Neuron

joined 1 year ago
[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

You can say you can expect, but you really can't, because if you're talking about momentum you're talking about velocity and you need a reference frame to define velocity and therefore momentum. Let's pick the sun for instance with the assumptions of A. So if we just have one portal pointing one direction and one portal pointing up and chell walks in, you should blast out straight up at 66,000 mph plus the speed she was walking then. I think you could make the reference Frame to earth and try and get a, but that would create problems too.

I think B, velocity relative to the moving portal, would be the only way to maintain some kind of consistency in game if you were going to have moving portals. Your examples are most consistent with B. A portal falls on chell, how fast does she come out? The speed the portal fell on her of course. And then she stops going out once the portal stops moving because it hit the ground and has stopped moving and they no longer have any relative difference in velocity. You could also say in the platform example that the platform was sitting still and the portal was moving down, you would emerge out the portal at the speed the first portal was moving down. Both should be equally valid ways if you want to maintain some consistency. But all of this is probably why they don't allow moving portals in the first place.

In the end though these are definitely strange unknowable physics, portals don't exist, so really you could make the game however you please, either one is perfectly valid, you could just say any velocity on the other side is whatever it was in relationship to the earth before going through, but that'd be weird, because how fast do the people move out of A then? Do they fly out at the speed of the moving portal and then suddenly stop mid air and plop straight down? If you're not moving faster than a moving portal does is become brick wall and smash you out of the way so you don't gain any velocity in relation to earth so A can be maintained? There's no way to test it in the current games. Hence the endless arguing. But I think B would be most consistent and allow for some really interesting puzzles though, especially if you had two moving portals! Or maybe 3d portals that can sit in the air and allow full movement through them in any direction to help make it possible. Portal 3? In VR with depth perception to accommodate?

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At least not as dreary as Alaska affording to the map! I love the snow, unfortunately the clouds get depressing but do also mean we don't really get that oppressive Midwest cold that often occurs in the sunniest midwinter days.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The reason this is so confusing with different answers is that the portals don't really exist, so inherently whether you say a or b is gonna depend on assumptions. In game they aren't allowed to move so we have nothing to base it on to match game physics.

Here's my take, momentum is a product of velocity. Velocity needs a reference frame. Without it, there's no real difference in saying the portal has a velocity of 0 and the people tied up have a the velocity and therefore momentum, or the other way around. If we assume velocity with respect to the portal is what matters and is the momentum carried forward, then it should be B. If it's relative to the earth or tied up people, then A.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Dreariness index not accounting for the fact that lack of potable water, temps above 110, and being on fire are all pretty dreary. But yeah inland northeast is pretty cloudy from the from the great lakes, also makes it warmer and snowier in the winter than the Midwest.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Agreed. One day I realized my computer was completely out of space, was barely still running. Turns out Microsoft store had dutifully downloaded many copies of a game until the entire drive was full. Uninstalling got rid of only one copy of the files. Store said it was no longer installed even though all the files of many copies were still there. Deleting them manually was a horrible mess of permissions issues, involving the need to edit the registry and things too. I think I ended up needing to boot into Linux from a usb stick to finally fix everything up. Anyways, steam for me if I have the choice. Let me just delete files if I need to Microsoft, geeze.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Taking these medicines in the forms they are found in nature is a horrible idea. Most of the plants they come from are poisonous because the therapeutic index of most of the drugs here are low, meaning the line between medicine and poison is very fine. Purifying the ingredient and allowing tight control of the dosage is the reason any of these are able to be used safely. Please don't go around eating bits of foxglove or belladonna.

As you've seen, modern medicine is not shy about taking ingredients found in nature when they actually have a useful purpose in medicine, and enabling them to be actually used safely instead of taking some random unknown dosage of a potentially deadly drug and hoping for the best.

Except for fixing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, supplements are ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. They're in desperate need of better regulation in the United States. They scam tons of people and get away with ridiculous claims like fighting dementia based on no evidence that would be totally illegal for any actual pharmaceutical company to claim, all while selling bottles of stuff with "proprietary formulas" or claiming to have plants that aren't even in there when independent researchers look at them. All totally legal by the way, no requirement for ingredients listed on a supplement to reflect reality. Stay away if you value your health or your money. Not saying pharmaceutical companies are always shining beacons of beneficence here, obviously I have many problems with them as well, but they at least have some sort of regulated evidence base for the most part.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

It's true, electronic medical records range from garbage to totally broken in terms of usability for healthcare workers. Then you realize the actual customer is the hospital system, and all the design decisions start to make sense. Because the real purpose of the software is efficient billing, not patient care.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The former president? No wait he wanted to inject bleach. Or sunlight or something I dunno.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

It shouldn't be a big deal, but prior to the Biden administration, Betsy Devos under Trump was doing everything possible to block even already available student loan forgiveness and throwing up as much roadblocks as possible. The department education had to be sued in court to get loan forgiveness granted for things they should have been helping with not blocking. And even after all that they repeatedly failed to follow their own settlements and court orders for years, just refusing to grant forgiveness. So even though a lot of forgiveness was technically already on the books, having a administration actually helping this process instead of actively trying to prevent it is a huge breath of fresh air. They also previously changed many terms in public service loan forgiveness to help it apply to more people and made lots of other positive changes that luckily the supreme court did not block. At least not yet.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just this one small part of the massive nationwide conspiracy of sedition is already much worse than Watergate.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 55 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Just to be clear, it's not like a protective order for their person (though Jack Smith and others already have to travel with large security details because of the stochastic terrorism of Trump and most other Republicans), but a protective order of the evidence in the case given through discovery. So before the trial the prosecution has to show the defense all the evidence it has, which is called discovery. The prosecutors here are concerned that Trump is going to leak that info in some way, like witnesses lists, so that his supporters can harass and intimidate witnesses on his behalf. Or maybe even bribe them or something. What the prosecution is seeking is a protective order to prevent trump from releasing publicly any evidence that they obtain through discovery. Normally there wouldn't be anything preventing a defendent from releasing that info, though most sane people wouldn't generally want their incriminating evidence released publicly. If the order is granted and Trump violates it, he could theoretically be held in contempt and go to prison where he no longer can violate the order.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exactly, Putin is constantly describing Europe as a vassal state of the US and tries to drive wedges between European and US cooperation, especially when our interests clearly align like in Ukraine. In fact the biggest per capita contributions to the Ukrainian defense effort come from European countries. It's not like the US dragged Europe kicking and screaming to defend Ukraine, it's pretty obviously even more important for Europe than for the US. This is why so many European countries like Germany have made major ramp ups in military spending and defense. All these calls about Europe being a vassal state are basically telling Europe to shoot itself in the foot to show how independent it is. If they want a more unified foreign policy, the answer isn't stopping cooperation with the US and the defense of Ukraine. The answer is they have to work on more cooperation with their own member states so they can speak with a unified voice. Something Russia in reality actively works to prevent, using influence in countries like Hungary to drive a wedge in the EU and preventing unified foreign policy in the EU and from them becoming a more independent player.

view more: next ›