2019.01.24
That is super mind-blowing. And - if you'll pardon me playing fast and loose with my layman understanding of physics - in some ways, stuff outside your light cone effectively hasn't happened yet. Seemingly common-sense concepts such as "events happened simultaneously" (Fnarr Fnarr) are not well-defined - and even in something as "small" as our solar system (A snapple cap I saw today: "There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth") you can "see" the effect of lightspeed not being instantaneous.
Hell - I'm sort of glad we can see relativistic effects, like where atomic clocks orbiting the earth drift in terms of time, because otherwise I'm not sure I'd really believe that time is less of a "thing", more of a byproduct, if you know what I mean. And if you do, please explain it to me.
(Kottke has some more views of light moving and our planet)
WINGS
It was on the outskirts of this city that she saw the butterfly. A single white butterfly, wings folded on a reed bed, one November morning. No butterflies had been seen since summer, where could this one have been hiding? The air temperature had plummeted in the previous week, and it was perhaps on account of its wings frequently freezing that the white color had been leached from them, leaving certain parts close to transparent. So clear, they shimmer with the black earth's reflection. Only a little time is needed now and the whiteness will leave those wings completely. They will become something other, no longer wings, and the butterfly will be something that is no longer butterfly.