I like Instagram more than I ever imagined I would.  I’m far from a good photographer and half of my pictures are bullshit that no one would ever have any reason to want to look at, so maybe I’m a terrible Instagrammer– but I like the hell out of this app for some reason.  I’ve got a couple of friends who appear to take pictures of every single object they look at and post them to Instagram; I’m not at that level yet (and, for the record, I’m not griping about those who are) but I may be headed that way.  I don’t know why this is so much fun but it is.

Anyway.

That’s the moon.  It was taken yesterday, at OtherJob.  It’s not blurry as hell out of any particular desire to be arty or anything like that; that’s just how the picture came out and I decided I liked it enough to go ahead and use it.

Note a couple of things:

• That the moon is full, or is at least nearly enough so as to not matter for this picture.
• That the moon is bright.  Full moons are bright!  That’s kind of the idea!
• That the moon is, while large, not larger than you’d expect it to be.

You can cover the moon with a dime held at arm’s length, people.  When it’s at the horizon your brain tricks you with the Moon Illusion, which– while really, really cool– does not actually represent a change in the moon’s size.  The moon looks small from the Earth’s surface.  It should; it’s not very big to begin with (by celestial-object standards, I mean) and it’s, on average, 380,000 kilometers or so away.

I’ll get back to this in a minute.

It is not a secret: people are wrong on the Internet.   There are always people who are wildly catastrophically stupidly wrong on the Internet and they will always be out there, on the Internet, being all wrong and shit, and furthermore some of them are wrong on purpose and those people enjoy making you crazy.

For a certain kind of person, how capable they are of ignoring Internet idiocy is a useful measure of their overall mental health.  I say “for a certain kind of person” because some people don’t notice Internet idiocy; those are generally the kinds of people making the rest of us insane.  The quality I’m talking about is the ability to read something, recognize that you have lost IQ points to its soul-destroying stupidity, and then ignore it and move on with your life.

Anyway.  Here’s a guide to how to make me nuts:

1) Be wrong on the Internet.  This ain’t hard.  And, to make this clear, I’m wrong on the Internet all the time.  If I wasn’t in the habit of deleting all my Facebook posts a day or two after they go up I could point to many examples.  Some of the people most likely to set me straight when I’m wrong on the Internet may well comment on this.

2) Be someone who should know better than whatever nonsense it is than you just posted.  This is critical; I’m actually pretty good at ignoring stupid from people who I already think are stupid.  If I think of you as an intelligent person, or you occupy a job that should by rights be held by someone with a brain in their head, and I see you posting stupid shit, I’m much more likely to intervene and point out why you’re being stupid.  (2A is “or catch me in the mood to fuck with someone,” which I’ll admit does happen sometimes, but is less common than those who know me well might actually think.)

3) After I correct your stupid, use the phrase “that’s your opinion” or “we’ll agree to disagree.”

No.  No we fucking won’t.  You’re wrong, or I wouldn’t have wasted the breath on correcting your dumb fucking ass.  (Can I tell the difference between fact and my opinion?  Yes!  I’m about to illustrate the difference.)

Here is the difference: if me correcting you uses math, you’re wrong.

For example, if you’ve used the phrase “supermoon” in the last couple of days.  And if you’re posting on something you’re calling an “astronomy blog.”  And if you seem to think that the moon is not only going to be several times larger than it usually looks but is going to cause earthquakes and volcanoes due to its incredible proximity to the Earth, and you post this on your astronomy blog, it is entirely possible that I’m going to speak with you about it.  And when I use the numbers in your own post to point out that the difference between “average” moon and “super” moon is less than seven percent, and you tell me “that’s your opinion,” I’m going to get a little closer to losing my mind on you.  Because that’s not what “opinion” means.  And when I further point out that your stupid ass has suggested that something that happens a little bit less than once a year causes earthquakes and floods, and you tell me that “you’re just saying that the idea is out there,” I’m probably going to savage your soul.  Because, guess what, jackass?  There’s this thing, called observation, that we can use to determine whether the moon causes earthquakes and floods and volcanoes and swarms of locusts every 13.5 months.  And someone who calls himself a “scientist” probably ought to acknowledge the fact that there’s a way to determine with objectivity whether this “idea” that’s “out there” is true or not.

And it isn’t.

That’s not my opinion.  That’s fucking reality.  It is objective fact that the moon is not going to look five times larger in the sky on Sunday than it does today.  It will, to the naked eye, look exactly the fucking same.  Will it be bright and prominent and light up the night sky?  Yes!  That’s what the full moon does.  

So, yeah.  If you want to make me crazy, pose as a scientist, post blatantly nonscientific shit where I can see it, then try and blame me when I call you out on it.  The end.

(Seriously, though?  Look up on Sunday.  The moon is cool, “super” or not.)