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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • That always did confuse me about the Triwizard Tournament. The only task that could be spectated was the first one with the Dragons. Task two spectators got to watch a murky lake for an hour and and the final task they stared at a wall of hedges.

    Surely they could have had some sort of magical projections of the champions. Even if not like a live video feed (because of course the only moving pictures in the Wizarding world are the semi-sentient ones in the paintings and newspapers), surely they could have had some sort of progress tracker like checkpoints or a live map of their movements (like the maurader’s map, but less advanced) so you could at least see some sort of indication placement in those races other than the take off and then their arrival back at the start.

    I’m not even the spectator type but wizards are really bad at sports. Quidditch is so unbalanced the recent video game had to change the scoring system to make it less broken. And one of their more populat schoolyard games shoots stinking shit all over 50 percent of the particpants. Their candy is a bit ridiculous too. Who wants an acid pop that literally burns a hole in your tongue or a fucking feces flavored jelly bean?



  • I’m not even sure what Trump thinks he’s gaining by spreading this? Zelensky is clearly concerned that if Trump takes office again, an unfortunate near 50:50 at this point, that he will be pull all support from Ukraine (maybe even help Russia). He’s doing what a man in his position, a good president trying to protect his country under invasion and dependent upon the support of allies, would do. He’s going to endear himself to the egotist, puff him up and hope that if he wins the presidency, Trump either sees reason or at least enjoys Zelensky sucking up to him enough to not fuck this up for Ukraine.




  • HAARP is a research program studying the ionosphere IN ALASKA! Apparently this void-skull thinks it’s a weather machine controlling the Hurricanes in fucking Florida!?

    Edit: Dug deeper into the conspiracy theories about HAARP. So many morons attribute so many powers to this fucking radio research station. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, earthquakes… it can make the sky appear to burn and control minds. It can flip the Earth’s magnetic poles. It can neutralize satellites. And it can create artificial aurora’s in the sky visible across the entire northern hemisphere. Man… conspiracy theorists think science is way cooler and more advanced than it actually is. I wish we were at that level of technology. This isn’t even a new research facility. It’s over 30 years old. We were still using VHS’s when this fucking apocalypse machine was being built. Imagine what we could do now!






  • First, you missed the part where the actual price now is not 4 dollars? He lied. It was 3 dollars, per the sign right behind him.

    Second, national inflation is calculated off a broad spectrum of goods and services providing insight into the relative buying power of tthe dollar itself, so it is not missing the point to compare based on the adjusted buying power of the dollar. It is a more accurate reflection of the true rise in cost of this individual good comparing how its rise in price has outpaced the average rise in costs across the board. It reflects the extra pressures put on the egg market from the avian flu outbreaks and possible other factors rather than the general inflation of the entire economy.

    Third, if Vance’s goal was to demonstrate that inflation in general had gone up tremendously and blame Harris specifically for that (despite how ridiculous that is), using eggs as a specific measure of the effect of their policies when the price hike on eggs have significantly outpaced other goods and is clearly due to non-policy related circumstances outside anyone’s control is obviously disingenuous. And that was before he lied and tried to add another 30+ percent on top of the already inflated price.




  • Not to mention the price spike on eggs specifically is also way less than he would like to make it appear. Yes, in 2020 dollars, a dozen eggs was $1.50. But adjusted for inflation to today’s dollars, that 1.50 is actually about 2 dollars today (inflation being a much broader issue and highly affected by covid). So the price didn’t jump from 1.50 to 4 dollars, an increase of 167%, nor even from 1.5 to 3 dollars, an increase of 100%. It only went up from 2 dollars to just under 3 dollars (given the signs), an increase of just under 50 percent. Considering all the avian flu outbreaks that is an entirely reasonable price hike on a high demand good.


  • If there were a 4th spatial dimension and you could see in 4 dimensions, yes, you could see the inside of things that are enclosed in 3 dimensions. It wouldn’t be like x-ray vision exactly though. Think about a sphere in 3d. It is enclosed. When you take 2d projections of the sphere by slicing cross-sections of the ball, from a 2d observer on that plane, they would also see an enclosed circular object. But from the 3rd dimensional observer looking down at that cross section they can see everything enclosed in the circle. From the 4th dimension, then it stands to reason they would have a similar view of a 3 dimensional objects innards. But rather than seeing through the object like in an x-ray, they just see the whole thing laid out in every detail at once like we see the insides of the 2d circle.


  • I disagree. I think we are very much hardwired to innately understand 3d space in an intuitive level. All else about higher and lower dimensions is learned experientially and/or academically, and it’s near impossible not to understand it in terms that relate to 3 dimensions or math. I also think that thinking about 4 dimensions in relation to 3 dimensions makes it impossible to truly understand 4 dimensional space as a whole. We can describe every detail of it mathematically, but still not be able to visualize it in whole. Regardless, given the fact that there is no 4th spatial dimension, I doubt either of us will ever have a definitive answer.


  • I’ve read it. Recently actually. It is really cool. It kind of supports my point though. It’s hard for those to both comprehend and describe that have been in higher dimensional spaces and much of what they do describe is in 3 dimensional terms, (enclosed spaces being visible as if by an open top being a good example of trying to comprehend a thing that would be uncomprehendable in 4d through a 3d mindset). Of course, it’s also written by an author that hasn’t actually experienced such things and is also trying to imagine what it would be like to experience his interpretation of the phenomenon, so… not exactly conclusive either way.

    Also later in the story

    When they describe how 3 dimensional space is dropped into 2 dimensions, I think it also illustrates how hard it would be to comprehend 4 dimensions from our 3 dimensional mindset because every bit of 3 dimensional spaces that drops into 2d space would unfold and expand infinitely because there’s no way to fit 3 dimensional data completely in 2 dimensions. So trying to comprehend 4 dimensions from a 3 dimensional perspective will likewise always leave gaps