The Camera Pits

Random musings by a terribly lazy engineer and photographer. There are sometimes even DIY photography tips for the poor photographer. We all can't spend $1000's on camera gear, now can we?

[furryprovocateur]

this stupid fucking image sends me into hysterics every time

[bimmyjimmy]

he decided to interrupt my game time

[trashyeggroll]

tumblr is great and all but ya’ll are missing the woman in one of my cat fb groups that has birthed her own tier 1 meme

[bruzum]

[girlgrimer]

Americans invented tbe worlds burgled and burglars to apply to robberies because the concept of losing their burger is the scariest thing to them

[girlgrimer]

Follow me for more wikipedia ^

[luimnigh]

This is shockingly close to the truth.

Both come from the Latin "burgus", meaning castle or fortified town. A burglar being someone who bypassed the security of fortifications.

Meanwhile burger comes via Hamburg, the burg of Hamma.

So burgers are named after fortifications, and burglars are the ones who bypass them.

[bubba-san]

The Hamburglar is a reunion of terms

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[habbadax]

That’s the hyena river

[vintagewildlife]

"I can't believe humans would hunt the thylacine to extinction, humans are fundamentally evil" Hey, did you know that extinction was long thought to be impossible, and within 50 years of humans realizing that extinction via overhunting was a possibility it practically stopped happening? Did you know that humans are so desperate to prevent more losses that they're funneling millions of collective hours and billions of euros into helping other species? Hours and euros that could be spent on humans, and species on whom humanity's own survival does not depend? Did you know that due to an accidental introduction of rats, the Lord Howe Island stick insect population was brought down to 24 individuals and now there are tens of thousands of them?

This bug. This bug that, to most humans, is utterly useless, relatively gross, and completely foreign. Humans saved it because humans do not want to cause another extinction ever again if they can avoid it.

[psalidodont]

The Penumbral nightmare, or previously known as the Grinning spectre. A fierce beast that lurks amongst the darkness like a phantom and preys on those who fall for its striking, light blue and teal patterns. It hosts bioluminescent bacteria on special patches of its skin, teeth, and even bones. This monstrous creature can pop its jaw open for intimidation displays, and its lack of firepower is made up for the use of a very corrosive, foul smelling gel that is ejected from its throat. This dragon hunts small cetaceans, large fish and Hunterfolk. Smaller dragons too will succumb to its jaws.

[poppetsisters]

A crossover for the ages.

[poppetsisters]

Prequel

[poppetsisters]

The Climactic Battle

[importantcatpics]

[charl0ttan]

something i actually just realized on call w some friends recently is how crazey it is that your online friends are as many as thousands of feet above or below u right now. like if you teleported to their location without changing your height above sea level, well your fucked in some way basically

[charl0ttan]

How high above sea level are you right now?

0-250 feet

251-500 feet

501-750 feet

751-1000 feet

1001-2000 feet

2001-3000 feet

3001-4000 feet

4001-5000 feet

5001-6000 feet

6001-7000 feet

7001-8000 feet

8001+ feet

Voting ended onJul 19

[c-rowlesdraws]

a picture of Sweet Pea and Nettle on a too-hot August afternoon, finished over several real life too-hot August afternoons

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Bringing this back for...um...reasons.

Vincent Price and Gene Kelly -

The Three Musketeers (1948)

[brawltogethernow]

Look what my friend with no social media posted to the chat with the damning staggered timestamps of 1:11, 1:37, and 1:42 A.M.

[melibemusca]

this is EXACTLY how sea otters eat fat innkeeper worms

like. I'm not even kidding

[brawltogethernow]

Oh my god?

[druid-for-hire]

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

[ambrosial-sunshine]

For the painting especially there’s a beauty in depicting some of our most advanced technology as synonymous with the most ancient. Very few people throughout history have had the privilege of seeing the face of Jupiter but many would recognize the sling thrower immediately.

[beemovieerotica]

[d6b-onion]

this video has been going around for a while but the English subtitles didn't match the energy of the spoken French at all. i had to fix it.

reblog to spread this version