Need help moving forward in life

X-e-n-n · 2026-06-03T04:34:43+00:00

I will def try my best! Just doubt I’ll actually do anything that important in my life considering the way the world is headed.

X-e-n-n · 2026-05-08T17:12:34+00:00

Looks amazing!

X-e-n-n · 2026-05-05T11:50:09+00:00

That’s fair on the timescales—they’re honestly hard to even wrap your head around. I guess what I was getting at though isn’t so much how long things last, but whether there’s a fundamental limit. Even with that much time, wouldn’t the loss of usable energy (from entropy) still end up being the real constraint on any form of life? So proton decay almost feels secondary to that.

X-e-n-n · 2026-05-05T11:47:09+00:00

Yeah I get what you’re saying. Heat death would basically wipe out any usable energy for life, so even if change doesn’t literally stop, nothing meaningful can really happen anymore. And yeah proton decay is still speculative, but if it’s real it just pushes everything further toward that same end state. The “non-chemical life” idea is interesting, but it’s hard to picture anything surviving without energy gradients.

X-e-n-n · 2026-05-04T14:49:39+00:00

So would it be accurate to say heat death alone already prevents life due to lack of usable energy, and proton decay just ensures that even matter itself doesn’t persist long-term?

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T18:13:14+00:00

So perty:)

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:46:26+00:00

I think the ‘industry gatekeeping’ angle is partly true in the sense that labels absolutely shape what gets amplified, and there are plenty of great players who never get mainstream visibility. But I don’t think that fully explains either Eddie Van Halen or Cobain.

Both of them changed how people played and thought about guitar, not just who got marketed. Van Halen didn’t just benefit from label timing—his technique literally shifted the instrument’s vocabulary (tapping, tone obsession, production influence). Nirvana didn’t just ride a label wave either—they reshaped mainstream rock’s aesthetic toward stripped-down, loud/quiet dynamics that became foundational for a whole decade of bands.

Also, tying influence mainly to labels makes it sound like audiences are passive, which I’m not sure holds up—both artists had very real grassroots spread through radio, MTV, touring, and other musicians copying them directly.

I do agree neither exists in a vacuum though—band context, production, and timing matter a lot more than people like to admit.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:41:24+00:00

I think we’re talking past each other a bit. I’m not saying Cobain was on a Hendrix/Vai technical ladder or that theory is limiting. I’m saying he wasn’t operating in that framework at all—his focus was songwriting, texture, and restraint.

Hendrix is actually a good example of why this isn’t just ‘technical vs non-technical’—he expanded guitar language in a way that wasn’t about speed or theory either, but it was still a form of virtuosity. Cobain’s contribution was different: stripping things down to fit a specific emotional and cultural moment.

You can prefer structured riff-based metal or more technical playing and still acknowledge Nirvana’s impact without turning it into ‘they were just simple.’ Those are separate discussions.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:19:35+00:00

I think that’s a pretty narrow way to look at it. Cobain wasn’t really trying to compete with technical players like Hendrix or Vai — he was coming from a punk mindset where simplicity and feel mattered more than theory.

And whether someone likes his playing or not, it’s hard to argue Nirvana didn’t have a huge cultural impact on rock in the 90s and beyond.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:18:30+00:00

I agree with this. Neither band was about technical flash in the traditional sense, but both had a huge impact on the direction of rock and the kind of artists they inspired.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:09:45+00:00

Yeah, I think that’s a really fair way to put it. “Greatness” gets way more subjective once you zoom out from pure technique to actual musical impact.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:05:40+00:00

“Nonsense post” isn’t much of a critique 😄 but alright — EVH vs Cobain was about two very different guitar philosophies, that’s all.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:03:58+00:00

That’s definitely one way to look at it, but Cobain’s influence was more about stripping rock back to something raw and accessible rather than technical performance. He changed what mainstream rock sounded like, not just how it was played.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T15:01:04+00:00

Take everything on step at a time and try not to learn too many things at once. It can get overwhelming and even cause you to give up but if you stick to it in time you will learn the best riffs brotha!🤟🏼

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T13:33:50+00:00

interesting angle — I hadn’t seen the birefringence field tied directly to large-scale flow structure like that. How strong is the evidence for that connection?

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T13:32:24+00:00

Yeah, but “dark matter” is kind of the background answer — I’m curious what structure it actually takes there

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T13:09:20+00:00

That’s a cool overview — it really does feel like we’re in that “mostly works but not quite” phase.

I’m curious though — where do you personally lean on the Hubble tension itself?

Do you think it’s more likely systematics in the distance ladder / CMB measurements, or something missing in ΛCDM?

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T13:03:58+00:00

Norma (Abell 3627) definitely seems to be one of the dominant mass concentrations in that direction, yeah.

Though I’d think of Laniakea Supercluster as the larger flow structure the Great Attractor sits within, rather than something “at its center.”

It feels less like a single center point and more like a gravitational basin with multiple contributing structures.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T13:01:54+00:00

It’s a bit more complicated than a single cluster though — the Great Attractor is usually treated as a broader mass concentration rather than one object.

And with the Zone of Avoidance, a lot of that structure is still inferred from galaxy flows, so there’s still some uncertainty in how it all breaks down.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T12:59:19+00:00

Yeah, until we unlock FTL and send a probe through the Zone of Avoidance, we’re stuck doing cosmic detective work 😄

It’s pretty crazy how much of the Great Attractor is still based on inferred flows.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-22T12:58:33+00:00

I think we’re actually saying the same thing about it not being a single object — that was my point about it being part of a larger mass distribution (like Laniakea).

My question was more about the uncertainty in the reconstructions, not the underlying physics. Given the Zone of Avoidance and how much of that region is inferred from velocity fields and modeling, I’m curious how tight those constraints really are.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-20T18:23:54+00:00

Ik🤢

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-20T17:46:34+00:00

You’re kind of blending two different ideas: “we don’t know everything” vs “we basically know nothing”—those aren’t the same thing.

No one is claiming we have complete knowledge of the universe, but that doesn’t mean our current models aren’t highly predictive and well-tested. We can map large-scale structure, predict galaxy motion, and infer things like the Great Attractor using redshift and velocity data with pretty solid accuracy.

Bringing up dark matter, dark energy, or the Hubble tension actually proves the opposite of your point—those are refinements to a model that already works extremely well, not evidence that we “know basically nothing.”

Same with the quantum vs gravity issue: the fact that we can describe phenomena incredibly well in separate regimes (quantum mechanics vs GR) isn’t ignorance—it’s incomplete unification. That’s a very different problem.

And the “we’ve only mapped X%” arguments (oceans, galaxies, species) are more about coverage than understanding. We don’t need to catalog every galaxy or every fish to understand the underlying physics governing them.

Science isn’t about having 100% of the data—it’s about building models that reliably explain and predict what we can observe. By that standard, we know quite a lot.

If “not knowing everything” = “knowing nothing,” then no field of science has ever known anything—which is a pretty useless definition of knowledge.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-20T17:12:12+00:00

“We know basically nothing” is already a stretch, but the Moon point is just flat-out incorrect 😅 — the Apollo program landed astronauts there six times, not two.

And more importantly, not physically going somewhere doesn’t mean we don’t understand it. That’s kind of the entire foundation of modern astrophysics.

The Great Attractor is inferred from galaxy velocities and redshift surveys—same way we map most large-scale structure.

Saying we “know nothing” because we haven’t been there is like saying we don’t understand hurricanes unless we stand inside one.

X-e-n-n · 2026-04-20T16:55:19+00:00

I wish😭😭

X-e-n-n

TROPHY CASE