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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Sure, that’s an option. It doesn’t really change my overall point though that anything beyond galactic colonization is unrealistic on any time scale. Our next nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, is over 2.5 MILLION light years away, over 10 times farther than my “crossing the milky way” example, with nothing in-between to make a pit stop if needed, you have to cross the true void of space to get there.

    And that’s just to get the next nearest galaxy. Current estimates suggest the observable universe contains 2 TRILLION galaxies.


  • There doesn’t need to be more to it than that. The observable universe is over 93 billion light years in diameter. That means even at the speed of light, it would take over 6.5x longer than the universe has even existed for anything to cross that distance… except the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, so actually you need to go significantly faster than light to make it across. FTL is, sadly, still firmly in the realm of science fiction, so to the best of our current knowledge most of the universe is permanently inaccessible.


  • Not really, no. Generational ships might make colonizing the nearest star systems possible, but even colonizing our own galaxy would require some kind of suspended animation. The milky way is between 100,000-200,000 light years in diameter so even at the speed of light, you’re looking at a travel time that is ~33-66% of the time that humanity has even existed(homo sapiens are currently estimated to have become a distinct species 200,000-300,000 years ago)… just to go to ONE star system out of the hundreds of BILLIONS that exist in our galaxy. You’re gonna need generational ships so self-sustaining and capable that the generation that actually arrives at the destination will have long forgotten the point of the trip and might not want to leave the comfort of the ship.

    Still, colonizing our own galaxy is at least theoretically possible, given enough time. The real filter is just how unimaginably large the universe is. The vast, VAST majority of the observable universe is FOREVER out of our reach, as it is expanding away from us faster than the speed of light. Then there’s the unobservable universe, which could literally be infinitely bigger than the observable universe for all we actually know.


  • Okay then.

    Explain that to a diabetic child when Trump gets rid of the insulin price cap that enables their parents to afford it.

    Explain that to a trans person who, if the republicans gets their way, will be considered a sexual predator and imprisoned(at best…) for simply existing in public.

    Explain that to a woman forced to carry her rapists baby to term when, if Trump gets his way, abortion is federally criminalized. Scratch that, explain that to a child forced to die from their ectopic pregnancy.

    Explain that to Ukraine when we stop supporting them against Russia… hell, explain that to Ukraine when we end up supporting Russia against Ukraine.

    Explain that to EVERYONE when Trump’s “I’ll be a dictator, but only on day 1” comment becomes a reality and doesn’t stop after day 1.

    I could go on.

    By all means, continue to delude yourself into believing you are making the just and moral decision. It won’t stop anyone else from seeing that your morals are entirely performative.


  • Third party candidates and parties exist. They don’t suddenly cease to exist simply because the 2 right-wing parties we’ve had forced upon us have gone out of their way to prevent them from participating.

    Ah yes, the great and amazing third parties of the US. In this corner we’ve got the Libertarians, aka the “republicans that like weed and dislike age of consent laws” party, and in the other corner we have the Green Party, aka the “pops up every election year to complain how both sides are bad, before promptly returning to the ether upon the elections conclusion” party.

    Such good options, I truly don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to vote for one of those two. /s



  • I’m Canadian and have absolutely no dog in this fight.

    Then kindly shut the fuck up. I’m an American, I’ve ACTUALLY had to live in this country with Trump and Biden as president, and it’s no contest for me. I’d take Biden at his worst over Trump any day. That doesn’t mean Biden is good, it means Trump is just that fucking bad.