Protocol dictates Action.

Mostly Star Wars/SWTOR & RWBY, spiced up with random excursions into pretty much everything that somehow ends up on my dash and that I like. German as hell. Oh, and also Eurovision Song Contest once a year. Just as a fair warning. Aside from that, recently I just grab whatever strikes my fancy so that I can show it to my wife.

[hymnism]

wiggles at you

[langernameohnebedeutung]

"Verrohung", "Vertrauenskrise" Brudi, dich mag seit über 20 Jahren keiner 😭

[sforzzz]

im gonna make it big someday just you watch

[sforzzz]

*goes back to jerkin it*

[sforzzz]

waaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitt

[schakira]

hey not to advertise these twats (so don't look them up) but some absolute fucks in paris allegedly created a service where you can "rent air conditioning" (taking advantage of a climate apocalypse) and they make you pay 700€ a month for AC that costs 200€ for life.

[schakira]

image descriptions and translations:

[social media screenshot from Le Parisien, a french journal "renting instead of buying AC, the good deal proposed by [Don't-Look-Them-Up] mid-heatwave."]

[journal article from Le Parisien that reads: "renting instead of buying AC, the good deal proposed by [Don't-Look-Them-Up] mid-heatwave.

Since the start of the summer, acquiring an AC has been challenging. To answer to buyers who are faced with empty storefronts, [Don't-Look-Them-Up] has found a trick: the punctual rental of cooling units."]

ahem. and the review

[One-Star Review: Crooks that profit off of people's distress. He made me an offer for a 9000 BTu AC unit (valued at 280€) for 750€ per month. To avoid.]

[schakira]

they admitted in a video that they bought all the AC units DURING A BIG HEATWAVE all over Paris to empty all stocks, so that people would rely on them to get AC.

there were 3000 deaths due to the heatwave.

[weirdcultstuff]

To myself, raised in an environment that glorified and romanticized restriction and suffering:

There is no victory in skipping dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or morning coffee, or dessert.

There is no victory in refusing heaters and air conditioners and fans and heated blankets.

There is no victory in denying yourself sleep, or showers, or movement, or water, or a comfortable bed, or taking the elevator vs. the stairs.

There is no victory in refusing pain meds and heating pads and ice packs and medical help.

There is no victory in punishing yourself needlessly, in telling yourself that this pain you feel is because you are bad to the core and deserve it.

There is no victory in choking back your laughter and your tears, to keep an imagined equilibrium of safety that is really just a dry, cracked, empty, endless emotional desert.

You are here. You are in this body, and this body is yours. You deserve good things. You are alive, and that is messy and loud, and messy and loud are okay.

It’s okay to live abundantly. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to indulge. This paralysis of self-punishment, self-restriction, self-loathing is not healthy or good for you.

[meangirlnurse]

this is literally a stick and poke tattoo done by a stoned teenager who forgot what cats look like

[meangirlnurse]

😭

[tsarina-anadyomene]

it really is quite bad for your military to have an image of itself as a warrior class. what you really want is for your soldiers to think of themselves as boring professionals who will fill out a report form if someone gets a little too warrior ethos out there

[gsot]

[drmajalis]

[internetgreatesthits]

[mono-red-menace]

[unknown-but-existing]

i feel like this is more funny

[destiel-news-channel]

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'JK Rowling posted upskirt photos of a woman on Twitter' to Cas 'I love you'. /End ID]

No one doing this should be allowed to call themselves a feminist.

JK Rowling deadnamed and posted 'upskirt' photo of trans woman on X

The wealthy author escalated a social media spat that resulted in posting a photo from a 2023 event at the Institute of Economic Affairs in

[solarishashernoseinabook]

Let's not beat around the bush: Children's author JK Rowling sexually harassed someone. In some jurisdictions, this would count as sexual abuse. JK Rowling has committed a sex crime against a woman and fell back on the old rape apologist standby of "she was asking for it".

I hope your nostalgia is worth it

[depsidase]

[bebemoon]

"The sculpture in the image is “Das Schicksal” (Fate), created in 1905 by Hugo Lederer. The sculpture portrays fate as a ruthless woman dragging two vulnerable bodies by their hair.

The work is currently located in Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg, Germany."

from @dustseasons on instagram .

[ohheyitsjustjinx]

[guerrillatech]

[catasters]

[jadeazora]

It's so tiiiiiinnnnnyyyyyy... 🥺😭

[ofools]

not gonna say it again!!!!

a BOG is a wetland that is acidic

a FEN is a wetland that is alkaline

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

FINALLY someone said it!!!!!!!

[quasi-normalcy]

a SWAMP is a wetland whose vegetation consists of trees or other woody plants

a MARSH is a wetland with other forms of vegetation

[lesbianshepard]

#A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

[villainessbian]

a MANGAL is a swamp whose soil concentrates high amounts of salt and very low amounts of oxygen, supporting little else than mangrove trees

a PEATLAND is a wetland whose soil concentrates decaying organic matter, becoming peat

[big-smiling-monkey]

Oh yeah baby, keep coming at me with watery environmental states

[ralfmaximus]

Years ago back when I worked in cubicle land, we were hiring junior software developers. They didn’t have to have a ton of experience, just a willingness to learn, and some demonstration of their software skills. Like: show me a program you wrote (any language) or a web site you designed. Anything.

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team. 

And yes, his cubicle was loaded with ceramic frogs.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

Split-joint seals (骑缝章qifengzhang)are still widely used on important paper documents in modern China, an anti-tampering technique passed down from ancient times. They are applied across the edge of multi-page contracts, bidding documents and official archives. If any page is removed or replaced, the broken seal pattern can prove the file has been altered.

[ariaste]

OMG I got so excited about this because they used a really similar (though far less refined) version of this for contracts in the European medieval period!

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Delights me when human beings find similar ways to solve the same problem at two different ends of the world. <3