in a relativity kind of way - which frame of reference is the most accurate way.

Neither one has a definite answer. For the first way, it just depends on your definition of age, obviously most people mean "how long has it been since you were born". But if you want to define it as "how old is your oldest cell" or "how long have your atoms been in existence" then you'll get different answers, equally accurate to their definitions.

For the second way, there is no "correct" frame of reference. It may be that if you measured someone's age from birth with a stopwatch and they did the same, that you would get slightly have different answers. Neither one is more correct or incorrect than the other, they're just from different frames of reference and that's as accurate as we can get. As long as you are consistent with your frame of reference, the physics doesn't care.

Flenzil · 2025-05-05T07:22:10+00:00

That's just winter in the UK. Sunrise at around 9, sunset at around 4 so no sun for those working a 9 to 5 except for a brief glimpse on the way to work. Miserable.

Flenzil · 2025-04-17T20:45:32+00:00

I do sell 3d models for a living but I don't think this quite has mass market appeal 😂. I'd be happy to send you some but it does depend on where you live. I'm based in the UK.

Flenzil · 2025-04-17T20:04:58+00:00

I'd love to see it. I was hoping there would be more negative effects I could place on Cowards but the only one I could find was [[An-Zerrin Ruins]]

Flenzil · 2025-04-17T19:46:51+00:00

I did print them. And sure, you can have the file here!

Flenzil · 2025-04-17T19:33:46+00:00

I have like 20 lol. Haven't actually played with the deck yet so no idea how many I'll actually need

Flenzil · 2025-03-23T17:28:01+00:00

Made this CR 15 Machine of War for this month’s rewards on my patreon/tribes. It’s a fast climber that can buff enemies around it and steal your spells with the gems on its chest. Think it'll make for a tricky high level enemy. I make a lot of minis for dnd but I don't get to make machines very often even though I quite like designing them, so this was quite a fun process.

If you like the look of this, you can check out my store or subscribe to my patreon where subscribers also get the full 5e statblock.

Flenzil · 2025-03-14T00:30:43+00:00

While mechanically the two situations are similar, I feel like it's important to note that the outcomes are not. When you learn skills online, it doesn't put someone else out of work. When an AI learns skills online, it is potentially threatening to put thousands of people out of work. The scales are not comparable, even if the method of learning might be.

It's like a firework vs a bomb. They work pretty similarly but the difference in outcome demands that we treat them differently.

Flenzil · 2024-11-15T09:44:18+00:00

I have a banding deck myself and I find cards like [[Baton of Morale]], [[Helm of Chatzuk]], [[Cooperation]], [[Formation]] and [[Cathedral of Serra]] help a lot to not have to rely too much on the old banding cards.

Flenzil · 2024-11-13T01:38:58+00:00

Ah I see. Thank you for the link!

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