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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • So, one observer will see those oscillations happen faster than the other?

    Not quite. In each observer’s frame of reference, time appears to pass the same; it’s only when you try to reconcile the between two objects that are not at rest with respect to each other does relativity show up.

    Basically, when you bring someone back to Earth, the observers will find that their watches don’t match up even though both observers experience time passing the same way as normal (because the oberserver is by definition at rest with respect to their own frame of reference).

    TL; DR: Relativity is a pain in the ass and makes no sense in everyday terms.

    edit: disclaimer - I am not a physicist and have not taken physics classes in a decade plus, but I do teach science at a college. I’m going mostly on half-remembered lectures and some random one-off discussions I’ve had with my buddy in the physics department over the past few years.



  • It’s been a long time since I took modern physics, so I’m not positive, but I think you’re right that the moon would have time moving slower, and if your 50ms/day is right (edit: I based this on the moon traveling faster than the earth, but I don’t know anything about gravitational relativity, so that’s probably wrong) then you’d need to do something like skip a second every 20th day on the moon to keep pace with Earth. We could call it an “anti-leap-second”

    Programmers, that seems pretty simple; what’s the big deal? /s


  • No, the moon’s rotation isn’t on a 24-hour cycle. I’m not an astronomer, but I pretty sure since it’s tidally locked to earth and on a 28-day cycle around the earth, a lunar day is actually 28 Earth days, but I’m not actually sure how that would factor into the number of time zones (I’m pretty sure it would be more complicated than just 24 time zones to match 24 time zones on earth, though).

    Plus, I think the speed of the moon relative to the sun is different enough from Earth that you need to take relativity into effect, which is the real headache here.





  • late 2000’s here; I went to one of the private, strict christian schools in the area, so no house parties or Greek scene for underage drinkers. So, what did we do? We learned to drink in TJ! IIRC, I think we went down 1.5x per month for two years or so until all of our friend group turned 21 and moved off campus. Luckily, we were usually smart enough to make sure one of us was 100% stone sober while we were across the border (and we always parked on the US side, obvs), but we had friends that still had some close calls.

    I had a friend who drove down with a different group that got shaken down when one dumbass got caught by cops peeing in an alley on the way back to the border, and another acquaintance that spent a few weeks in jail on the Mexican side for having two (poorly made) fake twenties in his pocket. As I recall, he didn’t even try to spend them, but got searched for something unrelated and was then held without trial until his parents could get together ten thousand dollars to buy him out.

    So, from 2006-2008 or so there still weren’t card readers coming back as a US citizen, but it was definitely getting sketchy. My privileged white-bread ass managed to stay out of trouble (mostly), but I definitely got lucky and wouldn’t recommend it to others. Although, during the daytime it was pretty safe as long as you didn’t get blotto, and going for cheap, delicious tacos and margaritas was a great day trip.


  • And let’s not forget the Giants’ amazing reliever, Pablo Sandoval (0.00 ERA and 0.00 WHIP)!

    For those not in the loop, he was a (seemingly) overweight 3rd baseman who made phenomenally athletic plays and hit monster home runs (especially in the postseason, leading to 3 World Series trophies and a WS MVP), earning the nickname “Kung Fu Panda.”

    Then, in the twilight of his career, he also pitched 2 innings without allowing a baserunner, becoming a bit of an SF meme, including at least one “Let Pablo Pitch” bobblehead.





  • The Expanse series went into a fair bit of detail on the “form follows function” aspect of spaceship aesthetics, but it was a lot more near-future than Trek.

    In most cases, The Expanse postulates that the most important aspect of spaceship design is cleanliness and the ability to protect the air filters and purification systems. In this case, I would assume that carpets are likely going to cause more of a headache than comfort, but who knows. Also, they’d probably want something that would not interfere with magnetic boots when the ship is in zero-g.