Welcome to the Ship!

Biochemistry researcher and optics engineer. I will do anything for lo mein. Poverty abolitionist and public housing enthusaist. Amateur mycologist, native plant gardener, and solarpunk transhumanist. I like walkable infrastructure, sustainable energy, and big stompy robots. They/them, terfs fuck off.

[batshit-auspol]

In a rare double own-goal the Young Nationals (the youth wing of a conservative party) posted this in their own Facebook comment section today

Naturally they have been getting completely roasted for it in the comments, leading the page to clarify they were actually referencing another blunder.

Problem is, it was a blunder by another Nationals MP that had largely gone unnoticed, so they've just dunked on their own brand twice.

The comments on both are, of course full of references to one of the great AusPol comment blunders of all time, making it possibly a rare three-for-one stuff up.

[batshit-auspol]

I, an impartial follower, love Batshit Auspol's posts and think we should all follow for more

[junk-thunder]

it's a well-known secret among time travelers that you can just do whatever you want to genghis khan and it won't affect history at all. just last week i visited late 12th century mongolia to do a Hot Ones-style interview with him and someone had already given him a PBR baseball cap and a steam deck- the butterfly effect has that name for a reason but temüjin's destiny is just so firmly rooted that no amount of interference could possibly change it. dude absolutely kills it at Crypt of the Necrodancer

[uglywhitefatherfigure]

[transcyberism]

serious answer: I ran some quick math (below the cut) and found out that this ant would impart about ten times the amount of energy as an impact by a 45kg Howitzer round, or one thousand times the energy yield of a typical handgrenade. Ordinarily I would expect something like an ant to disintegrate on impact at high speeds, but there is simply so much energy in that ant that it would have nowhere else to go but forward - even if it completely exploded on impact without penetrating, you would definitely die and definitely need a closed-casket funeral. If it simply went straight through without meaningful disintegration, carrying the majority of its energy away with it, with this being a hypersonic projectile (actually, it's a relativistic one) it still would definitely shred at least a grapefruit-sized hole in you just from cavitation damage. Given the ridiculous speed, it would also create a significant amount of heat and a concussive sonic shockwave as it did so, definitely killing you instantly and probably turning you into charred ground beef.

TLDR yes you would be super mega dead

first let's use a more sensible unit than mph. 100000000mph is 44,704,000m/s. that's more significant figures than we need but I'll leave that to the end. for reference, c is exactly 299,792,458m/s meaning our unlucky ant is traveling at about 15% of the speed of light.

next let's find the mass of an ant. googling it, it looks like 1-5mg is an oft-cited figure, so let's say it's a little sugar ant that only weighs 1mg (because that's an easy number for math, and because I want to know the best-case scenario in case this is somehow survivable). that's 0.001g or 0.000001kg (important for next step.)

to find how much energy the ant will impart, we use the formula E(k) = 1/2 * mv², which results in a value of very nearly one gigajoule (1GJ ≈ 999MJ), which is neat because we started with one significant figure and now we're ending with one too.

[raptor-goblin]

oh but the ant so small I can take it

[transcyberism]

that's true I didn't think of that

[macklesufficient]

fuck it

fermi time

1. extraterrestrial life is rare or nonexistent (rare earth hypothesis)

2. extraterrestrial intelligence is rare/nonexistent (algae vs. alumni problem)

3. it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself

4. it is the nature of int. life to destroy others (berserker/dark forest)

5. civilizations only broadcast detectable signals for a brief period of time

6. alien life may be too incomprehensible

7. colonization is not the cosmic norm

8. physically spreading throughout the galaxy requires too many resources

9. humans have not listened correctly

10. intelligent life may be too far away

11. earth is deliberately being avoided (zoo hypothesis)

12. alien life is already here, unacknowledged

Voting ended onMar 26, 2025

had to eliminate some more specific ones for space, shout out to “intelligent alien species have not developed advanced technologies”

[luxiiien]

i just learned that the first species of millipede to actually have 1000 or more legs, Eumillipes persephone, was discovered in 2020!!

This bad boy has 618 legs and THIS one...

HAS 1,306 LEGS

[transcyberism]

I love that the genus name Eumillipes means "actual millipede"

[regina-bithyniae]

[starrynet]

new investigative reporting from kenny jacoby at usatoday

[bufhasvhndsls-deactivated201610]

GET A LOAD OF THAT DOG

[owlmylove]

[distantly] THAT DOG

[jamie-bennett]

This is hands down my favorite video on the internet and I am so happy it showed back up on my dash!

[thelensart]

Hearing her speak makes me think of the ocean

[politijohn]

Source

Source

[chillyfeetsteak]

what it’s like walking around with me

[theparadigmshifts]

evangelicals being like "god made men to do This and be like This and women to do That and be like That that's just how it is" and it's just a picture of a white man and woman following traditional gender norms makes me so insane like you boring fascist fucks. god made 2 million species of beetles. god made whales, ducks, humans, and 1500 other species capable of same sex behavior. god made fish and amphibians that change sexes. god made more than 30 different intersex variations in human beings. god, in his infinite curiosity. wake up!!! fuck!!

[theparadigmshifts]

"god wants women to have perfect no-makeup makeup looks and stay at home not talking back and upholding capitalism" god??? that guy who made lizards that shoot blood out of their eyes?? that guy who made salmon do whatever the fuck that is?? are you fucking crazy???

[micromontage]

[wordfather]

all i want is to get hellsitegeneticsed. i want to know what kind of creature my post is. god i want it to be something cool sooooooooo bad do you think they have the genetic code for werewolves

[hellsitegenetics]

String identified: aattgttgtcattatcattgattttgcattatgtcc

Closest match: fucking badass werewolf Common name: hell yeahhhh

[wordfather]

so this is what it's like to be god's favorite

[average-beets]

[amirrorcalledthemoon]

important addition

[sizhens-deactivated20250415]

Is it normal to have a bigass box of unsorted, loose, random cables in your house?

bigass cables box?

I assumed everybody had one of these

I sort all of my cables and have them neatly wrapped and stored

why do you have so many goddamn cables to begin with

OP you really live like this?

Voting ended onMar 25, 2025

[swiftlark]

hot take possibly? but i actually think it’s okay for things to be marketed for adults. it’s literally okay if things aren’t suitable for children. i feel like we are losing the plot