Small Pieces of Paper

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

This incredible image of the Earth rise was taken during lunar orbit by the Apollo 11 mission crew in July of 1969.

Credit: NASA 

[rhyslahey]

MOON DAY!

[argumate]

“my bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea,”

are we talking about the same body of water here, which is weird, or different bodies of water, which is even weirder

[theinflammablemammal]

this makes more sense if you assume both are the same body of water but the time between the statements is about 50 million years

[argumate]

you’re right, that’s significantly less weird

[argumate]

toasthaste said: maybe there’s more than one bonnie

blocked

[lalaithion]

A hypothesized geography.

[truth-shitposting]

i bless the bonnie over africa

[dark-magician-girl-meets-world]

The bonnie is in geosychronous orbit, thus over all the Earth’s bodies of water

[special-lucky-chosen-one]

the bonnie is merely moving very fast, perhaps at hypersonic velocity, relative to the singer

[special-lucky-chosen-one]

my bonnie lies over the ocean

my bonnie’s exceeding mach 3

[thememedaddy]

[wuggen]

Heard a car horn today that was tuned to a fifth. Fucked up, kinda delightful

[wuggen]

I want people to understand how jarring this was. Most car horns are either a single tone or two tones somewhere in the neighborhood of a minor third apart:

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Pretty normal rush hour sounds, yeah? But this thing sounded something like this:

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Fucked up! Didn't even realize it was a car horn at first, I didn't know what the fuck it was! It was weird as hell!

[fictionvssleep]

[myturtlespeedy]

I literally spit water all over my screen.

[thesevenumbrellas]

For context

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Is it lost? Is it trapped? Is it home? Is it innocent? Is it hunting you? Can you feel it watching you? Is it the house?

[debetesse]

TFW when you're hauling ass for 100 minutes with better than 90% success, but the "rock star" can't get his shit together to even take a single shot.

[queer-as-city-folk]

The worst part of anti industrial rhetoric is this assumption that everyone would be better off if all goods were made at home, sorry, I think women deserve to have a life outside of spinning

[queer-as-city-folk]

Because that is what would happen in the case of a total deindustrialization, more labor would be thrust upon women.

[queer-as-city-folk]

Someone has to spin the wool and wash the dishes and churn the butter and do all of the menial labor that makes human society survive, and historically, that labor has been done by women

[flameraven]

I need these folks to go watch really any episode of How it's Made and then try to explain how that common household object would be made at home. And then shut up.

[enki2]

[transcyberism]

ok but this unironically works. talk about how the working class is exploited and you can basically sell full-on marxism to your average republican if you do it right. all you have to do is avoid the words "Marx," "capitalism," "socialism," "communism," "means of production," etc - just use synonyms. say "big business" or "corporate shareholder interests" instead of "capitalists." say "a government that prioritizes the needs of the working people" instead of "socialism." it WORKS. I've DONE it. the hardest sell are usually things like social and racial equity, welfare, things like that, because people have been primed with the racist/classist idea that those things are somehow unfair - but you can get your foot in the door to getting them to buy into those too if you start with class issues. read up on your theory, make sure you REALLY understand your own ideology, because that will enable you to reword it and successfully sell it.

[a-ginger-in-black]

In my experience, you can often help sell 'welfare' stuff by appealing to self-interest with a touch of Aren't We Great.

Disability benefits: "I mean, sure, there are probably some sad sacks who are gaming the system, there always are, but hell, with the amount of taxes we pay, the government can afford a few freeloaders, right? I'd rather pay for a couple people who don't really need it than not have the system at all for if I need it, or my kids do, or whatever. I mean shit happens. What if some asshole drunk driver puts me in the hospital and it takes me a year to get back on my feet? Or Heaven forbid something permanent happens. I'll sure be glad that I can get disability then, won't I?"

UBI: "I dunno, the kind of guy who'll just sit on the couch playing Call of Duty all day if he doesn't have to work, I kinda don't want him on my job site anyway. That type is just taking up a place that you could fill with someone who'll actually get the job done, you know? You end up short-handed even though you technically have enough people because everyone else has to pick up his slack. And it'd mean that if your boss is a dick you can tell him to shove it and not worry your kids are gonna go hungry while you find a better place. We can sure as hell afford it."

Racial equity: "I've got a lot more in common with a Black guy who's just trying to get the job done than I do with some rich white asshole who thinks the sun shines out of his ass because of how much money mommy and daddy have."

[medusadyke]

academic dishonesty is not something you can spin as moral lol i do not want to share a career field let alone a social sphere with a bunch of chatgpt using ass bitches

[medusadyke]

"you're just scared your diploma is going to devalue" i'm afraid you dumb bitches are going to become my colleagues and drag social services to hell

[hylianengineer]

I'm afraid they'll become scientists and data that lives depend on will turn out to be wrong - and people will die.

I'm afraid they'll become engineers and sign off on bridge designs that collapse - and people will die.

I'm afraid they'll become medical professionals who don't know what they're doing - and people will die.

The assumption that academic dishonesty is okay is rooted in the idea that what you're learning to do doesn't matter.

[constance-mcentee-deactivated20]

"The assumption that academic dishonesty is okay is rooted in the idea that what you're learning to do doesn't matter."

[bluering8]

listen to me, this is so so important: you've gotta get used to really giving it your 60% as a default. like don't half-ass it necessarily but try not to go over 70% or so of an ass. you'll feel better and live a happier more fulfilled life, and on the rare occasions where you do need to lock the fuck in you'll be able to pull off bullshit that the sad miserable wretches giving it their 100% can never dream off, because they're busy draining themselves dry and you have energy reserves to spare.

[smokingchagga]

This is actually what I was adviced to do at the work rehabilitation program I went to. Hasn't left my mind since. 10/10 solid advice

[jungwildeandfree]

and while we’re at it, fuck this idea that ONE ACCOUNT has to belong uniquely to ONE PERSON. This is the same thing these silicon valley fucks want; their vision of the future where everyone has a unique biometric ID code implanted in their body is the ultimate extension of Netflix’s “no password sharing” policy. You want to use your friend’s car? Sorry, you can’t, you need to be an authorized user. Your mother wants to let you look something up on her OED account? Too bad! That’s only for her! The concept of perfect market efficiency gives them greedy little money bag eyes.

If I pay money to have a newspaper sent to my house, they don’t charge me extra when I show it to my dad. This password sharing thing isn’t just a Netflix problem; don’t be surprised if it shows up elsewhere in other forms. Stamp this idea out now or we’ll be stuck with it.

[jungwildeandfree]

This is by far the most popular post I have and I have to say: good, I’m right. Password sharing and ID verification are going to kill the internet. not oooh in 50 years. in like 5 more.

[hunter-rodrigez]

So I do 3D modeling and printing as a hobby, and a few weeks ago I designed wheel guards meant to prevent office chairs from running over cables and clothes... or your pet's tail.

I got the idea from cowcatchers old locomotives used to have.

Anyways, yesterday I uploaded the model to Thingiverse, and just hours after uploading it, the Community Relationship Manager of the whole website left a comment suggesting I enter the model into a competition that's currently being held on the site.

So I did... and now it's in third place not even a day later. First place is $500, but the competition still has a month to go.

Then the Community Manager contacted me again, telling me they want to feature my model in an upcoming design promotion.

Just, what is happening? I mostly made this thing for myself in, like, an hour, and now it's suddenly super popular? This is all a little bit overwhelming 😵‍💫

Other models I worked on for weeks didn't get nearly as popular. I swear, it's impossible to predict what people will like.

Anyways, if you want to print the wheel guards yourself, you can get the model here or here.

I also made a quiet version you can stick furniture felt pads on.

[these-violet-delights-fic]

People love simple, extremely practical things. I hope you win!

[guerrillatech]

[kieren-fucking-walker]

Do you consider yourself more a scurrier, a skitterer, or a scamperer?

Scurrier

Skitterer

Scamperer

Remaining time: 1 day 2 hours

Reblog for a larger sample size!

[encodedincommotion-deactivated2]

it's crazy how plausible all the shit the corporations do in the murderbot diaries is. that one scene when murderbot was talking to those humans who had signed a 20 year corporate work contract and it asked them if the contract specified 20 years by the standard local calendar or by a proprietary calendar created by the company was downright unsettling 😬 if the ceos of modern earth companies read these books they would probably start crying because the government won't let them do most of this in real life.

[radioorpheus]

hey fun fact this has absolutely happened before. part of the push to standardize time/timezones was because factory employers had clocks set to the pace of their machinery. meaning of the workers were not doing enough, time would run slower until they had reached their goal. there is historical precedent.

[duckbunny]

[flameraven]

Yup. All the shit modern Capitalism is pulling is mostly a rework of the shit Capitalism did in the 1800s. This is WHY people fought and died to unionize and pass labor laws. Now those labor laws have been weakened or companies found loopholes (ie, gig workers are contract workers and not protected by many labor laws) so they're pulling the same shit again. The Corporation Rim, of course, HAS no labor laws so the companies have been able to crank up their evil to 11 because nothing is stopping them. It is genuinely a really good bit of worldbuilding on Martha Well's part, she's done a great job projecting the tech bro bullshit of our times into the future that Musk, Zuckerberg etc would build if they could.

[theonion]

No longer able to put up even the weakest opposition to the strange charge, local man Dylan Barwell was reportedly too tired and defeated Tuesday to fight a new $14.99 fee on his phone bill. “Oh great, now I have to pay this?” said the utterly broken 33-year-old, ground down from years of customer service calls and failed refund attempts to the point that it scarcely crossed his mind to take action against the unexplained charge.

Full Story

[prokopetz]

You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.

[calloutnevvegas]

For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

Don’t fuck with flamingos

[revretch]

….. Didn’t know most of that

[iamthekaijuking]

Huh… so that’s why zoos don’t put them somewhere warm during winter.

[revretch]

Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.

American flamingos just drink that shit

[bogleech]

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

[assuming-dinosaur]

Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.

[is-the-post-reliable]

requested by anonymous:

RATING: RELIABLE

Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.

Source: ‘All flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planet’s most extreme wetlands, like caustic “soda lakes”, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.’

They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.

Source: ‘More than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).’

They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.

Source: ‘They can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.’

The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.

Source: ‘The birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.

“You’ll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,” Dr. Arengo said. “And as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.”’

The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.

It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.

Source: ‘The lake’s landscape is surreal and deadly—and made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s lesser flamingos are born.’

Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.

Source: ‘Flamingos have very specialised diets. And their food is responsible for their famous pink colouration. The two species in Planet Earth II eat a lot of floating microscopic algae, which contains carotenoid pigments, the same types of chemical that make carrots orange. These pigments turn their feathers pink, orange and red – without them, flamingos would be white.’

[adaginy]

… @todaysbird ??

[todaysbird]

yeah they’re just like that

[juney-blues]

information that is also important