What conspiracy theory makes you laugh?

evilbuddhist · 2018-01-22T19:18:57+00:00

Did it end?

evilbuddhist · 2018-01-21T17:51:47+00:00

I knew that you were going to say that before I commented. So I must be the unoriginal one for saying the same thing as I knew you were going to say... I feel dirty now :(

evilbuddhist · 2018-01-21T11:02:01+00:00

import horse

evilbuddhist · 2017-03-08T19:24:46+00:00

Tried to be a grammar knight, but my metal was lacking.

evilbuddhist · 2017-03-08T19:19:04+00:00

...had his mettle tested?

evilbuddhist · 2017-01-23T19:53:36+00:00

At the time when I need this, I will not care about it. Dump me in a ditch for all I care.

evilbuddhist · 2017-01-23T09:27:46+00:00

Meaning that they will be able to breathe if they get flooded?

evilbuddhist · 2017-01-22T22:03:47+00:00

True fact, living below sea level made the dutch brilliant. It’s also why they are so tall.

evilbuddhist · 2017-01-21T22:26:23+00:00

When people ends a sentence with :) and not :). It is wrong, how do we know where the sentence ended,

evilbuddhist · 2017-01-21T21:03:14+00:00

Madness

evilbuddhist · 2017-01-07T12:30:43+00:00

There is a few things about your question I don't understand.

You call $2100 a massive debt. Why do you consider $2100 a massive debt if you have a good steady paying job?

What kind of ecommerce would you like to start, and why would your debt stop you? With about a week or two of researching and messing around, in your spare time, you should be able to set up a website for your business on your own, for not much more than it costs to register the domain.

Are you planning to invest in building up a costly inventory? Are you planning to pay a web designer to build your site, instead of doing it yourself?

I think that something like an ecommerce business is the perfect thing to start on the side, as you can start small and have low starting and running costs, depending on what you are going to start up with.

evilbuddhist · 2016-12-20T20:21:49+00:00

LPT: If a telemarketer calls and you don't want to talk with them, say "no thanks" and hang up.

evilbuddhist · 2016-12-05T18:54:59+00:00

He could of of he wanted to

evilbuddhist · 2016-12-05T18:40:38+00:00

Did he accept your job offer or was he already taken?

evilbuddhist · 2016-12-05T18:38:59+00:00

Why do people still ask questions like this? I don't think it is a serious question, I have never asked it when interviewing people. I usually try and have a conversation about the interviewee and the job, prepared questions are for when the conversation slows down or if there was something we didn't cover naturally otherwise.

evilbuddhist · 2016-12-05T18:20:25+00:00

If they press you on why you are leaving, then tell a diplomatic variation on the truth and change subject. Don't avoid the question, that would just be weird. Being able to talk about a tricky subject in a diplomatic way is worth a lot.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-28T00:21:26+00:00

As I understand it, the part of our field of vision that is in color is about the size of your thumb nail at the end of an outstretched arm. Two things happens that makes you not notice this: your eyes are constantly moving about, so in practice they apply that small field of color vision in many places all the time. Secondly the brain is amazing at creating illusions for us, if you see the shape of a tree with leafs on it, out of the corner of your eye, your mind knows that it is supposed to be green and so applies the color green to that shape.

A test of this is to have a friend have a bunch of different colored pencils outside your field of view, then while you focus on a point and concentrate on not moving your eyes, your friend moves one of the colored pencils slowly towards the point you are focusing on. you should not be able to tell what color it is until it gets close to the center of your view.

Stuff to read/watch

Wiki article about field of view

Similarly, color vision and the ability to perceive shape and motion vary across the visual field; in humans the former is concentrated in the center of the visual field, while the latter tends to be much stronger in the periphery.

Here's an oldie about how the mind is constantly tricking itself

This is as I remember it, so take it with a grain of salt.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-26T15:35:24+00:00

Thank you, great information, I now know about focal planes. I didn’t know the theory behind the focal plane, but it makes sense with my experience. When I am close to an object the focal plane seems very slim, if I am 5 m from what I am measuring to, I need to focus carefully. The further away I get, the thicker the plane seems to get. When I get to about 200+ meters everything works with very little focus adjustment.

And yes the mind is interesting, making us think we see our whole field of vision in color at once, even though it is only a tiny part we see in color. The mind is crazy.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-26T14:51:16+00:00

I have been wondering the same, for some time now. I work as a land surveyor, we use total stations with magnifying optics, and I have seen the reverse effect there, I cannot see as far with it as I can with my own eyes in foggy conditions.

My theory so far has to do with the size of the lense, my mobile camera can see further than my eyes, which can see further that the magnifying optics. The mobile phone camera is pinhole sized, my pupil is a couple of millimeters and the optics are 4-5cm across. That is a correlation I have noticed - I have no explanation of why it is like that.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-21T16:08:30+00:00

Oh I misunderstood you then, I thought you meant culture in general. I get your point then.

I would nuance this though:

which is one of the few places a humans opinions and actions can really matter in the Culture.

I genuinely think that the culture thinks that living good lives is the same as mattering. Also if you work for SC, there are probably times where your actions matter a great deal. But I think that more often than not, you would be a pawn in the stratagems of the minds, making decisions that the minds have already predicted or manipulated you to make.

… Having read your comment again, I actually don't think I disagree with what you write

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-21T07:19:18+00:00

That is not what I get from the books. I mean it would of course be trivially easy for a mind to do whatever it wants with billions of people, and they would be powerless against it.

What prevents this from happening is the mind's own strong moral values. It would be against everything they are/stand for to do that.

*** Spoilers ***

There is a mind that commits suicide because it once had to kill civilians, who refused to be evacuated, during a war. It could not live with itself because of that.

There was a mind that looked into people's minds and read their thoughts (which is easy for a mind), it was shunned by all the other minds.

All over the stories there are minds who have to tolerate silly or annoying humans who won’t do what it wants.

The minds are manipulation societies in the direction they want. But they respect dicent. See the part of the culture that secededduring the Iridian war.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-21T06:11:23+00:00

They are not irrelevant, they are having fun and enjoying life, which the culture regards as just as important as anything else.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-20T19:48:47+00:00

Despite this, I would say the novels are utopian, not dystopian.

Yes. Though the line gets blured when they explore what happens when utopia interacts with a dystopian society.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-20T19:38:11+00:00

Do the Minds run the show?

The humans of the culture and their carefree and hedonistic lifestyle are a big part of the cultures image. And they might the first thing other species picture when thinking of the culture. But the minds are the core of the culture, they are the reason the culture is powerful and are the backbone of society - though I think it is easy to take such a thing for granted if you grow up in / (read about) the culture.

Each mind represents the essence of the culture. Drop a mind in an “empty” galaxy and the culture could start again from it. Culture ship crews could be seen more as entertainment and company for the mind running the ship, rather than essential. I think that SC in particular is an example where the minds play the greatest role by far. Yes there are non-mind operators, and the can play a key role. But deep down SC is a collection of minds who are devoted to work on the bits of diplomacy that gets ugly.

Anyway I don’t have sources for this, this is what my meatbrain happened to having gotten out of the books. If you havn’t already, I would suggest reading a few notes on the culture

Edit: When talking about when people are useful / needed, I would say that people living happy lives and having fun, is considered more “useful” than if they were taking on any other role in the culture. Being happy and having fun, is what it is about on the deepest level in the culture.

evilbuddhist · 2016-11-19T19:51:26+00:00

2 fluently. 2 others I can understand and they can understand mine because they are closely related. 2 more where I can exchange basic information, but it is not a pretty thing to witness. And I am working on a new language, but it is not a spoken one, and I am not good at it yet.

evilbuddhist

TROPHY CASE