this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
65 points (94.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43159 readers
1572 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
My quick guess is that it is so dim, that our eyes are seeing it mostly with the rods (instead of the cones), which only see black and white. βIn the night all cats are grayβ
Wait... Did you really just use the Benjamin Franklin grandma pussy quote for this?
Oh. I didnβt know this was a thing. In my mother tongue (German) it is like a normal expression.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachts_sind_alle_Katzen_grau
Apparently it was originally adapted from Don Quixote
I'm sure it is, it's just because my first experience with it was through that letter, so now it's ruined for me.
Excuse me the what now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_to_a_Friend_on_Choosing_a_Mistress?wprov=sfla1
Learn and be scarred
From reading the text, I speculate that Franklin was alluding to the preexisting saying as well -- alluding to the cat in the dark as an accepted axiom.
That would make sense, cleverly recontextualizing a regular saying. It would fit the tone of the letter to do that humorously
I think a better example probably would just be the night sky (at least in places with non-optimal conditions). Where I'm at there is very little color even when it's clear enough to see galactic features (interstellar cloud/nebulae, clusters of dimmer stars etc).