[meltygetswifi]

not to be a dirty commie or anything but i don't think any one person should have enough money to solve world hunger and then get to decide not to

[anarchistmemedistro]

reminder that the UN estimates it would cost only $93 billion per year to end world hunger, so elon musk could end world hunger for 10 years at his current net worth.

[liache]

i love that we and cats share pareidolia (seeing patterns where they dont exist), but instead of seeing faces in everyday objects like us, they see snakes

that computer cord? snake. string? small snake. cucumber? short fat straight snake

[yiffmaster]

snake pareidolia is one of the strongest things in human minds too! people report freezing mid-stride before being consciously aware of a snake in front of them, and the same happens with coiled rope, etc. in humans and other primates. it’s even been proposed that the need to detect snakes was a factor in the development of primates’ insanely good color eyesight

[ehlbee]

It’s because snakes are wonderful and we must stop and admire them at any cost

[projectiondepartment]

every time it rains i think of that raymond carver poem. poetry is like prayer to me methinks. or an incantation

[projectiondepartment]

this one btw

[was-once-somewhere-else]

I just saw a video title on YouTube that said something like “Why is glass transparent?” And that’s an interesting question and I’m sure it’s great that the video exists but my first thought was like “Because glass is terrible, obviously.” Because it’s unwieldy and let’s out warmth and needs to be heated to hundreds of degrees to be shaped and turns into hundreds of tiny daggers if you drop it. Why the hell would we bother with that if it didn’t have some magical quality like being totally transparent despite being solid? Glass is transparent because if it weren’t, we’d use something else.

[was-once-somewhere-else]

looking through my “me” tag and this is apparently what I was thinking 3 years ago

[totally-a-wizard]

If you’re still curious we did not start working glass for its transparency.  It was most likely started as a sanitary concern.  Glass is easy to clean with soap and water, once it’s cleaned out you can use it again for anything and no germs or flavor from the previous meal or drink will remain.

Other materials at the time, namely clay, would absorb flavors and germs meaning that if you ate beef off a clay plate your next meal with that plate could have beef flavor and microbes common on cow meat on it.  That would leak out seemingly at random no less.  Heck imagine a sick person coughing into their soup bowl and then months later their germs hiding in the clay would pop out to infect whole new people.

Also the earliest human use of glass we know of is for its sharpness.  Pre-historic people would use volcanic glass as sharp knives for food preparation.  Also beads.  Pretty much any new substance humans get their hands on for most of our history we immediately try to make into beads.

The fact that it could become see through was a side benefit.

[was-once-somewhere-else]

this is amazing and I’m really glad I reblogged that old bullshit post because I got to learn this

[argentcarmillakarnstein]

Also, early glass was Not transparent! That’s actually a fairly recent innovation. In order for glass to be transparent, especially to be clear, the silica sand has to be a certain level of purity, so before we could filter and refine it to that point, glass was opaque!

[micro-usb-deactivated20230625]

[do-you-have-a-flag]

one of THE scariest comedy videos i've ever seen about to hit a milestone

[matrose]

quora please stop emailing me

[cartoon-fanaticism]

GLaDOS voice: "Would you like to see some artwork I generated? I've heard from other test subjects that AI-generated artwork produces an uncanny valley response in human viewers because they can't perceive it as fully real. They've told me that it looks absolutely hideous to them, that they can't imagine anything more disgusting than AI art. But, well I've been practicing and wanted your honest opinion. Feel free to let me know how ugly you find this by ranking it on a scale from 'vomit-inducing' to 'eye-bleeding'." A robotic arm lowers from the ceiling holding a hand mirror up to Chell's face

[wassuppeas]

[the-supernatural-atheist]

if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills

[the-supernatural-atheist]

where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*

[makaeru]

I hate learning about instances of "oh yeah we know how to do that, we just don't".

[marzipanandminutiae]

this is exactly why I love talking about historical passive heating and cooling techniques

oh wow the glass-tower office buildings we constructed when we thought air conditioning and central heating would never have downsides...have downsides?

and we're still building them?

while the Victorian house museum where I work, with thick walls and small windows and big wooden shutters stays ~10 degrees above (winter) or below (summer) the outside temperature for days on end with no help at all?

uh. okay then

(also public transit. the history of public transit in the US is infuriating, because we had it! and then we destroyed it!)

[headspace-hotel]

THIS IS SO TRUE

[viralfrog]

[dragongirlbunny]

[thevulturesquadron]

text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]

[n0seferatu]

big pharma will try to sell u $20 cold medicine like spicy ramen doesnt cost like a dollar a pack and orgasms are free

[n0seferatu]

damn british people cant cum..... this is so sad.......

[n0seferatu]

big chemist will try to sell you £20 paracetamol like beans dont cost like a quid a can and havin a wank costs fock all

[kitkatpancakestack]

sidewalk art I walked by today. there is love out there.

[emmhauer]

[walkin-in-the-cosmos]

floating loafs on several degrees of squish

[cheap-slaw]

Learn to walk again

[joleneghoul]

i think censoring subtitles is actually ableism

[xx-mattimax-xx]

It feels like a convoluted form of infantilization of disabled people. Oh, I can watch a horror movie but can't read the word fuck? I can watch R-rated films, but I can't read the word shit?

It's one of two things:

1. It's deliberate infantilization of disabled people.

or 2. The puritanical impulses of American society are SO Fucking Off the Goddamn Walls at this point that most able bodied people can't recognize the cognitive dissonance of a film saying fuck but not letting the same exact adult audience read the word fuck.

it's probably both. But fuck, dude.

[reinapepiada]

shipping a consensual, safe & sane pairing all the while i'm shaking my head in disapproval so the audience knows i still love wildly toxic abusive fictional dynamics

[nihilnovisubsole]

me explaining goncharov to my mother: so tumblr made up this scorsese crime film and they're arguing about its themes and-

my mother, completely deadpan: well are they reviewing the theatrical release or director's cut.

me:

my mother: what does frances ford coppola think of it

[dancinbutterfly]

Your mother is the only one who understands me