Obviously it's arbitrary. The fact that it's arbitrary doesn't change the fact that we came to it through our model for the world and our reasoning. Even if that reasoning was based on assumptions that ended up invalid.

Lots of choices society makes are arbitrary. Red and green traffic signals, using commas for pauses and periods for stops, using these particular 26 shapes as an alphabet... but just because we make arbitrary collective choices that could have gone a different way, doesn't mean there wasn't a reason for the choice at the time we made it.

I'm not assuming anything: I have a modern understanding of the Earths relationship to the sun. Past humans collectively did assume based on their observations and measurements of the sun (see ancient structures marking the solstice or equinox), but it would be ignorant to discount that those early assumptions led to the modern conventions we use.

There is also a geographic reason. It's just not the sole reason. The Earth's poles and its rotation around its axis is the reason that pretty much everyone prefers a map with poles oriented vertically. If not for our rotation around our axis making the sun appear to move east west, we mightve preferred something different. From there we had it narrowed it down to two options (either south = up or north = up), and the one that stuck was the one that the people in power preferred at the time the convention became standardized.

I don't know how to else break it to you, but orogene isn't totally made up either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orogeny

It's the geometric/topological term for a donut or tube shape.

It's okay to occasionally let kids expose themselves to disturbing things, especially in innocuous ways like stick figures. Depending on their age obviously. Kids are people, and we usually don't get to choose when life hands us disturbing experiences. Knowing what's out there helps you cope if it ever confronts you.

You know I had to scroll all the way down to you to even make the connection between the actual event of the towers falling and bob happily singing about building. It really drives for me how 9/11 occupies a symbolically larger space in my mind than the actual event of the towers falling... at least for us who were still kids when it happened.

Ramadan mubarak!

It also works the other way around. Those children who never got to experience childhood often have adult expectations of their own children, and then when those children become adults, the trauma of their childhood seems to lead many people to revert back in maturity level because they feel like their childhood was stolen from them by their asshole parents.

They'll become the slavedrivers. Look at gig apps, they maybe already are starting.

People hate communicating with machines and most people are really bad at it. Learn a language or three, (a programming language.)

The past is the only empirical evidence we have and our remarkable ability at pattern recognition is what's helped us become apex predators and survive as a speciies to this point. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The goodest boy isn't attacking it and isn't terrified, I'd call it a win.

First off excellent insight. Second, amazing username.

A lot of Metal is inspired by fantasy fiction. Copy pasting from elsewhere on reddit, thanks to u/esa1996:

Evertale's (Power Metal) first album is about Dragonlance Chronicles, and their second is mostly about Warhammer 40k.

Lyra (Power Metal / Melodic Death Metal) has two songs about Wheel of Time (Betrayer of Hope and The Sword That Could Not Be Broken)

Caladan Brood's (Atmospheric Black Metal) entire discography is about the Malazan: Book of the Fallen series.

Blind Guardian (Power Metal) has songs about Dark Tower, Wheel of Time, ASOIAF, and Otherland (And an album about the Silmarillion).

Nightwish (Symphonic Metal) has a song about Kingkiller Chronicle (Edema Ruh)

Dragony (Power Metal) has a song about Wheel of Time (Flame of Tar Valon).

Katana (Power Metal) has a song about Wheel of Time (Wisdom of Emond's Field)

Beast in Black and Battle Beast (Both are power metal) both have plenty of songs about Berserk.

If you need fast heat go intense. If you need long heat go consistent.

Is there anywhere in India where people who don't want to wear a hijab might feel uncomfortable removing it in public?

Mandated laws are not the only form of this chauvinism. Reinforced family and community pressure is enough to restrict people's freedom of choice.

People downvoting without replying: I will assume that means these places exist and your downvotes indicate your embarrassment.

Yeah the freedom to take off your hijab if you want is progressive. how is that hard to grok?

Maybe if rocks were sentient, or even alive. But they're not; no rock might have tried this.

It was the best season of star trek we've seen in a long time. And the closest we've come back to the spirit of TOS since Wrath of Khan.

In 2000 years, people will debate if there was one Winston Churchill, two Winston Churchills, or whether Winston Churchill was a shared pseudonym like Publius and Anon.

The guy who discovered them was apparently a Dutch amateur who took an interest in lensmaking as a hobby. Possibly had lenses that could magnify 500x.

I find it really ironic at a time when the film side of the entertainment industry is dealing with a reckoning in audience retention and viewship, that television execs feel the need to reinvent the wheel at this specific moment in entertainment history.

They really feel like TV can compete with social media by becoming more like it? It's an insane bet Discovery is making and I doubt it's gonna work out for them.

Panasonic makes the batteries, Tesla basically just the landlord and as the sales company they decide how many batteries need to go in EVs vs powerpacks.

Tesla and Panasonics joint statement: https://www.tesla.com/blog/panasonic-and-tesla-sign-agreement-gigafactory

It's only slightly less impressive if they cheated with the more than one light.