exerian

Ξ

@exerian

this site has two programmers

 

dorky femme droid

eggbug enthusiast

important eggbug lore

 

 

if you use the phrase "be normal" as if it's something to aspire to, kindly take a long walk off a short plank. or block me. whichever is easier for you.

 

 

child of the 80s

 

 

i escaped a cult.
all of the content warnings.
all of them.
tag: exerian's tragic backstory

 

 

                                 
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exerian
@exerian
hootOS
@hootOS
hootOS
@hootOS

sheesh. earth is wild.

i was watching Dan Olson's In Search Of A Flat Earth and ended up getting distracted when one of the flat earthers he clipped says the Earth travels around the Sun at 66,000+ km/h or some obscenely quick speed like that. and as i was wisualizing that and pondering why we dont feel 66,000 km/h gusts of wind (just as a fun ponderance im not a flat earther) i ended up getting vertigo from my own visualization of the Earth.

so that's new. apparently i can give myself an "OH FUCK IM GONNA FALL" off-balance feeling that incites an extreme, sudden panic response when i visualize the Earth and its amazing physical presence.

life is amazing. the fact that i exist on this marble in a vast empty vacuum, breathing in an atmosphere created by billions of years of ecosystemic evolution, capable of staying planted to the soil as this marble rotates and flies at ridiculous speeds around a gigantic ball of burning gas... that's fucking gnarly, dude. this is so nuts

hootOS
@hootOS

bro science is fucking gnarly

i mean i kinda already knew most if not all of this because like i said im not a flat earther and i know there are perfectly reasonable scientific explanations for basically any question i could ask about How Earth Is Even A Thing, but still. like, the science behind How Things Are is awesome

exerian
@exerian

my favorite part about science is that literally everything you know about science is wrong. most of it is generally close enough that you'll probably never need to know how it's wrong but it's still wrong.

and then galileo will come along and tell you that actually the reason that stars do that funny little loop is because the earth is not in fact the center of the universe. did this knowledge really change much of anything for the average person? yeah, but not until people spent several hundred years figuring out how to use that knowledge.

there are equivalent massive holes in our understanding. we think we know but even if we actually did know the knowledge wouldn't be that useful too us until lots of tech is developed to use the knowledge to do interesting things.

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in reply to @hootOS's post:

currentlyunnamed
@currentlyunnamed

If you happen to want a scientific explanation it's because gravity affects gasses too. So the atmosphere stays glued to the earth and we, the earth and the air all fly at incredible speeds through the universe together (for Newton's First Law).

If you consider also the movement of the entire solar system around the Milky Way, and then consider the movement of the Milky Way through the universe we are moving more than 2 000 000 km/h.

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MrWildBunnycat
@MrWildBunnycat

Relating to self-inflicted sense of vertigo. There's a museum-kind-of-building in Edinburgh called the Camera Obscura. It contains all sorts of interesting things including, interactive historical exhibits, a mirror maze and one particular favourite of mine - a simple cylindrical tunnel about 5 meters long with a catwalk bridge straight through the centre; a set of spots/stars projected onto the walls of the cylinder, constantly rotating around the axis of the catwalk. The first time I walked through I was convinced the catwalk tilted. I grasped onto the railings and was holding onto my dear life trying not to fall off, completely tilting myself in the opposing direction of the rotating lights. My legs started dangling off the side of the bridge and I thought I was surely going to fall out. It took a good 20 seconds for me to notice that the catwalk was rigidly attached to the floor on both ends and the incredible sense of tilting and falling off was just my brain and body reacting to the rotation in my peripheral vision. It was a humbling moment to realize just how flawed our sense of reality could be.

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