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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4711771
At least some of the signs were desgined by Anders Sandberg:
I found the image on Bruce Sterling’s Tumblr.
The source is from u/FuckMyHeart’s (reddit user) comment, which has a bit more info:
From the same comment and user:
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Important context: it’s a mix of things that do and don’t exist which all have a certain cachet with junk science. Tesla coils are definitely real, for example. It’s just that junk/fringe science may use them to make their flimflam theory seem more exciting.
Maybe “science fiction buzzwords” is a better descriptor then, because I started at antmatter and I was like “how is that ‘fringe’?”
Same here, I was very confused about that.
I similarly thought this was supposed to be a list meant to help you identify when someone is deploying fringe science. But in the context of the community (sciencefiction) and some of the other comments, I’ve realized that I think it’s meant to be sample signs you could use in a story like at a lab where that kind of “science” was being done.
AFAIK all of them are fake warning signs but, as you said, some of them reference real stuff.
I didn’t add any indication that they are fake because I assumed it was implied by posting in science fiction communities. If not, I will add a warning.
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I love these!
I guess I will have to upload my scifi NATO-symbols at some point, here’s an example (it’s a bipedal non-atmospheric reconnaissance mech):
May also include Anna Torv and John Noble, with LSD as a recurring guest star
I was sure number seven was going to be a joke about exiting vim.
Warning: Hotel-California software
The perpetual motion one makes sense I think since I’d something can run forever could you even stop it? Or maybe it holds a certain torque until acted upon by a greater force
“The lumber mill had to be shut down because someone overloaded the perpetual motion machine providing power to it and now the bosses are trying to figure out if they can get it fixed or if it’s cheaper to buy a new one, they just don’t make things like they used to”
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That was a rabbit hole.
These would work really well in SCP wiki
They seem more like scifi trope signs than fringe science signs.
Love that the tesla coil comes straight out of Red Alert
KIROV REPORTING
The first row looks like something out of Half-Life.
Yeah, I should put one of those “atomic switches” on every light switch in my home… but I don’t think I have enough Higgs field stickers.
Absolutely love the idea!
Unfortunately I find execution lacking. There is too little visual consistency. Different signs don’t look like a pictographic system, but instead as icons from different styles and systems pasted onto a common template.
What’s the pitchfork referencing for anti entropy?
I would say Maxwell’s Demon:
Maxwell’s demon is a thought experiment that would hypothetically violate the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. In his first letter, Maxwell referred to the entity as a “finite being” or a “being who can play a game of skill with the molecules”. Lord Kelvin would later call it a “demon”.
In the thought experiment, a demon controls a small massless door between two chambers of gas. As individual gas molecules (or atoms) approach the door, the demon quickly opens and closes the door to allow only fast-moving molecules to pass through in one direction, and only slow-moving molecules to pass through in the other. Because the kinetic temperature of a gas depends on the velocities of its constituent molecules, the demon’s actions cause one chamber to warm up and the other to cool down. This would decrease the total entropy of the system, without applying any work, thereby violating the second law of thermodynamics.
That’s interesting to think of the warning with knowing that. Thanks for explaining.
