Meandering Orange

[vamptits]

don't ever look up what your childhood friends are up to now!!!!!!!!!! like girl you're a nuclear safety engineer. i put on matching socks today. we played tag a thousand years ago.

[halberdbooks]

Yeah

[meanderingorange]

The Comrades Ultramarathon breeds its own kind of insanity in the collective South African consciousness

South Africa is probably the only place on earth where people hear that you have run a marathon and assume that you did it to train for something else.

In most countries, the most famous long-distance road race is a marathon. In South Africa, that is very much not the case. The Comrades is about 96 km long, participation is capped at 22,000 entries, and we all grew up watching all twelve hours of it on television every year. In general, people cared a lot about who won, but they also tuned in to watch those who barely made it before the cut-off time cross the finish line.

You have to run a marathon in under 5 hours to qualify to enter the Comrades. Which is why telling people that you have run a marathon does not result only in awe and congratulations, but also in people asking you if you are aiming to run Comrades. In any other country, asking someone who runs a marathon if they did it to train for or qualify for an ultramarathon would be an insane response. In South Africa, it would be a completely reasonable question.

[maryschild]

[wtf-scientific-papers]

Wang and Lai (2014)

[gemstone-gynoid]

[meanderingorange]

My advisor was very much a visual communicator, and I am very text/narrative driven. The first paper draft I sent him for review went through 4 rounds of him asking, "More pictures, please."

I fully appreciate the level of "fuck it, fine, I will add another diagram somehow" that went into this illustration.

[meanderingorange]

Trying new things inevitably means you are going to find things you don't like

And there is nothing wrong with that. Today I learned that I don't like opera by going to a performance of Carmen. I also learned that it is possible to be immensely impressed by all aspects of a thing while being utterly bored by it. The set design and costumes were sumptuous. The music and singing were objectively very good. The acting was also really good. I dipped out during the first intermission.

I am glad I went. I am never going to go again. And that is fine. Not every good thing needs to be good for me.

[elodieunderglass]

Your tags about peppa made me laugh & reminded me of all the disney vhs tapes i watched in dutch as a child. The thing about children's tv and movies is you don't need to speak the language to know what's going on, so all that happens is you see it again 10 years later and say "why is the voice acting different?" or you get confused because everyone else knows knabbel and babbel as chip and dale.

(In reference to my recommendation that people who are forced to tolerate intolerable children’s programming can win some breathing space by insisting it’s only available in a different language.)

There’s a lot to be said for watching children’s TV in other languages – I know a lot of people who move to another country and are recommended to do so to level up their speaking! And I agree that it seems to seamlessly enter the child’s head without pausing for translation. But I was NOT expecting Knabbel and Babbel.

[meanderingorange]

I learned English as a child, partially from watching TV shows. The reason I am sure I mostly got it from TV is that no one in the area where I grew up actually spoke English on a day-to-day basis. My parents definitely also exposed us to it, but we almost never spoke it at home.

We did start learning English in school at age 7, but most of my classmates and I understood it before then.

[meanderingorange]

Throwback to that time I asked someone if they had Universities in Mozambique. In my mind, I was asking if they were called Universities or Colleges, but that was very much not what came out of my mouth.

It took a few minutes of the Mozambiquan man I had been talking to staring at me in disbelief for me to think back on what I had just asked and then clarify what I was actually trying to ask in complete mortified fluster.

[rozzed]

why not have the reader re-read a sentence now and then? it won't hurt him....

[mordredsheart]

snow white goth-coded not because of the hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow, but because her best friends are seven weird dudes in the metal scene

[meanderingorange]

A little sad about shelved knowledge

I spent over ten years working as a mechanical engineer at a power station, and then I transitioned into electricity system planning research. I really enjoy my new work, but while a lot of the skills have transferred, I do miss the depth of competence that 10+ years of experience gives you.

My sister called me yesterday to ask about a specific incident that had occurred at my previous job and how it relates to pressurised equipment regulations. She was working through a design request from a client and thought that there may be related regulatory implications. (Sidenote: we worked at the same company previously, but not in the same plant section, so she knew enough about the incident to think it was relevant, but wanted to discuss technical details around it)

And I got to just sink back into that mindset and area of expertise for 10 minutes. It was so nice. It reminded me that I really loved my previous work in terms of the work itself. It was the extreme level of understaffing and the total lack of work-life balance that forced me out (illegal levels of overtime semi-regularly can get very dangerous in occupations where poor judgment can have safety implications - I had to get out).

But it was fun to revisit it for a little while.

[cut-catches]

i love nature and wildlife and the earth so much.

that said, i would run over the limu emu with my car.

[meanderingorange]

Understandable impulse, but ground bound birds tend to be very dense and do a lot of damage. Even the small ones, like guinea fowl, can completely wreck your car. And that thing is a lot larger than a guinea fowl. So try not to.

[meanderingorange]

Romania's fumble may help the US out

I think that one of the overlooked benefits the US has this quad is the coaching team at World Champions. They have shown themselves to be very proficient at building routines that compensate for gymnasts' weaknesses, and they really know how to work the code on floor AND coach for floor artistry. With the glaring exception of Voinea (who would not work with them - and I really think this is what truly cost her the medal), the Romanians always showed up with well-composed routines that exploited the code in the previous quad.

Floor has become a potential weakness for the US in that they try to compensate for poor artistry with difficulty and execution. Giving these coaches access to gymnasts who are capable of high-level difficulty, for whom they can construct effectively choreographed floor routines, is going to be a game-changer.

[viktoriakomova]

We know that we are living through a period of USAG stagnation bc even with Simone presumably retired people’s way too early LA28 team predictions still are mostly gymnasts who have been around for 3 quads now

[cut-catches]

some of my thoughts on why the developmental program has stagnated

- we’re only over the recent couple years seeing the effect of covid on the junior program

- we’re also now seeing the effect of the Nassar scandal making parents rethink putting their children into gymnastics

- NCAA has become the goal rather than elite for more people because it offers better life balance while growing up, and offers a better chance at reward (much more college spots to go around than olympic spots). many talented levels 10s are choosing just to stay there than try for elite

- worsening cost of living crisis also means less people are putting their kids into gymnastics

[meanderingorange]

I do think we have to keep two truths in mind:

The US is not dominant at the moment. Even if they lean heavily on veterans, this would not ensure dominance. Particularly not if Russia is allowed to compete as a team and if Italy keeps up their current trajectory of improvement.

The US is still very competitive, even without veterans. The most telling thing was their team score at Pan-Ams last year. They showed up with Dulcy Caylor, Jayla Hang, Gabrielle Hardie, Hezly Rivera, and Tiana Sumanasekera. They put up a 164.7. Which is a little better than Brazil did in 2024 for Bronze. Granted, the Pan Ams team appear to have had a pretty perfect day, and this was not the case for the Brazilians, but the context is helpful.

I think the team final at worlds is going to be incredibly interesting. I also think the US winning would actually be a very bad result for them. The last thing they can afford at this point is complacency.

[raccoonmilf]

When I was in grade school I used to send emails to biologists and zoologists asking them questions to get answers to include in school projects I was working on, and would cry when they did not respond because I thought I was stupid for thinking that some random kid would ever be deserving of a response from someone who does something as smart and cool and important as *checks notes* studies frog fungus.

Now, at 29, I’m lowkey having a panic attack because my academic email is filled with middle schoolers wanting me to answer their questions about pygmy raccoons and I keep putting off answering them because I’m so overwhelmed with all the other raccoon stuff I have to do.

Anyway, greatest apologies to any scientist I ever emailed as a child and also an adult.

[raccoonmilf]

I know your research is really important and I appreciate all you are doing but this is so fucking funny

[meanderingorange]

Is emailing scientists encouraged in the American education system? I have never heard of anyone doing it or anyone getting emails like this.

[meanderingorange]

You could make a case for increasing the number of World's team slots Africa gets...

Or that the last few worlds team slots should get allocated at a qualifier competition if you want to be a bit more reasonable (and you are not South African).

I already felt that Egypt got the short end of the stick in 2023 when they outscored the last qualifier team from Europe, but got knocked out because of how slots were allocated.

But it was probably fair that if you only had 2 competitive teams, they should compete for one spot. But now Africa has 3 competitive teams (yes, Egypt imploded at African Champs this year, but they have a very solid program and a long history of doing much better than that one performance would suggest).

It is very likely that South Africa's team total of 146.8 (which they achieved despite a complete meltdown on beam) will be higher than the lowest qualifying totals from some other continental Championships. And Egypt will probably bounce back and is fully capable of getting similar scores next year.

I think allocating team slots based on a competition that took place in 2018 will become increasingly problematic over time. In Asia, the Philippines, Singapore and Kazakhstan are all becoming more competitive too. Will Asia get 4 spots regardless of rising competitiveness?

The elephant in the room is that Europe got to keep their 13 team slots even though their most competitive team was not allowed to compete in 2023.

Holding a qualifier competition for the last 4 to 8 team slots at worlds does not have to be fancy, but I do think it will become increasingly necessary. Particularly for the pre-Olympic worlds. Whatever allocation you end up with can then be carried over to the next mid-quad worlds. This allows the slots to be reset every 4 years.

[lobaznyuk]

my god

[meanderingorange]

I feel like the conventional wisdom at this point is to minimise the number of handstands in a bar routine to minimise deductions. But if your handstands look like this, you can have as many of them in the routine as you want to. In this routine, the handstands are so nice that they become a selling point. A case of: Look what I can do, isn't it wonderful?

[destiel-news-network]

(Source)

This comes one day after the archive changed their status to “Omega” for April Fools’ Day.