Yes, it's from a book called "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" and that book was resting on a closed toilet seat in a nation that only kind of uses the metric system in certain situations... however, you'd be surprised how much you can learn after a single visit to any local fast-food joint!

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[–] 57 points 2 days ago (10 children)

I think this snippet misrepresents the accuracy of the former definition of the metre. Sure, it's no longer the distance from the equator to the pole (the modern definition uses the speed of light and the period of transition for a particular atom), but the difference is quite small. The circumference of the Earth around the poles (so 4 times the distance from equator to pole) is 40007.863 km. In Napoleonic times scientists had a pretty good idea what the shape of the Earth was.

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  • [+] [S] -17 points 2 days ago* (9 children)

    Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates. Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of "time" to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.

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  • [–] 40 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates.

    Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.

    Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of “time” to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.

    This reads like an unfortunate confluence of psychosis, psychoactive substances and LLMs.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 days ago

    While I can't speak for my chemical imbalances, I can certainly assure you I am %100 not a fucking algorithm or some lame ass excuse for manufactured digital intelligence....

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  • [+] [S] -30 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.

    Thanks for explaining that a fucking ball is easier to squeeze at it's widest part, genius.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    What are you talking about? That isn't what they said, and a ball doesn't have a widest point. That's more or less the definition of a ball.

    The distance between the two poles is smaller than the distance from one side to the other following the equator. The earth isn't quite a ball, it's a bit squashed because of way it spins

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  • [+] [S] -13 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Okay, a ball is equally wide but sometimes it gets squeezed and becomes tallish

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago*

    Since it seems like you're confused about the precise deformation of earth: the earth is wider around the equator. It's not being squished but, rather, being flung apart by its spinning on its axis, like spinning pizza dough. Gravity just keeps it the same shape.

    If you're interested, look up "geodesy"

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