Um… but you said:

“There is nothing broad about their questions”

The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation

And, if your curiosity goes beyond that basic explanation, check out this NASA page on rocket launches:

Chapter 14: Launch

If a spacecraft is launched from a site near Earth’s equator, it can take optimum advantage of the Earth’s substantial rotational speed. Sitting on the launch pad near the equator, it is already moving at a speed of over 1650 km per hour relative to Earth’s center. This can be applied to the speed required to orbit the Earth (approximately 28,000 km per hour).

Getting into orbit doesn’t just require overcoming the force of gravity pulling down. In order to stay up, you basically have to put yourself on a path that allows you to go around the Earth faster (or as fast as) you fall back towards it. When your movement around the Earth is balanced with the rate that you’re falling, you are in orbit. This means you have to go really fucking fast, not just up but sideways.

Maybe if we keep hitting it more money will fall out

What is that, like 1 minute’s revenue for Amazon?

Er, not really… for instance:

“…back in the day?”

Which ‘day’? Before digital mapping? Before cartography as a formal practice? Before the invention of the compass? Before the standardization of the meter? Before the printing press? Before Galileo? Before Eratosthenes?

The time period of the question is potentially the entirety of human history. That’s quite broad.

What methods were used to scale down in world, to paper distances?

In which part of the world? In which culture? For what purpose? (e.g. navigation? coastal, inland, international? crop planting? city planning? determining property lines? etc)

This is not a straightforward question in any way. A complete answer would be an undergraduate degree with a double major in history and geography.

Pee is stored in expelled from the balls.

Hmm, OK could be interesting…

O… K…

Um…

Yeah… that makes sense…

That’s intended behavior, right? Let me guess, you used the project to vibe code the web page?

Good show mate, off to a brilliant start.

Yes.

Came into the comments to ask the same thing, you already found it. You are awesome.

Why do those things cause cancer? Why do some smokers not die of cancer? The reason it’s so vague is because we don’t actually know what causes cancer.

Ah, I see the misunderstanding now.

Just because a natural process contains some inherent randomness does not mean that we do not know how it works. Knowing exactly how a thing occurs does not make the action of that thing deterministic. Just because it is unpredictable on an individual scale does not mean it is mysterious, or beyond our understanding.

Some people exposed to a carcinogen will develop cancerous cells. Some will not. Some of their immune systems will remove the cancer cells before they cause problems. Some will not. Some will develop tumors from those cells. Some of those cells will die and get filtered out by the kidneys or liver before they reproduce and form tumors. Some of those tumors will grow enough to be lethal. Some will become benign before they cause significant health problems.

The outcome depends on many factors like age, health, exercise, diet, exposure, genetic background, etc. There are more variables than we can possibly track for any given person. Even if we could get all of that information, we are ultimately talking about the interactions of certain molecules with proteins in cells - meaning that quantum effects are relevant, so there is some probability involved.

We know what is associated with cancer, but not what causes it.

We know what causes cancer. Genetic mutations during cell reproduction cause cancer. We don’t know every possible thing that can provoke genetic mutations (that would require infinite knowledge), nor do we know if a specific individual will develop cancer in response to a specific carcinogen. The outcome is probabilistic.

Again, just because there is some inherent randomness does not mean that we don’t understand how it works. Understanding something does not make it deterministic.

Star Trekkin’ - The Firm

Two Vics

The title is “git gud”.

1. You will live, consciously aware, for eternity.
2. Your consciousness will be bound to the body which consumes the elixir.
3. The body will continue to age and eventually decompose normally.

We know many causes of cancer. We don’t know every possible thing that might provoke cell mutations. We know that it’s not any one specific thing.

We don’t know what causes cancer. It’s the oncogenic paradox.

Hmm, this is not really true though…

We know that cancer is caused by genetic mutations during cell replication, resulting in malformed cells which behave abnormally. If these cells then replicate successfully they can produce tumors. We know that this can happen with basically any cell type, though some animals have very low cancer rates.

Mechanically, we know that a lot of different sources can provoke genetic mutations in cells. We have identified many, many such influences (radiation, various chemicals, viruses, etc). Asbestos fibers can interfere with chromosomes mechanically during mitosis:

There is experimental evidence that very slim fibers (<60 nm, <0.06 μm in breadth) tangle destructively with chromosomes (being of comparable size). This is likely to cause the sort of mitosis disruption expected in cancer.

We know many causes of cancer. We don’t know every possible thing that might provoke cell mutations. We know that it’s not any one specific thing.

We also know that cellular mutation is part of the evolutionary process. It might not be possible to “cure cancer” in the sense of preventing cellular mutations, as this may be a built-in function of what we are as a species. Preventing mutation might also not be a good long-term strategy for the survival of the species.

Bacon fat can be used as a replacement for cooking oil in a pan or anywhere you would use grease while cooking. One of my favorite things to do with it is grease a cast iron skillet and bake cornbread in it (you get smoky bacon flavor crust). It also works great as a butter replacement for frying eggs or hash browns. You can also use it as a fat base to make gravy.

If you run the bacon fat through a coffee filter while it’s still hot & liquid (into a glass jar) it will be shelf stable at room temperature. Cone coffee filters are convenient for this.

If you don’t filter it you must store it in the refrigerator, or else the leftover bits of meat in the fat will go rancid and start to rot.

Is that… is that… Meowron?

Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh

Getting to Where You Are, by Steven Harrison

There is a lot of value in the pursuit of self-knowledge, though I think most people hearing it described find it dull (you just… sit? for hours?). I recommend reading these in the order presented here. They will guide you in meditation without any of the mystical or religious nonsense. Learn to breathe, learn to focus, learn to be.

No, we’re talking about companies scraping hundreds of millions if not billions of labor hours of output to train their models for the sake of developing software products which they then sell for profit.

Every model that was trained on legally acquired free public data and open source code should be freely publicly available and open source.

Every model that was trained on not legally acquired public data (e.g. Meta’s models) should be taken out of production until all of the lawsuits are concluded, and hopefully the parties responsible are put out of business.

I’m not talking about future, potential labor that AI might replace. I’m talking about the labor which was stolen to produce these models in the first place.

But, please use AI.