GM. Today is my last day of being 39.
Others at this age: "Oh, no! Tomorrow I'll be 'old'!"
Me: "So *this* is how long the Tribes of Israel wandered in the wilderness..."
Tomorrow I'll be 40. Bring it on.
PSA:
I wasn't going to respond to you at all. As a friend once said to me: "Never try to reason with the unreasonable." If -- despite my questions above that you never responded to, and hundreds of other everyday observations that would lead any sane and honest person to conclude that the Earth is a globe -- if after all that you still choose to bury your head in the sand and believe the Earth is flat, then there's nothing I can say here that could help you. But perhaps someone else will stumble on this conversation one day, and be persuaded to acknowledge the truth rather than the lies propagated by flat earthers, so there's a remote chance this will be worth it. Also, I unexpectedly had some extra time earlier today, so I decided to start tackling each of these one by one. Okay, here I go!
"Maybe start by explaining, with specificity, what gravity is and then pose an experiment once could perform in order to independently validate that claim."
Sure! Gravity is the force that pulls objects with mass toward each other. Back in 1798, a man named Cavendish demonstrated it in a lab by suspending two small metal balls on a wire and placing heavier balls nearby. The slight twist of the wire as gravity pulled them together let him calculate the force, and this experiment has been repeated with precision ever since. You could even try it with the right setup.
"Explain the CMBr."
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, or CMBr, is a faint glow of microwave energy coming from every direction in space. It demonstrates that the universe is spherical and expanding. You might question how everything began (which is great! That's the first step to scientific discovery -- just don't stop there, and don't fill in the rest with only what you want to see!), but this radiation is a real thing we can detect, and it doesn’t match a "universe" with a flat, unmoving Earth. Instead, it supports the idea that we live on a globe that’s part of a much larger universe.
"Explain the fact that not a single experiment exist to prove movement."
I'm assuming you mean the Earth's movement, and there are many simple experiments and observations that support a moving Earth. Take Foucault’s pendulum, for instance: a simple swinging weight that shifts its path over hours because the Earth is rotating beneath it. You can see this in action if you take the time to set up your own. Then there’s the Coriolis Effect, where the Earth’s rotation makes winds and ocean currents spin one way north of the equator and the opposite way south of it. Another one is called "stellar parallax", where nearby stars appear to shift slightly against the more distant ones as the Earth orbits the Sun, something astronomers have tracked since 1838. And let's not forget the sun, moon, and stars moving counterclockwise around the celestial north pole from the perspective of those in the northern hemisphere, clockwise around the celestial south pole from the perspective of those in the southern hemisphere, and simply straight east-to-west for those living along the equator.
"Explain long distance observations that in[v]alidate the curvature claim."
This is an old one! 😂 Probably based on the incorrect "8 inches per mile squared" formula, right? That math is only useful over short distances (it's still not correct in those instances, but the errors in such small areas are negligible, so it's good enough), and it measures the curvature of a parabola, not a globe. Much more importantly, that formula doesn't account for the observer's height, which allows us to see over the curvature of the Earth a little bit. The formula you should actually be using is a=√(r+h)²−r², in which "a" is the distance to the horizon, "r" is the Earth's radius (roughly equal to 3959 miles or 6371 km), and "h" is the eyesight level above mean sea level. Here's a great website with a calculator that explains it all:
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature#what-is-the-earths-curvature
"Ditto for long distance line of sight radio comms."
Radio waves actually don't need a flat surface to travel as far as they do. They can hug the ground as surface waves, bounce off the ionosphere as sky waves, or even get trapped by weather patterns in something called "tropospheric ducting". Ham radio enthusiasts use these tricks daily to chat across continents, and no flat Earth is required.
"Try and dispute the kinematic and dynamic equivalence of the two proposed models."
Assuming that "the two proposed models" are the globe model the popular-yet-impossible flat Earth model with the north pole in the center and Antarctica surrounding the edge as an ice wall, the globe explains everything seamlessly and without any add-ons or exceptions, while the flat Earth model just doesn't, not even a little. From the Sun shining for 24 hours straight for many days in Antarctica during its summer, to there being a central location in the south (as well as the north) that anyone can find from any direction just by using the stars (and many have), to the flights from Santiago to Sydney over only water, to the pull of gravity being a little bit stronger at the poles than at the equator, to the movement of the stars changing as you travel north or south, to the ability to watch a sunset twice if you quickly rise to higher ground, to how seasons work, and on and on and on. None of these things are possible on any kind of flat Earth, but they're incredibly easy and straightforward on a globe.
Here's a great visualization that shows what I mean:
So, when you put it all together, the evidence stacks up strongly for a globe Earth. Gravity keeps us in place and can be tested by anyone, the CMBr reveals a universe that’s expanding in every direction around us, experiments show the Earth spins on its axis and orbits around the sun, observations match a curved surface when you factor in the height of the observer, radio waves travel just fine around the globe's curve, and the flat Earth model can’t keep up with the facts we see every day. These are all reasons why I prefer to call flat Earth "FUD against reality".
There! I responded to all of your challenges. Can you respond to *any* of mine in the comment you responded to, using a flat Earth model?
As my favorite saying goes: "When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or he will cease being honest." I've been mistaken about lots of things, and sometimes I chose to cling onto my pride and I ceased being honest. I later turned away from that, and chose instead to cease being mistaken, but it would have been so much easier if I had just chosen to cease being mistaken from the beginning. I don't know who you are, but still, for your sake, I hope you will make the right choice now, and avoid more regret/delusion later; that is, after all, what having a low time preference is all about. 😉
So is this your admission that the Earth is a globe? You said he forgot his fisheye lens, and yet the image clearly shows a faded dip on the right and the left, when compared to the center. And that's only 50 miles up! That's still incredibly close to the ground, considering how huge the Earth is (regardless of its shape).
Until you or other flat earthers can explain how a 24-hour sun in the Antarctican summer is possible, and how a single airplane can fly from Santiago to Sydney while only flying westward over water (and in only 13.5 hours, no less!), and whether the Ceremonial South Pole is closer to South America, Africa, or Australia, you and other flat earthers have nothing to stand on. If you ignore these problems with flat earth, then you are not interested in truth, but only in listening to and spreading lies.
Definitely misinterpretation. The Hebrew word that's often translated as "firmament" simply means "expanse", and can refer to an ocean, a field, a desert, etc. In fact, in Genesis 1: 20, the Hebrew language describes birds flying *over* the firmament. If the firmament is the expanse of land and/or water beneath them, this makes perfect sense, but if it's a dome above them, then it makes no sense at all.
This video explains it better than I can:
https://www.youtube.com/live/aT0z0TIoy94
It's also worth pointing out that I believe in an infinite God, the Creator of an infinite number of stars, planets, and galaxies. Such a Being is definitely worth my devotion. But a being that only created this little dome, and then makes us think we're seeing a sun, moon, local planets, and distant stars that all have the appearance and behavior of spheres but are actually just projections on the little dome, sounds like not only a finite being but a deceiver, and not a god at all, but much more like one of the false "gods" the Bible repeatedly warns against. But that's just my 2 sats.
Flat Earth is nothing more than FUD about reality.
GM.
Walking is now my 1-year-old's preferred mode of transportation. He is officially a toddler.
That makes him a toddler hodler (which rhyme, to me).
Meanwhile, on the defunct bird app:
His account 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙩 have been hacked! 🤯
He just said something positive about Bitcoin, yet Bitcoin is pumping? Anyone checked the temperature in Hell, lately? 😅
My nostr:npub1srsa6lqlxnqfg3lgmzjxrjtn77tlju7t77zy8t6t9ydlnkv7syts8dwhlh finally arrived earlier today! It's now hashing at about 10TH/s, and cleaning the air around it! 🤩
I tested it in my family room first, where the air quality was great, but now it's warming up my garage, where the air quality is, well...
...we call it 𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘳.
I woke up this morning, and checked my nostr:npub1srsa6lqlxnqfg3lgmzjxrjtn77tlju7t77zy8t6t9ydlnkv7syts8dwhlh, which is still in my garage.
At first I thought this was an error, but it's not. My Heatbit has not only stacked a few sats for me, and warmed the area I work in, it has also made a real difference in the air quality there! 🤯
At the end of each week, my wife talks with our kids about what they learned & accomplished that week so she can help them set new goals and hold them accountable for their goals from the past week. She's doing that right now.
She calls this "Proof of Work Day".
What a woman. 😍
My nostr:npub1srsa6lqlxnqfg3lgmzjxrjtn77tlju7t77zy8t6t9ydlnkv7syts8dwhlh finally arrived earlier today! It's now hashing at about 10TH/s, and cleaning the air around it! 🤩
I tested it in my family room first, where the air quality was great, but now it's warming up my garage, where the air quality is, well...
...we call it 𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘳.
Not a movie, but I can't recommend episodes of The Chosen highly enough. You can watch them for free on their website or on The Chosen app.
Or my favorite: "Stop trying to seem so altruistic, as if you care about me. You're just trying to get me to pump your bags."
Projection, much? 😆
Also true:
When you use bitcoin-only products and services you strengthen yourself.
When you use altcoin products and services, you weaken yourself.
My youngest son started pulling books off our bookshelf earlier this evening. I think he's trying to tell me what he's interested in learning about.
My second son, Adam, is about to celebrate his 16th birthday, and this is the invitation he created.
No, you're sadly not invited to his birthday party, but it's so good, I had to share it here. 😂
It's best read in a "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" type of voice (e.g., "And the number to which thou shalt count shall be three").
Strange. I'm getting your DMs (which is why I'm replying to you here now), but you're not getting mine. 🤔 It's probably an issue with my relays.
Anyway, if you're on Telegram, my DMs are open, and you can find me here: https://t.me/geekigai Let's chat there.
