Enjoyed playing around the visualization to get a better mental picture of Earth's neighborhood. it's mind-blowing to know that there are 200 to 400 billion stars just in our galaxy alone. And it's even more breath-taking to comprehend that our galaxy is but one of a ≥100 billion galaxies in the _observable_ universe.
That kind of scroll is OK-ish for a background parallax effect, or maybe some pretty fade-in/out effects while elements scroll into view (without changing their relative position in the page).
When it interferes with the main functionality of the page, namely reading the content, they break accessibility, distract over understanding the difficult topic, make the content brittle against changes in the platform (different browsers or future standard updates), and as others pointed out make it difficult or impossible to use alternative presentations.
With most comments commenting on the presentation and not on the content, I think it makes clear that it detracts from the experience more than helps.
This perspective is still looking through a relative lens though, a form of stupidity (no offense intended, all people are a product of the flawed culture they are raised in).
How to make ALL people less stupid on an absolute scale is what humanity should set its sights on. Science was a good attempt, but that ideology too is stuck in a relativist framework.
I'd like to second this. Bonus points if a magnet were included so that the sample could be "levitated" over it. This is definitely a kind of novelty gift suitable for science-y and geeky friends.
That actually sounds fun. It's like karaoke but more than singing songs... even without the acting aspect, it sounds fun to experience the story unfold while you're in it. Not sure if people will feel bogged down by the additional effort they'll have to put in and prefer to just stare at a screen though.
The preference for silence may not be universal. John Von Neumann, a highly regarded scientist, appears to prefer noisy environments according to his Wikipedia entry [1]:
In Princeton, he [John Von Neumann] received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German march music on his phonograph, which distracted those in neighboring offices, including Albert Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its television playing loudly.
> I used to love X, but now it's been a few years since I've done X. What changed? At some point, everything got serious. [1]
> I started to only want to publish the best things, so I didn't publish at all. ...
> When I try to make the best thing, I become less happy, actually I become paralyzed. ...
> When I try to make the best thing, it feels different. It feels like I'm trying to prove something to someone instead of trying to discover something for myself. ... I'm just me, so I should make me things.
Pleasantly surprised to have chanced upon this piece of writing which has, in a few short paragraphs, captured a series of complex emotions I'd think are common among creators.
Practically I think it helps to be in touch with a community of creators who can offer support, guidance and empathy.
Personally I am far from mastering my emotions to the point where I'm comfortable putting my not-best creations up for public criticism/discussion while simultaneously recognizing the need to build up courage and wisdom to do so. I think for some this aversion partly stems from their upbringing's (family, education system, peer expectations) lack of openness/encouragement to exploration and failure to tolerate failure (failure comes hand in hand with exploration).
While eschewing failure appears to be of little detriment to the "cog in the machine", cultures that have yet figured out how to discuss, accept, and tolerate failures are destined to avoid innovation. People who are serious about creating/innovating should find means of coping with people who are overly critical/ dismissive of "not-best" iterative attempts.
Footnotes:
[1] Took the liberty of generalizing the author's post by replacing the act of publishing which was the author's original focus to "X" with the intention of having "X" being any activity.
I think it's because most employees just have no interest in diminishing competition. And if they did, most don't have the bargaining power to make it happen. And that to me is what corporate non-competes are generally about: exercising power for gain, and nevermind who it hurts.
