XKCD: It's more than a comic

The internet is too distracting to spend all day like that. Times like those are reserved for insomnia.

One might observe that our endless parade of entertainment and our mind-numbing everyday routines are there precisely to drown out that kind of introspective mental death spiral. The alternatives are to go into a black funk of depression or to live on a mountaintop for a few decades and reach True Enlightenment.

Or, I dont know, do some work...

Depending on your job, that might count as part of the mind-numbing everyday routine.

Am I the only person here who does not have a crush on Randall Munroe?

... Is anyone here even having a crush on Randall?

Good point.

We must conclude that either nobody exists or that Randall does not exist.

I have no idea where you're basing your conclusion from.

Hahaha, yes. Anyone engaging in 24 hour surveillance of my life would be bored to insanity, never mind the recursion.

edited 9th Jun '13 9:22:12 PM by Fighteer

If I provide running commentary while I play a game, while Big Brother watches me on their cameras, does that count as a Let's Play?

Oooooh, it's been a long time since I last played Dwarf Fortress.

Obok cancels Spy on Civilian: interrupted by Giant Sponge Man.

That was amusing.

It should.

Sure it's amusing, until an elephant sets fire to your house...

edited 10th Jun '13 10:52:40 AM by demarquis

What If #49: Sunless Earth.

Apparently, the Sun going out would provide us with a great number of benefits, including health, economic, and scientific. And we all freeze and die, so there's that downside. Who would have thought?

How much time would we have before we all freeze and die?

According to this link, the surface temperature would reach 0 F within a week and -100 F within a year. The food chain would vanish, but geothermal energy plus residual trapped heat would make subsurface life possible, and some microorganisms could continue to survive for millions of years under those conditions.

Edit: The vast majority of humans would die, but we do have the technological capability to allow small groups to survive. Geothermal heat would be our best bet — nuclear power would be even better, but you need a large infrastructure to support it, which might not be practical. Quite frankly, though, if something turned off the Sun like a light bulb, we'd have far worse short term problems, like hoping that whatever it is doesn't blast the Earth into atoms on a whim.

edited 11th Jun '13 8:13:18 AM by Fighteer

If the Sun was to disappear, rather than stop emitting any kind of energy, we'd be thrown out of orbit and become vulnerable to (probably) many more threats than we are now.

That too. However, we really wouldn't notice any significant difference unless the trajectory caused us to collide with something in the first couple of days or weeks; we'd be too busy dying of cold, and space is big enough that it would take a very long time for the planet to go anywhere interesting.

edited 11th Jun '13 10:59:55 AM by Fighteer

I don't think getting cold would be a problem, actually.

I read the part I emphasized as taking it from today's state, and have it go through an accelerated life cycle... giving humanity a lot less time before the sun expands into its red giant phase than would be the case under normal conditions, to the tune of ~5 billion years less time.

In short, you won't freeze, because you'll be cooked long before then.

edited 11th Jun '13 11:05:08 AM by Nohbody

You're reading too much into it. The sun going dark in an instant is physically impossible, so the text is Hand Waving that for purposes of establishing the premise for the What If?. That's how most of them work, really.

edited 11th Jun '13 11:06:19 AM by Fighteer

Hey, I'm just going by what the guy wrote.

yea. remember how far the dial on the hairdryer went?

#1224: Council of 300. Unless it's gone memetic, only someone familiar with You Tube would understand this joke.

You Tube puts a cap on displayed views of any video at 300 for the first 24 hour period that it's up. This is ostensibly so they can check to make sure it's getting "legitimate" views. Randall is proposing a slightly more sinister reason.

^ I wouldn't have gotten it without the spoilered explanation.

Even knowing what it means, though, it's still kinda "meh" for me. Oh well, they can't all be winners.