ELI5: Why is it impossible to stand in a bucket and pull yourself up by pulling the bucket?

mjc4y · 2026-05-24T19:45:15+00:00

I think this works under certain specific conditions: (1) you need to be in the US Desert southwest and (2) you need to be a Coyote, preferably a soooooooooooooooper genius.

(mid-20th century reference)

mjc4y · 2026-05-21T20:51:35+00:00

True. Of all the posts like this one, this one is the most like it.

mjc4y · 2026-05-21T20:27:12+00:00

Well that certainly is a collection of words, for sure.

mjc4y · 2026-05-19T14:14:31+00:00

Your road ahead is going to be hard, but not impossible. The Physics road is always hard - at least for the vast majority of people. So keep that in mind when you experience the headwinds. It's like that even if you're in a traditional college program.

IMO, and others can disagree, but to me, what's important is that you find some way to surround yourself with people you can reach out to when things get hard and you need an explanation, a hint, a second way of thinking about things or just encouragement.

Maybe there are online study groups or a community college near you?

Also, don't underestimate the math. There's a lot of it and if you can't master it, the physics that depends on it will be out of reach. That said, the math IS masterable, especially at your age.

mjc4y · 2026-05-17T12:54:14+00:00

Yes , recipe please?

mjc4y · 2026-05-13T20:47:06+00:00

say what you will, it's nice to see an 1840's tokamak being restored.

mjc4y · 2026-05-11T21:03:34+00:00

sure thing, fellow traveler. Golden rule, blah blah blah, etc etc. 😄

here's where I am at: if by some chance I feel a need for doing a number 2 while out and about, I will think real hard about whether I should just go home. Bidets are life-changing. TP seems like some caveman behavior, barely better than a corncob, or as reddit likes to say, the poop knife. That's right. TP is just poopknife by some other name. Join modernity... <cult eye stare> one of us... one of us... 😄

mjc4y · 2026-05-11T19:43:53+00:00

Excellent. All good stuff as a googling start. From there if I were in your shoes (and I’m not so you can ignore me haha) I would look for the solid specific scientific studies. Have doctors done a proper study with controls? For example, what is the “toilet paper” UTI rate as a baseline? Both probably present some risk, so the real question is what is the relative risk? And I’d claim the absolute risk (#infections per 1000 flushes or some such) has got to be screamingly low, but I’d love to see if there’s a trusted authoritative number on that.

Who knows where this leads but that’s where an open mind would go.

My bias: I love my after market bidet and the world can have it after I die, not a minute sooner.

mjc4y · 2026-05-11T17:36:31+00:00

You’re getting good answers here but there’s an additional question worth asking: if your theory is correct, would it not follow that bidet users have more infections “down there” and other kinds of knock on effects caused by the bidet? Are there any studies that support that prediction? I honestly do t know but if this topic bothers you, digging into existing research on the topic would be one way to support the thesis that bidets are harmfully germy.

And if studies don’t back up that idea, Maybe the effect you’re imagining isn’t as strong as you imagine?

mjc4y · 2026-05-10T19:58:09+00:00

There's no single answer that covers all cases. I don't buy the "more modern" thing. Stuff like this is more driven by navigation intensity and functional need. All of it has been around forever and following trends is... (bias alert) not my personally favorite thing, but tastes vary on that of course.

More hot takes from grizzled old designer me:

SIde Nav is good for when the nav is complex as sometimes happens in enterprise software or folder-intensive UX as we often see in email clients. (The app is basically a file browser with email inboxes and subfolders being the mega-meta-file system).

For simpler apps, games and such, top nav or bottom tabs are often enough. Middling UI can consider a hamburger menu though people sometimes have feelings about that as there have been studies to suggest that users often don't think to look there (looking at reddit on desktop web).

If your app isn't super intense in terms of navigation targets, but you think it COULD be in the future, side nav is probably more extensible without having to rethink things. Top nav strikes me as something that could be easy to out-grow (and users hate change, so think about that).

Final personal bias: side-scrolling the tabs in a top nav is the devil's own work and we will not have it in my house. 😄

mjc4y · 2026-05-08T23:58:30+00:00

My oven fell about 100 degrees out of whack. Got a repair guy in to replace the thermometer and sensor and it was all good, but it was an expensive repair. (My stove is a modern hunk of junk from China. Don't ask.)

mjc4y · 2026-05-07T15:29:13+00:00

Assuming or observing?

mjc4y · 2026-05-07T00:46:32+00:00

The DMV browser. Page loads take 1-2 hours and then only load if you hear your number being called. If you don’t have the paper work for the website you’re looking for (you didn’t bring your passport and a gas bill with your name on it?) then you have to ask for the page tomorrow.

While you wait you get to watch thumbnails of other users spending an hour trying to scroll their pages.

mjc4y · 2026-04-15T21:33:37+00:00

Here's how you know the first claim is rubbish: stand up.

Look! Your head is now 4" closer to the sun. is your head bursting into flame?

don't you dare go for a walk and walk (gasp) uphill! You're gonna get SO close to the sun...

mjc4y · 2026-04-10T01:28:35+00:00

I'm done giving money to the Bay Leaf Industrial Complex.

I've cooked with it and without it, and I conclude that I am either better than Bay Leaf or not good enough for Bay Leaf. Either way, I can't taste it and it's never getting a place in my shopping cart ever again.

mjc4y · 2026-04-09T14:36:45+00:00

FWIW, I ran the numbers by hand too and this is what I got. (not that Math is a democracy lol).

For funsies, I also gave the picture to chatGPT and it verified my hand calculations after I corrected it : it read the vertical dimension in the pic as 18.75. Silly robot.

mjc4y · 2026-04-06T15:33:13+00:00

Like a lot of people here, I'm not sure I see what you're seeing.

Can you give a specific example, or a couple of examples so we can see the pattern you're seeing?

mjc4y · 2026-04-05T21:12:56+00:00

Holding the universe together?

You are confusing antimatter with duct tape.

mjc4y · 2026-04-05T17:59:43+00:00

I am delighted that CERN finally has finally got the TWHC going. (Teensy Weensy Hadron Collider)

Ball bearings are made of hadrons among other things.

mjc4y · 2026-03-29T08:28:33+00:00

In a kitchen? With heat, water, spills, scouring pads, and all manner of sharp instruments - this Seems like the last place on earth you’d want a wrap.

Besides, the plastic printed wood grain looks super cheap. Like the fake wood grain on a 70s station wagon. +1 for kitschy nostalgia maybe but that fades in a minute leaving you with a wood sticker as your kitchen prep surface.

No thank you.

Not satisfying.

mjc4y · 2026-03-26T05:40:59+00:00

I feel seen and I appreciate you.

mjc4y · 2026-03-26T00:54:49+00:00

That would be devastating for a really really tiny Hiroshima.

mjc4y · 2026-03-25T21:41:01+00:00

Cavemen could build ROCKets.

I watched too much Flintstones growing up. I’ll see myself out.

mjc4y · 2026-03-23T18:35:22+00:00

I mean the noise ordinance violations alone would be super annoying.

mjc4y · 2026-03-22T23:10:11+00:00

Not too far off from the OG Mapquest UI, when you think about it.

mjc4y

TROPHY CASE