Frustration

Thinking about how old things are is a lot of fun - but some of those things are objectively cooler by virtue of still existing.

Sure, you could look at stuff like stars and galaxies, but like... we just can't comprehend that. Too many numbers. No good. Even if you look at just the history of Earth, stuff like multicellular life forms have existed long enough to remember when the galaxy finally calmed down a little and stopped making quite so many stars. And looking up at the stars doesn't exactly fill us with a sense of "holy moly, germs are old" - because they're just little dots. We can't really observe them.

When you're thinking about old things in Lord of the Rings, you don't look at Eru Iluvitar and call it a day. You look at how Elrond is still around and kicking during the events of LotR, knowing that he has been around for six thousand years old - and even he's little more than a child compared to Galadriel who's been around for roughly eight thousand.

They're old because they're still around, and they can remember the Old Days. No one cares about what Manwe is on about, because he doesn't talk to anybody anymore. We want the stuff that can tell us about the many eras they've been around for.

Anyways, back to not-so-middle Earth. Here are some old things to kick things off:

• Tish was a goldfish won at a fair in 1956 - he won a Guinness World Record for living 46 years.
• Harriet the Galapagos Tortoise died in 2006 - She was born in 1830, and collected by one Charles Darwin as a specimen for his expedition.
• The Greenland Shark is the longest-lived vertebrate, with one specimen being placed at upwards of 500 years old. Perhaps they lived alongside one Leonardo da Vinci.
• In the East China Sea and Southern Ocean, there are aquatic creatures known as Glass Sponges - it might be a slight overestimation, but it's possible that several have been around for upwards of 10,000 years, placing them almost as old as writing itself.

You might've heard that Cleopatra lived sooner to the moon landing than to the creation of the Great Pyramids. You might've heard that Cleopatra lived sooner to the internet than to the creation of the Great Pyramids. Truth is, Cleopatra will live sooner to the present day than to the creation of the Great Pyramids for roughly another five hundred years.

The Great Pyramids are 4.5 thousand years old by the estimates I found on the internet, and they're still around. Egypt is roughly 5000 years old, which is - if you recall - only half as old as some of those sponges up there.

What about geological features? The oldest glacier is roughly 7000 years old. The Namib Desert has been dry for 55 million. 

But I'm going to cut to the chase:

yeah

but I was curious, and looked up Oldest Geological Features. First I found someplace called Mount Roraima, which looks EPIC AS HELL:

and then I came upon a massive meteor that struck the Earth 3 BILLION years ago, nearly five times as large as the infamous Chicxulub asteroid (y'know - the dinosaur one)... which smacked into a special little place called the Barberton Greenstone Belt:

these, my friends, are the oldest things on Earth.

There's a weird hole in Philosophy that I've been thinking about.

(Note: I'm mostly going to be referring to the history of Western Philosophy throughout this because that's the bit I know about. Feel free to educate me about whatever whack breakthroughs that I'm sure the muslims and hindus were up to at the time)

Aeoliae was the one who brought up the "poll for results" thing in the Academy thread I made, which I dismissed because... well, that isn't particularly Philosophical in nature. Which is to say that Philosophy is concerned entirely with logic and reason (or "rhetoric," for you fancy folks), which is because it actually used to be the same thing as Science way back when - Science was the Philosophy of Nature, and what we call philosophy nowadays was essentially the Philosophy of Ethics and other stuff like that.

You can poll massive groups of people about the most obscure and complicated aspects of quantum physics and find a tasty bell curve with the data, but that isn't sufficient proof to publish a dissertation. For Science, direct observation and recording of natural phenomena is strictly required - however, Philosophy has this weird thing where you can't exactly "test" it, because it's not like you can get a Bottle of Ethics from PlatoMart and scrutinize it under a microscope. We don't really need to, because our day-to-day lives are ultimately unaffected by whatever metaphysical hijinks we can come up with... but still.

Eventually Science and Philosophy split into two separate things as this divide became clear - right around the renaissance-ish. Physical science was getting better and better with the advent of stuff like telescopes and coffee, with people beginning to pin down the natural world to mathematical equations and physical laws. Less so for Philosophy, which remained still very much untestable and unresolvable.

You might be wondering how something would manage to stick around if it's so fundamentally unprovable, and the answer is - of course - the Christians. Theology made a major comeback into western Philosophy (it had been around during the early days of Greek thinkers, and while it was still around it wasn't quite as prominent since Socrates), mainly in the form of one Thomas Aquinas: my Philosophy Teacher's favorite person ever. He (Aquinas, not my teacher) is notable for deconstructing the ideas of current Christian faith, scrutinizing them, then mostly reconstructing them using the power of reason, postulating that the natural human morality matches that described in the Christian faith (which is also mostly true for most religions that have a decent amount of "be good and do good things" in their doctrine). He also postulated that it is impossible for mortals to fully comprehend the Truth, and (as a Christian himself) presumed that revelation is still necessary to determine the nature of reality.

So by now you might be seeing a slight issue: to this day, western Philosophy is still very much influenced by christian values. Basically, it's European as hell. Philosophers never really claim to have the by-all and end-all of Truth in their theories (except maybe Nietzsche, depending on what his mood is), but it's important to note that we're limited beings with a limited capacity for reason, which means that for such things as Philosophy, we kind of have to take everything that people postulate with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, coming up with theories about the nature of the universe doesn't prove anything, and we'll probably wind up going about our daily lives regardless - and most Philosophers were well aware of this, because a lot of them were scientists and teachers on the side, with the theories of metaphysics and stuff like that acting as more of a hobby than a career.

It stands to reason that if a person's Philosophy can be wrong, then multiple people can have directly opposing Philosophies. This, in case you weren't aware, is called an opinion. Losers just scream at each other about why they're right and the other guy's wrong, but Philosophers are cool and have a nice long chat over some coffee and math homework about what is logical and what is not. Debates and arguments nowadays are notable for using stuff like "logos" and "ethos" and "pathos" and stuff to support either side's opinion, which is good and (usually) respectful, but with Philosophy it is all rationalizing. Philosophical debates are just equations (a word whose origins, by the way, literally just mean "to reconcile.")

You guys might've heard of William of Ockham and his somewhat infamously omnipresent Razor. People tend to misinterpret this theory as "the simplest solution is the often the correct one," but not only did he (probably) never say that, but enough people have just gone with it so far that it's become both a self-fulfilling prophecy and an absolute unit of a pretentious phrase. What he did write was "Plurality must never be posited without necessity," which is code for "if you need to invent fifty new rules to explain something you just came up with, then it's probably BS."

So we come to a nice little tie-in with my actual point, but first I need to explain one more thing: Axioms. You might've heard of these things in math class, but if you haven't (or, rather, simply forgot what they are), then allow me to explain. An Axiom is "a statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true;" basically, it's a rule that you make up to explain something, then explore to decide whether it's true or not. You could postulate that 3*15=9.22 as the Axiom of Weird, but would be ultimately disproven by about a billion other Axioms that actually follow basic mathematical science.

Why do I bring up Math in a Philosophy discussion? Well, firstly because a lot of Philosophers were also Mathematicians (You might know René Descartes as the guy who said "I think, therefore, I am," but he also, like, invented modern geometry), and secondly because the method of using Axioms to postulate theories is very important for my point today, because Philosophy uses them as the basis of all knowledge.

The first Axiom in Philosophy is what I'm going to call the Axiom of Reason, which basically means that "Logic is logical." This might seem ridiculous at first, but if you don't assume that logic is logical, then you both completely undermine the nature of reality and doom all knowledge to the endless void of chaos. Plato called humans "rational animals" (and also featherless bipeds, but that's not important right now), and pretty much every Philosopher ever has agreed that if we can't use Logic of all things to discern the nature of reality, then there's no point in even trying.

That's not the point I'm about to tear to pieces, because if I did then I would immediately be forced to stop doing that due to my own constraints. No, I'm going to analyze a second, slightly sneakier sort-of-Axiom: the Axiom of Fundamentalism, which basically means that "Crazy people are probably wrong most of the time."

This goes back to the whole "your Philosophy can be different from my Philosophy" thing, but dials it up to eleven to consider the people whose method of logic is completely different from that of the common man's. While you and I might disagree, we can sit down and have a respectful exchange of reason over coffee and math homework, and even if we still wind up disagreeing we can come to the conclusion that the other has a perfectly sound perspective, because we could follow each other's logic as reasonable and good.

However, consider a sentient monkey, who I will call Spock to make things unnecessarily confusing. Suppose this monkey went about his entire monkey life as a regular monkey, but in a freak accident was imbued with the full mental capacity of a human. Spock is now a rational animal (and, of course, a featherless biped), and so begins to postulate his own theory of the natural world - but he has had a completely different experience from the rest of humanity, and his logic is structured in a completely different way from the kind that we humans tend to (mostly) agree upon.

This raises the issue of our limited understanding of logic itself being... well, limited. Incomplete. We can assume that even if our interpretation of logic can be wrong, that Logic Itself is still true, and that our interpretations are near the truth by association. This is the Axiom of Fundamentalism, which postulates that most sane people can comprehend logic and, therefore, the nature of reality.

Emphasis on "sane."

There are insane people in this world, but they're only insane because we "sane" people decided that they are. We say "they aren't reasonable" and shut out their logic. And perhaps we're right, and it's better to assume that we are right - in fact, I'm going to go as far as to say that we should say that we're right. I'm not saying that "we're all wrong and the insane people are right," I'm saying that there is a fundamental flaw in the basis of this Axiom that means that logic is still something we have to agree upon.

 

 

But fortunately that doesn't matter, because the sun still rises in the morning regardless of if we're wrong about why.

 

 

 

 

kay bye

My favorite hymns have got to be:

Praise to the Man

A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief

If You Could Hie to Kolob

Spaghetti and Cereal.

That's what you get for lunch when young adult guys are in charge.

1000 is divisible by 8 and idk why but that just feels wrong to me

yall sometimes i rly feel like i gotta stop posting here

like i joined this site 6 whole years ago

and now im looking at the active crowd rn and im like...way older than most of you

probably not you guys specifically since i dont think that too many of the current 'active circle' follow me but you get the idea

am i old

do i need to retire

i remember when i was more in the active circle
most of those other guys are gone now

it feels weird sometimes being an adult and seeing tons and tons of middle schoolers on here is all

I've been looking at simulations for what would happen if the USA went to war with the world, and I'm loving it.

perhaps the worst part is that I'm almost as afraid of sleeping as I am of lying awake

TIL that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima contained 64 kg of Uranium

Of that 64 kg, roughly 8 grams actually underwent the fission process. The rest was blown away in the blast

 

which means

8 grams of uranium = 15 kTons of TNT

GUYS

I JUST REALIZED I MISSED MY THIRD SHARDIVERSARY

IT WAS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

HOW DID I MISS IT?

*sadness*

BUT no use dwelling on missed opportunities and better late than never so happy late shardiversary to myself :)))

I would tag everyone but it's 2am here currently and I should be asleep, so just know that I am forever grateful to all of you for all you've done for me and the crazy influence you've had on my life. There are a ton of things I wouldn't know, both about myself and about just the world in general, if I'd never found this place, so thanks! And of course, there are a ton of friends that I wouldn't have if it weren't for the Shard. 

Thank you all, love you all, have a good life :))

5 on AP Calc AB

5 on AP Bio

5 on AP World

5 on AP Environmental

4 on AP Physics

4 on AP Lang

3 on AP Seminar

Lots of complaints about how you can tell when a female character is written by a male author.

Not many for when a male character is written by a female author? There was that whole thing a little while back for someone's work seeming like it was "written by a woman," which I think is just a backwards way of looking at it.

I think the problem is that we boys just assume that we don't know jack diddly squat about our own gender and just assume that whatever's written is more accurate than whatever it is we believe. I mean, Peeta (from the Hunger Games) was pretty much as damsel-in-distress-pretty-face-love-interest as it gets, but no one craps on Suzanne Collins (that I know of). Guys are just like "yeah he's cool" and just read the story about the fun survival game.

And believe me - I have read some awful crap by women. Both of us can be god-awful at writing.

So is God only tangentially eternal?

Some scientific facts:

• Monty Python is the cinema equivalen of jazz.
• The scariness of a spider is not proportional to the size of the spider, but rather to the length of the spider's legs. Tarantulas are awesome and everyone knows it, but black widows are the freakiest and most hideous creatures known to man.
• When you're staring at the glowing red numbers on your alarm clock and all the shapes start to warp and corrupt, it is not your eyes playing tricks on you but rather your mind being suspended to the Plane of Dreams.
• Right next door to that is the Plane of the Forgotten, which is where pencils go when you drop them behind the couch and can't find them again.
• There was a little turtle tank in the nurse's office at my elementary school. This is not relevant but I just remembered that which I think is cool.
• There are three types of Ghibli fans: The normie Howl's Moving Castle enjoyers, the inexperienced Spirited Away watchers, and the chad Nausicaa stans. I've yet to meet another soul whose favorite Ghibli is Castle in the Sky yet, which means that the Truth has yet to spread to the masses
• Cool ranch doritos are meh at best and you know it.
• The masses fear the weebs, for people fear what they cannot know - that is, they do not fear true weebs, but rather the Demon Slayer junkies who haven't the spine to watch or read anything longer or more braindead than that. In fact, true weebs fear these junkies as well.
• People who ship Legolas and Gimli are stupid. People who ship Legolas and Aragorn are not. If you require an explanation for what happens with Arwen in this universe, simply leave it to Gimli to put on the charm because turns out he's really into elves.
• People who ship Frodo and Sam are stupider, and anyone who says otherwise will taste my katana.
• Before TotK came out, I considered BotW to be the best Zelda Game, and A Link to the Past to be the best Zelda Game. With this new addition to the cast, both those titles hang in the balance.
• I will not read your writing if it's in Arial font. All good prose deserves serifs.
• The Batman (2022) has no right being as good as it is.
• If you put me in the trolley problem scenaro to gather data you'd have to rule me out as an anomaly because whatever I decide to do is ultimately at odds with my innate clumsiness.
• I wonder if emptying your brain is a good way to knock yourself unconscious for the night? Or am I just forcing it to think harder about things that it really shouldn't when I'm trying to sleep?
• That last one wasn't a fact.
• It was a question.
• Tamales are either gross or made by a bona fide mexican guy and there is no in-between.
• It is impossible to make a good churro, which is the point.
• Sheev Palpatine really needs to work on his branding. The "Tragedy" of Darth Plagueis the Wise is barely a few lines of dialogue long - that isn't a tragedy, that's a synopsis. Give me a remake where the opera Anakin meets him at is a three-act musical about the rise and fall of Darth Plagueis, complete with a greek chorus and dudes wearing coconuts.
• Everyone says The Minish Cap is the most underrated Zelda game, which I think is ironic.
• By cubic meter you're actually hotter than the sun. Light also escapes you much faster than it does the core of that thing.
• I'm tired. I just yawned. What a day.
• You're yawning too now.
• Goodnight.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD HEEEEELLLLL YEEAHHHHHHHHH

LETS GO BLOW STUFF UP

YEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWW

too many nights I lie awake and wonder
if I should go to tear asunder
the rains and heavens to find the one
who put me here

too many nights just pass on by
waking hours despite how hard I try
to tell whoever's up there that I'm done
with this fear

 

I sit on the precipice of my bed
too many thoughts gone through my head
a dangerous devil waiting to be fed
on my frustration and my dread

I sit tight on waiting for the day
on the sun to rise up and to say
it ddn't matter anyway
 

Even at light, nothing ever seems to come of me
just wasted hours; wasted time and wasted energy
spent making nothing of the day
I'm living

Does it even count if I eat and breath?
if then at night I'm left to seeth
about the shits I say
I'm giving

 

I lie on lies I tell myself at night
like if I've got any will left to fight
if theer's still a part of me that lives in the light
or if my days are only nights

I lie without strangers in my mind
I keep looking even though I know what I'll find
I search for nothing because I'm blind

 

I've been trapped in this cycle for too long
stuck drifting as the tides carry me along
it seems I've come to find I don't belong
anyplace for people who still stand up strong

I've been trapped in this limbo, this parody
while I watch my own villains get the best of me
I watch it all with clarity

It is so weird for me to see people complaining about having to pay for things.

Like yes, somebody had to go make that thing and then bring it to you, and you expect them to do it for free?

If you ever get ridiculed for using "dumb" combinations of words, just remember that "advisor" is just a fancy was of saying "advice-er" and that us english-speaking nincompoops couldn't figure out a better name for a spiny fruit than "pine apple"

idea for a project im probably never gonna make

www.timetravellersguide.com

a database of everything any potential time travellers would need to know before they leave. 

you'd input what year you're time travelling to and it'd give you a list of all the classic stuff

-lottery numbers for that year
-what stocks increased the most in the near future after the time you arrived
-what teams won all the big sports matches
-any huge societal disasters in the near future

allllllll that stuff, and in actual detail, explaining exactly how to use the winning lotto numbers or the best way to bet on sports at that time. 

like whenever someone brings up the classic question "what would you do if you went back in time 20 years" it's always "invest in google" and "look up winning lotto numbers" but would you rly know how to do that?

it'd be funny to have a "recently arrived" section to, for any time travellers coming to our time from the future. a list of celebrities who are still alive, recent movies that came out / which ones are only announced, stuff that they'd need to know to blend in better. 

Alright, I need a vote.

Which one is Kaladin's Theme Song?

Song 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS0uS8Tfyt4

 

Song 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Hrq9dzNSs

Things I don't like about Brando Sando:

(to clarify he still is one of my favorite authors)

• He's good at wordcraft, but he's no linguist. Whenever I read a fantasy story set in another world without romans in its history, I can only imagine that they aren't speaking english or some other latin-based language... but then sometimes he seems to forgor this. There was a part in Oathbringer (I think) where the MCs were making puns about something, and then in Alloy of Law Marasi literally uses the word "ergo" at some point. Most of the time I'm never bothered by this but the few times these slip-ups occur, it really does drag me out of the story.
• Some of the climactic stuff is lost on me. Dunno why... maybe I just find them to be too melodramatic? Almost anime-like in its character proportions, so I never feel like I'm connecting well to said characters in their moments of triumph. It's like "I WILL PROTECC" and then BOOM - Stormlight buff. The kinds of ideals that the characters embody seem really beyond the human scale as I understand it, though to be fair that's actually the case with most authors nowadays.
• Hoid. I don't like Hoid. I stopped liking Hoid when Hoid stopped being a cameo and started being a character. All of a sudden he's a million times more human, and all the magic is gone. What's more, reading his words of wisdom now feel much more arbitrary than they really ought to be.
• I think that's it

It could be Christmas Eve and Google's doodle would still be "Celebrating the 103rd birthday of the first Native American woman raised in South Africa with scoliosis and dandruff to major in cutlery design at Denning's University at Miami, France. Today we recognize her contributions to the world."

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Just beat my latest BotW file in preparation of TotK. Those Ganon fights are... way too easy - even with Jelli the Idiot Horse as your loyal steed. I hope Zombiedorf is harder.

Strange how randomness becomes impossibility when you're expecting it