Somehow Reopen For Business

[lutzlig]

[blogontheweb]

When i was like 13 was allowed to use the internet unrestricted for the first time and i spent a lot of time on Runescape. One of the people i talked to on there was this person who had much higher levels than me in every skill and had, to my perception, a seemingly overflowing amount of game resources. One day i was taking about wishing i could get gold ore to level my smithing and not having access to any and they like “here, you can have this gold that i have” and just gave me this big stack and i was like “i don’t even have anything to offer back”. They told me they didn’t need anything and just wanted to be nice. I said that they didn’t have to and what they told me honestly has stuck with me since, they said “life’s too short to spend it being mean to people” and like it’s such a simple thing to say but combined with their actions and the weight they bore to me at the time was hugely influential on my outlook on life and the way i treat others. I don’t know who that person is but they changed my life that day and I’m so thankful to them.

[captainlordauditor]

high level MMO-ers are either the nicest people on earth or the spawn of Satan there is no in between

[goblintinkering-blog]

Runescape was a big part of my formative years for better or worse. Age twelve left me impressionable at best and the free lobster this guy gave me one day just stuck with me. We fished together for days on end and we talked about our parents and stuff. If you’re out there NinjaKirby69 I miss you buddy.

[maris-solstice]

I forgot to type it up yesterday but one of my best experiences didn’t even involve me. It was when my younger sister, Runescape user cooldudetha, crashed the steel market single-handedly out of sheer boredom.

[obi-one-drop]

I need to know this story

[maris-solstice]

So if you’re not aware, Runescape has the Grand Exchange, which is basically a global trade market controlled by supply and demand. It’s an incredible system, and deserves a lot of commendation. 

Well one day back in…I think Summer between 2010-2012? my younger sister and I had nothing to do but play Runescape in our free time. I did what all aspiring heroes do, I was happy to go out and commit mass goblin murder. My sister was more creative. At first she went to train Smithing in Al Kharid, which is this desert area with easy access to iron, coal, a player bank, and a smelter. So basically she made craploads of steel for hours on end for like a week. But then she realized she had nothing to do with the steel. She could go find a smith with an anvil and train Smithing further, but that was boring since she’d already been grinding forever. So she went to the Grand Exchange and sold it all. 

Thousands of units of steel ingots. 

And it sold like immediately, since there was always a large amount of people training Smithing at the level they could use steel.

Obviously she became fabulously wealthy and didn’t know what to do with her newfound wealth. But since she spent a lot of time at the Exchange, she knew basically how the market worked. I’m not 100% sure on what the thought process was for her, but she essentially realized a basic economic principle: If she could control the supply and demand for steel she could accelerate her profit margins. 

So like any reasonable 12-14 year old, she bought out about twice as much steel as she sold. Flooding the market had almost halved the price, and she now was both the supply and demand. Of course, as a result of some mystery person buying tons of steel, the price went up again. So she went and sold it at the higher price. She spent about another week or two playing Carnegie before it got old and she retired to Lumbridge with fat stacks of gold and the finest armor money could buy (but she couldn’t wear due to low Defense level). 

I found out from a friend later who was part of one of the big trade guilds that the big market guilds were all pissed that somehow the steel market had crashed, skyrocketed, then crashed in quick succession for no goddamn reason and all of them had lost thousands of coins in the process.

[jirvaerka]

My favorite thing about this is that it validates my entire Master’s Degree. This. This is how games can develop incidental learning and teach kids valuable lessons. This 12 year girl figured out, and manipulated, a free market economy because she was bored. She was able to recognize, understand and utilize a fundamental principal of economics to entertain herself.

[expositionfairy]

Morning on Mars

6 Martian sunrises, as seen by the HiRISE orbiter.  Once again, not artist’s renditions.

[gregmelander]

NOT ARTIST’S RENDITIONS

[dailyrowlet]

You can draw a Rowlet trapoed in a sand bucket?

[kumarajeet21]

What happened in 4 hours is sped to 1 minute. #SuperBlueBloodMoon

[yourplayersaidwhat]

Never Challenge a Physics Major

Context: So my group usually plays D&D 3.5, but we decided to give Pathfinder a try. Because we play on campus we take a 2 hour break in the middle of sessions because everyone but the GM and myself has class at that time.

Setting in the Campaign as everyone left for class: We had just fought 100 bandits to reclaim a castle, and we see 900 more on the horizon coming as reinforcements.

Both me and the GM chat casually for the next 15 minutes, as I’m looking through everyone’s spell lists and coming up with a plan for us, then I come across a level 1 3pp spell that enlarges weapons by 1 size category.

Me as a light-bulb goes off: Oooo! Hey GM how would this spell work in terms of the weapon’s mass?

GM: I’m going to say that once you let go of the weapon, it becomes as heavy as it should be at that size.

Me with a huge grin: Hey could I increase this medium steel spear into a ginormous one and drop it from super high up, effectively hitting the army with a kinetic missile?

GM: Hmm… Ok since you have a +5 Intellegence score I’ll let you do this, but only on one condition; you must do all the calculations yourself, and before everyone gets back.

Me: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

Que a hour an a half of calculations for everything (impact velocity, how high up could my character get in 30 minutes, aim, etc)

Me giddy af: DONE!

GM: Ok, roll aim.

Me: rolls a 20

GM mumbling with face in hands: What have I done…. Ok doc, give me the diagnosis….

Me: Proceeds to explain all the science

GM who’s just done with me atm: The short version please.

Me: Long story short, I dropped a 2 ton bomb off in the middle of their ranks, and everyone died do to the high amount of psi. (100 psi minimum)

GM after a long sigh: Roll to fucking loot…..

It was at this point everyone got back to find me laughing maniacally as I roll to loot the, now dead, army, and the GM, with his face in his hands, mumbling "why did I agree to this?“

[fredaugis]

[clio-muse-of-history]

September 15

This one is technically not yet history, because at the time of posting, the little craft has about half an hour left to go.  That said, let’s proceed.

In 2017, NASA’s Cassini space probe ended its twenty-year mission at Saturn.  After a nearly-seven-year-long journey there, it orbited the ringed planet for 13 years and just over two months, gathering copious amounts of information about the planet, said rings, and many of its moons.  It landed an ESA probe called Huygens on Titan, the first-ever soft landing in the outer Solar System.  It discovered lakes, seas, and rivers of methane on Titan, geysers of water erupting from Enceladus (and passed within 50 miles of that moon’s surface), and found gigantic, raging hurricanes at both of Saturn’s poles.  

And the images it returned are beautiful enough to make you weep.

On this day in 2017, with the fuel for Cassini’s directional thrusters running low, the probe was de-orbited into the Saturnian atmosphere to prevent any possibility of any contamination of possible biotic environments on Titan or Enceladus.  The remaining thruster fuel was used to keep the radio dish pointed towards Earth so the probe could transmit information about the upper atmosphere of Saturn while it was burning up due to atmospheric friction.

This is us at our best.  We spent no small amount of money on a nuclear-powered robot, launched it into space, sent it a billion miles away, and worked with it for two decades just to learn about another planet.  And when the repeatedly-extended missions were through, we made the little craft sacrifice itself like a samurai, performing its duty as long as it could while it became a shooting star in the Saturnian sky.

Rhea occulting Saturn

Water geysers on Enceladus

Strange Iapetus

Look at this gorgeousness

A gigantic motherfucking storm in Saturn’s northern hemisphere

Tethys

This image is from the surface of a moon of a planet at least 746 million miles away.  Sweet lord

Mimas

Vertical structures in the rings.  Holy shit

Titan and Dione occulting Saturn, rings visible

Little Daphnis making gravitational ripples in the rings

That’s here.  That’s home.  That’s all of us that ever lived.

Saturn, backlit

A polar vortex on the gas giant

Icy Enceladus

(All images from NASA/JPL)

[cosmos-kitty]

A drawing to say goodbye to the Cassini spacecraft after completing its mission and burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere today ✧  

[theoreocat]

[goddess-scarlette]

i needed the full songs worth of this not 15 seconds

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Have an unproblematic cute. Definitely turn the song on.

[polyamorous-tangles]

Because everyday needs to begin with a smile

[theoreocat]

And again this shows up at the top of my activity feed 🔥

[monfevre-deactivated20180114]

the thrashy thrashy by the fridge gets cuter each time

[zoomine]

[myonlyphenomenon]

I’ve been staring at this for 5 minutes

[dont-kill-the-kennedys]

That’s what it looks like. That’s really what it looks like

[avesatanaa]

Being out in the ocean is actually so scary because when you look really far out you can kind of see how the Earth is rounded out. It looks like a few miles ahead you’re just gonna fall off or something. Also fun trick: if ur on mobile, double tap zoom in and slide the picture side to side. It looks like you’re actually there looking left to right

[norulesnobras]

DO THAT DO IT RIGHT NOW

[just-shower-thoughts]

Ever since Pluto was declared that it was not a planet, everything started to go downhill.

[ultrafacts]

Source [x]

Click HERE for more facts

[as-warm-as-choco]

[scribghetti-junction]

Magikarp’s hidden talent.

[ale-halexxx-deactivated20161220]

fanart sketch, pyrrha nikos from rwby

[just-shower-thoughts]

Your shadow is a confirmation that light has traveled nearly 93 million miles unobstructed, only to be deprived of reaching the ground in the final few feet thanks to you