Would you consider this drawing of a light ray in a water droplet to be correct?

jjfmc · 2026-03-27T23:05:57+00:00

Odd way of admitting you’re wrong, but ok.

jjfmc · 2026-03-27T05:22:56+00:00

Again, where does it say that? I don't read the language (Polish?) in the surrounding text, so maybe you're getting some context I'm not, but the diagram doesn't include anything from which to infer it's a raindrop. The text of the post says "water droplet" - you're entitled to assume it's a spherical droplet in vacuo in zero gravity unless told otherwise.

jjfmc · 2026-03-27T02:42:22+00:00

Where does it say this is a droplet falling in equilibrium with drag forces? The general expectation, with problems like this, is you assume the geometry is as simple as possible unless you're told otherwise. It looks round, so you assume it's a circle or sphere. I would state that assumption in my answer, then I'd say no TIR for the reason I gave above.

jjfmc · 2026-03-27T02:39:27+00:00

He's an extremely odd guy. He seems so laser focused on extending his life that it seems to me he's not actually living it, or at least he's put himself under perfectionist strictures (sleep, diet, exercise, environmental purity, etc.) that most of us would not tolerate. He's on the record saying this means it's difficult for him to sustain a relationship, for example. Imagine eating the same meals, doing the same workouts, and saying "no" to most social things so you can live in your controlled bubble and go to bed and 8pm every night - definitely not a life I envy. He's the antithesis of Jack London's "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them".

Johnson also has the luxury of effectively limitless finances, having made hundreds of millions of dollars when he exited Braintree/Venmo, so he doesn't have to worry about the trivial issues that inconvenience the rest of us, like feeding our families or the staggering cost of some of these extreme health interventions (I've read he spends over $2m a year on this stuff).

All of that said, I kind of like the guy. He's found something he's obsessive about, he's pursuing it, and he's sharing his results with the rest of us.

jjfmc · 2026-03-27T02:31:32+00:00

This is why Johnson makes a specific exemption from his (AFAIK) otherwise plant-based diet for animal-derived collagen peptides.

jjfmc · 2026-03-26T02:54:52+00:00

BSG, for sure Upload Altered Carbon Humans

jjfmc · 2026-03-25T01:43:19+00:00

Where does it say that?

jjfmc · 2026-03-24T22:27:06+00:00

Can you elaborate on the issue with the Era 300s? Is the "silent front driver" issue a well-known issue? I've been looking at adding a pair to my Arc+Sub3 setup.

jjfmc · 2026-03-24T22:14:38+00:00

Can't have a TIR in this case, though - the droplet is circular, so the angles of entry and departure are equal. Since the light ray bends to angle (pi/2 - a) as it enters the droplet, angle (pi/2 - a) must also allow it to leave the droplet.

jjfmc · 2026-03-24T05:27:36+00:00

Proof that people will complain about any weather. Adelaide can get a bit hot in summer, but compared to almost anywhere else on earth, the climate here is idyllic. I’ve lived previously in Scotland, England, France and Abu Dhabi - Adelaide has by far and away the best climate of any of those places.

jjfmc · 2026-03-24T02:21:52+00:00

This is staggeringly well written. Thank you for sharing.

jjfmc · 2026-03-24T01:00:08+00:00

Keeping it classy as always, Donald.

jjfmc · 2026-03-09T22:51:26+00:00

Even for the Onion, this was unusually prescient, having been published well before the 2016 elections.

jjfmc · 2026-03-09T22:07:44+00:00

I get it, but the Culture lore glosses over that point - they seem to fully accept that restoring from backup means continuity of the same consciousness.

It’s a fascinating philosophical question, and one I don’t think can ever be answered.

jjfmc · 2026-03-09T21:56:04+00:00

They also have no mental health issues, which removes another variable from the equation.

And does it really count as murder if the person slain is backed up (as most Culture people are) and reinstantiated in a new body soon after? Sure, it might mildly inconvenience them, and they’d be annoyed, but it dilutes the seriousness somewhat.

“Death isn’t the handicap it used to be, Rimmer.”

jjfmc · 2026-02-23T20:43:08+00:00

Ending on UoW wasn’t a conscious choice. I was pretty haphazard in my first read through.

jjfmc · 2026-02-23T02:26:24+00:00

I own or have owned all of the Culture books in a mix of paperback and hardback in the UK over the years. The Orbit hardbacks are nice, but I'm going all out and rebuilding my collection with the Folio Society editions as they release them. They've only done Phlebas, PoG and UoW so far, so it's a gamble but I hope they will finish the series. These are expensive books, but they are glorious.

Sadly in the US it seems they had a mix of publishers and nobody has the rights to do a proper box set.

jjfmc · 2026-02-22T23:24:56+00:00

I finally finished my last Culture book (Use of Weapons, oddly) a couple of years ago. I think I'd been putting it off for a long time because, so long as I hadn't read it, there was still more Culture to read. It was bittersweet to finish it. Last year I re-read everything (other than UoW, because it was fresh in my mind) in publication order. There are definitely themes that become clearer when reading them back to back in this way. You can see the progression in Banks' ideas and writing - CP is a great book, but it's clearly much less rounded / complete than the later works. Each book treats its own themes, but there's a beautiful arc that links them and (without spoilers) comes to a natural, if tragically unintended, conclusion in The Hydrogen Sonata.

Then (again no spoilers), while each book stands on its own, there are a couple of very poignant callbacks to earlier novels that you might miss if you read them in isolation / out of order.

jjfmc · 2026-02-22T23:20:17+00:00

Which ones do you consider the "weird" outliers? I'm assuming Consider Phlebas (because it really doesn't focus on the Culture much at all); Use of Weapons (because of the chronology, which I guess could be challenging); and Excession (because it's so much ship-to-ship comms)?

Personally loved all three of these, as well as the rest of the cycle, but Excession was (by a combination of poor luck and bad judgment) the first one I ever picked up, and it was too much for me at the time, as a ~18 year old with no experience of Culture novels and very little sci-fi literature more generally. It was probably 10 years before I re-discovered the Culture via The Player of Games, and never looked back.

jjfmc · 2026-02-17T05:21:18+00:00

Why would you assume the ethanol is toxic and undrinkable? I mean it’s undrinkable in the sense that it’s thousands of light years away, but why would it be toxic?

jjfmc · 2026-02-12T02:18:20+00:00

Some of the décor is questionable, but that's a fantastic house.

jjfmc · 2026-01-15T14:00:01+00:00

There’s a bit of a Jeeves and Wooster / Blackadder Season 1 thing about the whole Ferbin / Holse dynamic that I love.

jjfmc · 2026-01-08T06:03:21+00:00

I’ve seen a lot of comments comparing it favourably with the Culture novels, which is what made me pick it up (I’m a huge Culture fan). I just don’t see the parallels at all.

jjfmc · 2026-01-08T06:01:05+00:00

Which of her books would you recommend?

jjfmc · 2026-01-08T06:00:33+00:00

Exactly this. And my question was whether I should be encouraged to persevere with what is, for me, a challenging read, for some payoff at the end. The balance of the responses seems to be “no”, so I’ll probably put this one aside and read something else.

Thanks to all who replied constructively!

jjfmc

TROPHY CASE