Just Stuff

Whatever I find interesting, and some of my stuff. A queer person. Any/All pronouns. Gender diverse safe blog

[prismaticpichu]

ok, but Seph’s wing melding with the storm clouds??? 🥺🤌 AND ZACK IS SO BIG FHFHFHF

~

Picture from the FF7 Revelation Press Release!!!!

[viktor-sbor]

A 50-kilogram anvil floats perfectly on the surface of mercury, because the density of the steel from which it is made is almost half the density of mercury.

[e-102]

damn that shit is light lmfao

[telltaletypist]

[vienna1954]

Fun fact! Many lighthouses with especially large fresnel lenses would have huge fucking tubs of liquid mercury in the lantern room because it’s a super easy way to make these giant lenses rotate quickly!

Shockingly, however, spending most of your time in close proximity to 500 pounds of liquid mercury is Not Great For One’s Health and tons of lighthouse keepers started to go crazy from the whole. Mercury poisoning thing. Hence why there are a lot of “haunted” lighthouses or wickies that lose it and maybe do a bit of manslaughter.

Anyway, people saw a bunch of lighthouse keepers go crazy and get sick and got empirical evidence that it was in fact related to the 500 pound mercury bath they have to visit every day and then they decided nah it’s fine actually. So we’ve kept the liquid mercury thing and I think that’s beautiful

[ben-the-hyena]

I love how it is so dense it does not "wet" the anvil, the drops all run and leave with nothing behind them unlike water, oil, sauce... it's super satisfying it's like in cartoons

[macleod]

In a letter written on April 19, 1825, Augustin Fresnel proposed the use of mercury to reduce the friction in revolving lenses. His statement follows: “I propose to float our rotating devices, of the first order, in a bath of mercury, instead of placing them on rollers. This project won't present many difficulties; nevertheless, as I have not put it into execution, I won't require you to adopt it for your first lighthouse.”

Fresnel’s plan for mercury flotation was not put into practice until 1890 when Monsieur Leon Bourdelles, Chief Engineer of the French Lighthouse Service, designed and built a workable mercury flotation system. The mercury bath allowed the lens to operate in an almost frictionless environment and, additionally, allowed the speed of rotation to be dramatically increased.

Lens Rotation by Thomas Tag | United States Lighthouse Society

[sashaforthewin]

Ah to be a sailor in 1890 who has to turn to his fellow men and ask "is it just me or are the lighthouses flashing faster?"

[asteroidtroglodyte]

They had been slowly getting faster for decades.

It mattered for optics reasons.

Under less-than-ideal conditions, you can only see the beam when it’s pointed more or less directly at you. In-between beams you would not be able to see anything. One solution to this was to create multiple beams, and the lenses Mr Fresnel designed usually created 8 beams. But, even still, duration between flashes could be as long as one minute in the old mechanical roller systems.

The nearly frictionless operation of the Mercury suspension system allowed the lenses (large pieces of precisely ground glass weighing several hundred pounds in some cases) to rotate fast enough that they could be redesigned to create fewer (usually 3) beams. Fewer beams from a similar light source will be proportionally brighter, and the gains in speed were sufficient that duration between flashes could still be reduced to as little as 10 seconds.

This was a big upgrade. It didn’t just make the lighthouse signal faster, it allowed them to completely overhaul the lens and derive more visibility from a light source.

What’s a little Madness, in the face of Progress?

[noah-luck-easterly]

mods are asleep, post the fresnel lens

[cass-without-the-andra]

The mercury baths are slowly being replaced by a new system, this video about it is super interesting and explains it way better than I can!

[socialmaya]

[lierdumoa]

This is why I have no sympathy whatsoever for anti-intellectuals who complain when discussion posts use too much academic language. "You can't expect me to whip out a dictionary every time you post—" BITCH I LOOKED UP "AHEGAO" FOR YOU. OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART.

[depsidase]

[zootycoon-archive]

i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck

[loseremo]

[syzygy-yzygy]

THE ORIGINAL? ON MY DASH

[this-too-too-sullied-flesh]

this post led to a series of events that had martin scorsese himself reacting to his alleged movie goncharov and it has less than 400k notes almost 3 years later?

[simplyghosting]

I’ll never forget the time my parents said they were going out for a few hours, and left my siblings and me at home by ourselves (ages 9-14), and instead of going nuts or just sitting around, we all rushed and did our hair and makeup and got dressed as fancy as we could; sister pulled out the wine glasses and grape juice and made an hors d'oeuvres platter, another googled how to play poker, pulled out chips from a different game, dimmed the lights, and we set up a fancy 4-person gambling den at the kitchen table and played until my parents said they were on their way back with dinner. Then we quickly picked everything up, washed our faces, changed back into our casual clothes, and pretended nothing ever happened. They never found out.

[lyinar]

[lyinar]

And a bonus.

[lyinar]

Two more tore their way out of my brain.

[partywithponies]

One of the most annoying genres of people on the internet are people who act like they believe science is one single monolithic thing. Like, you'll see an article saying something like "scientists studying the movement of tectonic plates", and then in the comments there'll be several smug people saying "smh why are scientists doing this instead of finding a cure for cancer", like. Why would a geologist be doing that.

[nateconnolly]

*hefts my cartoonishly large shovel* It’s gotta be buried down there SOMEWHERE

[sparvverius]

if i could make gifsets i would do one with wei wuxian wen qing and jin guangyao to the quote from marat/sade that goes woe to the man who is different who tries to break down all the barriers woe to the man who tries to stretch the imagination of man he shall be mocked he shall be scourged by the blinkered guardians of morality. but i dont know howwwww

[sparvverius]

have whatever this is instead

[sparvverius]

thinking about this again. it really is insane how mdzs cultivation world had like. at least 3 once-in-a-generation geniuses on their hands in one generation and murdered all of them

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[hypokeimena]

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[redstonedust]

yall ever lose interest in something so you stop seeking out content for it and your brain will be like. wow its so crazy that that thing used to be everywhere and then everyone stopped talking about it. so crazy that it fell off like that because nobody is talking about it on my personal curated social media and youtube algorithms. surely no other factors here.

[valeriapryanikova]

THE BUTCHER / THE BUTCHERED

[sleepy-bebby]

If anyone wants to know what a leopard seal sounds like 🦷🩸

[bandydear]

Leopard Seals are what happens when god needs a lizard and all he has is a mammal

[gallusrostromegalus]

I'd recommend turning the sound on. The seal is not screaming. It's not very loud at all, actually, but the noise it's making is Much Worse.

[doomsday-dj]

There was recently a copyright infringement case in YA and I need everyone to know that the following sentence was in the legal decision:

“Hot, sexy, dangerous boys, central to virtually all young adult romance novels, cannot be copyrighted.”

[kuttithevangu]

“Regarding setting, the court held that both works taking place in Alaska high schools was not protectable because Alaska is a public place and setting a teen novel in a high school is a common genre convention.”

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

[kogiopsis]

I've read the entire decision (skimming over the purely legal precedent/definitions bit) and here are some of my favorite bits:

[doodleoo]

what you learn from hobbies:

consistent practice opens up whole worlds of skill that you couldn't imagine

making mistakes in the process of learning is not only natural, it is also essential

activities that you enjoy can give you more energy back than you spent on them

wow everything is so expensive

[doodleoo]

my hands hurt

[sketchjay]

my back hurts

[lakritzwolf]

my eyes hurt

[thememedaddy]

[berylian]

[cherabby]

[bo-an-aro]

“sex/romance/empathy makes us human,” they say. awful. pathetic. what makes us human is the urge to set things on fire

[sullina]

you’re actually correct!

Cooking is the one thing that only humans do and can be directly linked to the increase in our brain size

[detrout]

Burning the mammoth flank just a lirtle instead of eating it raw gives grug more calorie to think. Grug thinking about color symbolism in silence of the lambs

[leveragehunters]

Behold, a (hu)man!

[kirkegarde]

The bird that torments Prometheus learned something

[shithowdy]