@phcorcoran - eviltoast
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • In an unarmored context, which applied very often throughout history, the spear is easier to use and especially lighter, which makes it a better and more nimble weapon. Spears can also be much longer than heavier pole arms whilst remaining usable, keeping the danger further away from the user

    The speed at which one can move a spear tip is impressive and getting stabbed by it has large stopping power. The spear can also parry attacks in a large sweeping area, which makes it hard for anything else than another spear to get through

    The more complex pole weapons start to shine in an armored context, where stabbing someone at the end of your long pointy stick becomes harder. Then, the hook-y, chop-y and spike-y bits of the halberd can really help tackle the armor





  • I’m sorry but you can totally control the margin size in LaTeX if you learn the right incantation

    backslash UsEpAcKaGe letterpaper H-maaaaaaargin point seventy-niiiiiine inch brackets GEOOOOOMETRY

    then you spread the entrails slightly and stab towards the sky. Really don’t see what the big fuss is all about.










  • Yeah I would say that one could explain the picture here

    Ultimately, the phenomenon is happening much much higher up in the atmosphere, so being a few kilometers closer vertically won’t make a difference; but by being further up on the ground, you could see an aurora from further away and through a lot more molecules that could scatter non-red light


  • That’s a cool photo, thanks for sharing.

    For more context why this wouldn’t be related to redshift, redshift is a concept in physics for light that’s analogous to the Doppler shift for sound. The typical example of Doppler shift is the EEEEE-OO-UUUUUM sound a car makes when moving fast past you. When the car is speeding away from you, the sound pitch is noticeably lower

    Similarly, when a light emitter moves away from you at extremely fast speeds (i.e. hundreds of millions of meters or yards per second), the light you see reaching you will be shifted down in frequency, towards red in visible light. This can happen in other more complicated relativistic situations too but they are less easy to explain and also not applicable here

    I don’t know why the people in the photo see this beautiful red aurora but redshift is almost certainly not a related concept here




  • Picking a higher density of the material just means the one gram would occupy less volume, it doesn’t affect how much energy that gram is equivalent to in terms of E=mc2. For that calculation, as the equation implies, only the mass matters; a gram of feathers is equivalent to the same amount of energy as a gram of lead for that equation. Now, this equation is in fact a simplified assumption; if you launch your feather at relativistic speed, then we’re talking