That, plus learning that the sun is a star (but doesn't twinkle for reasons I don't remember) and Earth revolves around the sun, were a few of my favorite things to learn.Yeah, I know, and I don't want to spoil any good childhood memories. That, plus learning that the sun is a star (but doesn't twinkle for reasons I don't remember) and Earth revolves around the sun, were a few of my favorite things to learn.įallible wrote:Growing up, we kids were told by a star-gazing uncle that you could tell the difference between a star and a planet because only stars twinkle because they reflect the sun's light. Growing up, we kids were told by a star-gazing uncle that you could tell the difference between a star and a planet because only stars twinkle because they reflect the sun's light. Did the ancient Greeks think the dots of light were the gods, or were they more like the Goodyear blimp, just a sort of symbol of or advertisement for a god? So it's perfectly OK to wish upon a planet, and in fact, if Venus is visible in the evening-when it is called the "evening star"-"star light star bright first star I see tonight" is going to be Venus. Notice that as far as the Greeks were concerned, a planet is a kind of star. The Greek for "wandering star" is "astra planeta," or "planet" for short. Now, if you do it a few days in a row and pay attention, you'll notice that they move a little bit from night to night, relative to the other stars. But bright enough to see easily even in a suburban backyard or city park, and red enough to look a little different from the other stars. You should see a star that's not as bright as you think Mars should be, and not as red as you think Mars should be. If he were looking out of his window these days, he'd see two stars. If you think of the opening "When You Wish Upon a Star" sequence in the Disney cartoon Pinocchio, a star that's so bright that you can see it, neatly framed in a window, even in a room that isn't completely dark. Is it a distant light of some kind? A plane landing? Nope, it doesn't move. The other will be so bright that you will not be absolutely 100% sure it is really a star. One of the stars will be just a nice real bright star. If so, just turn around until you see a couple of bright "stars" that are more or less together. This is naked eyeball backyard astronomy. I knew I shouldn't have sold my telescope! No, no, no. Both apps should allow for easy shrugging.Nisiprius wrote:By the way anyone who likes to wish upon a star should take advantage of the current juxtaposition of Jupiter and Venus to get two wishes for the price of one. And the best app like this for Android seems to be Textspansion. On Twitter, Justin Jacoby Smith recommends Auspex, a free utility for Windows that mimics the Mac and iPhone’s system-wide text-replacement function. ( I’m sure there is a Windows fix, but I don’t know what it is. My solution is also only possible on a Mac and/or iPhone. But then I found a solution, and it saves me having to google “smiley sideways shrug” every time I want to quickly rail at the world’s inherent lack of meaning. That makes it a kaomoji, a Japanese emoticon it also makes it, on Western alphabetical keyboards at least, very hard to type. Unlike better-known emoticons like :) or ), ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ borrows characters from the Japanese syllabary called katakana. I use it at least 10 times a day.įor a long time, however, I used it with some difficulty. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ represents nihilism, “bemused resignation,” and “a Zen-like tool to accept the chaos of universe.” It is Sisyphus in unicode. With raised arms and a half-turned smile, it exudes the melancholia, the malaise, the acceptance, and (finally) the embrace of knowing that something’s wrong on the Internet and you can’t do anything about it.Īs Kyle Chayka writes in a new history of the symbol at The Awl, the meaning of the “the shruggie” is always two-, if not three- or four-, fold. In its 11 strokes, the symbol encapsulates what it’s like to be an individual on the Internet.
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