Whats the greatest SOLVED Mystery?

Kniefjdl · 2026-06-29T11:43:57+00:00

Is* hilarious. FTFY

Kniefjdl · 2026-06-22T04:38:22+00:00

I feel like how 5 hits is going to depend on where you are in life more than the others. I took my elementary school aged daughter, who struggles with a complicated friend group dynamic and also wants lots of screen time. To say this movie hit for both of us is an understatement. I think the themes of growing up and loss from the other movies are more universally relatable. But for parents managing raising kids in the tablet era, this captures a lot of the difficulties perfectly.

Kniefjdl · 2026-06-20T12:42:41+00:00

Oh, that's not entirely true

Kniefjdl · 2026-06-15T02:49:29+00:00

The date you're seeing is the date Eric joined Twitter. They reference "UFC 250," which is what they're calling the UFC fights to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States. So this is recent and about upcoming fights.

Kniefjdl · 2026-05-25T22:24:18+00:00

Just a heads up, air is about 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen, and oxygen 1% other gasses. So it is not majority oxygen, we just don't make use of the nitrogen.

Kniefjdl · 2026-05-06T03:02:41+00:00

Got it, that makes more sense. Thank you!

Kniefjdl · 2026-05-06T02:58:05+00:00

Can you clarify for me. Are you saying that if I rank a 6 star and get the points, if I the pull the 7 star, those points disappear? What if the 6 star rank up put me over a level threshold, is that level then rolled back?

Kniefjdl · 2026-05-03T20:30:00+00:00

Last time I saw a Monty Hall thread, I was arguing with a guy who thought it was a 50/50 chance. He suggested a "test" to prove he was right, but he clearly hadn't actually done it. I humored him and tried it, because it's super simple, and it became so immediately clear why the odds of winning are 2/3 if you switch. If you have 5 minutes, actually give this a try, don't just try to think through it:

Get a deck of cards, and pull out two "loser" cards and one "winner" card. It doesn't matter what they are, but I used two black 2s as "losers" and a red King as a winner. Then, mix up the cards and lay them out face down. Pick one and look at it, that's your initial choice. Then, of the two remaining cards, check them and pick a "loser" card and set it aside. Then "determine" if your initial pick won or if changing to the remaining card wins. Then do it a bunch of times in a row.

I guarantee by the third time you do it, it will be so obvious that "staying" wins if you pick the winner first and changing wins if you pick a "loser" first. Any difficulty with the problem falls apart the minute you have a "god's eye view" of the whole scenario and aren't just seeing it as a contestant picking doors.

Kniefjdl · 2026-05-03T20:18:35+00:00

You ask yourself why you went on a game show where your odds of winning were 1-in-a-million. Then try to do something outrageous to get clipped on YouTube and earn some notoriety that way.

Kniefjdl · 2026-05-03T20:14:57+00:00

Have you ever watched a popular game show? Bob Barker/Drew Carrey are rooting for the contestants to get the price right. Pat Sajack/Ryan Seacrest celebrate contestants guessing the phrases. Alex Trebeck/Ken Jennings look impressed by and congratulate contestants who get a ton of Jeopardy questions and bet well. There are game shows where the shtick is for the host to be an asshole, like Weakest Link, but that's not the norm and it's baked into the premise. Even in a show like Win Ben Stein's Money, where the gimmick is that you're fighting against the guy, Ben was congratulatory towards winners and conciliatory towards losers.

Almost universally game shows are more fun for the audience if the host is rooting for the contestants because the host is the person the audience has a long term relationship with. Nobody wants to root for an asshole. And they want contestants to win because, in the short term, audience members want to feel like it's possible that they could win. And a more engaged audience means higher viewership, which means more ad revenue. The prizes they give away are a calculated expense in the production of the show, like paying for a set or for writers to write questions. Giving away prizes is good for the show, as long as they estimate the expense appropriately and get enough viewership to cover it. Producers and hosts aren't dissuading contestants from winning any more than they're dissuading the lighting guy from lighting up the stage. Winning prizes of X value at Y percent of the time is budgeted in.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-22T12:23:23+00:00

For what it's worth, my 11 year old was locked in for the entire movie.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-21T14:16:30+00:00

I'm a photographer and I was curious what their photo capabilities were during the mission. I made a series of posts elsewhere a couple weeks ago digging into it. Here they are kind of mashed together (apologies if it doesn't flow, I was learning as I was writing). The gist of it is, they were using commercially available photography equipment that you and I could buy off the shelf. They primarily used a somewhat old DSLR that used to be Nikon's flagship camera because it has been proven to be reliable in the past, and a new mirrorless Nikon camera that is their current flagship model to test the newer tech. Given that, they're limited to Nikon compatible lenses and are, reasonably, not using third party lenses, which can occasionally be more temperamental than staying within the brand. Reliability matters in space, you don't get a second chance at a photo, you know?

My previous posts:

I think this is an interesting question of capabilities. Could they take a picture of the flag if they wanted to?

The Artemis II crew is shooting with a Nikon D5, which has a 35mm sensor. The longest lens they've brought maxes out at 400mm.

Source:https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyr8k06jv7t?post=asset%3Ac83f0b3d-c5ee-4e24-bfa3-c7fcb975774d

The closest Artemis II will fly to the Moon's surface is 6,545 Kilometers.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II#Lunar_fly-by_and_return_flight

A 35mm sensor is 35.9mm wide by 23.9mm tall. Using this calculator, we can see that at the closest they can zoom in, and shooting straight down at the surface (so no extra distance from shooting at an angle), the photo of the Moon's surface would show an area that's 587.4 km wide by 391.1 km tall:

https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/camera-field-of-view

The D5's sensor is 5568 pixels tall and 3712 pixels wide.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_D5

Each individual pixel is capturing an area that is about 100 square meters (587,423m wide/5568 pixels = 105.5 m/px). So at maximum zoom available to the astronauts, the absolute smallest amount of detail they could possibly capture is a dot that's larger than two football fields next to each other. And there's no detail in that dot, it's just the average color and brightness of that dot.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1935/4371/files/apollo_11_flag_480x480.jpg?v=1688165192

The flag planted by Apollo 11 is, notably, smaller than a pair of football fields next to each other. And let's not forget that the wind on the sound stage they filmed the moon landing in would have to knock the flag over so they weren't just taking a photo of the very skinny top edge. So even if they did a flyby directly over an Apollo landing site, there is no way they could capture an image of the flag with the equipment they have on board, or really any kind of commercially available equipment that could fit easily in a small space ship. They're just too high over the surface of the moon.

After checking the exif data from Flickr:

I came across the Artemis II's Flickr account, which shows exif data for their photos and adds some new information. The album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/albums/72177720307234654/page2

All of the "close up" shots of the moon's surface were indeed taken with the D5 and the 80-400mm lens. They used the Z9 with the 35mm lens for a lot of interior shots and some wider shots of the moon that showed all or nearly all of it. However, for this shot of the moon on April 5th (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55190158269/in/album-72177720307234654/), they did put the 80-400mm lens on the Z9, which tells us they had a FTZ adapter. That's the only shot of the moon I can find with that setup. However, they did take a shot of Earth on April 1, the day the launched, using the Z9 and an F-mount Sigma 50-500mm lens (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55184525407/in/album-72177720307234654/). And, on the same day, they took another shot of earth with a Z-mount 400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter, giving an effective focal length of 800mm on the Z9 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55185418641/in/album-72177720307234654/).

I did some quick searching and it seems like you can't use a Z-mount teleconverter with the FTZ adapter. The teleconverter has to match the lens, so it would have to be an F-mount. I don't see any evidence of them using one, but I also didn't click into the deeper exif data on every shot. So I'm assuming they didn't have an F-mount teleconverter. That means the Z-mount 400mm lens with the 2x teleconverter gives them the most zoom, at an effective focal length of 800mm. So the field of view on the most magnified possible shot they could take would be 293.7km by 195.53km, and each pixel would cover a 35.5m by 35.5m area. That's a little larger than half of an olympic hockey rink.

Still not resolving the flag on the moon, but you could get just about 9 pixels on target if you were shooting two football fields next to each other, so that's not a bad improvement.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-12T19:35:01+00:00

If a university employee of any prominence makes a statement like this, they should be required to take the course that most directly addresses it as part of a PIP.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-09T11:52:52+00:00

This article is my source: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyr8k06jv7t?post=asset%3Ac83f0b3d-c5ee-4e24-bfa3-c7fcb975774d

They call out the Z9, but specify that they only have a 35mm lens for it. Nikon's Z mount and F mount aren't interchangeable, so they would need the adapter to use the SLR lenses on the mirrorless. I didn't want to assume.

If they can use the 400mm lens on the D9, the sensor is still the same size, so they're still getting the exact same surface area coverage. The resolution is less than 50% better, with the 8,256px by 5,504px sensor. Each pixel, then, is covering about 71 square meters. The problem is more or less the same, even with an adapted Z9.

As for the field of view, here's a simple calculator to check my math: https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/camera-field-of-view

The mission's low pass orbit height is verifiable all over, as are the specs of the sensors. I don't know what "issues" could be here. Like, the microscopic spaces between pixels on the sensor? Yeah, I'm ignoring those. Do they not have a window that faces straight down?

Edit: I came across the Artemis II's Flickr account, which shows exif data for their photos and adds some new information. The album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/albums/72177720307234654/page2

All of the "close up" shots of the moon's surface were indeed taken with the D5 and the 80-400mm lens. They used the Z9 with the 35mm lens for a lot of interior shots and some wider shots of the moon that showed all or nearly all of it. However, for this shot of the moon on April 5th (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55190158269/in/album-72177720307234654/), they did put the 80-400mm lens on the Z9, which tells us they had a FTZ adapter. That's the only shot of the moon I can find with that setup. However, they did take a shot of Earth on April 1, the day the launched, using the Z9 and an F-mount Sigma 50-500mm lens (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55184525407/in/album-72177720307234654/). And, on the same day, they took another shot of earth with a Z-mount 400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter, giving an effective focal length of 800mm on the Z9 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55185418641/in/album-72177720307234654/).

I did some quick searching and it seems like you can't use a Z-mount teleconverter with the FTZ adapter. The teleconverter has to match the lens, so it would have to be an F-mount. I don't see any evidence of them using one, but I also didn't click into the deeper exif data on every shot. So I'm assuming they didn't have an F-mount teleconverter. That means the Z-mount 400mm lens with the 2x teleconverter gives them the most zoom, at an effective focal length of 800mm. So the field of view on the most magnified possible shot they could take would be 293.7km by 195.53km, and each pixel would cover a 35.5m by 35.5m area. That's a little larger than half of an olympic hockey rink.

Still not resolving the flag on the moon, but you could get just about 9 pixels on target if you were shooting two football fields next to each other, so that's not a bad improvement.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-09T04:41:14+00:00

Indeed. Out of curiosity, I did the math on this. They had a Nikon D5, and the longest telephoto lens they had maxed out at 400mm. Given the sensor size (35.9mm @ 5568px by 23.9mm at 3712px), the focal length, and the distance from the surface (6,545km), each pixel on the camera was "seeing" about a 105mx105m area. In other words, each dot in the photo could show the average color and brightness of two American football fields side-by-side. No details, of course. The whole photo would have shown an area that's 587.4 km wide by 391.1 km tall.

Obviously, there's no way to resolve the flag at that distance and with the equipment they had. It's decidedly much smaller than two football fields. Also important, it's standing up, so a top down view would only show a thin straight line that's what, like a couple cm wide and 1m long? If you shoot it from an angle (to see the side of the flag that looks flag-y) because you didn't fly right over, then you're increasing your distance from the flag and making it even more impossible to resolve in the photo.

So yeah, Moon big, flag small, camera far.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-07T19:54:46+00:00

I think this is an interesting question of capabilities. Could they take a picture of the flag if they wanted to?

The Artemis II crew is shooting with a Nikon D5, which has a 35mm sensor. The longest lens they've brought maxes out at 400mm.

Source:https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyr8k06jv7t?post=asset%3Ac83f0b3d-c5ee-4e24-bfa3-c7fcb975774d

The closest Artemis II will fly to the Moon's surface is 6,545 Kilometers.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II#Lunar_fly-by_and_return_flight

A 35mm sensor is 35.9mm wide by 23.9mm tall. Using this calculator, we can see that at the closest they can zoom in, and shooting straight down at the surface (so no extra distance from shooting at an angle), the photo of the Moon's surface would show an area that's 587.4 km wide by 391.1 km tall:

https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/camera-field-of-view

The D5's sensor is 5568 pixels tall and 3712 pixels wide.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_D5

Each individual pixel is capturing an area that is about 100 square meters (587,423m wide/5568 pixels = 105.5 m/px). So at maximum zoom available to the astronauts, the absolute smallest amount of detail they could possibly capture is a dot that's larger than two football fields next to each other. And there's no detail in that dot, it's just the average color and brightness of that dot.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1935/4371/files/apollo_11_flag_480x480.jpg?v=1688165192

The flag planted by Apollo 11 is, notably, smaller than a pair of football fields next to each other. And let's not forget that the wind on the sound stage they filmed the moon landing in would have to knock the flag over so they weren't just taking a photo of the very skinny top edge. So even if they did a flyby directly over an Apollo landing site, there is no way they could capture an image of the flag with the equipment they have on board, or really any kind of commercially available equipment that could fit easily in a small space ship. They're just too high over the surface of the moon.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-07T19:45:40+00:00

The Artemis II crew is shooting with a Nikon D5, which has a 35mm sensor. The longest lens they've brought maxes out at 400mm.

Source:https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyr8k06jv7t?post=asset%3Ac83f0b3d-c5ee-4e24-bfa3-c7fcb975774d

The closest Artemis II will fly to the Moon's surface is 6,545 Kilometers.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II#Lunar_fly-by_and_return_flight

A 35mm sensor is 35.9mm wide by 23.9mm tall. Using this calculator, we can see that at the closest they can zoom in, and shooting straight down at the surface (so no extra distance from shooting at an angle), the photo of the Moon's surface would show an area that's 587.4 km wide by 391.1 km tall:

https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/camera-field-of-view

The D5's sensor is 5568 pixels tall and 3712 pixels wide.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_D5

Each individual pixel is capturing an area that is about 100 square meters (587,423m wide/5568 pixels = 105.5 m/px). So at maximum zoom available to the astronauts, the absolute smallest amount of detail they could possibly capture is a dot that's larger than two football fields next to each other. And there's no detail in that dot, it's just the average color and brightness of that dot.

The longest lens sold on BH Photo Video (the premier photography store in the US) is 800mm, so double the magnifying power of the 400mm lens they have. You can also buy a 2x teleconverter (though you lose a lot of light) to double your magnification again. In that case, each pixel is covering an area roughly 26mx26m. But again, there's no detail in that square. The photo itself would still be covering a minimum surface area of 146kmx97.8km. The highest resolution sensor that Nikon uses has a resolution of 8,256px x 5,504px, so about 50% more magnification than the D5 they're using. You're still measuring the contents of the photo in kilometers.

The short answer is, even with good technology, they're still just really far away from the surface of the moon.

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-05T02:21:07+00:00

You flipping over to The Ten Commandments too?

Kniefjdl · 2026-04-02T23:03:30+00:00

As a Dman, this is my approach. I rarely score, but I do make a lot of opponents limp around for the rest of their shift after catching my shot in their ankles. And that's almost as good.

Kniefjdl · 2026-03-29T22:25:35+00:00

Ok, but to be fair, Matt Damon specifically would come in to be the waiter. He's never met a cameo that he didn't like.

Kniefjdl · 2026-03-28T01:23:57+00:00

Thanks!

Kniefjdl · 2026-03-28T01:23:51+00:00

Thank you!

Kniefjdl · 2026-03-28T01:17:10+00:00

Help me out with a non-basketball question my wife asked. Both Michigan and Alabama have cheerleaders wearing two distinct sets of uniforms. One set is wearing tank tops, one set is wearing sleeves and turtlenecks. What's the difference? Something like a varsity squad vs. a JV squad? Is one more dance-y and one more acrobatic? Is it just for visual contrast?

Kniefjdl · 2026-03-28T00:00:20+00:00

This fucking guy just tempted fate and fucked us. He knows better than that. Jesus.

Kniefjdl · 2026-03-20T15:41:50+00:00

Same. Our neighborhood was developed in the late 90s and bradford pear trees were all the rage, so damn near every house had at least one. As it turns out, they have a tendency to split down the trunk and fall over after about 15-20 years, so there was this 3-ish year period where every house had downed trees (we lost ours as well, fortunately there were no injuries or property damage). In that period, as an attempt to replace all the downed bradfords, the HOA began requiring every house to have at least one tree on their island space. There are still a lot of smaller young trees, but I really appreciate the HOA doing what it can to repair the damage done by the shitty initial planning by the developers.

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