the persistent beat

the loneliness never left me, I always took it with me, but I could put it down in the pleasure of your company

[little-pondhead]

[little-pondhead]

[rohirric-hunter]

"You could get up early and do it before work" I could also wait for a magic beanstalk to start growing in my living room LMAO. Let's focus on things that happen in the real world

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I have had a really full and busy day today, but the highlight was:

So I'm sitting in the staff work area and one of my colleagues comes up to me. There's an open day this weekend, and so we need to plan an activity for the would-be students.

"Simple!" I say. "Let's get them to dissect some owl pellets. Hands on, fun, they get to play with skulls."

"Good idea!" she says. "But we'll need something even fancier for the open day in February. What can we do? Perhaps we can take some soil samples."

And as we're debating the photogenic merits of soil Vs dead mice...

Suddenly, a Dashing and Handsome Stranger (read: an autistic engineering lecturer) appears with a flourish (read: launches himself into a seat beside us while visibly and physically vibrating with excitement about his special interest being Useful) and asks "HELLO I'M SORRY DID YOU SAY SOIL BECAUSE I HAVE A RAMAN MICROSCOPE"

"Amazing!" declares my colleague. "...Who are you?"

"COME AND SEE IT!!!" he says, currently the human embodiment of the :D emoticon.

We went and saw it. It's an excellent microscope and his ten minute infodump about it was both spectacular and also extremely useful. We're going to use it to assess microplastics.

I have a new friend.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Guess who I saw again today! I say 'saw', he hunted me down to invite me to train on using his microscopes - it turned out some of the engineers asked if they could look at explosive substances with it and he was like NO YOU MAY NOT IT'S POWERED BY A LASER so now he's insisting that everyone train on it, but wanted to ask me if I'd like to do it. Obviously I have said yes. He's getting an SEN as well so he's put my name down for that, too.

And then we compared notes on working in labs, and he told me about the time he was sent to the 'chemical cupboard' in his last lab and found a Tesco bag of asbestos, three and a half kilos of TNT, and half a pint of cyanide, and when he told the health and safety woman she just said he should use a lone working protocol, and he was so angry he yelled A LONE WORKING PROTOCOL WILL NOT SAVE THE CHILDREN FROM A DIRTY BOMB, CAROLINE

I love this man

[shotgunfullofbabies]

Why did the chemical cupboard have three and a half kilos of trinitrotolulene (the full name for TNT, for those unaware), and was it at the very least an explosives cupboard?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

It was not in an explosives cupboard, and he didn't know. Basically this was in an HE building being converted over to a young offenders institute, and for whatever reason, all the science teachers quit en masse as the switch was happening, leaving all their students in the lurch. So one morning he came into work, was told he was being promoted to Technical Demonstrator, given a Bunch of Mysterious Keys, and told he had three hours to familiarise himself with the contents of the chemical cupboard.

"Great," he said. "Where is the chemical cupboard?"

"Shrug emoji," his boss said gravely, and wandered off to have crisps.

So he spent an hour wandering the building and trying his keys in every lock before finally finding a door that opened, and upon finally opening it, was immediately greeted by a Tesco carrier bag on the floor labelled 'Asbestos, do not touch'.

"Right-o," he thought. "No touching that."

But then he had two hours left to familiarise himself with the packed shelf contents of quite a large room, and the problem is that when you tell an autistic lab tech to familiarise themselves with a room full of chemicals, what they hear is not "Have a quick look so you have an idea of what's there", it's "These chemicals must be catalogued in detail and also here have a time pressure," so he was going to be both Thorough and Grumpy about this. And this room was packed.

The oldest bottle he found was a reagent opened in 1959.

It had crystallised.

("It was quite beautiful, actually," he told me dreamily. "A work of art. I wish I'd kept it.")

The cyanide, when he finally found it, was in a stoppered glass vial. So that was the point he lost his shit and went and grabbed Caroline.

The kicker is, Caroline didn't care. She insisted they didn't have the money or resources to spare on getting rid of it. So he had to march all the way to the Dean's office.

"You look like you're having a bad day," she said warily.

"Well I thought it would peak with the Tesco carrier bag of asbestos I found," he said, "but I was very wrong."

And that's how you give your boss a heart attack.

[probuccalfat]

great! now do the same medical study with women

[probuccalfat]

[dykecinema]

there should be a jesus on the cross emoji. not for any religious reasons. just so I can use it for every slight inconvenience.

[yupthatexists]

Scientists have just discovered some rocks at the bottom of the ocean can make oxygen... and they do it in complete darkness!

These aren’t magic stones, they’re polymetallic nodules, potato-sized metal lumps packed with manganese, cobalt, and nickel.

But here’s the twist; when seawater flows over their surfaces, they generate tiny electric currents that can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. No sunlight, no photosynthesis, just deep-sea chemistry creating breathable gas in the pitch black.

This “dark oxygen” could explain how deep-sea creatures survive in low-oxygen zones far from the surface. What's even wilder is that if this can happen on Earth, it could be happening right now in the hidden oceans of Europa or Enceladus, two icy moons that scientists think might host alien life.

[unfriendlybat]

Linky

Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor - Nature Geoscience

Oxygen is generated abiotically at the abyssal seafloor in the presence of polymetallic nodules, potentially by seawater electrolysis, accor

[discordantq]

Oh fuck yeah

[cognitivejustice]

Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF

[ramshacklefey]

Excellent resource if you're new to sewing and want to start doing some clothing repair!

[queenofzan]

Professional seamstress here, who has taught intro to sewing many times, saying: this guide is excellent!

[leac-art]

Round boi inspired by the radish tattoo on my ankle. If that's not meaningful art, what is ? 🫜

[sailermoon]

you used to be able to go onto a tag after finishing a movie and see all sorts of gifsets. now you have to comb through reader insert fanfiction. we used to be a society

[sexygaywizard]

FUCK AMERICA HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY CEASAR SALAD 🇲🇽🇲🇽🇲🇽❗❗❗

[kaban-bang]

[dollsahoy]

I cannot stress enough that all those things in sewing pattern instructions that seem pointless are actually very important

Yes, how you fold your fabric before putting down the pattern pieces and cutting matters, because it influences how the fabric drapes, and ignoring that can cause fit issues in ways you wouldn't expect

Yes, cutting an entire separate piece to sew to the edge to finish it is going to be better than turning the edge and stitching it on its own, because there are geometry issues in play that make it actually harder to just fold a curve to the inside.

Yes, cutting clips or notches into the seam allowance around curves should always be done, because those geometry issues will work on the seam allowances and keep the curve from laying flat (remember, clip when the curve goes in, notch when the curve goes out)

Yes, interfacing may seem completely superfluous and frustrating and an extra step to work with, but it adds rigidity and stability to areas that need it (especially under buttons)

Yes, using a fun quilting cotton print for lining looks nice, but the point of lining isn't to make the inside pretty as much as it is to make the inside slip smoothly over the layer under it, and quilting cotton is going to instead be prone to grabbing everything under it, so you really should use those annoyingly slippery lining fabrics

Yes, in general, you should use the kind of fabric the pattern tells you to use, because there have been centuries, if not millennia, of people throughout the entire world figuring out what fabric best suits what kind of garment, for reasons beyond aesthetics

I know that a lot of people new to sewing see these things and feel like they're things that just aren't necessary, because they skip them when they sew and the item ends up just fine. And if you don't mind the idea of your clothes looking homemade, then it is fine. But...if you're consistently skipping these things and end up unhappy with how homemade your items look, please consider that that result is at least partly because you're not following the entire directions

"Sewing" involves so much more than just the stitches

[byjove]

One of the funniest things about Mormonism is that I’m sure Joseph Smith never believed any of the bullshit he said. There are some religions and cults where you have faith the original prophet actually thought they were talking to angels or believed the set of principles they laid out for their followers were for the greater good. Joseph Smith was a dumbass but like PT Barnum he realized a sucker was born every day and he was one step above the average 1830s sucker. He went from making people pay him to look at a rock in a top hat and ‘locate buried treasure’ to receiving lost bits of scripture, through the rock and top hat method. His wife caught him cheating and he said an angel visited him and told him men should be allowed multiple wives and not obeying that would send her to hell. I’m fairly convinced that dude was an atheist. He was on that hustler grindset. Brigham Young might have actually believed some of the shit he said but I don’t think Joseph Smith genuinely had faith in Mormonism or gave a fuck about humanity in the slightest.

[byjove]

Few people hustle and scam so hard that they’re considered a martyr and a prophet 200 years later and their fanfiction is considered serious lost biblical scripture even though they stole lines from Shakespeare.

[gin-juice-tonic]

I used to be a proficient googler who never wasted a word but since Google is near useless no matter how good you are at it now I have reverted to just typing in entire questions like an old person

[sexhaver]

im trying to watch this guy analyzing Nightreign relics and keep getting distracted because he has his parakeet on his shoulder in the webcam and it's the same color as his greenscreen

[erines]

[ratsetflummi]

happy "closer to 2050 than 2000" day everyone

[fred-the-dinosaur]

[artbytesslyn]

Sappho with Violets.

I made a painting for an LGBT+ fundraiser and forgot to ever post it here 🥲 It’s colored pencil, graphite, gel pen and ink washes

Shop | Comic | Patreon

[pangur-and-grim]

I’m sorry I just don’t believe that most people have an inner voice in their head that speaks their thoughts for them. that sounds made up. why do you need a voice. just think in silence like a goat or a dog, it’s better that way

[pangur-and-grim]

do you have the voice??

yes

no

I’m bald/ vanilla extract

Voting ended onJun 28, 2025