Idle Thoughts

People Trapped in Video Games

(This one is pretty out there, people. Brace yourselves)

I guess this is similar to an Osmosis Jones complex, but for the longest time I’ve always imagined that people are enslaved (where and by whom, I have no idea) and forced to be the characters in the video games we play. But I don’t think of it as if there’s a kid that looks exactly like Link and has to relive every death and game over that the player puts him through. (my sub-conscience is a tad bit more effed up than that) Instead its as if every time your character dies in the game, the enslaved person forced to take orders from your controller actually dies (or falls to lower ranks of enslavement, etc) and another takes his/her place. As you can imagine this makes me a lot more cautious in gaming when given the choice sneak around or go guns blazing…

Keeps my K/D spread above 1.0. Easily justified.

Also, I’m pretty sure this all stems from the toy’s confrontation with Sid in Toy Story and a forgotten episode of Totally Spies.

adafadooska:

crookedindifference:

The Average Color of the Universe

What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky was smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted above, is a conditionally perceived shade of beige. To determine this, astronomers computationally averaged the light emitted by one of the largest sample of galaxies yet analyzed: the 200,000 galaxies of the 2dF survey. The resulting cosmic spectrum has some emission in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but a single perceived composite color. This color has become much less blue over the past 10 billion years, indicating that redder stars are becoming more prevalent. In a contest to better name the color, notable entries included skyvory, univeige, and the winner: cosmic latte.

Cosmic latte… now I like that. Sounds delicious.

adafadooska:

I like to think that Carl Sagan is some sort of timeless, extra-dimensional being not unlike Doctor Who that travels those “cosmos” he always talked about when he was alive during our time - I don’t want to say he died, but I don’t want to say he’s immortal either… He’s just infinite, kind of like Dr. Manhattan, but not god-like. Just traveling the universe, walking through it as though it was a museum gallery of all that has ever existed.

…Is that weird?

Trees Grow Up, Not Perpendicular

This is probably obvious to most of you - you’ve seen trees growing on mountains and hills before. But have you every really thought about the biology and physics and actual phenomenon that it is? The trunks do not sprout perpendicular to the ground, but up. Against gravity. The biology of the trees recognizes the direction and presence of gravity and grows opposite of it. I guess its just evolution: a tree that grew perpendicular to a slope would eventually fall due to gravity anyway, right?

My mind loves thinking about how things came to be and how evolution and the forces in this universe affect that.

And I’m sure there’s trees that don’t do this and other exceptions in the plant kingdom - I just found the acute and obtuse angles formed by the trunks of these giants fascinating.