Configurations

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configurations

Title text: Fun fact: Aerogels were discovered by futzing around with jelly.

Votey

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Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts describe what happens in each panel — here are some good examples to get you started (1) (2).

[Describe panel here]

Technology isn't ever new. It's just configurations of stuff that's been around for billions of years.

Did you know that in gabon scientists discovered the remains of a "natural" nuclear reactor.

It's really not surprising. You just need some uranium deposits that get surrounded by water and bam! Controlled fission.

It gets weird if you apply this generally. Like.. A photograph is just the right chemicals on a more or less flat surface. In principle, there could be a selfie of a tyrannosaurus somewhere, waiting for us to find it.

Sagan said, "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." but, actually, the "you" is unnecessary.

Human life, culture, civilization. It's just a sequence of technically permitted, but ever more unlikely physical configurations.

So everything is meaningless?

No, there's a clear meaning for human life, and it runs throughout history - to find weirder and weirder configurations.

And use them to explore the heavens and plumb the planck-scale.

Mostly it's for food and tv, but yeah, that too.

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Votey Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts describe what happens in each panel — here are some good examples to get you started (1) (2).

[Describe panel here]

By god I want that t-rex selfie.

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