AlexanderRM

[bramblepatch]

The thing is you can have a grassy lawn or even a golf course without it being an ecological disaster, you just have to a: be cool about having the occasional non-grass plant in the mix and b: be willing to live in a climate that supports grass without irrigation.

[bramblepatch]

Golf courses in California are an abomination which is why the sport was in fact invented in Scotland.

[abstrusetheorist]

I always thought that golf as a sport should be adapted to the local native landscape. I think this will encourage regional pride when local golfers completely trounce visitors at Swamp Golf, Desert Golf, Forest Golf, etc. Rich tourists will be pressured to travel extensively to experience all forms of golf, instead of staying in their backyard country club golf courses. Internet discourse will probably somehow get worse but I think this is a small price to pay.

[mctreeleth]

[mogseltof]

Nullarbor Links - Wikipedia

[bramblepatch]

Alright, so, it seems like Australia is on a level of golf innovation the rest of us can only dream of.

[sqbr]

I am Australian and had never heard of either of these??? Now I feel extra unhappy with the golf course near me that's just regular water-hungry grass :/

[alexanderwales]

Son: Which is older, Die Hard or Among Us? Me: ... because of the vents? Son: Yeah. Me: God I'm old. Son: That's why I asked you, because you'd know.

[dykebeckett]

sometimes a video game with a bad story has a good secret story that you can unlock if you pretend the bad parts aren’t there and make up a bunch of stuff

[alexanderwales]

Note: the same is true with movies, television shows, short stories, novels, and songs. I have unlocked the secret good story to many pieces of media this way. It's one of the reasons my gamer score is so high.

[alexanderwales]

I was helping my son with his parts of speech homework, and the only things he got wrong were "this" and "that". Which meant that we got to do a great comedy bit:

Me: So I think this is the only thing that you didn't get right. Son: And that. Me: What? Son: No, just this and that. I was fine with what. Me: And you think if you had to do this over you'd get it? Son: And that.

[alexanderwales]

One of my favorite bits I ever did, when he was much younger, was when he didn't want to watch the Green Eggs & Ham show, which had just come out on Netflix:

Me: Do you want to watch Green Eggs & Ham with me? Son: No. It looks boring. Me: Well how do you know if you've never tried it? Son: It just doesn't look good. Me: You liked the book though. Son: I don't want to watch it. Me: Would you watch it on TV? Would you watch it next to me? Son: No, I just don't want to. Me: Would you watch it on the ground? Would you watch it without sound? Son: I don't EVER want to watch it. Me: Would you watch it on the couch, would you watch it while you slouch? Son: I'm not going to watch it! Me: Would you watch it on my phone? Would you watch it in our home? Son: I don't want to daddy. I want to watch something else.

Eventually I relented, and we never ended up watching it. Would have been a lot better for the bit if he'd tried it and loved it.

[isayoldbean]

YO HOLD UP THIS AQUARIUM THEY'RE HAVING A YURI DATE IN HAS GOT COELACANTHS?!?!

[isayoldbean]

GIRLS. GIRLS STOP MAKING OUT. YOU'RE MISSING OUT ON THE MAJESTY OF THE COELACANTH

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Went to the grocery store with my kindergartener. We weighed some bananas: 2 pounds even. We weighed a watermelon: 4 pounds even. We weighed some mangos: a little over 1 pound. We weighed the watermelon AND the bananas: 6 pounds even.

“That’s funny” said the child “because 2+4=6 and two pounds and four pounds is six pounds. It’s like the same as math!”

“What happens if you add 6+1?”

“SEVEN”

“What if we put one pound of mangos on the scale?” <mangos added>

“IT’S THE SAME!!”

“OK, what’s 7-4?”

“Three?”

“What if we take the four pound watermelon off the scale?” <watermelon removed>

“Mama! Are you telling me math works In Real Life? Think of all the things you could measure!!”

[not-so-impossible]

[alexanderrm]

@zamboni-whisperer

[nightpool]

Oh Chicago

The Chicago Maroon reports:

> At 1:30 p.m. on April 17, a group of undergraduate students identifying themselves as “UChicago For Our Future” gathered on the main quad, handing out onions to protest the 1958 Onion Futures Act.  > The 1958 law prohibits the trading of onion futures contracts, making the bulbs the only type of agricultural product banned from futures markets in the United States.  > To draw attention, the group brought approximately 100 raw onions to the quad in a large cart. They encouraged passersby to participate, saying that any student who ate an entire onion would be featured on their website. About 20 students attended the event, while others took onions as they passed through. The group also collected 131 signatures on a petition to repeal the law. 

I feel like you might see a protest like this at Oberlin as a joke, but at the University of Chicago market distortions are deadly serious and the protest was in earnest. Maybe:

> “It’s always filled me with fury that we accept such odd minuscule policies that really are just odd market distortions,” second-year Adam Ash, a member of the group, said. “Even if one specific issue seems minute or minuscule and trivial, what matters is a combination of all of these. It’s a death by a thousand cuts to our agricultural policy.” … > The group’s Instagram account was later banned, which Ash claimed was the doing of “the corn lobby.”  

Okay maybe a joke?

(via matt levine)

deep and abiding respect to the uchicago undergrads who decided 2026 was the year we stand up and protest the 1958 onions futures act

[feathershy]

there is nothing you can describe as "subhuman" without sounding sus, even if people that a dog's life is less important than a humans, dogs should have less legal rights than humans, and that dogs shouldn't vote, saying "dogs are subhuman" makes you sound bigoted even though it is unclear how that is different from what people already believe.

[josephbrassey]

“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.

[gudamor]

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day

[alexanderrm]

“Please save me! I’ll do anything for you!” “Then perish.” “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” “Will you fight? Or will you perish like a dog?” “…Then I shall face God, and walk backwards into hell.” “…I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.” 

-All of these are from shitposts, regrettably not from literary classics.

[angstriddentrashhuman]

Shakespeare’s ghost is simultaneously thrilled that these happened and irate that he didn’t create them

[i-cant-think-of-anything-to-say]

hunting down tumblr posts i see on pinterest part 411

[alexanderrm]

I regret to inform you I stole this from a KnowYourMeme comment but misunderstood it, the 2nd is from Shakespeare's Tempest and the 5th is from Moby Dick. Naturally it's gotten probably 100 times as many notes as every original post I've ever made combined and is still making the rounds 8 years later, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised it hasn't even stayed contained to Tumblr.

[tastefullyoffensive]

[official-mugi]

[kiruyos]

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Went to the grocery store with my kindergartener. We weighed some bananas: 2 pounds even. We weighed a watermelon: 4 pounds even. We weighed some mangos: a little over 1 pound. We weighed the watermelon AND the bananas: 6 pounds even.

“That’s funny” said the child “because 2+4=6 and two pounds and four pounds is six pounds. It’s like the same as math!”

“What happens if you add 6+1?”

“SEVEN”

“What if we put one pound of mangos on the scale?” <mangos added>

“IT’S THE SAME!!”

“OK, what’s 7-4?”

“Three?”

“What if we take the four pound watermelon off the scale?” <watermelon removed>

“Mama! Are you telling me math works In Real Life? Think of all the things you could measure!!”

[not-so-impossible]

[sepublic]

I do think it’s interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. It’s very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isn’t to say the stories of Olde didn’t have fun with loopholes either though).

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

So yeah. Dracula isn’t stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like… That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and aren’t even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century he’d probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldn’t help.

[downtroddendeity]

Dracula is full of details that put it in what was at the time an incredibly modern time frame, which only isn't obvious to readers now because it's been more than a hundred years. A few off the top of my head:

Jonathan brings photographs of the properties to show to Dracula that he took with a Kodak portable camera.

Seward keeps an audio journal via phonograph recording.

Seward being a psychiatrist- the idea that you could actually try to talk to and understand a "lunatic" in order to help them get better instead of just throwing away the key was a depressingly novel concept in medicine at the time. Freud's Studies on Hysteria only came out two years before Dracula, for instance.

Blood transfusions. It's easy to make jokes about how Dracula was written before people knew about blood types and that's why Lucy gets transfusions from so many people with no problem, but because blood types wouldn't be discovered until 3 years after it was published, blood transfusion was still an extremely experimental and risky treatment that many doctors would hesitate to even consider, because sometimes when it was performed the patient would instantly die and no one knew why.

Mina's joke about "the New Woman"- anxieties about gender and feminism in Dracula are the kind of thing whole theses have been written about, but there's an obvious irony to this comment because Mina kind of is the New Woman. In contrast to Lucy, Mina is a highly-educated woman with a real actual job, and she works to hone those practical job skills because she plans to be an active participant in Jonathan's work.

When Van Helsing decks Lucy's room out with garlic flowers, he telegrams to Holland for overnight shipping across the Channel from a friend who owns a greenhouse, because garlic flowers are a good 3 months or so out of season at the time the chapter is set.

Jonathan literally makes a comment in Chapter 3 about the surreal contrasting modernity of sitting at an antique desk in an ancient castle and frantically scribbling steganographic shorthand in his notebook.

[deepspacescully]

[youzicha]

I think it's a little misleading to compare a mall parking lot with a city block to show the impact of car-centrism. American malls are typically out in the middle of nowhere, where the land is cheap, so building a huge parking lot around them is basically free. The actual cost of the car centrism is on the other side, in the city center, when the people who live there need to store their cars somewhere.

But people in Tokyo do pay that cost! They have fewer cars, 0.3 per household, as compared to 1 per household in America and the rest of Japan, but they still have them. U.S. cities devote 22% of the area to car parking. If you cut the number of cars to a third and built housing on the freed space, that would raise the density by a factor of 1.17, which doesn't sound amazing. I think the bigger problem is that Americans just hate density in general, like if you look just next to the mall the buildings are like this:

The driveways for parking don't help, but they are hardly the biggest drag on density.

Conversely, I think a big reason Tokyo neighborhoods look so nice and walkable is that they don't provide street parking (forcing people to put their cars in garages instead), so the streets are really narrow and cozy. The U.S. could also do that! Or I guess we can't now, we're locked into our own insane system, but if we could go back in time that would have been a really good idea.

[serinemisc]

I think you're misinterpreting my point. I think a lot of Americans have grown up in America, and have heard some urbanist anti-car talking points, but have never really had a visceral sense of exactly what the alternative is, of exactly how walkable a walkable neighborhood is.

I chose a mall parking lot because it's a funny example of a distance drivers clearly consider walkable. I'm not anti-mall-parking-lot (not without caveats, at least).

When I wrote it, my friend in the room with me commented that it made her even more anti-car than she already was, because she didn't realize just how walkable Tokyo was. That was really what convinced me it was a useful post to make.

My original post is tagged "vagueblogging" because it's a response to a thread where many people seemed afraid that anti-car infrastructure would be too much walking, so I thought a worked example would help establish exactly how much walking it is.

[youzicha]

Oh I see! I didn't understand that's the point, but it makes sense now.

[serinemolecule]

When I was a kid I was a little grossed out by Pocari Sweat's name. Like, I knew it wasn't actually sweat, it was just Japanese Gatorade, but it looked like sweat and sounded just off-putting enough that I just avoided it.

Anyway I was looking it up on Wikipedia (slightly paraphrased) "Pocari Sweat sounds off-putting to English-speakers. But it's actually just called that because it contains the electrolytes your body loses when you sweat."

...and I was like, hey, that just means it contains the exact same things as sweat. You can even look it up. Sweat: Water, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium... Pocari Sweat: Water, sugar, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium...

So yeah. It's sweetened sweat. The English speakers weren't even wrong! Child me feels vindicated. Adult me is still gonna drink it because this sort of thing doesn't gross me out anymore.

[alexanderrm]

The important distinction is it hopefully contains 0 skin bacteria, especially 0 bacteria from other peoples' skin, which is the image "drinking sweat" conjures up to me.

[lizardsfromspace]

People still doing "do you think voting can fix this" memes when the answer to the question "when did voting last end an authoritarian regime" is "two days ago"