this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don't want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That's ludicrous!

That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use "less" when they should use "fewer"

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Pluto is a MOTHER FUCKING PLANET

It has enough mass to deform into a spheroid, it orbits on the major plane of every other planet.

"Clearing their orbit" is utter bullshit, Earth hasn't even cleared its orbit that's why we get the Perseid and The Leonid meteor showers.

Fuck you NDT, I know you didn't start it but you SURE as FUCK popularized it.

And I will literally fistfight any of you who disagree idgaf where or when.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The main issue is that if Pluto is a planet, there's like 30 or so others that have to be also, for consistency.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nah... Just take the current definition of planet and append "and also Pluto because we're emotionally attached to it" and you're good.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Or, you know, reverse the stupid as fuck arbitrary definition of 'clearing its own orbit' being appended to the definition of a planet. It's that easy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Why aren’t you arguing for Ceres to be a planet then?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do they orbit on the general plane of the other planets in the system? COOL! Add them to the list!

IDGAF if we have hundreds of planets, it's always been an arbitrary number and the only reason to keep it small is so kids can memorize the list and that isn't good enough to DISRESPECT motherfucking PLUTO

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The only reason pluto was listed as a planet is because it was thought to be bigger than it actually was. And noone bothered challanging it until the dwarf planet category was created.

Do you also get upset when animals change families in taxonomy?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

DNA gives us insight into ancestry that has no parallel in astronomy. When we finally sequence a creature, we pretty much know right on the tree where it goes and stupid fucking crabs and everything that look like them can all get placed in their proper relations when previously purely dissection and observation misled those taxonomy pioneers.

you can't have that kind of bait and switch on celestial objects because what we see is what we see.

The reason that Pluto was smaller than predicted was the fact that the mass calculations assumed a single central object when the perturbations were made by the PLANET/moon system. That doesn't change the fact that it has enough mass to deform into a spheroid and orbits within 20% of the orbital plane.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

DNA has made it a lot easier to deterimine ancestry yes. But most of of taxonomy has been created on nothing but observational data.

For example, rabbits, hares, and pika used to be classed as Rodentia until they were placed in their own order, Lagomorpha, in 1912.

Also, the other dwarf planets were considered large asteroids until they were upgraded to dwarf planet status... so if you wanna be upset, you should be upset pluto isnt an asteroid.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Ceres is a planet.

Makemake, Hamuhea, Pluto, and Eris can come too I guess.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure, if they orbit within 20% of the ecliptic like every other real planet. Ceres does but I don't know about the other two and am too lazy to care.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I was with you until this, now it just sounds like blatant pro-Pluto bias. Why would you care so much with Pluto but not with the others, if an injustice is afoot!?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

He’s just a cry baby stuck in the 1st grade.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think it's about the way Charon and Neptune both influence it's orbit and rotation, in ways that, for instance, the Moon doesn't with Earth.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh the moon certainly influences our orbit, that's how we get the second tide of the day, just not as much as Charon

And Venus and Mars both have measurable effects on our orbit, just again not to the degree of Pluto.

See this is what pisses me right the fuck off, arrogant people spewing words they don't understand.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

OK, my bad. I should have used "to a vastly different degree".

Sorry for being an arrogant mouth-spouter.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You can't help it, hardly anyone including science educators ever really look deep into things.

I will give you this: What the meaning of 'planet' has been has changed over time and shrank and grown until in our modern understanding of astronomy it is hard to rectify our image of the solar system. We used to think our local space was empty except for a handful of traveling lights that moved against the relatively still galactic background and we gave spiritual and mythical importance to those lights because we thought such objects uncommon.

But the truth of it is there's quite a lot of objects that qualify for the original definition of 'planet', as in literally every astronomical body out to the heliopause which includes an obscene amount of mass from the Oort cloud. And even I will consider that ridiculous and worthy of revision.

For the longest time it was just the easiest to see objects, then Lowell predicted the existence of Pluto it made the discovery unusual as it wasn't from direct observation, and personally I think this is the root of astronomers' reason to exclude it. In their minds there is a primacy assigned to the bodies discovered with the naked eye and primitive telescopes as they represent some symbol of the true nature and majesty of the human effort to understand the heavens, and not because excluding Pluto in any way benefits the classification system.

I get that, but it is not a valid reason to downgrade a disproportionately favorite planet for many people. The added requirement is meaningless as it can very well apply to Earth, downgrading our status as well, but of course everyone just makes a silly face and handwaves despite being reminded twice a year in spectacular fashion that Earth has yet to clear its orbital path.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)