random thoughts

stuff. things i see, do, eat, read, think. you know, stuff...

[brucesterling]

*Well, if you amend that to “clutching the Old Testament and consulting the Koch Brothers,” it’s pretty spot-on, Carl

[wilwheaton]

The scary thing is, Carl Sagan predicted this *decades* ago.

[wilwheaton]

Best. Troll. Ever.

Patton Oswalt *pretended* to delete offensive tweets, and Twitter lost its shit at him, based on what a bunch of people *imagined* he must have said. It’s maybe the best trolling I’ve ever seen in my life. Somewhere, the ghost of Andy Kaufman is applauding him.

[the-average-gatsby]

[mwgore]

Bwahahaaa!

[chaotically-neutral-deactivating]

[mentalflossr]

13 Little-Known Punctuation Marks We Should Start Using

In honor of National Punctuation Day, here are a few new options. Because sometimes periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces, and ellipses won’t do.

[circusboness-deactivated2013080]

Yes, false rape accusations happen. Run the protocol anyway. I’ve heard that perhaps the military has the highest number of ‘em. True or not, RUN THE PROTOCOL ANYWAY. Because in 15 years of investigating rape accusations, I can count those that panned out as false on one hand. Meanwhile, the one time I almost skipped the protocol, the one time I almost didn’t believe a petty officer, because I was naive as an investigator and a young woman, because her commanding officer described her as “a party girl, always late, always out drinking, don’t bother with this one”, she turned out to be the victim of one of the most brutal assaults I’ve ever investigated. She shouldn’t have still been -alive-, let alone up and making the accusation. So let me repeat: five false accounts in fifteen years. And one time I almost failed a woman ‘cause of the bullshit way it’s normal to talk about us. Take your shipmates’ word, and then run the protocol. Every. Single. Time.

 - JAG lawyer, speaking to my husband’s plant during Sexual Assault Prevention Month. (via circusbones)

[sesamestreet]

Happy birthday, Jim. We still miss you.

[infinity-imagined]

At each moment, light (as well as electromagnetism and gravitational force) is coming towards you from every direction, in a sphere around you.  The light has left its location at different times, from the Moon; 2 seconds ago, the Sun; 8 minutes ago, Vega; 25 years ago, Andromeda; 2 million years ago and so on.  You could imagine a set of concentric spheres, each one containing a part of the universe you are experiencing.  The greater the radius of the sphere, the farther back in time you experience that part.  In the diagram this is represented as the “past light cone”; each ‘sphere’ becomes a circular slice of that cone.  The present moment of each location in spacetime is the focused intersection or standing wave pattern of all waves and forces originating within the past light cone of that location.  Likewise, all electromagnetic and gravitational waves and forces traveling into the future of the present are ‘dispersed’ relative to the observer by the inverse square law; intensity is proportional to 1/(distance²).  For example, all the light the bounced off of a pterosaur 200 million years ago and passed through Earths atmosphere is still out there, traveling, 200 million light years away.  It is incredibly diffuse, you would need to construct a telescope billions of light years across to create an image, but the information still exists. 

For forces that travel at light speed, we only experience and effect the surface of the light cones.  Matter, which travels at less than light speed through space, influences us and is effected by us within the volume of the light cones.  All matter and forces travel at light speed, but in different dimensions.  Light is restricted to space dimensions, and does not experience time.  Matter travels at light speed primarily through time, and can also travel through space relative to other objects.  To maintain light speed, matter will move less through time, giving rise to relativistic effects such as time dilation.  Here I will cite "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, an excellent book that shaped my thinking on this subject.

The implications of light cones are incredible.  At each moment your body is being influenced by the volume of the entire universe, in a gradient from moments ago to the big bang.  The size of the effect is mediated by the inverse square law, so the closest things effect you the most.  However if one star in the andromeda galaxy, 2 million years ago, disappeared, there would be a minute change in the gravitational pull on the atoms of your body. Perhaps a salt ion in one of your neurons wouldn’t exit an ion channel, and your thoughts and life would be different.  This effect goes forward into time as well, every action we take effects everything in out future light cone.  As beings, we are completely integrated into the Universe, composed and created by every event in our past light cone, and manifesting everything in our future light cone.

[mattfractionblog]

I’ll be in my bunk

[wilwheaton]

I … I need some alone time to think about things.

[error4583324]

It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth. You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything. But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures. Particularly prone to serious procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high expectations placed on them. Their older siblings may have been high achievers, leaving big shoes to fill, or their parents may have had neurotic and inhuman expectations of their own, or else they exhibited exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.

David Cain, “Procrastination Is Not Laziness” (via pawneeparksdepartment)

This totally justifies every excuse I’ve been giving myself from not doing that thing I’m supposed to do.

(via aaronmoles)

[wilwheaton]

Two Years Ago, John Boehner promised to be “Laser Focused on Jobs and the Economy” So what has the GOP House been up to?

House Bills passed: 46 Bills on Abortion 113 Bills on Religion 73 Bills on Family Relationships 36 Bills on Marriage 72 Bills on Firearms 604 Bills on Taxation 437 Bills on...

[wilwheaton]

I understand the reflexive establishment posture, which suggests partisan observations are necessarily wrong, but consider recent events: the fiscal talks have broken down because Republicans won’t compromise and accept meaningful concessions; the farm bill and the Violence Against Women Act are stuck because Republicans won’t vote on them; efforts to reduce gun violence face extremely long odds because Republicans are beholden to the NRA; a U.N. treaty on disabilities was killed because Republicans believed extremist conspiracy theories; the process of filling President Obama’s second term cabinet is stalled because of Republican smear campaigns; and another debt-ceiling crisis is underway because Republicans are threatening to hurt Americans on purpose unless Democrats pay a steep ransom. It’s not “both their fault.” One side is being reasonable; the other side is being nihilistic. One need not be partisan or biased to see what is plainly true.

It’s not ‘both their fault’ (via wilwheaton)

yup

[mwgore]

amanda fucking palmer + the grand theft orchestra. fitzgerald's houston. 9/18/12. best fucking rock show i've ever seen. and i've seen quite a few.

[mwgore]

happy canada day, eh!

[g1988]

HOLY COW. Check out “It Is All Illusion,” a painting from Aaron Jasinski, for Friday night’s “There’s Always Money In The Banana Stand!” which opens this Friday, June 29th, and runs through July 21st.

[mwgore]

how timely - just finished archive binging arrested development

[10ismydivision]

david tennant as romeo - royal shakespeare company production of romeo and juliet, stratford, 2000

[dunderklumpen]

[mwgore]

dunderklumpen makes the most spectacular gifs...

[knitmeapony]

We accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout. If a child is living as a girl, that’s good enough for us. We don’t require any proof of gender.

—Rachelle Trujillo, vice president for communications of the Colorado Girl Scouts, responding to a story about a transgender girl who was allowed to join the Brownies.

Looks like I’ll be buying a ton of cookies this year.  

(via Shakesville article on various bigoted attacks on the GSA by religious groups & the right-wing blogosphere; trigger warning on that for cissexist, misogynist bullshit)