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wolframhydroxide

@ wolframhydroxide @sh.itjust.works

Posts
3
Comments
578
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • If everybody in the world agreed to do so, what would you rename the twelve months?

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  • I mean, they also named the one before it after one of their favorite board games, so I think anything's fair game.

  • TIL there is no agreement on how many continents there are.

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  • No, you misunderstand: I am claiming that the only valid way to define continents is using the best available scientific understanding at the time. The idea of "continents" as defined by laypeople is bullshit because it does not conform with consistently-defined parameters.

    There is a geological definition of a continent, which is, effectively, "a portion of a tectonic plate which is thicker and less-mafic than oceanic crust, formed by volcanism and accretion." This definition has utility.

    To pretend that definitions can't change is ridiculously prescriptivist. It's just a failure of the educational systems available that few learn a better definition than "whatever old dead white guys said was a continent". Are you suggesting that we should have come up with a new name besides "element" when early chemists started realising that "fire", "air", "earth", "water", "wood" and "metal" were not, in fact, the most basic building blocks of reality? Old outdated terms can and should be applied to new classifications which better comport with our best understanding of reality.

    When plate tectonics was developed, the geological community quickly accepted, for instance, that Europe was no longer its own continent, but also that New Zealand was. I am suggesting that anyone claiming there are six or seven continents is precisely like someone claiming there are nine planets, or four elements. It's not only not based off of the best available scientific classifications, it's also so reductivist as to be literally useless. Anyone who doesn't know that fire is not an element needs to retake secondary chemistry, because their understanding of the world is flawed at a basic level. Anyone who thinks there are five, six or seven continents needs to be introduced to better, more up-to-date definitions.

  • TIL there is no agreement on how many continents there are.

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  • To actually answer your question: yes and no. If Europe is a continent, then India definitely is. Both are only separated from the rest of Eurasia by a collision boundary, and Europe's collision boundary isn't even active anymore, IIRC.

    Realistically, if you're counting tectonic separation, then the afar triangle is its own continent, as there's an active divergent triple boundary splitting it off from the rest of Africa. The coast of California is a different continent than the rest of north america, because it's split by a transform boundary due to the subducting remnants of the farallon plate (now the Juan De fuca and cocos plates). New Zealand has been accepted to be its own continent for quite some time, since there's a gigantic slab of continental crust underwater to NZ's Northwest. Even still, the southeastern portion would be counted as separate by this hypothetical "boundaries-only" definition, because the transform boundary which has created the South Island Alps splits the south island. Madagascar is its own continental crust, as is Greenland.

    Really, if you want to understand the geological boundaries and origins among the areas of the world, I'd recommend considering all of the following five types of data:

    1. Cratons (the really old chunks of continental crust that have just been floating and moving around, making up the continental cores, for the last 3.5+ billion years
    2. Active Tectonic Boundaries (really useful for understanding why there are mountains, trenches, volcanoes and earthquakes where we observe them)
    3. what you can see on a map, like rivers, mountains, isthmuses, and continental shelves (the only thing that our current definition of "continent" actually cares about)
    4. anomalous hotspot volcanism (currently hypothesised to be caused by mantle plumes)
    5. historical terranes and plates (such as avalonia and the flat-slab subduction of the farallon plate)

    If you're really interested in the tectonic boundaries of earth, check out the Concord Consortium's "Seismic Explorer" online tool. Super fun.

    So, TL;DR: the idea of a continent is bullshit, and purely cultural, just like our definition of a planet (see minute physics' videos explaining why the moon should be a planet, and the IAU are bad at definitions)

  • TIL there is no agreement on how many continents there are.

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  • Honestly, the biggest two problems I've encountered are:

    1. "Oceania" is not a continent. It's like seven smaller continental plates. Zealandia is more of a continent than Europe is. Similarly, Greenland is also more of a continent than Europe is.
    2. if you're going to count Europe, you also have to count India, and in reality, we should probably just talk about cratons and plates, not "continents".

  • vivipary in tomatoes

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  • I mean, in human terms, that tomato is a bloated uterus, already filled with zygotes and amniotic fluid.

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  • Actually, that's a really good point to which I really want to know the answer. We have to assume that, since it's effectively fermented meat, the prion would survive, but maybe they're really efficient at turning all of the protein into unbound amino acids?

  • “God is nonbinary”: GOP activates over Talarico’s past comments characterizing him as too radical for Texas

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  • And yet, let the symptoms of a disease go unchecked, and the patient could very well die from them before the antivirals and serum have been administered. The problem is that it ALL matters.

  • Finally, an optimal monitor configuration!

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  • But it reduces the usable space in the middle, as any rectilinearly-designed webpages will have areas on the far left and right that aren't viewable except in small parts while scrolling.

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  • Sharks are older than the current rings of Saturn, and I'll bet that the e-ring (the one which is primarily made of ice spewed out of enceladus) has been around for significantly longer than we give it credit for.

  • Gives it away every time

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  • If you can't read a fucking em dash —already a commonly-used punctuation mark— without thinking the author must be AI, then you are both insufficiently trained —either in grammar or in how to use your own keyboard— and bad at identifying AI responses.

  • Trump tells CNN Cuba is soon going to fall: ‘I’m going to put Marco over there’

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  • Did you forget archivist of the united states?

    Edit: after doing a bit more digging, he apparently timed out and ceased being the archivist in February, but no other archivist has been named.

  • What is something you dont care to understand or "get"?

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  • Never forget 1066.

  • Prepared for this day

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  • Worth pointing out that, just as a chimpanzee may not be particularly knowledgeable on the matter of chimpanzees, and fascists are generally not very well-educated on the history of Fascism, asking a cable to explain itself to you may not lead to the outcome you desire (although this FireWire cable does seem to be capable of producing at least some level of output, and stringing two words together is indicative of a greater capacity for thought than, for instance, a fascist)

  • Pam Bondi Declares Herself God-Empress Of Ethics (Call to action video, and public comment link in body)

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  • Dayorder unperson NOEM. Rectify malquoted bb "$200M were never spent by Miniluv on thinkpol prolefeed, issue is blackwhite"

  • US investigators believe strike on Iranian girls’ school probably carried out by US forces

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  • Secondary science

  • US investigators believe strike on Iranian girls’ school probably carried out by US forces

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  • Two of the teachers in my department literally told me it was an Iranian false flag today.

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  • Ah, no, it's that the more efficient packing takes up less space, so the less efficient square is actually slightly larger than the other, compared to the smaller squares.

    If the smaller squares are identical in both sets, then the larger square in the less-efficient set will be slightly bigger than the larger square in the more efficient set.

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  • Since a link to a wiki article does not an explanation make:

    The optimal efficiency (zero interstitial space) is achieved when the ratio of the side length of the larger square to the sides of the shorter squares (let's call it the "packing coefficient") is precisely equal to the square root of the number of smaller squares. Hence why the case of n=25, with a packing coefficient of 5, is actually more efficient than the packing of n=17 given in the waffle iron, with a packing coefficient of 4.675. Since sqrt(25)=5, that case is a perfectly efficient packing, equivalent to the case of n=16 with coefficient of 4. Since sqrt(17)=4.123, the waffle packing (represented by the orangutan) above is not perfectly efficient, leaving interstices. However, the packing coefficient of the suboptimal solution (represented by the girl) is actually 4.707, slightly further from sqrt(17), and thus less efficient, leaving greater wasted interstitial space.

  • What's a TV series that you really, really liked and would enthusiastically recommend?

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  • I haven't! It's shockingly tough to find anywhere