My imaginary companions (armored troopers from Star Wars: The Clone Wars) accompany me while I perform the tasks and undergo the trials of typical adult life. Other parts can be found here.
I Don’t Like Ration Bars
“Hey, can Hound pull an overnight guard shift tonight?” Thire asked without preamble, towing an obviously uncomfortable Hound behind him. “He’s never done one.”
The answer, of course, was ‘sure’. There was very little need for a guard rotation at all, but the troopers liked to have one set anyway. Besides, I had a soft spot for Hound. (I have a soft spot for most of them, but he is a bit of a favorite.) Was it too on-the-nose to say that he was almost puppy-like in demeanor and attitude?
Anyway, I opened my mouth so respond that I would not mind a bit, but Thire talked over me. “I already promised to watch Grizzer, so you don’t need to worry about a massiff in your house.”
I tried again to agree - and to add that I wouldn’t care if Hound did end up bringing Grizzer along - but Thire interrupted again. “And the commanding officers said they want a good rotation of us so we can all be familiar with your house’s layout.”
We watched each other for a long moment. I wanted to make sure he was done talking before I tried again to reply. Thire gave me an expectant sort of eyebrow raise, but spoke just as I began to agree.
“You mostly choose your guards from the 501st, but I for one would like to think you aren’t prejudiced. Despite what the rest of the troopers say. And all the evidence that says you are.”
I couldn’t help that my eyes began to narrow, not at all liking what Thire was trying to suggest, but Hound spoke up before either of us could say something that we both would end up regretting.
“Stars, vod,” Hound said, voice dripping with exasperation. “Shut up and let her talk and we might actually get an answer!”
I smiled broadly at Hound. “For that alone, I would be honored if you did an overnight guard shift. For the record, though, my answer was going to be ‘yes’ the first time.”
Thire didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed as he clapped Hound on the shoulder. “There you go, then. Have fun!” With one last cheeky look, he ambled away, probably to look for Thorne, who seemed to be his best work friend. (Never say that in front of a trooper, though. They always act offended by the suggestion that they form something as plebian as friendships.)
“When and where do I report?” Hound asked, defaulting into a regulation-level parade rest, his hands clasped together neatly behind his back.
“Just meet Rex and I at the office by 4:30 and we’ll walk out to my car as a group,” I told him. “Oh, and my one weird rule is that you can’t bring any ration bars with you.”
“Ration bars, ma’am?” he asked curiously.
“Okay, two rules,” I corrected myself. “I dislike being called ma’am, so please don’t do that. And yeah, no ration bars. I hate watching you guys eat bland, boring nutrient sticks when there are other options. I’m making dinner tonight, and you’re welcome to as much of it as you want. Also, I have way too many snacks lying around my house that you can have if you don’t like what I make.”
“I couldn’t take your food, m-” Hound looked embarrassed by his almost-slip. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, Hound,” I assured him. “You won’t be taking anything from me. Rex, Tech, and I have been trying to figure things out and we think you guys are taking copies of the food in what almost seems to be a different, but neighboring, dimension.”
Hound didn’t even try to respond to that, just stood staring as he opened and closed his mouth a few times. I tried explaining it in a different way:
“Basically, if I have a plate with my dinner on it, you could take ten copies of my food from that single plate and it wouldn’t affect my reality’s food in any way, but you still get the calories and nutrients from the copies. Does that make sense?”
“None of it makes a bit of sense to me,” Hound admitted freely, “but I trust you. 4:30?”
“4:30,” I confirmed. Hound was still shaking his head as I walked away, but it was okay. He would understand when he saw - and ate - what I was talking about. As long as he didn’t try to bring any ridiculous ration bars into my house, we would be fine.
Me: "What if part of the Fictional Physics That Makes FTL Travel Possible was that relativity still works in FTL but instead of the Lorentz factor it uses something else?"
Me: "If we replace sqrt(1-v²/c²) with c/v, then at lightspeed that factor would equal 1, but at infinite velocity it goes to 0 the same way that sqrt(1-v²/c²) does at lightspeed, so you can travel faster than light but not infinitely fast, which is useful narratively"
Me: "... Wait, but you'd still go into warp at some sublight speed, so there'd always be some observer who is stationary relative to you when you go into warp, so what would they see when you went into warp? Let me just plug v=0 into the factor I'm using for relativity at warp and see what happens"
Me, after doing some maths: "Huh. I'm pretty sure that would break spacetime entirely."
Me: "... Unless I require a smooth transition into the warp state. I'd have to use different factors for sublight and hyperlight warp to make the numbers work out, but I think I can manage it"
Me: "Now here's another question: would the speed of an object travelling in FTL work like the speed of light, so it doesn't depend on the frame of reference, or like sublight speeds, so it's entirely dependent on the frame of reference? Hmm..."
I really fucking hate people who think they understand science (specifically physics, because that’s what I have to deal with mostly) to the point that they can come up with new theories without any actual research ???????? I’m not trying to say not laymen can’t understand science, can’t then teach others, but that there are too many fuckers out there who read a pop science article on black holes, come up with their own theory and then go on about how “Einstein was wrong!!!!!!” And how “scientists are lying! There is a centre of the universe and it’s got a black hole in it!” Or “the quark model is wrong because I don’t like it. Never mind the overwhelming evidence that nucleons, like the atom, are mostly empty space with concentrated bits of charge and the quark model accounts for that……. Everything is made of positrons and electrons!”* Of course, people learn, question, and grow. I’m not saying no to that. But when you have a question, please don't just fill in the blanks yourself, or if you do, try to find some evidence. Even if what you're thinking is entirely new, there will be evidence for it somewhere. I'm not talking ~~~~~thought experiments~~~~~~ (which do NOT mean what you think they mean, haha), I mean actual evidence, or at least a testable hypothesis. Think superfluid dark matter is the answer? Why? What specific properties does it have that WIMPs, MACHOs, hot/cold dark matter (though the latter few have fallen out of favour) don't? Why is your theory better? Don't just say that the other theory doesn't work, you need a reason. Sure, intuition can get you a long way - but it can't get you all the way, and it's sure as hell not grounds to throw out a hundred years of research and refinement. People like to throw Einstein about as some kind of intuitive genius whose theories came from thought experiments rather than actual experiments - but what they forget is that Einstein got his idea that the speed of light is fixed from going through Maxwell's equations. It came from mathematics, not from nowhere. He then took Lorentz's work, Minnkowski's, etc, and built special relativity. He didn't just think it up - his thought experiments justified the mathematics, they didn't exist in a vacuum. I know, there’s a big problem in science with communication, and how scientists need to do a better job of reaching out to the public, engaging them in research, and not making it all locked away in an ivory tower. But the truth is, science requires a lot of work, and a lot of background knowledge. There's a reason scientists normally have so many degrees, there's a reason scientists have a reputation for being obsessive - you almost have to be to learn enough to be specific enough in a field. If you think that after a weekend of reading pop science articles you're ready to jump into hardcore string theory, then please stop. Open a textbook on string theory, (or google one, and open the free pdf versions everywhere online) and if you then say "no, that's way too hard, I can't understand that!" Then step back, and maybe consider that you don't know enough to do original research. Step back, and make it your goal to get to the stage where you *can* open that textbook and begin to understand it. Start with the basics; classical mechanics, lagrangians, hamiltonians. Then discover quantum mechanics in all its weirdness. Move on to quantum chromodynamics, some particle physics, some topology and differential geometry (for which you'll need a whole lot of multi variable calculus and algebraic knowledge), then tackle general relativity, and then, when you understand the motivation behind string theory, then go forth. There's no shame in learning the basics fully - you might find you even enjoy maths now it has a direction! But don't go trying to convince people on the Internet that your theory is backed by science/scientists. Don't try to pretend that you are the holy grail, the light in the darkness. Please. Ugh. I don’t know what my point is. I’m just sick of people putting the pieces together wrong but being unwilling to correct themselves when presented with actual information. I'm also sick of pop science articles in general, because they’re so reductive and make people make some dumb assumptions, which then leads some people down the rabbit hole of idiocy. *I’m not kidding. Someone was trying to push that as fact.)
Why do you have to pee more the closer you get to a bathroom?
Ah. The age old question. To answer this question we must go back. Way back in time. To the time of the big bang.
In the beginning, there was nothing but a small highly dense ball of energy. Spontaneously, the ball of energy exploded like a sac of silicone within the breast of Tom Brady’s latest hooker. Within a second of this explosion, the energy converted into all the matter we see in the universe. Now, imagine if you will, that you have consumed a small explosive device. Perhaps some Chicken Tikka Masala, perhaps some of Zatarain’s Jambalaya. It is highly unlikely that consuming a product of this caliber would leave the digestive tract (intestines all the way to the anus — pronounced EH-noos) completely intact. Your tubing would have many holes in many areas. Now imagine that the universe is a thin woven sheet with threads of space and time running perpendicular to each other. If Zatarain’s can rip your ass tubing, imagine what the big bang would do to this thin sheet of space-time.
So we have established that the Big bang left the universe with many holes of varying size all over the space time continuum. Now let us examine excretory system. Your genitals are highly sensitive to the effects of gravity. If you don’t believe me, try looking for a picture of a flaccid penis pointing up. HAH thought so. Now delete your browser history. Try looking for a picture of a floating vajayjay. HAH thought so. Now delete your browser history again.
Interestingly, these little holes in the fabric of space time manifest themselves as black holes. Many and many a year ago, in the deserts of Harappa, the indigenous…Harappans…discovered something that shook the foundations of their world; they found many—MANY—of these tiny rips in the space time continuum. And the sensation that they felt when around these holes was the strong and overwhelming sensation to excrete their urine due to the pull of gravity on their genitals (their excretory organs). Eventually, these tiny holes became known as “cholezze”, as in “cholezzegoatekkedelik”, or in modern english: “yo lets go take a leak”. Eventually, like broken telephone over many years, “cholezze” became “toilets”.
The modern governments of the world have encased these tiny black holes in porcelain prisons, so that the matter consumed by these black holes would be regulated. To maintain the usefulness of these black holes, these porcelain prisons had one entrance: a small tube of four inches in diameter guarded by water.
Thus, when u go near what you know to be a “toilet”, there is a cosmic force at play pulling—tugging—at your excretory organs, beckoning your liquid excrement to come forth and be consumed by the black hole created billions of years ago.
