I need to stop procrastinating

[normal-horoscopes]

Everyone shut up and look at this carving of a whale from the 1200-600 CE Chumash culture

[theslowesthnery]

ohhhhhh my godddddd

[calware]

i really love this genre of image

[lunarthesugarglider]

[villaqueen]

The best part of that video is that the owner found the ORIGINAL plush later on the beach and took another video with it after their grandmother stitched it back up

[i-am-a-lonely-nerd]

I love the death grip after the toy was fixed up. Lessons were learned. Try to steal it this time you fucking bird. I dare you.

[lectern-fullcauldron]

Joe Hills stuff that I tend to assume people know (like in the academics overestimate comic):

Joe is one of two people who have been wholly in charge of hermitcraft (Joe's reign as dictator lasted for the duration of time it took to confirm all the decisions for the start of season two, after which he stepped down)

Joe wrote hermitcraft fanfic (as part of a video) long before many hermitcraft fanfic writers got started

Joe led a one man, multiple day protest outside record label Warner Chappell for ruthlessly copyright striking Mumbo and putting his channel in real danger

Joe's channel music is a mix of original songs and parodies created in collaboration with his cool as hell sister Quinn Hills (hi Quinn if you're seeing this). She has a cat called Blair Witch, writes fantastic music, and is a vocally trans artist

Joe has consistently featured guest speakers in his streams or videos over the years, whether that be pathfinder writers, activists, or community members coming in to help offer viewpoints on his builds

Joe has admin permissions on hermitcraft (usually to his own detriment in accidentally clearing his inventory) and is a member of the hermitcraft "secret council" (as Cleo put it), who are the people who regularly turn up to meetings and do some actual admin and decision making

Joe and Cleo first met when they were challenged to fight to death by Vechs. Joe won the fight and then Cleo stabbed him in the back for vengeance. They both made overdramatic videos to prepare for this

Joe thought hermitcraft was a scam when he was invited a few weeks into season one (as a wildcard member)

Joe used to be part of the team who made the webcomic Jaque of All Blades and got his streaming start doing art streams.

Joe is also one of the authors of the Penguins and Pitfalls TTRPG, which he developed as part of Team Snow Day (TSD)

Joe pays all of his staff fairly for their time and classes blazing posts on Tumblr (especially for the mcyt sexyman competition) as marketing so that the IRS can see he's running a real business, not a fraud scheme

Joe's webcam expands on stream in response to tips. It moves from the hot bar into the Jhost (with the mandatory Jacob Marley chains bit) before growing larger and more transparent until he is gone. Once the Jhost is fully expanded, the beetlejhost comes out (with the suit and the webcam expander song). Once we max out beetlejhost, we get Joemez Addams (who wears a different suit)

Joe is one of only two hermits to have played every hermitcraft season (although he missed a lot of season 3 with a newborn baby to look after)

Joe's coup was responsible for getting mumbo added to the server. Shortly after, he suggested in a meeting that no members under the age of 18 should be admitted. Mumbo, 17, kept very quiet

Joe and Cleo did a Minecraft Christmas album years ago. It's bad. I love it

[fucktheflagandfuckyou]

its been 6 months and im still not over this. easily best and most hilarious play in baseball history

[fucktheflagandfuckyou]

for those who dont really understand:

-the first baseman had no reason to chase Baéz, if he just stepped on the bag he was automatically out

-theres two outs, so if hes out, the inning is over. even if the runner on second base gets home, the run doesnt count. its not until hes safe at first that the run scores

-theres no specific rule in baseball about running backwards from first, just that you “cannot retreat to home base” meaning so long as if you dont touch the plate, its fine

-Baéz ran backwards to kill enough to get the run to score, and then stole and extra base on the base on the bad throw

-HE TOOK THE TIME TO UMPIRE HIS OWN PLAY AND CALL SAFE

what a fucking sport yall

[bisexuel]

@fractaldunes

[altospaceangel]

Javier Baéz’s nickname according to those announcers is El Mago which is spanish for The Wizard

Well earned

[philippelebonducdebourgogne]

love how the explanations do not help at all

[officiallordvetinari]

Let me see if I can break this down a little more.

Javier Báez (the batter, a Chicago Cub, wearing blue) has just hit the ball. His job is now to run around the bases - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, back to where he started (“home”), at which point he will have scored a point. In practice, he will probably stop partway, wait for the next batter to get a hit, and try to make it home from there.

The Pittsburgh Pirates (in white) are fielding. Their job is to stop the Cubs from scoring by getting them out, by various combinations of catching the ball and tagging people or bases with it.

The scoreboard (top left) shows that one Cub has already made it to second base, so he will resume running now that Javy has a hit. It also shows that two Cubs are out. If a third Cub gets out, their turn to bat will be over, it will be the Pirates’ turn to bat, and the Cubs can’t score anymore (for now, but that’s not relevant).

The Pirate at first base (the first baseman) has the ball. All he needs to do is step on first base while holding it before Javy gets there, and Javy is out. This is probably the number one most common thing a first baseman has to do.

He does not do it.

For some reason he starts chasing Javy, presumably trying to tag him with the ball directly. This is a perfectly legitimate way of getting him out, but also completely unnecessary.

This has never happened to Javy before. Unsure what else to do, he just kind of… jogs backwards away from him.

Meanwhile, the Cub who was at second base (Contreras) has made it all the way back to home. Because the Pirates’ first baseman has helpfully walked the ball back home, he can easily toss it to the Pirate at home (the catcher) who will tag Contreras out.

The catcher doesn’t tag him in time.

The umpire signals that Contreras is safe (not out).

Javy also signals that Contreras is safe, just for fun. He’s never been nearby when a teammate makes it home before, and he’s enjoying himself.

Notice that the score has not changed, even though Contreras made it home. That’s because Javy is still technically running to first base. If he gets out before he reaches it, the Cubs’ turn to bat is over, and nothing else that’s happened since he hit the ball matters.

Javy remembers this, and heads back to first base. The catcher throws the ball to another Pirates fielder, who is frantically running to do the first baseman’s job.

He doesn’t catch it.

Javy is safe at first. Contreras scores (although the scoreboard won’t change for a second).

Javy notices how far away that ball landed, and decides he can make it to second base before anyone picks it up and tags him out.

An offscreen Pirate throws the ball to second base, where another Pirate is ready and waiting to catch it, tag Javy out, and end the Cubs’ turn to bat.

He doesn’t catch it.

Javy is safe at second. The video doesn’t show it, but he will go on to score as well.

This should have been a very easy out for the Pirates, but through two dropped catches and one truly bizarre decision from the first baseman, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and turned it into two points for the Cubs.

The Cubs won this game by two points.

[fucktheflagandfuckyou]

HAPPY OPENING DAY OF BASEBALL 2022 YALL. LETS PRAY FOR MORE OF THIS BULLSHIT

[uncahier]

I know I’ve reblogged this before, but here’s a version with an explanation for folks unfamiliar with the game* and this amazing comment:

Never change, Pittsburgh

[cluelessrebel1988]

Reblogging with the breakdown of what happened for anyone who isn’t familiar with the rules of baseball and wants to understand why we can’t stop talking about this play.

[viewtiful-kim-deactivated202105]

Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet is a vlogger and all his soliloquies are breakdowns he uploads to YouTube

[animatedamerican]

… I am unironically here for this

[oldfilmsflicker]

this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life

[kabesattic]

This is - legitimately - my favourite delivery of Shakespeare I have EVER seen (and I have seen some good-ass productions yo, in the Globe Theatre itself even). Like seriously, even though the words are unchanged, he’s stripped away ALL of the archaic pretense and assumed grandeur of ~presenting the bard~ that makes even the most wildly talented of actors and innovative of productions inherently inaccessible to a modern audience. Like, they’re still great, they can still communicate the message and (some) of the nuance, but they’re still always a step removed from being identifiable to any viewer’s lived experience. They’re still always reciting 15th century poetry. But this guy? This guy is like, screw iambic pentameter, to hell with being precious about the material, HOW WOULD AN ACTUAL PERSON SAY THIS SHIT?

Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.

So yeah, this shit post? I love it. Deeply and sincerely.

[spicedtealeaves]

A post about this went round recently, and I’m delighted to announce she’s since come out as trans and goes by Jasmine 🏳️‍⚧️

Jasmine Brimsmayd

Actor and Writer

There’s a whole series of the Hamlet videos on her YouTube, as well as a bunch of other films she’s made

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[hms-no-fun]

so i feel the urge to add a bit of context here because i find the vague on-screen text deeply underwhelming.

this is not just "a picture", it's Pale Blue Dot, one of the most famous works of astrophotography ever made public. and it was not just "a dying spacecraft", it was Voyager 1, a probe launched in 1977 to study the atmosphere and moons of Jupiter and Saturn, among other things. both Voyager probes carried on them a golden record meant as an introduction to humanity for any alien species that might discover them (if you saw Kane Parsons' Backrooms, you've heard the contents of that record coming out of a cardboard caveman standee). they did this because NASA planned to sundown these probes by letting them drift out of the solar system to parts unknown. Voyager 1 is currently 16 billion miles away, the farthest any manmade object has ever traveled from earth.

AND it's not even dead! despite supposedly being a "dying spacecraft" all the way back in 1990, Voyager 1 is not expected to be fully out of commission until 2036. to keep the probe alive they've switched off unneeded tools, adjusted its trajectory, even essentially updated the firmware, and through all that time it's basically never stopped sending back priceless data for scientists to analyze.

this is the original Pale Blue Dot, by the way:

it's relevant because "a single point of light smaller than one pixel" makes a lot more sense in the context of the original than it does in the heavily corrected version up top, where our pale blue dot looks more like a vibrant dwarf star. the difficulty of spotting earth in these waving curtains of space IS the entire impact of the picture! the blue dot is "pale" because it's hard to see! by making earth stand out so brilliantly, Terribly Interesting have inadvertently created the impression that earth is this vibrant glowing pearl, bright for all to see for billions of miles around. and it just isn't! the point is not that we can see earth from far away, but that we almost can't, because we aren't the center of the universe! when science educators past have used this image they often referred to one where the earth is circled in bright red, which only further emphasizes how small and fragile our home really is.

but hey, if you DO want an improved version of Pale Blue Dot you don't even need photoshop:

this is Pale Blue Dot Revisited, released by NASA in 2020. this is a reinterpretation of the original data using modern image processing techniques to create a more realistic or at least more high-definition rendering of the scene. it's important to understand that this is not the original image dropped into photoshop and airbrushed. strictly speaking, there isn't an "original" Pale Blue Dot the way there are negatives of traditional photography. astrophotography is almost always the product of raw data being deliberately interpreted by scientists, so the same data can produce many different images (ie if they want to emphasize the infrared spectrum vs visible light). similar work was done by Don P. Mitchell in ~2005 to enhance images taken by Soviet Venera probes of the surface of Venus to be less noisy.

here's an original:

and here's Mitchell's version:

i'm not here to argue which is "better" (and i highly recommend you read the source for this one because it's quite fascinating), just to give another example of the process in action and hopefully clarify how it's distinct from editing a jpeg in photoshop. also i just think it's neat!

which is the real reason i went to the trouble of making this post. Terribly Interesting may indeed find all of this to be terribly interesting, but it appears to be interest for the sake of a vague transient feeling of having been interested and little else. it doesn't name the probe, the photo in question, nor does it give historical context for the mission it was part of. the only substantial thing it says about the probe, that Voyager 1 is a "dying spacecraft", is so frustratingly oversimplified it may as well just be a lie.

so what's actually learned here, if you're someone who knows none of this history? that one time there was a thing and it did a thing? earth tiny from far away?? obviously it's just one image macro but i see this kind of thing making the rounds SO often, a screenshot with like two sentences on it explaining the image with as little descriptive text as possible. it's like there's a space-themed inspiration-posting rulebook that says you can't imply the existence of information not contained within the image. mention NASA? mention Voyager 1? mention Pale Blue Dot? nope! "a dying spacecraft" took "one last photograph", and here's a photoshopped version to make earth more visible.

and it might not even get to me nearly as much if this was any other space photo. i could accept that space stuff is complicated and this kind of fast-food image can only say so much if we were talking about Cassini or JWST's role in helping us find exoplanets. but this is Pale Blue Dot, the brainchild of arguably THE science communicator Carl Sagan! he wrote a book about Pale Blue Dot, he was on TV to announce the image personally! it's arguable that no astrophotograph exists whose context has been more digestibly packaged for laymen than Pale Blue Dot, which just makes it that much more egregious when someone doesn't go to the trouble.

so much of what i love about astronomy and studying the past & future of space travel is that everything you can learn is a doorway to learning more. you can't earnestly read about Voyager or Cassini or Venera or any other mission without finding some odd searchable detail and going "wait, what is that" and immediately falling down an hourslong rabbit hole to find an answer. and you'll never reach the bottom! i love reading articles about cutting edge astrophysics written for people in, like, early grad school, because i fully comprehend maybe 10% of it, vaguely understand 20% (on a good day), can kind of wrap my head around 30%, and find the rest totally inscrutable... but that's still a solid 60% scrutability rating even at the lowest-quality end of the spectrum! i'm no expert and i never will be, but in scouring the written expertise of others i almost always find one or two ideas that end up sticking with me forever. and it starts, every time, from questions about a photograph.

the sin of the above image is that it's solipsistic. it doesn't give you anywhere to put your curiosity or interest, doesn't invite you to leave their website and learn more than they have space to share, it doesn't even tell you anything useful about its subject! it reduces the entire history of Pale Blue Dot down to a vague and nondescript wonder that's just a pale imitation of the highly specific and ideologically driven wonder that Carl Sagan wanted us to feel.

here, feel it for yourself:

----

[P.S.: before you lament that this is an "AI" problem, while yes "AI" has radically increased the volume of low-value (often negative-value) inspiration bait like this, know that this has been a problem in online science education for a LOT longer than chatgpt's been around. this example isn't extraordinary, just close to my heart. nothing new under the sun and all that]

[writeranon69]

Don't Fall for this scam.

Transgender community, please please please do NOT use this product! It will kill you if used, please do not use it whatsoever.

Please reblog and spread the word

[moonlitmasque]

OKAY, EVERYONE, WE HAVE A POISON WARNING APPARANTLY, SPREAD THE WORD TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

[lakemojave]

I have you blocked because I don't like your blog at all but I hope you're doing well. ok blocking you again adieu

Hello???

[lakemojave]

Anon bb come back i can change for you

[wickedsick]

[scarlct-vvitch]

project hail mary is insane bc the first half is like oh my god the world is dying and there's alien bacteria eating the sun and there's some guy alone on a ship and he's having a breakdown and the flashbacks are getting darker and this is a tragedy the likes of which i have never seen. then BAM andy weir says fuck you actually. here's this pokemon guy he's here to save the day with the power of friendship. and it's the best thing you've ever seen in your life

[penny-anna]

okay, for those interested, here is a full timeline of how we got to Count Binface:

1977: Star Wars is released, featuring, of course, Darth Vader

(Pictured: Darth Vader)

1984: Director Todd Durham releases his Star Wars parody movie, Hyperspace, featuring Darth Vader inspired villain Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: Hyperspace poster featuring two Jawa-esque aliens flying through space in a shopping trolley.)

1987: Hyperspace is released on video in the UK, under the new title Gremloids.

(Pictured: Gremloids cover in the style of the original Star Wars poster, featuring Lord Buckethead.)

To promote the film, Mike Lee, the owner of the distributing company, ran for parliament as Lord Buckethead. He ran in Margaret Thatcher's constituency, Finchley, in order to get on TV. Lord Buckethead was representing the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with Margaret Thatcher.)

1992: Gremloids is re-released. Lord Buckethead rides again, this time against prime minister John Major in Huntingdon. (Here's a fun fact about Huntingdon: I was born there! :D) 87/92 Buckethead seems to have leaned pretty hard into the space supervillain thing, with campaign promises including 'demolish Birmingham to build a spaceport'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with John Major. Other notable candidates include Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.)

2017: comedian Jon Harvey, having recently watched Gremloids and learned of Lord Buckethead's candidacy for parliament, decides it's a great bit. He runs against Theresa May in Maidenhead. 2017 Buckethead seems to have a wackier and also more political approach, with campaign promises ranging from nonsense like 'nationalise Adele' to gesturing at actually sensible policies with stuff like 'lower the voting age to 16 and restrict voting after age 80'.

He also made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. As with his previous incarnation, he was a member of the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead dabbing on stage with Theresa May.)

2018: Director Todd Durham asserts his legal ownership of Lord Buckethead. Jon Harvey opted not to go to court over Buckethead and handed over the reins. Todd Durham extended an invitation to anyone who wanted to be the 'authorised' Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: the new Lord Buckethead.)

2019: Lord Buckethead, now played by journalist David Hughes, stood against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He ran for the Monster Raving Loony Party, the UK's pre-existing gag candidate party. He ran with a similarly silly manifesto as the 2017 incarnation, but with a bit less of a political edge. His promises included 'All doorways to be increased by 1 foot (30 cm) in height' and 'Nigel Farage to be sold for parts'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead and Count Binface square up.)

Meanwhile, Jon Harvey in his new persona Count Binface, also ran against Boris Johnson. Buckethead and Binface face off! Binface ran as an independent with a manifesto once again blending silly and semi-serious promises such as 'nationalising model railways' and 'giving £1 trillion a week to the NHS'. This was also I believe the debut of his promise to 'move the hand dryer in the men's toilet at Uxbridge's Crown and Treaty pub to a more sensible position'.

(Pictured: Count Binface presenting the offending hand dryer, inconveniently close to both the sink and the urinals.)

He has a point.

2021: Count Binface runs for the position of Mayor of London for the first time, with promises such as 'London to join the European Union'. He notably finished ahead of far right party UKIP.

2023: Count Binface runs in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election following Boris Johnson's resignation. He once again gets more votes than UKIP.

May 2024: Count Binface once again runs to be Mayor of London, debuting his now iconic 'build at least one affordable house' promise. Notably, he finished ahead of far right party Britain First.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Rishi Sunak. Also pictured: Monster Raving Loony Party candidate Sir Archibald Stanton with a ventriloquist's dummy.)

July 2024: Count Binface stands in the general election, running in Richmond and Northallerton against prime minister Rishi Sunak. He debuts his promise to cap the price of 99p flakes at 99p. This is his most successful election to date with 308 votes.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Andy Burnham. Also pictured: independent candidate Robert Pownell, dressed as a fox for his own reasons.)

June 2026: Count Binface stands in the Makerfield by-election against Andy Burnham, (recently) former Mayor of Manchester running for parliament with the intention of standing in the Labour Party leadership contest.

(Pictured: Count Binface on BBC's Newsnight.)

July 2026 (this week): Count Binface announces his intention to run against Nigel Farage in the upcoming Clacton by-election. He is briefly the only other candidate in the race and by the time other candidates announce themselves the narrative of 'Nigel Farage vs Count Binface' has already bedded in. And then it was now, and then I don't know what happened.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

For clarity's sake, Robert Pownall is dressed as a fox because he's an anti-fox hunting campaigner, and also he will be standing in the Farage Vs Binface election. So that's fun

[that-one-support]

No one cared who I was until I put on the cage

[pretentious-ravioli]

[baambastic]

The Author’s Barely Disguised Desire to Dom Man Ray apparently

[depsidase]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I adore this

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[razzmothazz]

still caring about internet friends you lost touch with years ago is so embarrassing. yeah i had a deam we met up irl recently. the last time we spoke was maybe 7-8 years ago. i still wear the laces we randomly decided was a sign of our friendship. i dont know what any of your socials are or if youre even active on any. sometimes i see someones art resemble yours and i wonder for hours. do you still go by that name you chose? whenever i see it i wonder if its you. we couldve passed each other in this vastness a thousand times and not have a clue.

[razzmothazz]

we were lonely kids having fun together. do you remember?

[todaysbird]

that’s a whole man.

[starsinfight]

you can't leave off the photo the sawmill worker took of the kiwi

[yujateaandpi]

Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.

Cybertruck. It was a cybertruck.

[socialmaya]

Occasionally forget people genuinely think capitalism is thousands of years old

[sylestial]

One time I was talking about Robin Hood with some coworkers and one guy was like “he was bad because the people he helped learned to expect handouts” and I wanted to be like… okay can you explain how that flawed capitalist propaganda applies to feudalism

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

reminder that capitalism was literally invented in the 16th century

[tayefeth]

That’s an exaggeration. What was invented in the 16th century was mercantilism. Capitalism really dates for the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rise of industry and cash crops over artisans and merchants. Vulture capitalism, with the notion that companies have no duties other than generating profit, is even younger.

[antique-scarecrow]

Capitalism is only 200 years old and I have to say, they have not been an impressive 200 years

[downtroddendeity]

I think a lot of this comes from the fact that most people don’t know the formal definition of capitalism. We all know the word, we’ve all seen the jokes, but very few people bother to actually define it unless they’re talking about political theory and philosophy, so it’s easy to end up with the impression that Capitalism = Money Can Be Exchanged For Goods And Services.

Capitalism is the economic system where most of the means of production (i.e. everything people need to have to make the stuff that everyone wants) are owned by private individuals or corporations, who then hire people to provide the labor necessary to produce things, with the intent of selling the output at a profit. It’s the difference between “you’re a carpenter and you make a chair and you sell it” and “you’re Richard Q. Richington who owns a chair factory, and you pay people to sell the chairs you paid other people to make and then all the excess money goes back to you.” There have been Richard Q. Richingtons on and off throughout history, but that being the norm for every single industry is a pretty recent development.