Just goes to show this place is only one half step up from reddit.
This ancient repost keeps getting upvotes no matter how many times it comes up.
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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It may be ancient but has it stopped being good?
I have two trainees and when they come to me with complex questions they’ve clearly thought out and debated it makes me so happy.
Oh wow, to be jump scared by the Destiel fanfic writer I'm obsessed with (the stories not the person lol) in the wild.
Northern Sparrow is an amazing writer and talks often about bird physiology in her fics!
well yeh it's fiction. because birds aren't real.
Fuck you too pal
a bit absent are we?
Scientist just discovered how to upload a picture to a bird. Non-drone theory isn't looking so good.
non-drone theory? what is this nonsense?
it's the 20last century.. fucking drones be everywhere..
and they talk to each other just like birbs.
how you defeat a patriot system or any other air defense? lots and lots of drones.
they're like the plague that is online bots, but they fly.
add a little AI to the mix and baby you got a stew going
This is the opposite outcome of one of my friends advisors. We went to the Roswell UFO museum as a lark. And one of the info panels said "this is potential alien metal panels, analyzed by a scientist, Dr. So and So" and we told the professor, who got really angry. "I said that I would look at what they had and it was all flattened pieces of beer cans, I told them not to associate me with this nonsense!"
So you're saying he did analyze the metals, and that he couldn't conclusively prove that they weren't alien metal?
This whole "it's comprised of an unknown element" thing that sci-fi likes to do is ridiculous in and of itself.
If aliens did turn up on Earth their starships would be constructed out of known materials, sure it might be some exotic alloy, or other engineered metamaterial, but we definitely understand what it was.
There's no such thing as alien atoms. Iron is iron.
I think the most crazy thing we could potentially encounter atomically (that we theorize about but haven't seen) is material from the possible "Island of stability" that could be (much) farther along in the periodic table from things we've created.
For the uninformed, the island of stability is a range on the periodic table with atomic numbers in the ~170's (currently the element with the highest atomic number - how many protons in the nucleus - that humans have synthesized is Oganesson, with an atomic number of 118) where it is believed that nuclei will remain (more?) stable, rather than breaking down in microseconds after we slam other elements into each other with devices such as the Large Hadron Collider.
There are SO many challenges with even getting to 118. Getting higher than that is theoretically possible but so far we haven't worked it out. A super advanced civilization might have the means and/or dedicated the resources, and be the beneficiary of whatever properties exist in the advanced/exotic matter that we know nothing about.
That being said, we would still be able to analyze the materials and understand what we're looking at, even if our WTF meters are breaking from the overload because we don't know how they managed to achieve it.
I, for one, love me some copernicium... truly magical stuff.
I'm still not convinced alien technologies would be totally incomprehensible to us. Some of it obviously will, but their tech will still adhere to basic fundamentals like levers, inclined planes, and wheels -- as well as fundamental forces like electromagnetism, kinetic energy, and pressure.
When you need to fasten two parts of machinery together, there are a limited number of efficient ways to do it. I fully expect bolts, nuts, and washers to be a universal technology. Same with focusing radiation; there are not many substitutes for lenses, mirrors, and lasers. When you need to move something around in gravity well, you're always going to need a wheel. If something needs to rotate, there aren't many substitutes for a rotor, stator, copper windings, and electricity. Gears, chains, and belts work just fine for transferring that rotational energy. Nobody is gonna go looking for exotic forces to perform tasks that can be far more easily accomplished conventionally.
Not wheels. When your technology is sufficiently advanced you un-invent the wheel and just hover everywhere.
Its very important that they can only hover and not float or fly. If they could float or fly then you wouldn't be able to do cool car chases in a society without cars
I know right? Who needs fire anyway?
Replaced with plasma and lasers.
Humans harness fire now more than all of history combined. And fire is plasma.
I'm just saying, even the lowest tech has never really disappeared. We still use rocks and steam in our highest technologies. There's no reason to think aliens would abandon whatever tech has worked for eons.
Pre-smartphone was a very different time.
There were literally phone numbers you could call and someone at a library would look up the answer to your question. In like, a day or so. And call you back with the info.
I want this job so bad. Do you know how much I know but never get asked about! I have to inflict it apon people to get it out ofy system.
Pfft, I bet you can't even tell me one interesting thing about minerals
Does Bronze count as a mineral for these purposes? If so did you know that the earliest form of bronze was arsenical and that large amount of copper deposits used during the copper and bronze age were contaminated by arsenic. This is probably what resulted in early blacksmiths being shamans, because they poisoned themselves while making their tools and went crazy.
I'll allow it, because A. interesting. and B. I can use my preplanned response:
Can the trap be a glacier? I want future archeologists to dissect my corpse much like how Ötzi who was probably a metal shaman based off of his tools and how far travelled he was. Though he was most likely a very early example, also he was most likely murdered.
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Here's a cross-over mineral and biology:
Teeth are not bone. They are made of a variety of the mineral apatite called hydroxyapatite (fluoride treatment converts some of it into fluorapatite, which has stronger chemical bonds).
Further, apatite is a homophone for appetite but they come from completely different root words.
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I have a friend who works for a library. They still offer this service. I don't think anyone under the age of 70 has used it in some time.
my first job ever was at a library. dewey decimal system anyone?
I worked in my college library, so no we didn’t use the Dewey decimal system.
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There used to be an address at some university and you could mail them photographs of insects and they would tell you what those insects were.
Usually it would turn out to be a beetle of some kind.
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You would NOT believe-… ok honestly everybody reading this already knows.
But there are SO many people that will offer confident unprompted incorrect advice on so many subjects while they have the sum of human knowledge in their pocket. Or they will ask some dummy for the answer while having that same access.
And the best part is that many of them use their literal human knowledgebase portal to send the wrong information!
well yeh, because everyone knows Wikipedia is only 99.9901% accurate.
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I imagine everyone in the bar silent while he's on the phone, leaning forward, waiting to hear the answer.
my advisor: …yes
Girl stacking cups in the background: OH MY GOD!!!!!!
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