Insight to my Life

Emily, 29, she/her, and welcome to my humble abode. I reblog whatever strikes my fancy that day. Thanks for the views!

[pronouncingitwang]

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

[yokowan]

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

[le-jardin-inculte]

at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly

[shithowdy]

at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.

[whitachi]

at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.

[araceil]

At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.

[determinate-negation]

unfortunate that the united states has been very successful at controlling narratives around word war 2 and positioning itself as the polar opposite of nazism and the main force fighting fascism when america was complicit in the holocaust. not only did american press report positively about hitler and the nazi party up until the end of the 30′s, some publications cooperated with nazi germany, american companies had investments and connections to nazi germany that they maintained until american involvement in the war, and companies like ibm in particular gave nazis the technology necessary to make the holocaust possible in the first place. some company owners themselves had nazi sympathies like henry ford and others just saw it as a business opportunity. the us denied entry to european jewish refugees and deported jewish refugees back to germany, many senators and other government officials during the 1930s openly supported nazism and worked to prevent the us from taking a side in ww2, and during the 30s large pro nazi rallies were held across the us. american eugenics movement, american race laws and american genocide set the model for the holocaust and there shouldnt be any discussion of nazism and the holocaust without also discussing the extent of american complicity in it. 

anyways heres some material on it

ibm and the holocaust

hitlers american friends

ap press cooperation with nazis

hitlers american model

general motors and nazi germany

operation paperclip

us reporting on the rise of fascism

[immaplatypus]

“so this week my town made the news for—” nope

“there’s a restaurant two miles from my house called—” nope

“today I learned [celeb] went to my high school—” nope nope nope nope nope

these are all real posts I’ve seen on the internet that allowed me to identify a user’s hometown instantly. if it’s a small town, that’s doubly dangerous, because a bad actor could trace you just by a unique first name or selfie you once posted. in an age where doxxing and stalking are some of the worst I’ve ever seen it, you HAVE to think twice about what you’re posting online.

i once saw a 13-year old post an image they noted as being “a few miles from their house.” it had a theater in the shot with a unique enough name to be local. one google maps search, now everyone knew not only what city they lived in, but the possible neighborhoods in that radius too. and they had a HUGE following…who all knew this was a 13-year-old child.

so yeah. not to sound like a 90s internet safety PSA…but I’m gonna be that PSA for a minute.

if you’re posting an image, there is NO need to say that you live there. you could just be traveling. “saw this in Montana” is better than “saw this by my house!”

before you post about a venue, especially a restaurant or small store, check and see if it’s local—CRUCIALLY if it has only one or two locations. people might travel to arenas or convention centers, but they’re far less likely to be traveling to Bartleby’s Fish and Chips. if it’s an anecdote and you still live nearby, you can honestly just leave the name out entirely.

if you’re sharing a news story, it can just be a story you found and wanted to share. you don’t have to clarify “it happened in my town,” because even if you don’t mention your town name, an easily-googled news article will.

if you’re seeing a concert or meeting a celebrity on a tour that’s stopped locally, wait until they’ve hit a few more venues before you post about it, or at the very least wait until you get home. this is honestly a smart move for any event you attend: unless you’re marketing yourself, there’s no need to advertise your location in real time.

check your selfie backgrounds for anything identifying. this includes city names on venues, school names, street signs, and house numbers.

this stuff is flexible if you no longer live in your hometown, or if your city is particularly big, but there’s STILL no reason to tie yourself to your school, your workplace, or your street. you can call it paranoid, but as someone who’s seen my friends get literal death threats over fictional characters before, the last thing I want is someone willing to act on those threats finding out where they live.

anyway. PSA over. does a kickflip or whatever

[shadowgremlin]

My wife’s idea of decompressing after the busy holiday was to rearrange every piece of furniture in our home is this an ADHD thing or just a her thing

I’m not complaining the way she’s done it is much better than it was it’s just like how is this your idea of a relaxing weekend

[kaity--did]

Listen I don't get to decide when the drunk elf that is my executive actually does the functioning but when he does we have a SMALL WINDOW OF TIME before he finds the schnapps again and we're done

[honeysbunchesofoats]

[kaity--did]

yes this exactly

[luminouspica]

So to me, there are spoons (general energy cost) and carnival tickets (specific energy cost).

Spoons can be used pretty much anywhere.

Carnival tickets are only good for the carnival, and it’s only in town for a limited amount of time.

So like, if I get “kitchen cleaning” carnival tickets, I can’t use that to clean my bedroom, that’s not where the carnival is.

[lingonberry24]

phrase added to permanent vocabulary

[mysharona1987]

[okiitos]

Rescue professional here:

If you need rescuing or help, DON’T FUCKING MOVE. You are so much easier to find when you stay put.

[thegreenpea]

Credits: @foxes-in-love

Your most important survival skill is asking for help

[existential-dread-in-the-am]

Goddamn preach this

[rogue-cyberman]

"Your most important survival skill is asking for help." THIS, it makes me so damn pissed off when parents try and normalize that asking for help is a taboo thing!

[isthescavengervideocute]

This feels important to reblog

[miseducatedmelanicmuse]

Like a new friend!

[adrenaline-revolver]

“Eridians dislike earth because they abandoned Grace.” *Incorrect Buzzer Sound* ya missed the point of the story buddy! It’s not about someone being ‘bad’ it’s about the incredible power of love and that love being worth dying for!

Gimmie Eridians who are absolutely heartbroken to hear that humans where so desperate and so scared that they where willing to part with not just one Grace, there were three of them! Gimmie Eridians touched to find that the humans planned a way for their sacrifices to be as comfortable as possible. Gimmie Eridians who send earth a message saying “We know it must have hurt to send your heroes to die, but one made it and he’s safe here. We lost 22 good Eridians on the journey we would have lost 23 if not for your Grace.”

Give me humans sitting on Earth slowly coming to the conclusion that when we look up not only are we not alone, someone out there is alive because of one of us. That no matter what we think of ourselves a whole species thinks highly of us because we helped save the galaxy. Give me humans who figure out how to send a probe to Erid filled to the brim with messages for Grace and footage of a monument being raised that reads his name, his crews names, and then “in memory of the 22 Eridians who lost their lives on the journey to save the stars.”

[karlyanalora]

I think some of the Eridians send messages specifically for Stratt. I think Adrien does. “I know how hard it must have been to send Grace to die and sending him away scared. But he’s safe now. He may have been mad at you, but I’m not. I can’t be. Without your choice, I would have lost Rocky and we would have both lost our homes forever. Thank you Eva Stratt, sender of heroes.”

[killowave]

[supremeshogunrj]

The longer it takes for this to come across your dash the funnier it is

[libraryogre]

Which will fade first? Memories of the Area 51 "raid", or memories of Internet Explorer?

[str8aura-no-not-that-one]

Oh my god....

[ryebreadgf]

just learned americans have different standard paper sizes than everyone else. what do you MEAN you don’t have A4 as the standard. what do you mean your standard paper size isn’t even the same size as an A4. apparently it’s like. ’letter’ and ’legal’ and whatever else. help!!!

[ryebreadgf]

this is so scary

[huggingtentacles]

That has to be false. That's misinformation hold on

[huggingtentacles]

holy fucking shit

[hydro-dragon]

So I work in engineering; and always wondered who used these weird “A” sizes I’d see in large printer settings that I’ve never seen any company even have paper in stock for. Now I know.

And now I have to be one of those obnoxious US Americans because WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU USE THESE WEIRD UNEVEN DIMENSIONS!? Even in metric most of the “A” settings are an annoying ratio! 210x297mm? 594x841mm!? What’s the point of using such small units of measurement if you’re not going to make sensible sizes!?

[psychuan]

because the largest standard paper size is A0 which is exactly one square metre of paper with an aspect ratio of the square root of two. this gives us a nice simple measurement of area for the paper as well as allows us to do the halving/doubling magic. A1 is 0.5m², A2 is 0.25m² etc.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The halving/doubling magic that psychaun refers to is the fact that you can get each paper in the series by cutting the previous one in half. I fold some A4 paper in half, I have an A5 booklet. I tape two A4 pieces together along their long side, I have an A3 piece. Each piece of paper is half the area of the previous and half the width of the previous' length with a length the same as the previous' width. The aspect ratio is exactly the same for every size. This makes it very easy to resize things, fold things inside each other, and calculate the size of paper you've never used before based on its name. "I can resize this to fit any other paper size because the aspect ratio is identical," "I can fold a standard size in half to get the next standard size down" and "the area I'm working with can be multiplied up to fit into a metre squared without any messy fractions of leftover paper" are all far more practical considerations for a paper size than "the millimetre length of this paper size isn't a round number".

[earhartsease]

fyi there are also B sizes in paper, which fit in between the A sizes - less often used but good for book covers and stuff

a Bn size is the mean between An and An-1

and then C sizes for envelopes, such that a C4 envelope fits an unfolded sheet of A4 etc

[spectrallydistracted]

Reblogging because this is something I find interesting.

Also because it’s another example of how the United States has to do things differently—to its detriment.

[vaspider]

This is a bad take, friend.

The US doesn't "have to do things different" for the sake of doing things differently, as your words imply, nor is the sentence above about who uses what paper fully correct, either*.

The reason that the US (and Canada, most of Central America, Chile, and the Philippines) use different standard sizes* from Europe is probably pretty easy to figure out when you think about things like "there's a big fucking ocean between two of those places, but not between all of the countries in Europe."

The standard size of paper, according to the American Forest and Paper Association, comes from the days of manual paper-making, and their assertion that 44" is about the length of the average experienced vatsman's comfortable grasp. So a sheet is 1/4" that length. The US standardized its own paper according to what legacy equipment it had, and keeps those standards because even today, paper tends to not be shipped back and forth between Europe and the US unless it has to be, because paper and books are really fucking heavy, so why should either one of us change our standards? Doing so would require massive amounts of capital investment, and frankly, we like our paper sizes just fine. It's really not to our detriment at all. We don't really import a lot of paper, and in fact, we export a lot of it.

American paper sizes are also half of each previous size, it's just that our base is a rectangle, not a square, uses imperial measurements, and reaches back to measurements based on manual paper-making. Sure, we could spend billions of dollars changing our standards to meet that of countries that don't supply us with this good, creating a massive amount of industrial and consumer waste as everything from paper manufacturing mills and industrial printing presses to plastic binders and hole punches at schools all become garbage, but... why? We also use different standard sizes of snack food bags, based on how our industries developed, but there's no actual reason for those things to be standardized, so why, exactly, should they be? Because it bothers someone who doesn't use our machines and didn't know until today that it was different? That's not a real reason. That's just "haha the US sucks and is dumb and irrational."

No, it's actually super fucking rational when you remember that most European countries are smaller than US states, and we're standardized across the places where paper actually moves back and forth in massive bulk on a regular basis. You know: our own states, and Canada, and not Europe, on account of this being a huge fucking continent and paper being incredibly heavy and expensive to transport across oceans. That's why it's governed by the American National Standards Institute, which also governs or governed stuff like thread standards for nuts and bolts & exposure standards for film. The latter had the ANSI standard become the ISO standard, which is a great example of technology which was developed more recently and more specialized and thus not so deeply rooted and hard to change being much more possible to standardize.

tl;dr: all industrial standards like paper sizes have valid and long-argued reasons why they're like that, and unless you're coughing up the solution for changing something with hundreds of years of built-up infrastructure without breaking all of the industries that depend on that standard, the cash to do it, and the reason why all the old equipment that can't be converted should become garbage... fuck off, man, and leave us alone. There are real problems in the world, go solve those.

*While many Mesoamerican countries have officially adopted ISO standards, ANSI standard paper is most commonly in use day to day.

[subversivecynic]

Thanks (honorific) Spider for the very salient argument.

[rubyvroom]

[rubyvroom]

Yeah, it's time to get this post out again

[fhauly]

repeat after me: i am a sexy bitch and no one ruins my 2014

[heirtocragflame]

I am a sexy bitch and no one ruins my 2014

[beardedmrbean]

[hbbisenieks]

I truly thought that the end of this would be "but then Elon killed the program and now rabies is on the rise" so I'm glad it's still running

[sunshinemoonrx]

HUH?

Most cop thing I've ever read. what the fuck are you talking about. The posts you're looking for might be on this website but we won't show them to you???

[sunshinemoonrx]

I'm sure all my settings are set to "yes show me mature content no don't filter anything" what are you TALKING ABOUT

[sunshinemoonrx]

the posts are ON THE WEBSITE. I can't search dirty words?? am I five??? is this club penguin??? when I get you

[skeletal-spire-man]

THE LIKE BUTTON IS GAY FOR PRIDE MONTH??????

Edit; you need to reblog the pride tags for it to work on reblogs (On web at least) (for me you do, may be a me problem)

[catchymemes]

[newtonpermetersquare]

So that’s basically how it went down

[tricornking]

I resent just how fucking accurate this shitpost is, congratulations OP, you effectively illustrated how Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection became accepted by the wider public using a FUCKING MUPPETS MEME, here is your A+, get the hell out of my office

[3liza]

Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth

A lifesaving injection given at birth to prevent severe bleeding has become collateral damage of the anti-vaccine movement.

talk to your coworkers about this. remember that the "taking advice from everyone except the experts" thing cuts both ways. you can be the non-expert guy at work who isnt an expert and gives someone advice they decide to follow based on vibes, but your advice can be the right advice instead. this is something we can all do.

the vitamin k shot has zero side effects, it is literally just a vitamin that does nothing except prevent babies from bleeding to death internally. its one of those things that does absolutely nothing except what it's supposed to do, is cheap, and has drastically reduced infant mortality this century and the last