I don’t think the situation of length contraction in Relativity is fully settled. I am of course not denying Michelson-Morley, etc.
Einstein came up with the standard answer regarding length contraction: comoving frame versus non-comoving frame: what’s absolute in Relativity is, and only is, the relative relationship. He wrote in 1911.
The so-called Bell Paradox gives an inkling of something…
[ALT ID: A digital illustration of a man being dragged out of dark water by his armpits. Watery hands reach up and cling to him. Two arrows pierce his chest while his face is bruised and bloody, and more blood is visible on his side and sleeve.]
w e l p I finally got the rejection letter for the job I interviewed for last week. I wanted it. Badly. And by wanted I mean needed, desperately. It had perfect hours, full health insurance, etc.
I'm just so tired of getting to the interview process and getting the same. damn. rejection. every. time, about not having experience in that specific role and them going with people who had experience in that area.
If that's the issue, why ask for an interview with me at all?? Like. Reject me out of hand if it is that important to the business. I am not going to show up to the interview like "oh yeah I have this experience, just didn't put it on my resume or talk about it in my cover letter." I've even asked for more information about the interview post-rejection and again, I just get the same answers--it was a great interview, I was put together, thoughtful, etc, I just don't have the right experience.
Ugh.
Well!
Good things today:
Got over my brain freeze thanks to the rejection letter so got significant writing done
It's in the 50s and sunny so I went for a walk to daydream with music
I was able to walk to the end of the apartment complex and down the street in the neighborhoods a little bit, which I haven't been able to do because of my foot sprain in October!! Go foot, go.
Since I was able to walk farther, I got to see my favorite tree which has a hole in it, which I have for months made up stories about
Also got to see my favorite 1870s house which is pink and green and looks like a Hansel and Gretel House, and has a big tree stump in front that also elicits story-daydream ideas.
Apartment neighbor's balcony skeleton is still up on December 15th, I love this skeleton
I saw the rarest apartment window cat, a super fluffy orange and white grumpy looking guy
My brother sent me a restaurant gift card for Christmas
My friend sent me a Mahito pin for Christmas and I want to lick it (but I won't)
it's arguable if Rex and his age cohort count as 'child soldiers' by the time they're deployed; he's age ten absolute, twenty relative, who the fuck knows experientially since we don't know how flash training works and that's ignoring the bit where we learn domino and other squads like them have been shoved out into the field early but -
he was a child soldier, even if he's some kind of liminal adult when he meets ahsoka, and tells her experience beats everything.
every clone in his command is an experienced soldier. they've been learning how to do it from decant. even 99, who never left kamino - during the invasion of kamino his instinct is to get to the armoury so he can arm the younger clone cadets - the assumption being that they are entirely comfortable with the weapons. neither cody or rex see anything out of the ordinary in this.
same thing in the movies, too - kids in headsets in tiered rows, learning how to soldier for the republic, or in the cartoon episode where boba sneaks onto pond's flagship with the clone youth brigade, and it's framed as special treat for them to fire off live rounds on a flagship during a war.
it's difficult for me to elide their entire lack-of-childhood and say they aren't child soldiers, because they were, for the vast majority of his abbreviated life rex was, and so was everyone else he knew, and it's not like trauma as a child doesn't heavily inform who you are as an adult.
They're rushing. So fast that Masha almost passes the boy by. It feels like luck, or fate, that she happens to notice the thread connecting them, a single string in a tapestry woven between her and the Scions. She can just make out a few threads between him and her fellow adventurers, though she doesn't have time to follow them.
Skidding to a halt, she turns to him, a flurry of stars blowing about them like a blizzard as she casts a protective barrier over him.
In response to a particularly persistent non-follower who continued to question my experiences with antique garments on this post , I had a chance to take a short video with an 1890s bodice in my collection that is boned with baleen. While all antique clothing should be treated with care, baleen does usually remain pretty flexible (the humidity of the environment is a large factor in this - in dry storage environments, it is likely to be more brittle). Accusing the Smithsonian of mishandling a garment by turning it inside-out on a mannequin, however, is kind of ridiculous, and I am sure they considered the potential handling damage carefully before staging that photoshoot.
Transcript:
hey so this is a pretty standard, very late-nineteenth-century bodice. it's a wounded bird so I don't feel bad doing this. (pardon me [for the visuals], i'm only working with two hands here.) this is a bone casing; there IS a bone inside; it is stiff, and if I bend it, it does *not* break. it is still very flexible.
there's a bone in that [other casing] too. now you can see up there that one of them already broke [at the top] (a long time ago, this is before it came into my collection), but there is baleen in there. actually - there's a piece further inside that you can see and pull out but I'm not doing that.
[this video is] just to show that if you bend the baleen, even in the way it's not traditionally supposed to bend, it's totally fine. (oh, there's [baleen visible through a hole] right there.) it is still very flexible more than 100 years after it was installed in this bodice, and it is totally flat when it is not being pressed against something [at a curve].
that is the case for basically every antique garment I have seen; in some cases they are still molded but- I mean, this is just a bodice, it's not a corset; it was not subjected to consistent strain. This is just...how it works.
Hope this clears some things up for casual followers :)
actually baby master's "i'm special" assertion getting shattered by looking into the schism is v fun in contrast w that bit from lucifer rising with theta stamping his foot and insisting to the hermit that he's the special one happening when he's already in the academy. that isn't to say theta didn't also get his shit rocked (hence the running away) or that the master is never prone to i'm-special-ness later in life (i mean, come on.) but it is interesting to think of baby master on the back foot compared to theta in that way. reminds me a bit of their dynamic in the hunting party, with head in the clouds theta vs bastard son who's much more worried abt things.
shoutout to the woman who adopted me trying to get me to hook up with a 30 year old male when i was 18 justifying it with 'i dated men way older than me when i was your age don't be a prude'
as much as I wish it were otherwise, I feel like the way I would die in a horror movie is absolutely going to some out-of-the-way location to learn about a local religious custom and getting sacrificed or something.
like on one hand, I am always scrupulously respectful of the belief systems I'm studying, including accepting that some knowledge is not meant for me and that's okay, but on the other hand, I have been known to do some truly stupid bullshit to learn about something esoteric that's on public display. lmao