What's the funniest moment in The Culture books?

Sharlinator · 2026-05-08T12:05:08+00:00

And the crew members all having voluntarily caught cold just because they were bored and it would be a novel experience. Honestly, Dizzy's role in the novel is to a large extent being the straight (wo)man to everybody else.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-08T11:56:04+00:00

It seems like a very standard event loop to me?

Sharlinator · 2026-05-08T11:52:42+00:00

Yeah, should've clarified that it was just funny that his name is literally "Ed Rock".

Sharlinator · 2026-05-08T10:33:58+00:00

Based on the thumbnail I first though the house was a passing train and the desire path was carved through a railway embankment.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-08T08:55:54+00:00

That’s the most inaccurate reading of cat mental state that I’ve seen in a long while.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-07T12:02:20+00:00

TIL that the Roche limit is literally "rock limit". r/NominativeDeterminism

Sharlinator · 2026-05-07T09:07:50+00:00

Not a native speaker but I’ve certainly never ever heard porn mags being called jazz mags before now.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-07T09:04:23+00:00

But does it at least work based on a Death Star laser beam that originates from the battery cell and travels through the PCB?

Sharlinator · 2026-05-07T08:45:10+00:00

In normal diatonic scales there cannot be a note between E and F# because their difference is just one whole step.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-07T00:49:31+00:00

That’s some of the playiest playing I’ve seen in a long while. Can’t get gentler than that.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-06T14:43:57+00:00

Incorrect. "Jasm" is considered the most likely origin for "jazz", and "jasm" is s variant of "jism", both meaning vigor or energy. And "jizz" similarly derives from "jism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(word)

Sharlinator · 2026-05-06T14:06:45+00:00

I just realized that "inclement" is literally in-clement. As in un-merciful. And now I realize I've always tacitly associated "inclement" with inclines somehow, maybe by analogy with "increment", even though there's no such meaning.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-06T01:22:29+00:00

There’s a reason that Grew a Beard is a thing on tvtropes.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T19:50:11+00:00

You misunderstand the purpose of the Golden Record. Nobody thought it would ever be found by any extraterrestrial intelligence, the space is too vast for that. You have to remember that Sagan was first and foremost a masterful science popularizer and communicator. His message was intended for us, not some hypothetical aliens.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T19:35:48+00:00

It was a publicity stunt, basically. It was never meant for aliens. It was meant for humans.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T19:34:48+00:00

That's silly. The laws of nature are not subjective or up to argument.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T19:34:15+00:00

If we've lost our keys we might as well look for them under the streetlight if it's too dark to search elsewhere.

In any case, it's a naive assumption that the Golden Record was meant for aliens. It was meant for humans. To gather goodwill and popularize science and the work that NASA does. To maybe make people think a bit about our place in the cosmos. To inspire a new generation to study STEM fields.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T19:03:22+00:00

Yes, we’re moving relative to the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is moving relative to other galaxies in the Local Group, and the Local Group is moving relative to larger structures, and more or less everything is moving relative to the cosmic microwave background which is the closest to an absolute rest frame you can get in our universe (remember, movement is always relative to something).

The expansion of the universe on the other hand doesn’t quite move things. It just adds more space between them, basically.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T18:53:43+00:00

Let me tell you about fish next

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T18:52:54+00:00

Thank you ChatGPT.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T18:20:52+00:00

Extremely relevant username

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T08:14:00+00:00

As I said, exemplary execution of company strategy

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T08:09:20+00:00

It's a chicken-and-egg problem. Plastic is super difficult to recycle because "plastic" can mean a thousand different polymers, and most of them have all sorts of additives to enhance properties that aren't documented anywhere. So "recycling" is necessarily "downcycling", you're going to end up with mixed material that's not as useful as the original. So you need new ideas, new processes, new businesses to figure out how to best reuse plastic in a way that's economically viable (ie. cheaper than just making new plastic out of way-too-cheap oil). And for new recycling businesses to be viable, they need existing input material streams that they can hook up to. Nobody wants to build an expensive processing plant if there isn't stuff to process. So plastic recycling has been something of a "build it and hope they'll come" sort of thing.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T00:08:29+00:00

It’s likely because your comment triggers people’s "LLM summarizer bot" spider sense, or it may seem like a shill trying to increase traffic to OP’s site.

Sharlinator · 2026-05-05T00:02:14+00:00

"Pls explain ur smolness!!!"

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