The Factory Floor - 2018-12-17

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1:15 AM

@Mithrandir24601 To your point, SpacX is worldbuilding. "How can I launch a rocket into LEO but have the primary stage land tail first so I can use it again?"

SpaceX is the billion dollar answer to that question.

2:01 AM

@bilbo_pingouin I think there's one little difference there. In SF, said Unobtanium must have behaviors consistent with science. If it breaks some rules, it must be very crisp and clear which ones it breaks vs. which ones it keeps. SF is fiction rooted in science.

WHich makes mideival SF tricky. Not impossible, but since none of the characters themselves know science, it might be difficult to wed the science into the story using only the narrorator while all of the characters remain oblivious

@CortAmmon yes, this

hey there @CortAmmon

user image

2 hours later…

4:37 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

Why is the Dark World so Dark? My hero has to journey into a mirror world. This world is much like our own except evil. Almost everything there is an enemy and there will be very little kindness. On top of that the world is DARK. It isn't just a metaphor and the sun hasn't gone away. It's a mir...

5:19 AM

@CortAmmon That's my point, SF is fiction rooted in science. But to think that science only started in the 19th Century is a reduction... some natural science was occuring before. That they were wrong in some important aspects does not mean that it cannot be used.

Building cathedral, running battles, travelling around the world are scientific achievements, which were made already during the (for some, late) Middle Age. It was mostly Empyric, true enough...

But they might have spent some time analyzing what they could do with the unobtainium. Not really knowing what propertry of it made it fly, but nonetheless having been experimented on.

2 hours later…

7:46 AM

@bilbo_pingouin My opinion (and this is just an opinion) is that the science that matters there is the science that the reader understands, which is modern science for most readers. That being said, it would be interesting to do a middle ages SF book which first teaches their version of science, then uses it to weave a SF story.

I did read a book a while back that compressed like 400 years worht of scientific discovery into one generation. The early years did involve things like putting bellows into the mouth of a skinned dog while it was still alive, just to see how everything worked.

8:03 AM

@CortAmmon I'm usually going for a more common approach, with SF based on Science that started off from current common scientific knowledge. But hearing that definition, I found it an interesting take on it. And why not? I mean I'll mull it over for a while and see what comes out of it.

Mithrandir24601

8:46 AM

@Green Just imagine facing an army of the All Blacks doing this

9:05 AM

@NickAlexeev ..why?

4 hours later…

1:17 PM

@Mithrandir24601 ...with big sharp weapons in their hands too? No thanks.

1 hour later…

2:35 PM

HAHAHAHAHH!!!! "We don't want to be happy! We want to be famous! TAKE HIS BRAIN!"

0

A: Why is my Dark World so dark

Make the Hero Depressed If physics in this mirror world matches physics on Earth, in real life, then all that needs to change is how the character perceives the world. Depression will do nicely. In 2010, some researchers found that depression makes a person see the world in more shades of gray...

It makes me smile so much that my answer to everything being dark is to make the hero depressed while everyone else is "Alter physics!" or "Change light!" While those may work, depression is far more effective.

2:57 PM

@bilbo_pingouin Hmm. If I run with that, I find that the "sciency" part involves not only explaining that the ship flies because it's coated in unobtanium, but a belief that there is/could be an explaination for why the unobtanium floats, and so on, all the way down. The funny thing about that is how many questions I've had to field on Physics.SE about "why" something happens where the answer is "look, you've gone far enough, it's time for you to learn the truth...."

"... not only do we not have an answer for 'why,' physics as a whole isn't even looking for 'why.' In fact, physics hasn't even been looking for that kind of 'why' from the start. They're just looking to be able to predict things."

3:51 PM

I think part of the reason why I tend towards that sort of definition is because it ties closely with Sanderson's First Rule of Magick. I rely on that rule so much on WB that it's sort of been ingrained in me.

4:02 PM

@CortAmmon for everyone else's reference: brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law

@Green That was such a funny question. I helped edit it in the sandbox a little. It was mostly right already. I had to giggle though, because Bruglesco was worried it might not be on topic. I was sitting back here thinking "oh heck no. This is like the definition of on-topic for this fourm! Let's get this sucker live!" =)

@CortAmmon Yeah, it's definitely on-topic. I do love my cheatery answers so much.

The answers are all over the map, but they're not the spastic version of all over the map that you get from a bad question. They're all over the map because gears are turning =)

Dont' change physics because that's hard and expensive. Just break the Hero's brain. That's way way easier.

It's always the little things that make for the best flavor.

"Do you think that's air you're breathing?"

4:13 PM

@CortAmmon Sometimes I wonder that to myself.

It's fun to try to believe it isn't. I fail each time, but its fun to see how I have to come back to the conclusion that it's air.

It used to bother me, but then someone gave me a great Nietzsche quote, "Truths are illusions that we have forgotten are illusions." So now I can be like "You know what? Time to forget. I like breathing air!"

My dad has been struggling to find universal symbols for good and evil. He can't find any. The closest he's ever gotten was the halo and horns of Christian angels and devils. It's funny how he's trying to find these moral absolutes in a world drive by perspectives.

@CortAmmon He's totally right. Humans need stories, even if those stories fail to map to anything 'real'.

I have found "heaven" and "earth" to be remarkably consistent symbols, actually.

I am yet to find a culturue where "up in the air above me" is bad and "down below me" is good

Indeed, AI researchers may have found such thinking is ingrained in us evloutionarially as part of how we learn to walk.

@CortAmmon How extensively have you looked? I admit that I haven't searched at all.

@CortAmmon Perhaps this is why close air support is so terrifying. It inverts the normal up=good, down=bad to "The air above me is death".

...well, and close air support is a really great way to kill the people you don't like in not very much time.

hehe

There is definitely something physically practical about being at altitude. Energy, lines of sight, etc.

Yeah, having your enemy have the heavenly position is no good

@Green I'm certain I'll find some Amazonian tribe or some Native American culture which defies the rule

But Christianity, Judaiesm, Shinto, Buddhism, Daoism, Confuscionism, the Australian Aboriginees, all of the African tribes I've checked. All of them have some concept ofabove being good

4:22 PM

@CortAmmon It feels like the kind of thing that would be cultural characteristic of a fantasy race like dwarves.

It's not always the Christian "you go to heaven when you die," but there's always that directionality to it

Oh, Hinduism, forgot to add that to the list

where down (and deep) is good but up (and shallow) is bad.

I wonder how far you could run with that before people start having trouble resonating with the dwarves in your story.

There's some race of beings in C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair who come from the molten depths.

@CortAmmon Probably quite a long way as long as the remaining attributes of the dwarves are approximately human.

It might become one of those itches you cannot scratch.

4:28 PM

Those from the molten depths considered the surface to be a horrible place. Deeper and hotter was always better.

hey

@CortAmmon Thanks for your help with that btw

@Green Ad I do love your answer.

I have a question for chat

I edited an old deleted Sandbox post in an effort to resalvage the old closed question. Since it is an edit it didn't pop up in the feed. Mind if I drop a link?

4:56 PM

@bruglesco I don't see why not

Some people even drop a link when it's a new entry simply because they think feeds is too slow.

5:17 PM

@AndyD273 thanks for the heads up.

Just wanted to check etiquette.

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

This Question has been Asked on Main and Closed. How can changing environments make my super-villain super-powered while causing chronic (extreme) pain? I have a super-villain who is from another environment( e.g. aquatic, extra-terrestrial, extra-dimensional ( Bonus points for the least extrem...

@CortAmmon You should know it didn't take long for someone to ask I'd it was a Zelda reference.

@bruglesco Could be Silent Hill too

5:51 PM

@AndyD273 And Coraline. and Neverwhere. And Narnia (although that is bright, just cold) And many more if you change the parameters a little.

Right. Since the world has magic, I kinda like the idea that effect is caused by the magic. Basically could be Greens answer, but it is caused by the magical field, and causes everyone in that world to be affected to one degree or another. And some people could be immune.

I'm just not sure if it's enough for a seperate answer

@AndyD273 Well I welcome any input personally.

I love your avatar. Whats that from? Or is it yours?

6:08 PM

@bruglesco From Bioshock, kind of a cartoony version of a big daddy and little sister. I didn't draw it.

@bruglesco Thanks!

6:24 PM

We have a new record for the most distant Solar System body, if anyone's interested.

3

Happy Monday, too!

@HDE226868 Hooray!

Maybe we can load up two SpaceX BFRs to get a probe out there in the next century or so.

@Green I think it's gotten about ~1000 more this weekend, thanks to the article.

@Mithrandir24601 That's really a phenomenal quote.

Mithrandir24601

@HDE226868 Nice! I assume they don't know the size or anything yet?

@bruglesco Ok, typed it up as its own answer.

@Mithrandir24601 Current estimates put it about ~500 km across, making it smaller than most known dwarf planets, although 2015 TG387 is likely smaller.

Mithrandir24601

6:33 PM

That is pretty small

Still hoping for an announcement for Planet 9, since the old planet 9 was such a disappointment.

I am wondering though; since IIRC most of the other dwarf planets are lumpy potatoes, how is Pluto so round and shapely?

7:09 PM

@HDE226868 I wonder how many people will stay on WB to contribute because of that visibility? No way to know I guess.

@Green Yeah, I do wonder. Likely not a huge number of people, given that it's only been a couple thousand views, but still more than nothing. There must be at least one or two. . .

@HDE226868 I wish we could get conversion rate information. Like, how many people who have accounts on other stacks make regular contributions to WB after clicking on a HNQ question?

I'm taking a look at the mod analytics, and it looks like we didn't get a bump in new users or new views or anything like that.

@Green raises hand

@HDE226868 What kind of conversion to we get from HNQ?

I can't see any sort of data on that. HNQ data is . . . not easy to come by, or maybe not even available to non-employees.

7:21 PM

@HDE226868 Aw, shucks.

Given all the hubub about inappropriate questions appearing on HNQ on work-focused sites, I kind of want to troll the people who trigger too easily.

@Green Leave the shellfish out of this.

@James I'll involve whatever mollusk I damn well please!

@Green Did you have a bad experience with seafood as a kid? What'd they ever do to you!

I was fed a steady diet of Surströmming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming

It did plenty to me.

@James for comparison: demislw.com/2014/03/09/its-a-fork-off-the-worlds-foulest-food

That looks almost as gross as Luetfisk

Lutefisk (Norwegian, pronounced [²lʉːtfɛsk] in Northern and parts of Central Norway, [²lʉːtəˌfɪsk] in Southern Norway) or lutfisk (Swedish, pronounced [²lʉːtfɪsk] in Sweden and Finland; Finnish: lipeäkala [ˈlipeæˌkɑlɑ]) is a traditional dish of some Nordic countries. It is traditionally part of the Norwegian julebord and Swedish julbord, as well as the similar Finnish joulupöytä. It is made from aged stockfish (air-dried whitefish) or dried/salted whitefish (klippfisk) and lye (lut). It is gelatinous in texture. Its name literally means "lye fish". == Preparation == Lutefisk is dried whitefish...

7:30 PM

@Green So come up with a clickbait title that gets really close to crossing the PC line without actually going over it, then figure out what question goes good with that title.

Seems like the kind of thing that would be fun to do in chat

@Green This article is gold.

bahahahahaha

7:47 PM

@Green How does one go down such a path, to be in a place where "Surströmming" and "steady diet" are anywhere near each other in a sentence?

8:27 PM

@HDE226868 Do you know of a good place to view the solar system with orbits drawn that includes these new more distant planets/planetoids/whatever they are called?

Google Earth?

I haven't tried, but the outzooming was pretty neat...

@MonicaCellio Here's my entry: meta.stackexchange.com/a/320370/255733

@AndyD273 I don't know but it was my childhood.

@James I have been lucky that it has been the top result for Surströmming vs Hakarl for the last couple of years. It's very easy to find.

@AndyD273 Also, I'm kidding. My parents never really fed us seafood so I don't have much of a taste for it.

@Green I think I would I prefer the other kind of swedish fish...

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2

@Green Ah, k. Seems like that should be the punishment for some very bad childhood behavior, like lighting the dog on fire.

8:43 PM

@AndyD273 Those are crack!

@AndyD273 You'd think so but it keeps getting made and keeping getting eaten in Sweden. There's no accounting for regional food preferences.

@Green Well, as the article says, probably a lot of alcohol is to blame. I wonder though about its history, and if you would consider that famine food; aka, the kind of food you eat when there is literally nothing else left, and you are hours from death. I think a few traditionally chinese delicacies fall into that category, like bird nest soup.

@AndyD273 Hakarl definitely falls in that category.

A description I read in Iceland about why the Icelanders still eat hakarl is to remind themselves that times used to be really really crappy in Iceland.

....and all there was to eat was hakarl.

I've had it. It is not pleasant to smell but I guess if you didn't have anything else to choose from, you could definitely get used to the smell.

The ammonia assault on your nostrils only lasts as long as it takes to completely destroy your sense of smell for the day.

I wanna propose we create a 12 days of worldbuilding song in honour of the upcoming example of festival-building called 'christmas'. I will start and I hope someone continues, and so forth:

8:58 PM

@dot_Sp0T Must include warfare, asteroid strikes and planets.

On the first day of worldbuilding, a beverage snorted he

3

@Green absolutely!

9:11 PM

@dot_Sp0T If you were players in my DnD campaign you would be fighting a lich riding the Terrasque into battle.

@James Dude's feet are too big. He'd be clumsy AF.

@James and what would we do after lunch? ;-)

@James Could I ride into battle on something resembling Starcraft's Archon?

@Green I feel like that would give you testicular cancer but sure, yeah, why not.

@dot_Sp0T you forgot the last third of the first line of the song, your suggestion needs more.

@James Bro, I'm powerful enough to get an apex unit like the Archon to carry me. I'm immune to such debuffs like cancer.

9:17 PM

Did you read that the Terrasque is an un-killable monster created to attack the gods in their home planes?

('course that such-and-such DM could just fail my saving throw against cancer and I'm toast.)

@James there is more?

@James I remember you mentioned it before...the figurine shown on the wikipedia page isn't appealing. The fan art is far far better. I'd ride one of those.

@James I wanted to do a wb-chat-folks dnd oneshot for a long time, you game?

@Green You could build a large villa on its back.

@dot_Sp0T may be tough to schedule but could be entertaining.

9:22 PM

@James I've played games with folks in the US as well as attended telephone conferences with people from Chicago and Bangladesh - I'm ready

@James oh my that would be a really interesting setting

@Green Were you the one that was telling me about superfight?

@James Probably. I really enjoy that card game.

I was considering turning Superfight into a busker act.

@James re:demiliches

> it is very resistant to most weapons and magic, and if disturbed, the skull will levitate and suck the souls from nearby living creatures.

What a great trap! Put a demilich in with a giant bone pile. Heros have to climb over, shake some bones loose then Ooops.....I've sucked your soul!

@James When we were talking about Power Space in the Monkey Lords podcast, did visions of D&D elementals pop into your head? (It did for me.)

10:03 PM

@Green Sure did

@Green I got it this weekend. I actually played it with my 8 year old.

kinda hilarious.

10:29 PM

@James points should be given when combatants are actually perfect matches for each other.

I had one game where a scientist made of lava was fighting a fire demon. They ended up being best buddies at the end.

@Green The best yesterday was a 40' tall Mohatma Ghandi with a sonic scream.

@Green Is this like the nerd version of "visions of sugar plums...etc"

10:46 PM

It weird how often I have snorted things because of this chatroom...

@James it's one of your redeeming features

11:13 PM

hey there @dot_Sp0T

@Shalvenay hello :D

@dot_Sp0T there's a good chance I'd be game for a WB.SE oneshot

@Shalvenay sounds wonderful!

heck, depending on system and themes, I may even be up for DMing said oneshot

11:44 PM

@James oh dang!

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Dec '1817

The Factory Floor

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