I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of how an observer is inextricably intertwined with the object/particle being observed, as part of the framework for the equations to flow, so to speak.

Then there’s the fact that Newton’s equations assume an infinite speed of light, until physicists of the 19th century that pinned it down, then Einstein established it as a constant.
If you try and use lightspeed at the atomic level, many values blow up to infinity, the math stops working, the answers become like static noise.

Recently I found out that Schrödinger’s famous equation is written in the framework of classical, newtonian physics, not in quantum terms. Like using a star screwdriver to flat screws, yet it seems to do an admirable job up to a point. And you have a whole lot of infinities to sweep under the rug and ignore, what is it called, Normalization or Renormalization? One of the two.

It’s all incredibly complex and abstract, the numbers being measured by the guys in the lab were strange to the point of absurd, and if you think it’s weird for us now, imagine how they saw it then.

So yeah, the math says that the observer is not passive from afar, the observer is part of the equation itself of what is trying to be measured.
Then the closer you look, the blurrier things get, like a greased pig you can’t get it to hold still, not even for an instant, particularly at the smaller scales, things don’t behave the way they do at our sensory and mental level. Things behaving as if going backwards through time. Particles and anti-particles popping in and out of existence. Particles transforming into other particles. Particles going through walls. The list goes on and on and on.

Weird stuff has to be conjured up to try and make any sense of this.
Light or electrons as amplitudes of probability waves. Axes of imaginary numbers, eigenvalues in Hilbert spaces, wave-particle duality, etc.

Reality is extraordinary, it will keep on always surpassing our expectations and imaginations. It just keeps on happening this way, wherever we poke at.

This, like so many other cruel unnecessary things, could have been easily avoided.
“But… but… muh puriteh! bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe”
vOtE fOr A wOmAn? mE?!! wHeN PIGS FLY!!!

The mental gymnastics so many non-voters use to convince themselves that their lazy mediocrity is not a HUGE part of the problem. They exert a hundred times the energy to stab themselves in the chest with a rusty knife, and as gangrene sets in, they fancy themselves as hero martyrs, because they so bravely did nothing of value to stop this. Useless deadweight flakes that they are.

The difference between a shithead like this, and any and all sane people, is that sane people could see this unnecessary shitstorm approaching from afar, while these stunted minds only seem to be able to see things only after things smack then in the face.
Fuck him, all his ilk and the greedy, myopic, ignorant goddamned boat they rode one.

Yep, this is the one I was scrolling down to find.

Godfather.
Godfather 2.
The Conversation.
Dog Day Afternoon.
The Deer Hunter.

All five Best Picture Oscar nominees, three winners.

Not too long ago, my sister went to NYC and I urged her to go to Veselka in the East Village, ten years ago I went and had an extraordinary meal, in a wonderful ambiance.
She didn’t listen to me and went to the russian tea room instead. Well that was a mistake, she said the atmosphere was tepid, the waiter service drab, the food bland.
She should have listened to me. Some people are stubborn and have a worse time because of it.

Try and control those rabidly ignorant bigots you force-fed with anti-science, anti-reason raw red meat, let’s see how that goes.
This is 'Murica! Muh freehdum!

Fiennes does seem to come from a posh background, doesn’t he?

Then maybe a commoner trained in Shakespeare can and does develop that poshness, the ability to deliver it effortlessly.
Was, for example, Peter O’Toole a noble or a hoodlum? Because there seems to be a bit of both in him at the same time.

But then I take a look at the full Fiennes family name and oof… there’s some olde stubbornly blue roots in there, in plain sight. The kind of thing you would spy on the guestlist for the weekly Saxe-Coburg canasta evening.

So is Rafe like the black sheep of his family, because he went prancing off to theater school and the bohemian lifestyle instead of a sturdy and dignified profession, like banking?

Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw, I am flabbergasted and illustrated, simultaneously at the same place and from a distance at the same time.

the vast majority of US citizens are abjectly fucking stupid who have no clear understanding how absolutely anything works or any understanding of how consequences follow actions

This happens both equally with the maga batshit crazy voters, and the narcissistic “my vote is a pure and delicate flower”/“bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL” non-voters.

Which is of course exploited by bad-faith actors pushing these lazy idiots back down on the couch and stroking their hollow vanity, to not do what they already didn’t want to do - doing the homework instead of just getting their “facts” from twitter or tiktok or whatever, taking the time and effort to register and vote, if just once a year, or at the very least once every two years for the midterms.

These idiots want instant results, have not a shred of a clue as to what political inertia is; just as medieval as maga, they want a political messiah with a magic political wand.

The 2010 midterms proved that these fickle mediocre idiots did NOT have Obama’s back, and lazily initiated a cascade that drowned their own future, rewarded the fascists for their virulent hysterical opposition, and to this day remain mindlessly, narcissistically oblivious to the fact.
Their mediocre motto as a mediocre electoral block is “If at first you don’t succeed, give up.”

So much of the world has rightly lost all faith in the intelligence and decency of the average american. As in - they have none, distractedly and lovingly fondling their purity, then sniffing their fingers and picking their teeth with those nails.

Kessel Run. In less than 12 parsecs.

That’s actually quite an interestingly accurate one, considering that something like 95% of Egyptians live near the Nile River, and anywhere that is NOT near the Nile is desert wasteland.

Other accurate analogies would be anywhere in Canada that is NOT near its’ southern border, or nearly anywhere/everywhere in inland Australia, they call it the Outback for a reason.

the fire was successfully restored

That is one strange turn of phrase.

Generosity through incompetence… mighty generous of them!

In the past week on YouTube, on channels about math and physics, I started getting a constant bombardment of online casino ads. The predatory enshittification is intense anywhere you look.

Having been hooked on cocaine and then implicitly or explicitly equating it with weed, sounds like some sort of internal “reefer madness” 24 hour movie-thon playing in his head.

Has anything other than self-serving, myopic and knee-jerk lies ever been said by this jerkoff?

putin and stalin - and every alcoholic below them on the hierarchy - equally incompetent, just as inhumane and idiotic in their views on life and the world, having brutalized and/or persecuted the intelligent people out of their right wing society, then scratching their heads as to why their infernal machinery crumbles.

This is why russia remains firmly stuck in the 19th goddamned century.

Probably the hope, not completely unfounded, that the migration from one “legacy” (from the 00s) platform to a more recent alternative service - twitter to Bluesky - will help inspire people in other legacy platforms to also realize that alternatives do exist now, they are part of a broader conversation that they weren’t a part of even two years ago.

Even a year and a half ago, this place felt like it hadn’t yet installed the drywall, the wiring and tubing was incomplete. Now it feels more seamless, ready for a spurt of growth.

“Hey… Bluesky isn’t all that bad, I’m glad to be out of the clutches of a billionaire asshole, and not feel utterly lost here”, now cue what OP believes a number of people will also think: “Hmm… maybe I’ll check out Lemmy, too. See what the alternative to reddit is like.”

Some of them could have tried it, didn’t like it, might come back and be like: “Hey, Lemmy’s not too bad since last I last looked a year ago”, and here’s a clincher that definitely wasn’t here a year and a half ago: “The app works pretty good”, and there are a lot of new apps, having a choice gives a sense and weight of legitimacy.

Because if it wasn’t Gaza, it would have been another excuse to not lift a lazy goddamned finger and still delude themselves into feeling "morally superior"while sitting on their fat mediocre asses at home.

Before Harris, they also leaned heavily on the “Sleepy Joe” bullshit and “two old white men up for election, who cares”. Once the old “Sleepy Joe” element was removed from the equation, they had to find a way to keep their goddamned stubbornly lazy and ignorant narrative intact.

Now that the election is over, most of these “concerned and outraged” deadweight assholes will never think about Gaza and the plight of its’ people again. And they will keep on feeling smug about themselves.

Fuck russia for making me feel indifferent about a drought, for making me feel like they deserve it.