• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Reminds me of a joke.

      One afternoon, as Einstein and his driver were headed to yet another lecture in yet another college lecture hall, Einstein had an idea. Speaking to his driver , Einstein said, "I really don’t feel up to giving my lecture tonight. Why don’t you deliver it? " " Me? " gasped the shocked driver.

      “Yes,” replied Einstein. “You have heard me give it scores of time. I’m sure you must have it memorised by now. " " What if there are questions? " asked the driver. " There are never any questions, are there? There is nothing to worry about,” returned Einstein.

      And so the ruse was planned. They would change cloths and switch roles. On arriving at campus, the driver was accorded the welcome appropriate for a famous Physicist, and Einstein tagged along behind, as was suitable for a man of his status. The lecture went beautifully, as Einstein knew it would.

      At the end of the lecture the driver dutifully asked for questions. To the horror of both the driver and Einstein, a man stood up in the audience and asked a detailed question about an obscure point of the theory of relativity. The driver looked at Einstein with fear in his eyes but then regained his composure, began to smile and looking directly at the gentleman replied, " That question is a very simple one to answer." Then gesturing to Einstein, who was at the back of the hall dressed his driver’s garb, the driver continued, " In fact that is such an easy question that I would like to invite my driver to the stage to answer it."

    • glimse@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Because we copied every single subreddit but forgot to copy what made them unique so we have a bunch of homogenous communities.

      The only difference between this and asklemmy is that asklemmy is slightly more opinion-based questions. It’s hard to blame OP when the rules of this community are basically “post any questions you want, we don’t care”

      Communities with tight themes are so much better than a bunch of “anything goes” communities. I wish that was the direction we went instead

      • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        The problem with the tightly themed communities is that you need a much larger userbase to keep them active. Copying all the niche communities from reddit at this point would lead to content being sparse and scattered. We’ll get there eventually though

        • glimse@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          A bigger community is rarely a better community. But either way that doesn’t address the issue that we have multiple nearly-identical communities for no reason.

  • AnotherDirtyAnglo@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    Not a physicist, merely a science enthusiast with a high school science education.

    My understanding is that we’re having a hard enough time smashing hydrogen together into helium (and actually getting back more energy than we put into the process) that making specific isotopes of heavier elements with the current state of technology is between ‘extraordinarily unlikely’ and ‘impossible’. We would have to manage to get past Helium and then on to Lithium, Beryllium, and Boron to get to Carbon – I imagine the amount of energy required to produce even just a few C12 atoms would be off the charts.

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Probably a better question for one of the more dedicated science communities. This ones over my head, personally.

    I’m sure we could theoretically, if you didn’t require it to be a sensible method. A cluster of thermonuclear detonations with some lithium in the middle would probably do the trick.