Thales’ circles @thalescircles - Tumblr Blog

if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills

the-supernatural-atheist

where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*

makaeru

I hate learning about instances of "oh yeah we know how to do that, we just don't".

marzipanandminutiae

this is exactly why I love talking about historical passive heating and cooling techniques

oh wow the glass-tower office buildings we constructed when we thought air conditioning and central heating would never have downsides...have downsides?

and we're still building them?

while the Victorian house museum where I work, with thick walls and small windows and big wooden shutters stays ~10 degrees above (winter) or below (summer) the outside temperature for days on end with no help at all?

uh. okay then

(also public transit. the history of public transit in the US is infuriating, because we had it! and then we destroyed it!)

headspace-hotel

THIS IS SO TRUE

dragon-in-a-fez

WAIT did I never tell tumblr about the haunted space waterpark hotel

dragon-in-a-fez

in January 2018, I spent a couple of days in the town of Hutchinson, Kansas for work. I rolled into town and stopped at what appeared, from the outside, to be a normal motel just off the highway.

it was not.

dragon-in-a-fez

I should add that I did not see a single other guest the entire time I was there, which intensified the whole vibe.

headspace-hotel

There is at least one thing to do in kansas

the-cassquatch

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

dj-of-the-coven

Long collection of resources under the cut.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.

xerxestexastoast

ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose

biothreads

Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!

A collection of 1,966 blogs about every topic

derinthescarletpescatarian

Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I'm going to cry

headspace-hotel

try Radiogarden

rosiewitchescottage

And it's amazing that you can find information that you looked for, just in the off chance, never expect ing that it would really be there.

Are you a word nerd like me, and my father before me?

Then may I introduce you to...

The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of Eng

Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

Thank you @headspace-hotel

dailypolyhedra

Polyhedron of the Day #346: Small dodecacronic hexecontahedron

The small dodecacronic hexecontahedron (also known as the small sagittal ditriacontahedron) is a uniform dual polyhedron. It has 60 faces (all darts), 120 edges, and 44 vertices. It appears identical to the small rhombidodecacron. Its dual is the small dodecicosidodecahedron.

publicdomainreview

Diagram showing what various lunar eclipses would look like with differently shaped Earths. Johannes Buno, ca. 1711.⠀ ⠀ Featured in the German theologian and educator’s Universal Geography. Buy a print here: https://publicdomainreview.org/product/four-diagrams-of-solar-eclipses/

thevaultoftheatomicspaceage

Massive craters pockmark the barren landscape of the Nevada desert, remnants of nuclear tests conducted during the 1950s and subsequent decades.

mossquitoman

I love mathematicians so much. No one else is doing it like them. Group of people genuinely only in it for love of the game. Everyone else hates their subject and thinks its boring and useless and these guys are out here talking about how beautiful and incredible and poetic it is with a twinkle in their eyes. No other subject has such a crazy disconnect between public perception and reality. I love it.

publicdomainreview

Spectators watch the flight of one of Alexander Graham Bell’s tetrahedral kites in 1904. More pictures here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/alexander-graham-bell-s-tetrahedral-kites-1903-9

cherryhatter-deactivated2015072

KICK THE CAN!

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

To kick the can, reblog it. I wanna see how long this can go on for.

visibun

the oldest reblogs for this post that i can find are from january 2nd of 2013. this can has been getting kicked around tumblr for almost 13½ years now

drtanner

And yet somehow this is my first time kicking it!

thalescircles

Mine too!

psychotic-gerard

x

kiragecko

[Image of text saying,

Some AAVE speakers pluralize 'child' as 'childrens'. People get racist about this ("It's already plural!"), but 'children' actually comes from Middle English speakers doing the same thing: slapping their plural marker on word already pluralized by an extinct plural marker.

To oversimplify: in Old English, 'childer' ('ċildra') was the plural of 'child' ('ċild'). Middle English developed an '-en' plural marker, which we see in 'oxen'. Instead of updating to 'childen', people slapped their preferred '-en' onto the end of 'childer' - so now we have 'child-er-en'. AAVE carries on this tradition with 'child-er-en-s'.

"Pure" language is just impurity obscured by the passage of time.

End ID.]

wordfather

idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????

wordfather

'whats your favorite apple' 'red' 'no i mean like what type' '??????' actual conversatiom i've had with a mutual from usa

wordfather

welcome to the icelandic apple selection. what color will you have

wordfather

okay so APPEARANTLY this is just an iceland thing? i looked it up and we dont grow apples here commercially. we get them imported and there's such few options that the stores rarely bother to name them. thats why, culturally, we just call them by colors.

i feel like we all learned something today. i learned that im hungry for apples with names and you learned that iceland is 3 apples tall. the world continues to surprise and enlighten

vacuously-true

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: HOME OF THE HONEYCRISPPPPP. EVERYONE SAY THANK YOU UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOR ALL OF THE HONEYCRISPPPPP. OKAY NOW THAT THAT'S OUT OF THE WAY,

The reason apples are so complicated is because apple genetics are really unpredictable so if you grow an apple tree from seed, there's a really good chance you're gonna end up with something nasty. So, to make sure you get something that doesn't taste like garbage, apple trees are mostly propagated by graft. You like what a tree is making? You take a graft of that tree. The wide variety of apple characteristics and the fact that most apples are grown as clones means apple varieties lend themselves to creative & specialized cultivation and patenting of results. So there are many varieties and they have fun names.

I'm curious what your three Icelandic apple varieties are. If they're imported I suspect they're found globally in large numbers, so they probably have specific names. Probably not honeycrisp tho, because those are not great for transport. Sorry about that.

unamusedsloth

“Vicious” Leopard seal tries to keep national geographic photographer alive by feeding him penguins.

michaelgogins

The Leiden Declaration is not just for mathematicians

Recently some leading mathematicians have been studying the use, impact, and risks of using artificial intelligence in mathematical research and institutions.

They have now published the Leiden Declaration to articulate their concerns and to make recommendations.

I learned about this today from the New York Times, and you can learn a lot by reading their article. But you can learn more by reading the Declaration.

I feel that the Declaration is directly relevant not only to the mathematical community, but also, in reality, to all of us who regard thinking as an integral part of what we do. And that, in the end, is really all of us.

I strongly suggest that you study the Declaration and adopt its recommendations.

mathhombre

From the NYT article:

Among the potential threats that the Leiden Declaration authors articulate are accuracy and reliability: Journal editors are already complaining about a flood of plausible seeming A.I.- generated papers and proofs that have turned out to be incorrect, and in ways that are difficult for mathematicians to discern. Perhaps most pointedly, the authors raise the question of whether the many A.I. companies tackling mathematics — major players such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic, or start-ups such as Harmonic, Math, Inc. and Axiom Math — are keeping the field’s best interests in mind. “Technology companies’ involvement in research,” they write, “raises the risk that research questions are prioritized and incentivized because of their amenability to A.I. methods and models, rather than their deeper significance to understanding.” In turn, they point out, this disadvantages researchers who choose not to use the technology, and those who do not have access to it.

and...

OCHIGAME Mathematics is a rich form of cultural expression with an ancient history, and I am not worried that any technology will ever render it obsolete. Its most precious aspects, such as the collective quest to understand beautifully intricate ideas, and to explore the limits of the human imagination, cannot ever be automated. What I am worried about is that a handful of corporations are mobilizing their vast financial resources to impose an impoverished view of mathematics so forcefully — at a moment when scientific research is already under political attack — that they may well end up destroying the social institutions that allow mathematics to flourish. What could be futile about resisting that?

cherryjams

‘Hands weaving magnetic-core memory, IBM, Poughkeepsie, New York,’ 1956. Photograph by Ansel Adams.

bladespark

My mother used to make computer cores as a "work from home" side business. As a child I got spending money via un-winding the ones that failed testing so that the magnetic center could be re-used. I got between $0.05 and $0.25 per core depending. Mom got more for the finished ones, of course, though I don't know how much. Her sister was an expert, and did the more complicated kind, some of which ended up in satellites and/or were used by NASA!

They were all done by hand using a kind of treadle-operated frame with a little (crochet!) hook to pull the wires around the cores. The people making them were mostly housewives who did this as a side-job in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if it's still done that way anywhere in the USA today, but the history of computing and space exploration is littered with "women's work" like this.