We. Are. Doomed.

[ariels@hachyderm.io]

@cstross Also appearing in the samples is this brilliant diagram of the phases of the moon. Ignore how the broken scale, which would make the diagram incomprehensible even if correct. There is what looks like a separate display for what is seen from the Earth and from... somewhere else I guess? Anyway apparently the sun lights up the far side of the "waning crescent moon (7)" moon.
The diagram is so confusing I don't even understand what it was meant to be, or how to fix it.

[internetsdairy@mastodon.art]

@ariels @cstross why it simply bounces its light off the earth

[cmdrsprocket@mathstodon.xyz]

@ariels @cstross moreover waning and waxing is mixed up.

[misjavanlaatum@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cstross I feel dirty, but I lowkey want this book. Something like this is most likely transient: it will only be around for a short while.

[petealexharris@mastodon.scot]

@cstross
This offends me to the point where I view it as a malicious attack on childhood.

[yojimbo@masto.hackers.town]

@cmdrSprocket @ariels @cstross That probably explains why my legs are still hairy, dammit

[cmdrsprocket@mathstodon.xyz]

@yojimbo @ariels @cstross Werewolf vibes?

[yojimbo@masto.hackers.town]

@cmdrSprocket @ariels @cstross Only when it's that time of the month ...

[yojimbo@masto.hackers.town]

@cmdrSprocket @ariels @cstross Could be spiderman of course ...

[catsalad@infosec.exchange]

@cstross Tripod kitty is a thing of nightmares!!

[kaito02@mastodon.social]

@cstross Any book nerds still willing to defend reading?

[fossfor@mastodon.art]

@cstross 🫣

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@kaito02 You know what I do for a living, right?

[5cifigirl@starbase80.wtf]

@cstross

Wtf

[davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social]

@catsalad @cstross

"Your Mad Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

[arne_mertz@mastodon.social]

@cstross if you make the categories small enough, everything is #1
"#1 best selling encyclopedia for kids generated by a slop bot on virtual meth"

[kookie@toot.cat]

@cstross Absolute nightmare fuel. I can only hope those reviews are bot-ed too

[megalodonnelly@mastodon.social]

@drgoon @cstross what in the world. Why are there 100,000 versions of this book for different demographics by different "authors"?

[lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cstross "we educated him wrong. as a joke."

[jdebp@mastodonapp.uk]

@HollieK72

If you do a quick search, you'll find that there are a couple of hundred '100000 Whys' books on Amazon U.K. and over twice that many on Amazon U.S.A.; all under different authors. Most of the authors are as fake as the books.

@draNgNon found another, and its customer reviews have people reporting that the book sample has a different author to the Amazon listing, & what they actually received was a B&W photocopy of a book.

One bizarre factoid that I have noticed is that they all seem to try to answer the question of why space is dark. I've nowhere near read them all, but I've seen several that all give the same wrong answer that there is no atmosphere in space. I have seen exactly *one* of these titles that comes anywhere near the right answer to Olbers' Paradox, although still missing the mark, published by a Wunder Press.

https://amazon.co.uk/100-000-Whys-Questions-Amazing/dp/B0H2L5BJD1/

I chuckled when I read its answer to 'why does the Moon change the shape' on page 3 (q.v.).

@cstross @lcamtuf
#astronomy