Solar panels are some ridiculous fantasy technology.

[geekysteven@beige.party]

Solar panels are some ridiculous fantasy technology. You're using crystals to summon energy from space? Sure buddy, let's put that on an album cover.

[mrrmot@oldbytes.space]

@geekysteven Sure, yeah, and then you tell me you can summon energy from space even without crystals, and use it to change your body's color?

[simonbp@social.linux.pizza]

@geekysteven I had a colleague who works on astronomical x-ray scintillation detectors describe it as "building crystals that glow with ancient invisible cosmic energy".

[nicd@masto.ahlcode.fi]

@geekysteven Heat pumps are such magic to me.

"Yeah instead of just using electricity for heating, we devised a complicated system of a compressor, liquids that are sometimes gases, and a whole lot of piping. It gives us 5 times the heat energy."

The simple solution should be the efficient one!

[barubary@infosec.exchange]

@geekysteven I love my energy crystals.

[aud@fire.asta.lgbt]

@geekysteven@beige.party but the rich necromancers, who profit from stealing the leftover energy from the corpses of dead trees, don't like the space crystals!

[xerge@mastodon.nl]

@geekysteven @_thegeoff stuff they feed to rabbits can do it too. It’s crazy efficient as well and we’re still not 100% sure how exactly it does what it does.

[jmax@mastodon.social]

@geekysteven Well, it only works if you use the correct spells to arrange the crystals. The material components are also quite expensive.

[_thegeoff@mastodon.social]

@xerge @geekysteven Yeah, right, so rabbits just feed on some kind of "captured sunlight" and hop around making more rabbits on that basis?

[benedikt_lauenburg@norden.social]

@geekysteven Combustion engines on the other hand seem to be an idea straight from hell:

Put dead animal bodies under very high pressure so they explode and move even more dead (and live) animal bodies as a result.

[theolodian@mastodon.social]

@jmax @geekysteven we paid £25 each for our 4 panels of space crystals, and they provided half of our household electricity today. 🤯

[xerge@mastodon.nl]

@_thegeoff @geekysteven yup. Some people seem to think some kind of invisible wizard must be involved. Can’t really blame them when reality turns out to be this insane.

[_thegeoff@mastodon.social]

@xerge @geekysteven Next you'll tell me it's all just driven by gravity.

[xerge@mastodon.nl]

@_thegeoff @geekysteven Everything will become crystal clear as soon as we figure out what gravity actually is.

[_thegeoff@mastodon.social]

@xerge @geekysteven

[wrosecrans@mstdn.social]

@geekysteven And basically the exact same kind of crystal that we use to steal energy from outer space, we can also use to shoot out beams of light, or do math.

And by "math," I mean if you etch small enough patterns in the crystals, and feed it the right arcane set of instructions in a strange language, you can make it do so much math that it's a game that shows you an imaginary world.

[_thegeoff@mastodon.social]

@xerge @geekysteven Oh, that will be crystal clear as soon as we've sorted out the concept of time.

[newpa_hasai@mastodon.social]

@geekysteven If you graph belief in the magical powers of crystals vs physics knowledge, it actually follows a J-shaped curve. (The minimum is right before you learn what a phonon is)

[lmorchard@masto.hackers.town]

@geekysteven clawing MINERALS from the EARTH to harvest POWER from the ANCIENT ATOMIC FIREBALL IN THE SKY - how that's not widely understood as absolutely frikkin' METAL is beyond me

[lovingfalloutlondon1954@mastodon.social]

@geekysteven

Makin' hay while the sun shines.