As a bonus, you won’t ever get invited to any boring events again. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Oh ok. So when the peak of the emission spectrum is in the IR range, the visible color will definitely be closer to red or orange. The amount of blue light emitted in that case will be very low. That’s what the thermometer experiment can definitely demonstrate clearly.

However, if the black body is hot enough that the peak is in the blue wavelength band, then the total IR output should also be pretty high, just like everything else is at that point. I wonder if it’s even higher than in the first example. Would need to calculate that properly… Anyway there will also be a fair bit of UV, so don’t try this at home. Maybe even some x-rays if the arc is hot enough.

As far as traditional carbon-arc lamps are concerned, people at the time wrote that the light was white. Maybe the arc was not hot enough or be perceived as blue. Also, the human eye is not particularly sensitive at those wavelengths, so that could explain some of it too.

LOL. With a poster like that, I expect blue to be a pretty hot color.

Europe - final countdown

Oh-oh, we’re heading for Venus (Venus)
And still, we stand tall
'Cause maybe they’ve seen us
And welcome us all, yeah
With so many light years to go

Wait, what? You’re heading for Venus, and you have many light years to go? This song was clearly written by aliens. I rest my case.

Ok, so white should be the warmest color if you just stick with natural and easy to observe examples. Sunrise can be pretty nice and warm after a cold night though, so in a narrower sense red/orange/yellow could still be considered warm. However, during sunset, it gets cooler again, so the same colors would be cold compared to midday white. It gets a bit messy.

Yeah, these cultural associations can get pretty wild. So, would you wear black or white at a funeral? Depends on the cultural context.

Hmm… I didn’t think about black body radiation that much. The filaments in a toaster really are red/orange/yellow when hot. I wonder what it would take to to squeeze blue out of black body radiation. Theoretically, it should be possible. Probably thousands of degrees… I think we’re moving into plasma physics territory at this point. Regular filaments just wouldn’t be able to handle blue light production. Electric arcs are blue though, and that plasma is pretty hot. Such an edge case, but still…

Those are some pretty solid points! Especially the one about healthy vs. freezing skin tone.

Developed countries with electricity and district heating. What you’re saying still applies to the rest of the world though.

Hmm… There’s nothing quite like the smell of sulfur dioxide in the morning.

Oh that is a good point. The sun really is pretty orange. Long before the first fire, people probably associated orange and yellow with warmth.

However, cultural associations can change over time. What we consider warm is largely sustained by old paintings and pictures. Modern day artists use orange to convey a warm atmosphere, and that’s why the idea of orange as a warm color persists.

People don’t really use fire that much any more, so realistically speaking, warmth doesn’t even have a color today.

Fair enough.

I thought that the origin of the whole concept is rooted in Haitian magic and folk lore. These modern iterations deviate from the “evil magic zombie” origins and end up with all sorts of problems. The story has to rely on various silly contrivances because of it.

Just go with magic, go old-school. May not sound modern enough, but it totally works. There’s no need to worry about the laws of physics when black magic is used to reanimate the corpse. The only way to deal with them is to break the spell. Who cares how dead and decaying the corpses are. They don’t need water, energy or even muscles to move. It’s pure magic. It just works.

Oh you’re absolutely right. These are just monsters that serve a purpose for the plot. Nothing more. You shouldn’t overthink it.

Although… Overthinking it is kinda fun too, but the people who wrote the script were kinda hoping you wouldn’t do that. The whole plot suddenly falls apart if you think about it more than 5 seconds. Well, at least that’s on-brand.

In the age of romanticism, art usually depicted idealized and beautiful things. Then realism emerged, and artists also stared painting poor and ugly people. In social realism, the art was supposed to make you feel a bit uncomfortable. All of that was still clearly art.

I think art requires an intention. When you paint a picture of a seagull covered in oil, you may want the viewer to feel something about the petrochemical industry. When you take a photo of Chinese children working in a toy factory, you might want your audience to feel what the children are going through.

When you’re painting using digital tools, you may draw the same line 20 times to get it just right. As an artist, you have a goal in mind, and you will keep pressing undo until each line in the drawing meets your criteria. If you generate a hundred pictures with an AI and pick the one that fits your goals, you’re essentially acting as a curator of art. There’s a goal and an intention behind the selection process. That’s why the line or picture that didn’t get deleted is art.

What if there’s zero human involvement? If there is no selection process guided by goal or intention, is that still art? Maybe? What if the viewer still feels something when looking at the result. Maybe that could make it art¿ What if you just look at the clouds drifting in the sky, and that makes you feel something. Is that art too? This is where it gets really messy and the categories fall apart.

Are those zombies smart enough to stay hydrated? If not, it’s game over in a few days.

The way zombies are portrayed in many movies, they shouldn’t really stand a chance. Maybe evil magic zomies (as described in CONOP 8888) could be a problem.

All the other zombies would still have to follow the rules of physics, chemistry and biology, so they would just stop functioning after a while. Rigor mortis, sepsis and microbial decay should take care of the problem in a day or two.

You don’t need to fly in the equator though. Try either of the poles, and fly in the summer.

That’s a common issue. People simply enjoy neat boxes and categories, but the world is actually really complex and chaotic, and that’s why these categories are very problematic. While you can create arbitrary categories for everything, these definitions will inevitably be flawed. They’re still useful but far from perfect, with areas of ambiguity and contradictions.

Consider, for example, where one species ends and another begins. It’s a messy and fuzzy situation, so we simply draw an arbitrary boundary. Similarly, what even constitutes “living”? Draw a line and don’t worry about the details. Yes, it’s indecently hard, because humans really love clear definitions with a burning passion. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t really support that notion.

The same problem arises in art. Who created this painting? Well, it was primarily the work of Mister A, but he received significant assistance from his apprentices B, C, D and E. It’s complicated. Let’s just draw a line and stop worrying about the specifics.

What even is art? It’s very messy. Expect uncertainty and contradictions within these fuzzy categories. Yes, but is this slop? Yet another category problem. Same answer.

Are people really expecting vitamins to heal disease? No wonder why you called it a scam. I just thought that vitamins would do their nutritional job instead of performing miracles.