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Moontanman

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Posts posted by Moontanman

  1. 13 hours ago, iNow said:

    I’ve been screwing around with some old rotten pieces had laying around for a few years, replacing everything rotten with something pretty. 

    Lots of faults and flaws and material removal and it became a sort of side meditation for me these last few months.

    Gonna start applying tung oil finish this weekend (which itself will take a few weeks to complete correctly). 

     

    IMG_6923.jpeg

    IMG_6944.jpeg

    I need to come and take some lessons from you, do you mentor old men?

  2. On 9/24/2024 at 12:06 PM, swansont said:

    It occurs to me that the way they do this now is with animated movies and voice actors. But animation often involves some kind of element not easily replicated with live action, and there’s a suspension of disbelief- animated action can get away with things that look weird in a live action scenario, and I don’t think AI would look real enough (which is uncanny valley-related)

    AI keeps getting better and better, unless there is some  actual limit I see no reason that AI animation couldn't be as good as Current AI generated still images which can fool even the discerning eye.   My main problem with them is that the AI images are often too good. 

     

  3. An older actor/actress might allow the use of a young version of themselves in their prime and do the voice over for the younger version of themselves or just straight up license their young image to a movie and AI can do the voice but the older actor or thier estate gets paid.   

    Imagine John Wayne rides again, lol 

     

     

  4. Does AI porn figure into this? AI porn is approaching a point where not only are no real persons involved. The realism is shocking, I wonder if AI will replace live actors in regular movies as well. 

  5. 5 hours ago, swansont said:

    Beavers have a pretty small brain, but I suspect that any elephants’ blocking of waterways by pushing trees into it is accidental rather than instinct. Elephants require a lot of food, so they wander around. Triceratops probably were similar. What would be the advantage of a dam?

    I should have said brain to size ratio, an elephant has a huge brain to size ratio compared to a triceratops but I've not seen anything to indicate either built dams with any intent or future planning. Beaver do how ever build dams specifically to make their lives better, whether or not they actually have the future in mind is debatable. 

    The phrasing of the OP indicated some intent to build a dam not accidentally dam up a stream. 

    45 minutes ago, tsmspace said:

    Well so I do believe the suggestion is that large flat areas with streams running through them would be able to contain water because an obstruction would result in that water spilling into areas that don't so quickly drain. Actually in the savannah this does happen naturally where during the wet season, some water floods lower lying areas and doesn't drain, so I suppose the idea is that strategically placed obstructions would encourage this flooding. 

    Are you suggesting that triceratops pushed down trees with the intent to dam up a stream? 

    45 minutes ago, tsmspace said:

     

    I do know that humans used to put a lot of logs into streams. There are various reasons why they would do it, but it was something people would do a lot. For example the classic bridge log,, but also as a kind of dam that makes for a fishing spot. It could be one of these things where people saw elephants copying their behavior a-back in the day idk. I will argue that it seems unlikely that one would find multiple references to the idea on the internet if the idea just spontaneously appeared as a hoax. I would think that at least some people have been saying elephants do this for generations for the idea to be present where it is,, , and again I do recall seeing it in videos if I'm not remembering incorrectly. The kinds of videos that we watched in school. 

    I am not saying this is a hoax, people mistakenly attribute intent to things all the time without justification but not to intentionally mislead. 

    45 minutes ago, tsmspace said:

    that was back when dimetrodon was a dinosaur, though. And dimetrodon was a dinosaur for over 100 years. (( that means it still is, because that's how english works. See in the 80's phylogeny came to power, and people went around saying dinosaur could no longer be used for "all ancient giant lizards" ,, and there was this period where some dictionary's presented both definitions and some only had the new phylogeny definition, which is basically all you find today... anyway,, dimetrodon is a dinosaur, whether or not elephants have ever actually been observed pushing logs into streams)) 

    I'm not sure why you brought this up but dimetrodon was a synapsid like you and me, triceratops and every other dinosaur were diapsids like crocodiles, lizards and birds.  

  6. 15 hours ago, tsmspace said:

    I was wondering if perhaps triceratops was a dam-building animal. 

    Elephants apparently build dams by pushing longs into streams with their tusks. This results in ponds and reservoirs that can contain water long after the streams have dried up. 

    I've never read that, do you have a citation? 

    15 hours ago, tsmspace said:

    Triceratops may have: 

    - used its beak to chew on tough materials such as roots or woody plants

    - pushed down large plants such as tree ferns to access the leaves 

    - could this mean that it would be as simple as pushing large woody plants into streams to make a pond? Is it possible that there could be evidence of such a behavior? Has anyone found triceratops prints and drag marks nearby reservoir or wetland style silt deposits? 

    Triceratops was large enough to down trees like an elephant of today and it's not unreasonable to think they may have done that but the idea of dam building by an animal with such a small brain and the mental capacity that is thought to go along with that small brain would make such long range planning unlikely IMHO. Has there ever been any evidence to suggest dam building among dinosaurs?

    I think "may have" is the key in this sentence.  

  7. 8 minutes ago, zapatos said:

    Today  learned that female cicadas seem to confuse the sound of lawnmowers with the sound of male cicadas. I can walk through my yard and maybe have a couple of cicadas fly into me. When I cut the grass it is more on the order of 100 or so that land on me, one after the other.

    Watch out for the ones with fuzzy butts! 

  8. 17 minutes ago, zapatos said:

    Seems like it MIGHT be devastating even if dispersed. Even a nuclear bomb would have minimal impact if its energy were spread over thousands of square miles.

    A nuclear bomb, currently that would be a max of around 3 megatons if an asteroid like Apophis his it would be around 1000 megatons.

    https://www.planetary.org/articles/will-apophis-hit-earth

    What would happen if Apophis hit Earth?

    Apophis would cause widespread destruction up to several hundred of kilometers from its impact site. The energy released would be equal more than 1,000 megatons of TNT, or tens to hundreds of nuclear weapons.

    BTW a pop up ad just wiped out what I was writing in response to this post. 

  9. 3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

    Well, they would at least transfer the same amount of energy to earth's atmosphere anyway, right? While a large object may make it to the surface, many small objects may not.

    It would depend on the size of the initial object but the transfer of energy to the atmosphere from a large object would be devastating even if dispersed.    

  10. 11 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

    Just my understanding that evolution of a gravity bound cloud of material should settle into a ring (or possibly more than one) that can coalesce over longer time into a second object or more than one. I think much will depend on how much total rotational momentum of the "system" created and I don't know what the time scales would be to become a ring... centuries, millennia, more?

     

     

    I would expect that close proximity detonations would explosively vaporize surface material and the shock wave of that will travel through the object.

    I'm still inclined to consider penetrating munitions, even as a preparatory first strike ahead of a second dispersing nuclear blast; if there is one area of engineering that we don't stint on, that we are very good, at it is weaponry. A real asteroid threat would be worth more than one device.

    Dispersal could be a double edged sword, the asteroid represents a huge amount of kinetic energy, even dispersed the fragments would transfer the same amount of energy to the Earth as the solid object. Changing the objects orbit so it doesn't hit at all would be the best outcome, IMHO.  

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