Waves, Books, Life

Astronomy, physics, and science, plus music (waves), mostly fantasy books and other media (books), and anything else that comes to mind (life)

[godlessondheimite]

I’m just thinking about how many times I’ve heard my dad on a long call with an obvious scammer and I’ll start begging him to get off the phone because I always think he’s a very easy mark and he’ll just keep going and then after a while he’ll say something like “I died 20 years ago” and hang up.

[godlessondheimite]

Virgin Millennial Daughter with 20 hrs of screentime a day: Dad! They’re scamming you! Dad! Stop! They will take your savings and your identity! Hang up before they SWAT you!

Chad Boomer dad with a flip phone he has not recharged since 2014: Well gee I wish I could give you my bank account number after you spent all this time on the phone explaining this car deal with me but I don’t have access to my finances because I am in Rikers for felony murder.

[shipburner]

I haven't actively used this site in years but this grabbed my imagination so thoroughly I had to draw it

[askjennaflorida]

The art style just made me ask out loud "Damn, when did Calvin transition?"

[homunculus-argument]

a vampire, wrapped tightly with indestructible enchanted threads: No weapon forged against me shall prosper. a blacksmith using the vampire as an anvil while making a sword: Shut the fuck up.

[sexboobomb]

I want to learn more exclamations that aren’t strictly just religious stuff. “Jesus Christ” this, “oh my god” that, nah I want something fresh.

What are some of y’all’s favorite exclamations that aren’t about god?

[sexboobomb]

first submission and we're already off to a fantastic start. absolutely love this one thank you

[sexboobomb]

ok its time for the challenge round now we want nominations that arent about sex either actually

[mbrainspaz]

had a friend who used to make new ones up on the spot. The only one that stuck with me was 'good golly jelly beans'. If something catastrophic happens I go for 'that's not ideal.'

[foldingfittedsheets]

@chekhovs-tantrum

Absolutely not letting you leave these in the tags.

[headspace-hotel]

Today I learned about the Atacama Desert Giant Horsetail

Equisetum xylochaetum

OUGH.

[paleodictyoptera]

ATACAMA DESERT?!?!?

[joemomrgneissguy]

Huh... Neat!

It looks like it hangs out in some canyon stream beds, which makes sense as that's where I would expect to find the most water in such an arid environment. Thinking about how things are in Arizona, groundwater fed springs can often crop up in canyons, and rivers can be fed by them in addition to snow runoff or other precipitation from farther afield. Even if it's dry most of the time, that's where the water is all going to flow to.

They must get plenty of water where they are, because these guys also get Really big. 4 meters high is insane. Really calling back to their ancestors in the Carboniferous there that were some of the first trees.

According to the paper I found, they also have some interesting interactions with fungi and bacteria in transferring nutrients into and out of the soil.

Linked the study these screen grabs are from here

[otterloreart]

ok then why didnt you

[otterloreart]

In honor of this post getting way too many notes i made this

Shes dedicated to all the people who missed the point

[otterloreart]

some people really aren't getting it so i need to clear something up, let me hold your hand through this

^^^THE SAME COMIC. THESE ARE ALL THE SAME.

[normal-horoscopes]

Everyone shut up and look at this carving of a whale from the 1200-600 CE Chumash culture

[theslowesthnery]

ohhhhhh my godddddd

[pointless-letters]

One of the best letters I’ve ever seen just popped up on my Facebook memories. Still makes me laugh.

[pointless-letters]

As today is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s a great time to revisit Dinah from Devon’s memory of this historic event. And yes, still makes me laugh.

[pointless-letters]

Today is the 54th anniversary of the moon landing, but Dinah’s diary entry is still absolutely magnificent.

[pointless-letters]

56th anniversary of the finest moment in human history…..and some folks landing on the moon.

[o-lanterns]

cmon child safety lid you know it's me

[jewish-alluka-deactivated202401]

WHAT does this tag mean

[starblaster]

Richard Nixon once called in staff to help him open an allergy-pill bottle. It was the childproof type of bottle, with instructions saying “Press down while turning.” The cap had teeth marks on it where Nixon had apparently tried to gnaw it open

[beesmygod]

lmfao what the fuck!

source: richard nixon: a psychobiography

[anarchistmemedistro]

i can’t find the reblog chain that mentions it but it’s important to me that people know it was richard nixon himself that had signed the legislation requiring child safety lids on pill bottles

[hydro-homies]

Imagine being the only person alive who can say this

[nevercure]

buzz aldrin and neil armstrong liked to do a thing where they’d tell unfunny jokes at parties about being on the moon and when people were confused they’d go “guess you had to have been there”

[roscolux]

need to beam this tweet directly into everyone's minds right now

[sexygrammaticalerrors]

[escuerzoresucitado]

Pedestrian traffic lights

[sjorsdottir]

Ooooh, we have a bunch of really fancy pedestrian traffic lights in Germany! I need to share:

Starting off with the difference between formerly Eastern German traffic lights (upper images) and formerly Western German traffic lights (lower images):

The city of Erfurt had some additions, like an umbrella or a heart:

Same sex love in Marburg (upper image) and Frankfurt (lower image):

Traffic light lady in Bremen:

Karl Marx light in Trier:

Face of Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal:

Elvis in Friedberg (Hessen):

A sparrow (for the Golden Sparrow film awards) in Gera:

Winemaker in Bad Dürkenheim:

Mainzelmännchen (mascot of the public broadcasting service ZDF) in Mainz:

Otto Waalkes (German Comedian) in Emden:

Town musicians of Bremen in Bremen:

A miner in Pirmasens, Rheinland-Pfalz:

Bishop in Fulda:

Source: Saarbrücker Zeitung

Enjoy!

[translatingpoststogerman]

And we call these "Ampelmännchen" ("traffic lights little man").

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

omg that's amazing! I wanna visit Germany just to take pictures of all the cute traffic lights.

[saveerskine]

From Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

Kate Sheppard, leader for women's suffrage

Kapa haka dancers

And Carmen Rupe, transgender drag queen LGBTQIA+ activist icon

[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)

[heartofalifer]

what was this movie even 

[eddiemoonson]

A cinematic masterpiece.

[angremlin-deactivated20250312]

I CANNOT stress enough that in the Spy Kids films, Danny Trejo is literally playing his titular character from the Machete movies, who happens to be the kids’ uncle, because the movies have the same director

[lang-wich]

what this reply misses is that Machete originated *in* Spy Kids. the Machete movies are Spy Kids spinoffs

[hobgoblinhero]

I think it’s important to make clear that Robert Rodriguez, the director, says that Spy Kids and Machete are alternate universe versions of each other , while Danny Trejo, the actor, says that what happens in Machete is just what he does when he’s not hanging out with the kids

[ouroborosorder]

the problem with writing fantasy is that i have to constantly stop myself from having people say "jesus fucking christ." jesus didn't exist here dammit. i need a fake swear that means the same thing i think

[dominostodoomsday]

This and baseball metaphors are the hardest things to avoid, I swear

[ouroborosorder]

I think I’m gonna let baseball slide. baseball existing in my canon is waaay funnier than catholics existing

[sidechica]

[fashion-runways]

MANISH MALHOTRA Couture Fall/Winter 2027 pls help me get out of debt donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways or dinahlance-shop.fourthwall.com