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this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Asklemmy
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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. „In the night all cats are gray“
Wait... Did you really just use the Benjamin Franklin grandma pussy quote for this?
Oh. I didn’t 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
Well he's not wrong there!
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).