Dark Matters - Catch-Up Post

In the above meme, we see a meme doing what memes do best, which is distill a complex topic down to its bareboned essence. In this case, it is the dark matter problem, which is this: When scientists observe galaxies, what they see and can measure doesn’t account for their action. Based on calculations of the observable matter, galaxies ought not hold together, yet they do. It isn’t close, either. To make the math work, they have to add 80% more stuff, more matter, and they call it dark matter.

This means that we have two options to account for the action of galaxies:

1. Dark matter is a real thing.
2. Our understanding of gravity is deeply flawed.

Take your pick as to which one is the correct explanation. I can go either way.

If dark matter is real, that means that 80% of the universe is operating somewhere other than on the electromagnetic spectrum. This thought really fires up my imagination. Whatever interacts with light is necessarily on the electromagnetic spectrum. I’m way out of my depth here, but this is how I make sense of it. Our eyes and ears sense on the electromagnetic spectrum. Atoms repel each other due to their like negative charges in the electron shells, otherwise things would just pass through each other. I used to tell people, gravity is what makes you fall, and electromagnetism is what makes you splat.

So, everything that composes the reality we perceive, taste, smell, touch, see, hear, is electromagnetic.

If dark matter is real, there’s no means by which we can know it. It is by definition undetectable to us. You couldn’t see, hear, taste, smell, or touch it. That would mean that a dark matter version of you could be sitting next to you on a dark matter version of your couch in a dark matter verions of your living room and you could never know it.

80% of the universe. Unknowable.

But it interacts with gravity.

I see no reason why electromagnetism ought to be the only game in the universe; nevertheless, it feels goofy. The saner explanation, that we don’t much understand gravity, has to me the Occam’s razor, that the simpler explanation is probably correct. Given that humans are just uppity talking apes, it is much simpler to chalk it up to our inabiltiy to understand. It wouldn’t be the first time. LOL.

Anyway, I can go either way, or I can go both ways. I think we have gravity all wrong, that’s for sure. I mean, we just call it a force as a placeholder itself. What, after all, is a force? It means this happens and we have no idea why it happens. It just does.

Thanos was Undeniably Right

We are just ants Ants might have an extensive literature. They probably do, actually. It doesn’t matter if they do or don’t, though, because ants are ants. That’s us. We’re just talking apes. Shakespeare was just a talking ape. The talking ape that is best at writing down the talk is still just a talking ape. No one cares.

Do ant lives matter, though? I don’t know. If you Thanos-snapped every ant down the shit-hole would it matter? Ecological? I mean, yeah, for a minute, but ultimately no. Like us, too. If you Thanos-snapped us, all the pigs and chickens and dogs (not cats) and cows would all croak-off the mortal coil, but what else? Human lives don’t really matter, no matter the ethnicity.

But you, you think you matter, you self-deluding goofball. LOL.

I’m just observing all of it. Just observing. I laugh every single day at people and their goofy and delusional sense of importance. And I laugh even more at the contradictions, when I see people driving like apes, literally like a chimpanzee might drive, because on one hand life is so precious, right, but on the other hand not precious enough to slow the fuck down or adjust to slippery conditions when it rains, and then I understand the ape-like logic of miscalculating risk, that the same people driving like chimps are also sometimes wearing a surgical mask in the car to fend off microbes. We suck at risk-management. LOL.

Thanos was undeniably right, but I don’t much like admitting it, but it always struck me from the moment I caught that stupid movie in the theater. Thanos was the good guy, and the Avengers were the baddies. I mean, how can you argue otherwise? In the second movie, whatever it was called, we get the first half-hour of all the characters moping that they lost friends and family FIVE YEARS LATER. What? That’s not at all how that would go.

Thanos snaps half the people out of existence. Fuck me, but that would be awesome. Yeah, it would suck if one of the fifty percent was your mom or your kid, but you’d get over that in six months, give or take. You’d be overwhelmed with how much better the world became, and that would be apparent immediately. Fewer cars. Less traffic. Stupid cut in half. It would be a golden age.

Christians drive me crazy with their insistence that every baby be born. God help us all. More meat for the grinder. Grist for the mill. Because life is so fucking aweseome and us talking apes really, really matter.

So imagine you got over your granny getting snapped and you’re living in the golden age and the avengers unsnap all those assholes and everyone is back. Imagine how depressing that day would be. You’re used to just walzing thorugh the line at Six Flags and, snap, everyone is back and farting and shitting up the place again and you’re wait time goes from 15 minutes to two hours, because exponential.

This is probably exactly the reason why no aliens want to visit here, because of us. I imagine Earth would be a nice vacations spot if you were an alien, but what right-minded alien would want to put up with us? Seriously. We are talking apes who don’t even understand that we are talking apes.

Evolution is CRAZY

Christians drive me nuts, god love them. I’m glad we still have Christians, dead serious here, because without churches and Jesus and Christians we got nothing. I always tell folks that I’m glad we have Christians because they give us a pile of goodness. You take all the good stuff, throw it in a pile, and we’ll just call that god, and we’ll make buildings so we can come together once a weeks and celebrate good stuff. We’ll love each other, or at least pretend we do, but pretending and actually are just the same in practice so it is fine. We’ll set up a food bank so poors can eat. We’ll, one day a week, do some good things, because the other days we’re just goofing around and scraping by. All I am saying is that I am glad we have Christians, so don’t get me wrong.

But you can’t understand anything if you don’t understand that people are talking apes. If you’re walking around the Earth thinking that everyone matters and that everyone must be born and that there’s some divine spark in us, what crack are you smoking? Like, where is it? Where is the divine spark? Point to it so I can see it.

Is it in our porn? Like, you realize that if chimps had cameras the first thing they’d make is porn, right? Chimp porn.

Is it in our fair-minded economic systems that just work? LOL.

Point me to one thing, just one damned thing, that can’t be better explained by our evolutionary programming. Show me the divine spark.

All I ever want Christians to say is just this: Hey, yeah, you are right about us being talking apes. But we need this religion or it is a hell of a lot worse around here.

I’ve never heard a Christian say anything remotely close to that. Instead, they are collecting money to put up billboards that say: Evolution is wrong because Jesus gave us a divine spark. They just strongarm you or otherwise pretend they haven’t noticed that we are talking apes.

So I ask where is it? Show me an example of it.

Crickets.

Christians: quit pretending you haven’t noticed. I’m onto you. :)