safe to say i'm baffled, and this may be well beyond me

hmm, reading that and some related links, it looks like consensus says there's nothing remarkable for an observer free-falling past the event horizon. which seems to contradict either that black holes evaporate in finite (outside) time, or that falling into a black hole takes infinite (outside) time

but as you've said, due to hawking radiation, surely the infalling observer would dissipate at an apparently (from their own POV) increasing rate as they approach, and disappear completely before they can cross the horizon?

which has led me to the idea that from the POV of an infalling observer, the singularity would form as they cross the horizon, while the universe dies around it.

That's been my sticking point for a while too. if everything falling in appears to slow, and takes an infinite amount of "outside" time to cross the event horizon, then surely the singularity can never form, as no matter can actually cross the event horizon when observed from outside

TIL! that's super cute

Hello :)

this wedding takes no objections..

as we all know every programmer's dream job is to never have to code again and instead just manage PRs with unreliable code and communicate with the unreliable entities who wrote it

that's so important, I need to think of that more often

alas, it has now frozen once 🙃