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r/AMA ● 1 day ago
petri_fied
I’m Ryland Grace (yes, really) - AMA
What the title says. About 11 years ago (from my perspective; relativity is weird) I was launched into space onboard the Hail Mary to figure out a solution to the Astrophage problem. Now I live on an alien planet I call Erid, in the 40-Eridani system. Yes, I’m actually Ryland Grace. Ask me anything.
Also, can someone please tell me if Eva Stratt is alive? And ideally send me a video of you punching her in the face? Guess that’s a long shot, but it can’t hurt to ask.
EDIT: Alright, I probably should have seen this coming.
EDIT 2: Rocky wants me to clarify that he helped me connect to the internet, and yes, I couldn’t have done it without him. May we all bow down to our Eridian betters.
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u/spacesandwich1000
This is in incredibly bad taste.
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u/lonelyheartsclubman
I mean, not if it’s real??
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u/ily-lilyyy
rihgt but its not so who gives a shit
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u/mauldrake
Seriously. The Stratt stuff alone… I know public opinion’s turned against her, but I don’t think Dr. Grace would want to punch his superior in the face.
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u/petri_fied OP
Try getting sent to Tau Ceti against your will and see how you feel about the lady who gave the orders.
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u/spacesandwich1000
I see we’ve shot right past bad taste and into libel.
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u/Formal_Apricot_48
You can be honest. Did you fuck the rock?
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u/missusslydog
What Earth food do you miss the most and why is it Skittles
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u/petri_fied OP
Glad to see the logs from the beetles arrived intact! I only ate Skittles so often because Stratt sent a bunch up with me—not that I don’t love Skittles. But the actual answer is omelettes.
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u/charmingshoulder
i know we’re all being internet funnyguys here but what if he’s being fr?? this account was created in 2015… could be him
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u/EtTuBronte
Fuck off
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u/Da_Bomb_Dot_Com
Wait ok. I just went back through the acct history and it does kinda line up. He was posting/commenting on teacher subreddits in the 2020s, and before that he was on microbiology and academia subs.
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u/EtTuBronte
You people cannot be serious
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u/notit
How did you connect to the internet from Erid?
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u/00spirklives00
Please don’t encourage him.
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u/petri_fied OP
Short, really oversimplified answer: lots of data bundles sent across a series of nodes using quantum teleportation. Long (really long) answer can be found here on my substack. Side note, if anyone knows of any scientific journals that would be interested in publishing the work of a guy stuck in space with questionable credentials, hit me up.
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u/sarahvera
is it crazy if i say him linking to a substack kinda convinced me this is real. who still uses substack in 2045?
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u/petri_fied OP
Way to make a guy feel old. Jeez, is it really 2045? I was kinda hoping my math was wrong.
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RADIO TRANSMISSION LOG - ERIDCOMMS SHORTWAVE
[2045/03/26 START 09:53:33 GMT +00:00]
00 00 03 OUTGOING: Biodome to Central Thrum.
00 00 07 INCOMING: Copy Biodome. This is Thrum. Adrian at comms.
00 00 10 OUTGOING: Hey, is Rocky around?
00 00 15 INCOMING: One moment.
00 00 25 INCOMING: Rocky at comms presently. Problem question?
00 00 30 OUTGOING: How’s it going, bud?
00 00 35 INCOMING: Worried. Is problem question? You never call at this time.
00 00 39 OUTGOING: No problem! All good here. But you should come over when you get a chance.
00 00 45 INCOMING: No. Sounds bad, and Rocky is busy busy busy. Tell now.
00 00 47 OUTGOING: Drama queen.
00 00 51 OUTGOING: It’s just, uh. I didn’t account for something kind of important with this whole internet experiment.
00 00 58 INCOMING: Explain.
00 01 04 OUTGOING: They don’t believe me.
00 01 05 INCOMING: Confuse. Explain better.
00 01 07 OUTGOING: The people on the internet think I’m lying.
00 01 10 INCOMING: Lying about what? About Erid question?
00 01 17 OUTGOING: No, they think I’m not really Ryland Grace. I guess they assume I’m just some guy trolling for laughs.
00 01 24 INCOMING: Rolling? Question?
00 01 29 OUTGOING: Trolling. Means lying for my own amusement.
00 01 36 INCOMING: Do not understand. What motivation would Grace have to lie question? Not funny at all.
00 01 40 OUTGOING: I… don’t know, Rock. People just lie on the internet sometimes. Not really sure where to go from here. They don’t believe me, and it’s not like I can just send them a video or whatever.
00 01 53 INCOMING: Could send video.
00 01 56 OUTGOING: What? Mary’s camera broke down years ago. I know you didn’t forget.
00 01 58 INCOMING: So Rocky make new camera. Problem solved.
00 02 02 OUTGOING: Rocky. Buddy. You don’t have eyes. How are you gonna make a camera? The visual aspect is kind of important.
00 02 10 INCOMING: Don’t need weak human eyes for engineering. Rocky prove you wrong easy. Only need three weeks.
00 02 17 OUTGOING: The old camera parts are all mixed in with Armando now. You think you can make a camera wholecloth in three weeks? Without eyes?
00 02 24 INCOMING: No cloth. Xenonite and glass probably. Easy easy easy. Grace have so little trust. Make it two weeks.
00 02 30 OUTGOING: No, wholecloth just means—two weeks?
00 02 37 INCOMING: Needed in Thrum now. Go do your job.
00 02 41 OUTGOING: Bossy pants.
00 02 45 INCOMING: Grace class arrives in 3 minutes.
00 02 49 OUTGOING: Shoot!
[2045/03/26 END 09:56:22 GMT +00:00]
TRANSMISSION TERMINATED
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esther (is watching bridgerton!) @estherthetesterr ᐧ 42m
ok is it just me or is it WAY too soon to be making jokes like this
happycat ✨💖 @happylilkitty24 ᐧ 1d
LMAOOO
[Attached screenshot] [ALT TXT: Screenshot of a Reddit r/AMA post from user u/petri_fied titled “I’m Ryland Grace (yes, really) - AMA”]
7:40pm ᐧ 4/5/98 ᐧ 16K Views
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ryah ₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ @edwardoeluriku
Its been 22 years since launch.
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BerryBerry @_sosweet_
ok but i literally just had my first ever beach day like half a year ago because before that the SUN WAS DYING so can we just give it a SECOND like damn!!!
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blastoise || comms closed @wildblastoisey
and here we all are still on twitter. kms
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Eridian Shortwave Transmission and the Internet of Space Things
A case study from Erid
RYLAND GRACE, PHD
April 2, 2045
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I’ve been living on Erid going on 17 Eridian years now, which shakes out to roughly two Earth years. Time flies when you’re living on an alien planet.
If you had asked me when I first docked the Hail Mary on Erid’s star ladder what I foresaw to be the greatest technological challenge Rocky and I would face here, I probably would have said something about language localization, or nutrition, or atmospheric pressure irregularities. That’s all been challenging, naturally, but if you want more on my day-to-day you’ll have to wait until I get around to publishing an article on that (you can find good primers cited at the bottom of this page).
You, dear reader, are currently witnessing the fruits of the hardest feat we’ve tackled thus far: connecting to Earth’s internet. Strangely enough, this was Rocky’s idea. He’s really into Earth media, which I guess is what happens when you’re an Eridian stuck on a ship for four (Earth) years with your human friend, a medical robot, and a laptop stuffed full of pretty nearly every piece of media any human ever created from the beginning of time through the year 2023, inclusive. By the end of our first year of travel to Erid, the laptop’s 2023 Wayback Machine snapshots were just not cutting it. Rocky was clambering to see more of the modern internet, and I’d been missing it myself. There’s a certain primitive corner of my brain that still demands a good old Reddit doomscroll every now and then. Also, to be totally honest, we were incredibly bored, and Rocky and I get antsy if we go more than a week without a project.
So alright, enough expositing. How’d we do it?
We started with the technology our societies already use to transfer data through space. In Earth’s solar system, NASA uses a cyber-physical system of data transfer, sometimes called the Internet of Space Things (which is a cool name, so we’re taking it). Here in the 40 Eridani system, they communicate near-instantly across Erid and up to the star ladder with an incredibly advanced, high-speed variant of what we Earthlings might call shortwave radio transmission. Individually, neither system can handle intergalactic internet connection. But, as Rocky and I have often found, humans and Eridians can accomplish a lot more together than we ever could apart.
Read More ≫
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r/ProjectHailMary ● 4 hours ago
tau-you-ba
Ryland Grace’s Substack?
Has anyone read the new article on Dr. Grace’s old Substack site? I know it’s probably just a troll, but if it is, it’s a really good troll. How tf did they get his login info? Anyone else looking into this?
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u/infiniti_and_beyond
It’s really not that hard to hack into an old account. Don’t give them attention, that’s clearly what they want.
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u/xfungusqueenx
it is kinda crazy how well they captured his old writing style. like, the new article and the old ones totally read as if they’re written by the same guy.
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u/cosmicka__
You’re tripping. They’re completely different. “Really good troll” my ass lmfao
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u/Adam-J-Biscotte
Just read the article. I’m gobsmacked. It’s got to be fake, but whoever wrote this definitely did some serious research. As far as I can tell the engineering stuff checks out.
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u/BackwardAlbedo
I mean… What if it’s really him?
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u/cosmicka__
People will just believe anything anyone posts huh? The science is gibberish. Come on.
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u/Adam-J-Biscotte
I have a doctorate in electrical engineering. I promise, the science is not gibberish. It’s quite sound.
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u/SLokken
Seconded. It is.
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START ACCESSIBLE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
[00:00 - 01:51]
Blurry in-motion video of sand. Camera adjusts and focuses. The person holding the camera sets it down, backs up, and sits. We now see two figures sitting on a beach. Righthand is human Ryland Grace [GRACE] and lefthand is Eridian Rocky [ROCKY].
Ryland Grace wears a polo shirt and flight pants, and Rocky wears a protective transparent shell. Rocky speaks in musical tones overlaid by a flat text-to-speech translator voice emanating from a nearby laptop.
[GRACE]: Okay. It’s going?
[ROCKY]: Yes!
[GRACE]: You’re sure this time?
[ROCKY]: Pretty sure.
[GRACE]: I need you to be totally sure, because I really can’t do this three times in one day.
[ROCKY]: Grace wimpy. Was your idea in the first place. Speak to Earth now!
[GRACE]: Alright, okay. [Waves to camera] Hello, Earth! This is Dr. Ryland Grace, coming to you not-live but definitely alive, from here on the surface of 40-Eridani A b, or as I call it, Erid. I’m joined today by a very special guest. Say hi, Rocky.
[ROCKY]: Hello! I am Rocky. Grace and Rocky meet far away in Tau Ceti system and save stars together! Now Grace live on Erid in fancy biosphere Eridians make so Grace not die.
[GRACE]: So I’m making this video mostly to prove to you guys on Earth that I’m still alive and kicking. But I figured while we’re here, I can show you around my little home on Erid.
[10:01 - 12:03]
[GRACE]: And over there we have, uh… I don’t know if you can see that from here. It’s just a model Rocky made when—never mind. Sorry, I know this whole thing looks like it was filmed on a Nokia flip phone. It’s pretty incredible that Rocky managed to pull this off at all, but… yeah. Making a video camera from scratch was tough. So, seems like we’re coming to you in sepia tones for now—
[ROCKY]: Word question?
[GRACE]: What word? Sepia?
[ROCKY]: Yes, explain.
[GRACE]: Like, monochrome, kinda. This video won’t have color.
[ROCKY]: Oh, Grace complain again about color camera. Why need color question?
[GRACE]: I told you, it helps us see better.
[ROCKY]: But Eridians see fine with no color. Humans so needy.
[GRACE]: [to camera] Yeah, it turns out it’s hard to make a camera that captures color when you’ve never experienced color and also you don’t fully grasp the concept because you don’t have eyes.
[ROCKY]: Rocky will build next camera with color if you want color so much! How make color question?
[GRACE]: I guess the easiest way would be to build in a beam splitter and make three different sensors for red, blue, and green… could get bulky.
[ROCKY]: Three sensors? Why need three question? And why only three colors question?
[GRACE]: Okay, you know how human eyes sense light with cones and rods?
[ROCKY]: Approximately one hundred and ten million rods and six million cones, yes. Ohhh, same colors as human cones photo pigments!
[GRACE]: Right! Digital cameras sort of use a really simplified version of that system. We’d need a series of reflective—you know what, just get your texture gun, this will be easier with the whiteboard…
[25:59 - 26:32]
[GRACE]: Aaand now we’re back at the beach where we started! Hopefully you got a sense of what my life is like here on Erid. Sorry for the science stuff in the middle. I don’t have a video editing program so you’ll just have to skip it if it’s boring.
[ROCKY]: Was interesting! Human eyes amaze amaze amaze.
[GRACE]: Not as cool as Eridian echolocation. Maybe you can explain that one to Earth next time.
[ROCKY]: We make more videos question?
[GRACE]: Yeah, if you want. We’ll have to test out the color camera, anyway.
[ROCKY]: Good good good. Now Grace give this video to you tube for Earth. Why put in tube, question? Human internet is way faster.
[GRACE]: No, the… it’s not actually a tube, it’s part of the internet.
[ROCKY]: Then why called tube question?
[GRACE]: Huh. I don’t know.
[ROCKY]: We will look it up on the internet.
[GRACE]: Sounds like a plan. [to camera] Well, until next time, Earth! Please spread the word that I’m not dead.
Ryland Grace walks to the camera and picks it up.
[GRACE]: I really hope it was recording this time—
END ACCESSIBLE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
2 Comments ≡ Sort By
@AnimeSweatdrop ᐧ 5 min ago
???????
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@megamillionman41 ᐧ 1 min ago
Is this like an ARG or what
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