
Is the Great Attractor a Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann? - gwern
https://jgeekstudies.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/great-attractor-ttgl/
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Filligree
One nit:

> Interestingly, the spell enlarge person from the tabletop RPG Dungeons &
> Dragons agrees with half of the law (Cook et al., 2003). To double in size,
> the target of the spell has its weight multiplied by eight, in accordance
> with the “cube law”. However, the target receives a fixed Strength modifier
> of +2, instead of having an increase proportional to his/her base Strength
> value, which would make more sense.

The strength scale is nonlinear to begin with. I don't quite remember for
sure, but I think it might be exponential, in terms of bench-pressing ability.
It's meant to reflect that adding 100kg to your weight limit is far more
useful if it's a doubling than if it's 10%.

\---

Also, Tengen Toppa runs on DETERMINATION and IRON WILL, and the laws of
physics therefore do not apply.

~~~
chc4
He's also wrong about The Ring.

The escape hatch is a naked singularity, created by the supermassive
superstring structure rotating around it fast enough to skew the gravity
envelop. Superstrings are an integral part of the book; the entire structure
is made of them, along with Xelee spaceships. One small piece of one isn't
what broke reality enough for the escape hatch, they just used them as
scaffolding.

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mdadm
Mine is the drill that will pierce the heavens!

Now with that out of the way, that's pretty cool. I think it's interesting how
the idea of a 10-million-light-year-tall robot was taken seriously in this
way; given the comparisons with existing robots (in fiction and real life), I
like how the conclusion that was reached is "it's unlikely but possible." It
gives me hope that maybe, out there in the universe somewhere, there's
something awesome like that hiding.

~~~
cicloid
And apparently given the size, the whole fight took something like 8 billion
years...

or 23 minutes

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coderdude
This is quite possibly the nerdiest thing ever written by man. I've never seen
so many references in a blog post about an anime robot. Nevertheless, I liked
it.

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ksec
Giga Drill Breaking !!!!

Spiral Nemesis!?

Seriously i thought no one watches Anime on HN. Since this landed on the front
page it means there is still quite a few.

Off Topic: When we discovered Gravitational wave, i wonder and asked how far
are we from creating Goldion Crusher, aka Gravity Shockwave Generating
Division Tool.

~~~
fennecfoxen
It's probably because Hacker News is serious about not being Reddit and goes
about maintaining an aura of seriousness better than most Internet forums.

That, and - for me, at least - most technology / startup news stories don't
give too much room to drop references to my favorite cute, harmless, adorable
magical-girl animes like _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_ and the homage _Yuki Yuna
Is A Hero_.

 _(and by "harmless" I mean "dark psychological horror with a death toll
rivaling _Game of Thrones_")_

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>(and by "harmless" I mean "dark psychological horror with a death toll
rivaling _Game of Thrones_")

SPOILERS!

~~~
fennecfoxen
Naah, "spoilers" would be more like intimating that the title character has to
kill her old mentor after she goes crazy and starts shooting her friends. (If
something like that actually happened, which I'm pretty sure it didn't.) Just
letting someone know that they shouldn't expect the series to end with
frolicking in a sparkling happy dreamland filled with pink cherry-blossoms at
the corner of Good Morning and the Country of Sweets? That's nothing. :P

If you want real spoilers go watch the train scene:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPntVlsN-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPntVlsN-k)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>If you want real spoilers go watch the train scene:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPntVlsN-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPntVlsN-k)

 _Wow_ , they made that a lot worse in the dub. Or maybe it was always that
bad and I couldn't tell because of Japanese politeness in the original script.

Damn.

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tonyle
This is funny. Suppose there was a giant fight taking place, would it take
millions of years before we notice the first punch?

btw here is a size comparison of various mecha, guess which one is the
biggest.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo)

~~~
minimaxir
That plothole is resolved in the anime/manga. Sort of. It's a mental battle
that takes place in a parallel dimension.

TTGL is trippy. Worth marathoning on Netflix since it's short for an anime.

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jcl
For some reason, I thought this was going to be about the Lorenz Attractor...

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lorenz_attractor_yb....](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lorenz_attractor_yb.svg)

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eli_gottlieb
Eh-he-hem.

WHO THE _HELL_ DO YOU THINK I AM!

Gurren Lagann will always be the best explanation for galaxy-scale
astronomical anomalies, just as the Getter Emperor will always be the best
explanation for planetary-scale anomalies.

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gus_massa
Small comment: The first link to a video in Youtube is broken:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qeOhJ9dbg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qeOhJ9dbg)

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krick
Wow, even though I despise all this "geeky" culture as represented on, say,
xkcd, this one magazine is actually quite awesome. "Is the Great Attractor a
TTGL?", "The biology of giant war centipedes", etc — this stuff is actually
fun to read.

Funny that they accept only manuscripts submitted "as a Microsoft Word
document" though.

~~~
ambivalence
Do you think if you submitted an RTF or even a TXT they would turn you down?

~~~
ninguem2
For them to be truly geeky, they should accept LaTeX.

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mirimir
Maybe LIGO will find lots of black hole mergers there.

