research gossip

serious and irreverent in hopefully equal measures RESEARCH CAN MAKE THINGS BETTER a personal blog about a graduate student's love of inquiry

[sandandglass]

Last Week Tonight s03e02

[samsaranmusing-deactivated20140]

Orbital path of asteroid near miss in 2002. Yah, that’s how close we came to nuclear winter and possible total destruction.

[lonelyinsomniac-deactivated2014]

A visitor.

[davesproot-deactivated20140614]

It’s like it’s trying so hard to hit us and it just can’t do it

[mamasam]

All I can imagine is every astronomer drinking heavily from 2002-2003 like “There it goes—OH FUCK IT’S COMING BACK”

[randomrafe]

ohgodohgodohgod

[mostlyjudson]

thank you  moon for being Our last defender against space chaos. When Jupiter fails, The moon will aid us.

[thenearsightedmonkey]

Dear Students,

Yesterday, during the Saturday Science Drawing Jam at the Wisconsin Institutes for discovery, we made drawings from science images to help us guess about things that they could be. A lot of different people of different ages worked together, and we were joined by cartoonist and teacher, Ivan Brunetti. That’s him in the last frame.

Thank you to those of you who volunteered to work with the kids and their parents who came to draw with us.  Sometimes I have to remember how rare this sort of thing is, how rare it is for people of all different ages who are strangers to each other to sit together and draw together in response to a question.

Those of you who came to help made that happen.

Best to you,

Prof SETI

[research-gossip]

amazing work of Lynda Barry using drawing to explore science - creative methodologies.

[scienceisbeauty]

An animated chart of 42 North American butterflies

Via Tabletop Whale

[life-of-beyonce]

Fave Moments: When Beyoncé was shooting for vogue magazine but her photoshoot got taken over by this one little boy.

[theblastofatrumpet]

Your privilege is comprised of the questions you’ve never had to ask.

Catherynne Valente, “The Girl Without Hands: Writing, Carpal Tunnel, and Silence” at Rules for Anchorites (via yesdarlingido)

[allthingslinguistic]

Signily: ASL Keyboard app 

Signily is a really neat keyboard app that lets you type many common ASL signs as images or gifs, in both left and right hands, and in several skin tones. 

It’s currently for iOS, with Android support on the way, and they’re using gifs because Unicode does not support handshape characters beyond a few basic ones like thumbs-up and okay, let alone the moving images that are important for some signs. The gifs are a clever workaround for the moment, but hopefully later versions of Unicode will support a larger inventory of handshapes, which is also something the Signily developers are advocating for. More information and demonstrations of how it works on Signily’s website. 

[lunarbaboon]

Lunarbaboon facebook twitter

Lunarbaboon: Volume 2 Kickstarter

[thenearsightedmonkey]

Dear Students,

This was filmed yesterday.  It’s your final project taking shape and making its way to you.

Sincerely,

Prof SETI

[thenearsightedmonkey]

Dear Students,

What did kids drawings look like in 1240? This.

Scratched on birch bark and discovered in Novgorod, Russia (via Wikimedia)

“The most famous of the birch bark texts are the scribblings of a boy named Onfim. Estimated to have been between six and seven years old when he made them, Onfim idly drew himself as a grown warrior and disguised as a beast; the aspirational art isn’t much different from the drawings of children adorning refrigerators today. Often these seemingly inconsequential relics don’t survive the passage of time.”

One of the Onfim birch bark drawings, showing the boy disguised as a beast (1240–60) (via gramoty.ru)

You can view the archive of Novgorod birch bark manuscripts online

Source: hyperallergic.com

[researchinprogress]

Last year of PhD

by Emin

[iguanamouth]

something about memories

[rcah]

this is beautifully worded and drawn it’s so creative i love this so much

[potbelliedgeek-deactivated20150]

So my mom is shopping in a supermarket, wearing a full hijab and jilbab (commonly misnamed as a burka) and the whole time she is there, this kid is staring at her. Won’t stop staring. Just looking with wide-eyed shock. The lil feller isn’t any older than four. She doesn’t think much of it, she is used to far worse than just a few stares.

Until the very end when the kid and his mom are behind her in the checkout, and he leans up and whispers loudly:

“I LOVE YOU BATMAN”

[dinofarts]

TODAY IN BIOLOGY CLASS WE LEARNED THAT WHEN YOU MOW THE GRASS THE BLADES RELEASE A CHEMICAL THAT MAKES THAT GLORIOUS SMELL BUT THE REASON WHY THEY RELEASE THE CHEMICAL IS TO WARN OTHER GRASS BLADES OF DANGER SO WHEN WE SMELL THE FRESHLY CUT GRASS SMELL IT’S NOT JUST A GOOD SMELL IT’S THE SMELL OF THE BLOOD AND SCREAMS FOR HELP OF THOUSANDS OF GRASS BLADES

[real-faker]

warning other grass blades of danger hahaha what are they gonna’ do they just grass

[stariceling]

So a lot of plants produce volatile chemicals in response to something damaging their leaves that are basically the plant version of screaming to everything around them AAAAH SOMETHING IS EATING ME SAVE YOURSELF! And then other plants make all kinds of nasty chemical compounds to stuff into their own leaves to deter things from eating them.

Other plants have an approach where they use those chemicals to scream HEY SOMETHING IS EATING ME SOMEONE COME EAT IT BACK! Like: are aphids eating at you? Announce to all local ladybugs that you have a big fat buffet crawling on you and they will remove your problem.

And IDK what response grass is hoping for but it seems tragic because no amount of I-am-not-for-eating chemicals or calling for backup will deter a lawnmower.

[scienceyoucanlove-deactivated20]

poor grass :/

[itscolossal]

A Sprawling New Cut Paper Bacterium by Rogan Brown

[wewerenotthefirst]

dude, what if a prince is cursed to be a dragon but instead of being upset by it, they’re like ‘hell yeah i’m a dragon’ and they spend weeks finding the perfect decrepit castle to haunt and try to convince their fiancé to be a princess in the tower ‘just for like a week’ and everyone is like ‘we can break the fucking curse’ and the prince is like ‘but i’m a dragon.’

[thecharmwasbroken]

Disney needs to hire you asap

[research-gossip]

I submit my comps today

sooooooooooo, of course, I just wanted to celebrate by telling anyone who still looks at this about kindlecoverdisasters.tumblr.com - please go to there and laugh and laugh.

Obviously, due to my bruised brain and weakened state from COMPS-overload, my judgement is slightly impaired - hence the tears of laughter I cried this morning look at this collection of awesome hilarity, but really - it’s really really funny. Please go look and celebrate with me.