@apricotgryphon - Tumblr Blog

Hello! This is Rai (Apricot's wife) on her phone.

She asked me to let folks know when I got the news that she was out of surgery. I just got the call from her surgeon, everything went well! She's not awake yet, but I'll be seeing her in a couple hours.

I'm sure she'll pop in herself later. Have a good one!

apricotgryphon

I lived, bitch

Hello! This is Rai (Apricot's wife) on her phone.

I'm sure she'll pop in herself later. Have a good one!

mamoru

no no no. those two boeing starliner astronauts are not stranded in space, that would be bad!

their ship just malfunctioned so badly they might have no way back to earth for over six months when their original plan was only to be up there for around a week.

see? completely different.

mamoru

Two American astronauts face the sudden prospect of spending Christmas and New Year in space.

everything is fine. last month they said they like being up there and do not mind being there "a couple extra weeks". disregard how boeing launched another vehicle with all the confidence of sending it to space and still fucked up and those "couple extra weeks" is turning out to be several extra months. this is fine

zemiotics-deactivated20260522

Will they be okay because they're in the space station? IDK how many resources are already in the station.

Honestly seems concerning their return flight is in SpaceX's hands.

mamoru

I mean, okay as in alive? yeah probably. they have food and water and are being told to do work as part of the crew while up there. much easier to shoot more supplies up to space than it is to get humans back down to earth. they just got a new shipment of clothes.

were they medically prepared for a 6+ month trip to space? no, probably not. being in space for that long can fuck with the body pretty bad.

ralfmaximus

^^This. Long duration spaceflight is something an astronaut agrees to do, not something that's sprung on them as a surprise. Having said that, space is still an incredibly dangerous place and they knew the risks.

But I doubt anyone sat them down and said, "heyyy what would happen if (say) y'all were stuck in orbit for a month? six months? your pet sitter gonna be okay with that? hope you didn't park you car at the airport ha ha...!"

My question is: since it costs a minimum of $90,000 per human per day to feed/equip an ISS astronaut, who is paying that bill? Is Boeing gonna reimburse NASA/ESA for housing their trapped pilots for a few months?

apricotgryphon

the best/worst part is that it's not like that's how much time they need to wait for contingencies. They have contingencies. You simply cannot not have contingencies when sending people to space, and you're not going to not have those just ready to go at a moment's notice. No the reason it might take them that long is that boeing don't want to use someone else's contingency; that makes them look even worse! So instead they are making them stay up there while they try and get shit going and then hopefully not kill them on the way home. Because wrt what was commented above, while certain aspects of spacex might have been utterly fucked up by the muskrat, they do actually have talented engineers and they have been transporting astronauts safely between earth and the iss for a while now

sirfrogsworth

How do you take a photo of time?

I've been watching the track events at the Olympics since I was a wee lad. It was a tradition in our family. We'd gather around our ancient low-definition 19 inch CRT television and watch tiny blobs compete against other tiny blobs and root for our country.

It was a bit like watching YouTube on your phone in 144p.

Several heroes emerged.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was amazing.

You can't forget about Flo-Jo.

And then the Olympics decided NBA players were allowed in the competition.

Which formed... The Dream Team.

Was this fair?

Well... they won each game by an average of 44 points.

So... no. It was not fair.

Though it became more fair as time went on.

But, umm... yeah. The other teams looked like the Washington Generals and the US looked like the Harlem Globetrotters if they stopped screwing around half of the game.

But my absolute favorite Olympian was a runner named Michael Johnson.

He was cool as heck.

For one thing... gold shoes.

But he also had this crazy, upright, Tom Cruise-ish sprinting style that just made him look like a running robot on the track.

And in the 1996 Atlanta games he just trounced EVERYONE. I mean, it wasn't even close.

Yikes. Those losing blobs are probably really embarrassed.

Last night I decided to invigorate my nostalgia and watch the track events again. And I got to see one of the wildest races in history.

It didn't even last 10 seconds but it was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever witnessed. Almost every runner won the race.

After I saw that initially, I was like... who the heck won???

Even in slow motion I wasn't sure.

This was one of the closest finishes in history. There has never been a race where all 8 runners were within this margin.

The arena was silent as the winner was being confirmed. The runners just kind of paced around waiting for official word. My best guess was the Jamaican runner, Kishane Thompson. But then the loudspeaker announced Noah Lyles.

The last tiny morsel of American pride burst out of me with a big "Wooooo!"

I forgot what it was like to be proud of my country. I wish it happened more often. But this young man, despite being last place in the first 3rd of the race, turned on the afterburners and won in a photo finish.

And that's when my inner nerd took over.

Because when they showed the photo finish image, it looked super weird.

Why is the track white?

Why do all of the runners look all warpy like that QWOP game?

So I went down a research rabbit hole to figure this out.

Photo finishes are actually fascinating. The first photo finish captured the end of a horse race in 1890. But that was mostly luck and timing. The actual photo finish mechanisms weren't used until 1937.

Originally they would film the finish line through a physical slit.

And the first horsie head that appeared in that slit would be the winner. This technology ended a huge aspect of corruption in horse race fixing almost overnight.

But we have come a long way since then. And I'd like to introduce you to the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate.

This slow motion camera sits fixed on the finish line of every race. The concept of the photo finish has remained remarkably similar to the 1930s approach. The camera sensor is specially designed to only record a vertical slit.

Only the finish line itself is actually captured.

And because it limits what it records to only that slit, it can capture 20,000 frames per second to get amazing temporal resolution.

So why don't the photo finishes just look like, well... this?

That is because the camera takes a picture of time more-so than dimensional space. I guess it would be more accurate to say it *assembles* a picture of time.

As the runners cross the finish line, the camera combines all of the little strips of pictures into a single image.

It's almost like if you tried to reassemble a piece of paper after it had been shredded.

Imagine each strip of paper is a picture of ONLY the finish line, just at a slightly different point in time.

What if someone stopped on the finish line and didn't move... what would that look like?

Once they got there, the same part of their body would just be repeated.

So the right side of the photo finish picture represents earlier in time and it just assembles the image strip by strip as time passes and you literally get a picture of time itself.

NEAT!

Okay, but how do they determine the winner from the photo finish?

I mean, that shoe looks like it is ahead of Noah Lyles!

Clavicles!

The IAFF rules state the foremost part of the torso must cross the finish line first. And the endpoint of the torso is the outer end of the clavicle.

So if you get this bone across the finish line first, you win the race.

Two more fun facts!

The start of the race is actually just as carefully timed as the end of the race. There are sensors in the starting blocks of each runner.

The starting gun also has an electronic sensor.

They have determined the fastest a human can react to the sound of a gun is roughly 100 milliseconds. So if you start running before 100 milliseconds they know you didn't actually hear the gun, you just got antsy and started running too early.

And the final fun fact...

Did you notice the Omega logo at the top of the photo finish?

That isn't superimposed or added after the fact. That is captured by the camera.

But if this image is composed only of tiny little slivers, how did they get the Omega logo to show up?

That is a little display. And it is synchronized with the Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate to show a little sliver of the Omega logo for each frame captured.

So when the final image is stitched together, it looks like a cohesive logo at the top of the photo.

Pretty clever, Omega!

wonderwomemes

Op can i buy you an icecream or something? This is amazing!

meowsfeed

Source: lilochipie

remcycle

I don't usually like animal videos with captions, but I'll make an exception for this one because the voice-over is actually good.

spaceshipsandpurpledrank

He did bro so bad homie made another video just to apologize.

early next year I will be going in for surgery and i am experiencing every emotion about it i think

lakevida

HOT TIP: if you need enrichment to stave off diseases of the mind but don't have any puzzles you can just eat a bunch of pistachios and then sort thru the shell pile to find matching halves and superglue them back together

lakevida

this is awful. try it

wizardonline

hey man quick question. you okay?

lakevida

that's none of my business

chongoblog

An Increasingly Frustrated Pokemon Trainer who wants a Sylveon but he isn’t emotionally equipped enough to understand the nuanced difference between friendship and affection so he just has like 13 Espeons and Umbreons

atreefullofstars

He ties ribbons around their necks and clips them on their ears, and never thinks they’re good enough. He ignores them when they rub against him for pets, focusing on his newest Eevee, so tiny and soft and full of potential. He keeps trying, and trying, and every time he sees black instead of pink and his face falls. Or he perks up at a glimpse of a paler color--but no, that’s the wrong shade, and there’s the forked tail, and he is even more crestfallen.

Until one day he gives up on a Sylveon. It’s never going to happen for him. He slams the door, and cries with his head in his hands, and can’t stand to look at the warm, soft bodies pressing against his back, rubbing against his knees.

He can’t stand to look at the ribbons and bows. He avoids the Pokemon for two days and then, in one explosive burst of frustration, he takes all the bows, stuffs them into the trash--only just managing to keep his trembling hands gentle on soft necks and ears. It’s not their fault. He knows it’s not. It’s his. He rubs a black ear, worried that it might be sore. It’s his fault.

He pets them more. It’s not their fault they’re not what he wanted. He feeds them, and restarts the training sessions that had ended when each one evolved. He doesn’t know their movesets; he starts reading. He learns what he can ask from them, and then learns from them too: which one would rather Quick Attack than use Confusion, which has a Mean Look that freezes even him in place. It’s fun. It’s more fun than it ever used to be, when he followed all the best training manuals so anxiously. They respond, growing and learning and butting into them for pets that he sheepishly gives them.

It’s inevitable, with thirteen of them in the same place, that eventually two would breed. He holds the tiny Eevee in his cupped palms. So soft. So warm. He knows which Espeon gave her those extra-long ears and which Umbreon is responsible for her round little nose. He is fascinated.

He pets her. He holds her. He watches her try to mimic the others and he smiles when they high-step over her or when they lift her by the scruff. She joins in on training sessions and for a moment there’s the thought--but she’s having fun copying one of her aunties and he’s not going to change that. She learns what she likes because she likes it. She’s the happiest Eevee he’s ever trained, and he doesn’t need her to be anything else.

But she changes, of course. Children grow up and Pokemon evolve. Espeon, he thinks when she changes in daylight, when he sees a pale coat--but no, that’s the wrong shade--

He is dumbfounded. The rest of them are not. They crowd around, pushing him and Sylveon together, pressing against both of them until everyone is one pile of fur and waving tails. He laughs and hugs her first--and then the nearest Umbreon, and the next.

He is happy, of course. But not because of what she is. He's glad that it means she’s happy. And she is happy. He gets the sense, watching her examine her own ribbons, that she became exactly what she wanted.

Maybe he should start keeping some stones in the house. It’s inevitable, with fourteen Eeveelutions around, that they’re going to keep breeding, and the next Eevee might want something different.

pokemonheritageposts

Pokemon Heritage Post

prokopetz

I think "they don't even have X" is one of those memes that's actually funnier in its original context than in anything that's been done with it subsequently. Like, in its original context, this is a joke about a man who has lived his entire adult life alone in a swamp cold-reading the atmosphere of a corporate workplace and deciding that appealing to the receptionist's sense of working-class solidarity is going to get him in the door, and it fucking works.

lowpolyanimals

Kiwi from Mabinogi

failcringegf

picture this, i give you a glass bottle and tell you to open it, but bottle openers are forbidden, how do you do it?

failcringegf

im talking about this bitch btw

#sabre

mollyjames

Girls Kissing (Weekly Sketch Poll Winner)

Support my work at patreon.com/mollyjames

mucking-faori

This stupid bitch is going to court over a 90 minute course

Also the course is specifically on maori world views in regards to land and working with iwi and maori clients, so it's not even like she's being taught about maori "religious" beliefs that could conflict with her own.

mucking-faori

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