Enderlord's Random Banter #230 (Friendly warning: Might teleport. Don't get wet.)

[Anonymouswizard]

Ugh, yeah, I know the feeling. The last time I was able to see any of my friends was... 18ish months ago. Since the pandemic cancelled my annual planned visit. I feel like it'd be even worse if you were in actual visiting distance of each other, but couldn't. So, my empathies...

Yeah.. Sadly none of my partners or friends live less than fifteen minutes away, so seeing them is an effort at the best of times

Tierception.

I'd that the creation of tiers?

[DataNinja]

Yeah.. Sadly none of my partners or friends live less than fifteen minutes away, so seeing them is an effort at the best of times

Oh, you poor dear.
I wish I had people 15 minutes away. Because that would mean that they were on the same road as me.
Shush, it's a walk, okay? I don't have other forms of transportation near me.

[Rater202]

Sometimes I find myself wondering if I could fly through space under my own power and didn't have to worry about vacuum, lack of food water and air, or the like, just how difficult it would be to fly to Mars and back.

[factotum]

Sometimes I find myself wondering if I could fly through space under my own power and didn't have to worry about vacuum, lack of food water and air, or the like, just how difficult it would be to fly to Mars and back.

Well, since it's an entirely imaginary situation it's as difficult as you imagine it to be? There was a 2D space game many years ago called Escape Velocity: Nova, and one of the starts you could choose was as a member of a race who created their ships entirely using their own mental powers. Those ships didn't have inertia, unlike every other ship in the game, and could travel FTL at least as well as any other, so they were arguably some of the best ships around. In one of those a trip to Mars wouldn't be any more effort than walking down the shops for a cold drink!

[Anonymouswizard]

In all honesty, if I want to get to anyone I know it's at least an hour on public transport. But that's not as funny. And there's a couple of people I just can't get to without lifts it long walks at the end.

Sometimes I find myself wondering if I could fly through space under my own power and didn't have to worry about vacuum, lack of food water and air, or the like, just how difficult it would be to fly to Mars and back.

What's your acceleration? Your delta-v? How much time do we need to give over to orientating yourself for thrust? Can we cheat and put a skyhook at each end? These are all important questions.

[Rater202]

...I was thinking more "if I could just fly into space like superman--just am able to selectively ignore gravity and all the other problems of space travel don't apply, how hard would it be to find my way to Mars and back"

Like, actually, physically getting there without any means of detecting it remotely or a computer to keep track of all the calculus and timing.

In works of fiction they treat actually getting to space like it's the hard part in this scenario, but planets move and they move pretty freaking fast. You can't just draw a straight line from the Earth to Mars, wait till the part of the planet you're standing on is pointing the right way, and fly straight up.

[Rockphed]

The question is definitely meant to be about illegal or illicit acts you're doing, and keeping a secretary under your desk that you hang out with is definitely one of those

The question I wrote down here, maybe. Since the teacher was shocked and appalled by the innuendos answers, I think she had meant it more innocently.

[Fyraltari]

...I was thinking more "if I could just fly into space like superman--just am able to selectively ignore gravity and all the other problems of space travel don't apply, how hard would it be to find my way to Mars and back"

Like, actually, physically getting there without any means of detecting it remotely or a computer to keep track of all the calculus and timing.

In works of fiction they treat actually getting to space like it's the hard part in this scenario, but planets move and they move pretty freaking fast. You can't just draw a straight line from the Earth to Mars, wait till the part of the planet you're standing on is pointing the right way, and fly straight up.

Considering you can see Mars from Earth and you've decided to ignore all of the physic, I'd say, rather easy? Just aim for the red dot.

[Rawhide]

The question I wrote down here, maybe. Since the teacher was shocked and appalled by the innuendos answers, I think she had meant it more innocently.

Earthquake? Nuclear siren? Fire?

[Anonymouswizard]

In works of fiction they treat actually getting to space like it's the hard part in this scenario, but planets move and they move pretty freaking fast. You can't just draw a straight line from the Earth to Mars, wait till the part of the planet you're standing on is pointing the right way, and fly straight up.

Because it is the hard part. Oh sure, you can get to space by just going up, but once your fuel runs out you're going back to the hard, hard planetary surface (eventually, it might take a few quintillion years if you had enough delta-v but you'll eventually hit something). Honestly the hard part is staying in space.

Once you're in orbit it's all about timing and fuel. There's known points where efficient trajectories can be made, and you can work this all out with pen and paper if you really need to. It's orbital mechanics, not... okay arguably rocket science.

[enderlord99]

The question I wrote down here, maybe. Since the teacher was shocked and appalled by the innuendos answers, I think she had meant it more innocently.

...Did she get "under the table" confused with "on the side"

[factotum]

You can't just draw a straight line from the Earth to Mars, wait till the part of the planet you're standing on is pointing the right way, and fly straight up.

In a ship with sufficient delta-V you could totally do that. The main reason for the orbits they choose for planetary probes is to save fuel--Voyager famously only worked as well as it did because the planets were in just the right place to provide a gravity assist for each pass to move it on to the next one, but if you had a ship with thousands of metres per second delta-V then a more direct course is entirely possible and much, much faster.

If you want to put actual numbers on it: let's assume your ship can accelerate at 1g pretty much constantly. At Mars' closest approach to Earth it's about 40 million miles away. If you accelerate toward Mars at 1g to halfway, then decelerate for the rest of the distance, it would take you around 2 days to get there, during which the planet would move around 4 million kilometres--so you'd have to spend time correcting your position at the other end. But we already established you have a magic ship that can accelerate at 1g constantly, so that doesn't actually matter, you can make the correction easily and it'll take a few hours at most.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Hey Peelee, did you come through the tornadoes with you hoard intact?

[Anonymouswizard]

Every time somebody in the kitchen catches plague I get annoyed that I had a promising interview literally one week before the first lockdown. I could have been working from home by now.

[Peelee]

Hey Peelee, did you come through the tornadoes with you hoard intact?

My wife woke up on the middle of the night last night because the house was shaking and she thought there was a tornado on our street. I slept through it (as I am wont to do).

I may be a ridiculously heavy sleeper.

[Rockphed]

...Did she get "under the table" confused with "on the side"

It would not surprise me. Also, as I said, it has been 20 years so I might have confused exactly what she said. Or she was a dirty old woman who secretly enjoyed the innuendo. Considering that several teachers in that school district were prosecuted for various sex crimes in the decade following, I would not be surprised if she was just a dirty old woman.

Now that I think of it, I am not actually sure which teacher it was. I am fairly certain when it happened, but not which of my teachers that year it was. I do know that all of them were women, however.

[Rater202]

In addition to all of the personal reasons for why I think my body sucks, sometimes when I imagine having access to one or more of Marvel's various "take this and some or all of your attributes will be permenantly lifted to peak, near-peak, or low-to-moderate superhuman levels" and maybe some extras and taking them, I just think that it would make just being a functional person in society easier.

For one thing, there's the confidence of knowing that you could be good at almost anything if you make the effort to do so. The confidence of knowing for a fact that you have nothing to prove becuase you are objectively the strongest, toughest, healthiest, heartiest, fastest, and smartest person in the room no matter what.

Also, being able to learn anything with minimal effort and being physically able to do any task that can be done by a human are useful in almost literally every situation.

That's not weird, is it?

[Tvtyrant]

In addition to all of the personal reasons for why I think my body sucks, sometimes when I imagine having access to one or more of Marvel's various "take this and some or all of your attributes will be permenantly lifted to peak, near-peak, or low-to-moderate superhuman levels" and maybe some extras and taking them, I just think that it would make just being a functional person in society easier.

For one thing, there's the confidence of knowing that you could be good at almost anything if you make the effort to do so. The confidence of knowing for a fact that you have nothing to prove becuase you are objectively the strongest, toughest, healthiest, heartiest, fastest, and smartest person in the room no matter what.

Also, being able to learn anything with minimal effort and being physically able to do any task that can be done by a human are useful in almost literally every situation.

That's not weird, is it?

Is wanting to be effortlessly better then everyone weird? Not really. Lazy maybe, but not weird. Sword of Truth is a whole fiction series where the author's insert is exactly that haha

[Rater202]

Is wanting to be effortlessly better then everyone weird? Not really. Lazy maybe, but not weird. Sword of Truth is a whole fiction series where the author's insert is exactly that haha

Please don't compare me to the author of that series or the characters therein.

[Anonymouswizard]

Sword of Truth is a whole fiction series where the author's insert is exactly that haha

So it's ppublished fan fiction?

Or alternatively a published version of one of my writing attempts?

[Tvtyrant]

So it's ppublished fan fiction?

Or alternatively a published version of one of my writing attempts?

Something like that. It might be less edgy then R. Scott Bakker, but at least he knows the protagonists are bad people.

Please don't compare me to the author of that series or the characters therein.

Duly noted. My point is that the desire to be a Mary Sue type is pretty common.

[Anonymouswizard]

Something like that. It might be less edgy then R. Scott Bakker, but at least he knows the protagonists are bad people.

Wait, are you saying that Bakker or what's his name knows the protagonists are bad people? Your wording is a little confusing.

Or maybe I'm just being autistic.

I do like the Chisarum (or however it's spelt) though. But then again I find the idea of blinding yourself for power and then borrowing a familiar's sight cool, even if I'd be unlikely to do it if I had proof that it worked.

[Rater202]

Duly noted. My point is that the desire to be a Mary Sue type is pretty common.

It's not about being a Mary Sue Type.

It's about knowing that anyone who talks down to you, pushes you around, or demands unearned respect from you and justifies it with a claim that they're better than you in some way is objectively wrong to make that claim, leaving you free to shrug off their bullcrap and go about their day-yeah, they're probably wrong regardless, but that certainly goes a long way.

It's about knowing empirically that all you have to do to be good at something is put in the effort to learn because let me tell you, something brother, there is nothing harder than giving up your dreams because you just can't do it even though you've been told all your life that you are a one in a million genius who could do anything and I say this from personal experience. (185 IQ my ass. Was gonna be a pharmacologist. Was gonna research cancer treatments. I was good at math and science right until I got to college.)

It's about knowing objectively that you have nothing to prove to anyone and that anyone who tries to force you to prove yourself worthy in their eyes will end up humiliated for it.

It's about being able to learn a whole buttload of things, fun trivia or useful skills, without worrying about forgetting things or having to prioritize learning this thing or that thing.

[Peelee]

It's about knowing objectively that you have nothing to prove to anyone

You can have that without fantasy superpowers. I have that right now, for example. Had it for years. That's a state of mind, your physical abilities have nothing to do with it. From what I hear, Iron Man had a good line in Avengers Super 28 or whatever: if you're nothing without the suit, you're nothing with it.

and that anyone who tries to force you to prove yourself worthy in their eyes will end up humiliated for it.

If you feel like they need to be humiliated, it makes me think that you do have something to prove to them. You want to prove you're better. Having nothing to prove means they don't need to be humiliated because, well, you've got nothing to prove. It doesn't matter what they think. It doesn't matter that the still think they're right. It doesn't matter because you've got nothing to prove to them.

[Bartmanhomer]

You can have that without fantasy superpowers. I have that right now, for example. Had it for years. That's a state of mind, your physical abilities have nothing to do with it. From what I hear, Iron Man had a good line in Avengers Super 28 or whatever: if you're nothing without the suit, you're nothing with it.

If you feel like they need to be humiliated, it makes me think that you do have something to prove to them. You want to prove you're better. Having nothing to prove means they don't need to be humiliated because, well, you've got nothing to prove. It doesn't matter what they think. It doesn't matter that the still think they're right. It doesn't matter because you've got nothing to prove to them.

What if you combined the powers of Mister Mxyzptlk and Impossible Man?

[Rater202]

You can have that without fantasy superpowers. I have that right now, for example. Had it for years. That's a state of mind, your physical abilities have nothing to do with it. From what I hear, Iron Man had a good line in Avengers Super 28 or whatever: if you're nothing without the suit, you're nothing with it.

The mind is a plaything of the body. It's much easier to be confident in yourself if you have a good reason to be confident in your abilities.

Right now the only thing I'm 100% confident in is that nobody gives a crap about my eight years of studying crime, bigotry, and the relation between them or my degrees in history or sociology.

You would not believe how often things like that, things I've spent years studying, come up in relation to works of fiction I'm discussing with others, I try to explain how it is based on my experience studying it, and then people tell me I'm objectively wrong and then insist that I went to a crappy school when I bring up that I literally have two overlapping degrees in subjects that cover this specific topic.

If you feel like they need to be humiliated, it makes me think that you do have something to prove to them. You want to prove you're better. Having nothing to prove means they don't need to be humiliated because, well, you've got nothing to prove. It doesn't matter what they think. It doesn't matter that the still think they're right. It doesn't matter because you've got nothing to prove to them.

Have you ever been forced into doing something and then mocked for not being able to do it to the standards of the person forcing you to do it? Often because the jerk wanted an excuse to mock you and feel superior in the first place?

Because I get the feeling that if you had, you'd understand my desire to be able to humiliate the people that try to pull that crap.

Wanting the confidence of not having to prove anything and wanting to be able to humiliate any condescending asshat who tries to force you to prove yourself are not incompatible desires.

Sometimes the most effective way to tell someone to screw-off is to take their attempt to humiliate you and turn it around at them.

[Tvtyrant]

Wait, are you saying that Bakker or what's his name knows the protagonists are bad people? Your wording is a little confusing.

Or maybe I'm just being autistic.

I do like the Chisarum (or however it's spelt) though. But then again I find the idea of blinding yourself for power and then borrowing a familiar's sight cool, even if I'd be unlikely to do it if I had proof that it worked.

No no, you are quite right that sentence was obtuse. I meant Bakker is aware his world is grimdark and his protagonists are bad people. Goodkind thinks his characters are genuinely moral in their despicable actions.

[Peelee]

The mind is a plaything of the body.

The body is a plaything of the mind. If my mind wants to go for a bike ride, it makes the muscles move. If my arm wants to think about something, it just sits there like the piece of meat it is.

Have you ever been forced into doing something and then mocked for not being able to do it to the standards of the person forcing you to do it?

Depending on what you mean by "forced", yes, this is probably not as uncommon an experience as you might believe.

my desire to be able to humiliate the people that try to pull that crap.

Your thing to prove. There's nothing wrong with having something to prove. The only issue comes into play when you claim you have nothing to prove but you absolutely have a thing to prove. Be true to yourself, that's the real goal.

[Rater202]

There is a difference between being willing to prove something if it will get you what you want(IE: The humiliation of someone who was attempting to humiliate you) and having to prove something.

[Peelee]

There is a difference between being willing to prove something if it will get you what you want(IE: The humiliation of someone who was attempting to humiliate you) and having to prove something.

There's a difference between wanting something (eg "i want another Star Wars book to come out already") and wanting something (eg "wow i really wish i could humiliate a seemingly certain people"). I and you both talk about these respective things so much that it borders on obsessive. I'm cool with mine. I'm slightly uncomfortable with yours. But hey, whatever lets you sleep at night.