It's meeee

🌟 she/her 🌟

[totally-cis-offical]

Wait that explains everything so so much

[rainbow-demoness]

And since we don't face direct punishment for missing positive social cues like we do for negative ones, our coping skills and compensatory hypervigilance don't develop the same way. So we go through a world of never recognising positive signals, sometimes spotting negative signals, and knowing for sure there's more negative signals we're still missing, because those keep blowing up in our face.

Kind of fucked tbh.

[porterdavis]

[nochd]

Complication: Compare the following four phrases.

the big bad wolf

the bad big wolf

a little good boy

a good little boy

Which ones are correct English?

[zzazarin]

I think they're all correct, but not all the same sort of construction. #2 and #4 are normal - they're a noun and add adjectives. #1 and #3 otoh apply adjectives to a combined noun. I don't know the official name for this, but the sort of thing where in German you'd remove the space, and in English in some cases you'd add a dash. A pine-forest.

So they're a big 'bad wolf' and a little 'good boy'.

I've seen another post about this before and commenters got into a discussion, and one example exemplifies it pretty well - you can have a 'big brown cat' or a 'brown big cat'. But they're different. The first vibes to 'maine coon' and the second to 'lion' or thereabouts.

[nochd]

Pardon my curiosity, but is English your native language?

To me (native English speaker) #1 and #4 are correct and #2 and #3 are errors. I don't think this is just because The Big Bad Wolf is a recognised folktale character; a big ugly building to me feels correct while a little nice treat is an error.

Actually---

Which two options feel more correct?

#1 and #3; English is my native language

#1 and #3; English is not my native language

#1 and #4; English is my native language

#1 and #4; English is not my native language

#2 and #3; English is my native language

#2 and #3; English is not my native language

#2 and #4; English is my native language

#2 and #4; English is not my native language

Nuance option (reblog and explain); English is my native language

Nuance option (reblog and explain); English is not my native language

Remaining time: 1 day 1 hour

[zzazarin]

It's not, though I'm very very immersed. I read a lot a lot.

I don't disagree that 1 and 4 are more correct, though tbh I think 1-2 is a bad example precisely for recognizable folktale character reasons. It's hard to get confounding factors like that out of your subconscious.

I just think 2 and 3 could be correct. Like, in this specific construction 2 feels less correct than 1, but 'evil little cat' would, in turn, feel more correct than 'little evil cat', without the folktale character confounding factor.

Of course, there can also be confounding factors like mouthfeel or grandfathering - big ugly building isn't just random adjectives added to 'building', it's a phrase I've seen verbatim in many places before, and similarly 'big bad' might just *sound* better to English speakers than 'bad big', because of how ingrained 'big bad' is in the lexicon as a phrase.

I think the rule is probably right in general, but like with so many things, there are sparkling exceptions. Like with irregular verbs.

[porterdavis]

[nochd]

Complication: Compare the following four phrases.

the big bad wolf

the bad big wolf

a little good boy

a good little boy

Which ones are correct English?

[zzazarin]

I think they're all correct, but not all the same sort of construction. #2 and #4 are normal - they're a noun and add adjectives. #1 and #3 otoh apply adjectives to a combined noun. I don't know the official name for this, but the sort of thing where in German you'd remove the space, and in English in some cases you'd add a dash. A pine-forest.

So they're a big 'bad wolf' and a little 'good boy'.

I've seen another post about this before and commenters got into a discussion, and one example exemplifies it pretty well - you can have a 'big brown cat' or a 'brown big cat'. But they're different. The first vibes to 'maine coon' and the second to 'lion' or thereabouts.

[picsthatmakeyougohmm]

hmmm

[rubykgrant]

You BEHEAD Marie Antoinette?

[commodorecliche]

you CHOP her head like the GUILLOTINE??

[quadradaz]

OH OH CHAOS FOR FRANCE! CHAOS FOR FRANCE FOR 1000 YEARS!!!!

[petermorwood]

Pity I hadn’t seen this closer to Bastille Day… :-D

[redcurlzbychoice]

Marie Antoimiette

[zim-kinnie]

Whenever Americans use Cryillic like. That. I just. Instantly shrivel up an cry

[zim-kinnie]

Like idk how to tell you this but н isnt h and и isnt n

[skyheartstar13]

It’s true and you should say it.

[zim-kinnie]

Я isnt R

Р isnt P

В isnt B

[shipping-is-life-1-0-1]

If you want to explain, what does it mean then? 0.0

[zim-kinnie]

н makes n sound,и makes ee sound, я makes ya sound, р makes r sound, в makes v sound

[shimmedmilk]

you mean, like, ня?

[aveture]

oh no. It can be made with Cyrillic now

[zim-kinnie]

ня

[verminviscount]

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE EXPLAINED

[zim-kinnie]

НЯ

[degenerate-perturbation]

НЯ

[give-fnc-chocolate]

[zicygomar]

[exvind]

OH. GOD.

[lizord-lord]

THATS SO FUNNY

[homunculus-argument]

A three-circle venn-diagram where the circles are "sex workers", "the furry community", and "people working in morgues". I don't know what the overlap parts are.

[flufflogic]

Fourth circle needed: IT workers

[homunculus-argument]

You say that with such confidence that I am compelled to trust your vision. Personally I have no idea where this is going.

[trytocallmecal]

i'd say the overlap between "sex workers" and "people who work in morgues" is probably "seeing naked strangers a lot"

[homunculus-argument]

"professional handling of bodies of strangers"?

[small-gods-curator]

Putting my neck out for you folks here

[tryan-a-bex]

Okay I’ve gone through many of the reblogs and “prefer when clients don’t talk to them” is peak

[tiktoksformyfriends]

[video by soupygarbagejuice. original caption: stuie]

[bitemeilovewaffles]

"I guess I would scream too if I knew a God could hear me" is too much of a raw line to come from a tik tok about a cat

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

vibes tbh

[swagophile]

important reminder that most people you follow online are significantly lamer than you think they are including me. and if you feel insecure comparing yourself to someone online: DON'T. theyre probably also lame and weird. most people on the internet are

[most-sane-classicist]

reblog if you're also lame and weird.

[marinella-ela]

[drtanner]

The soft eyes! The forward facing ears! The question mark tail! Not to mention the poise and control! This little dude is having a blast and is SO good at it!!

[ihaveashrinkray]

[mikkeneko]

[whatcoloristhatcat]

black spotted tabby

[boymounter]

so many people don't understand how abelist it is to kill your brother with a rock

[birdplushie]

"it's not that deep" START DIGGING!!

[magn-animously]

DIG

[14-opossums-in-a-trenchcoat]

DIG

[buriedunderyourmum]

DIG

[hannisconfused]

DIG

[kitsunesakii]

DIG

[yourlocalfandomfriendo]

DIG

[apple-notplural]

DIG

[vivitur-moritur]

DIG

[spacecat24-7]

DIG

[chub-froggy]

DIG

[thatghostthateatspeople]

DIG

[krowbreaker]

DIG

[spid-the-spider]

DIG

[annabelle--cane]

DIG

[yellow-faerie]

DIG

[vampiraptor]

[philosopherking1887]

OOPS TOO DEEP

[breaks-hetheon]

CLIMB

[artist-of-obsessions]

CLIMB

[fablegate]

CLIMB

[marzibird]

CLIMB

[the-luckyrabbit]

CLIMB

[staarbles]

CLIMB

[modmad]

[sebwritesstories]

[daughter-of-sapph0]

tw lying

Keep reading

[gallusrostromegalus]

A cat is a machine that turns proteins into violence.

[starathsbunker]

#Helios was declawed by his former owners so he doesn't just slap things he dislikes like most cats#he really only feels confident in hissing at them#Especially because a lot of the thing he doesn't like are bugs and those are sharp sometimes :(#Selene has figured this out and now when she hears him hiss she sprints over the kill the fuck out of the bug#Helios has learned she will do this so he'll hiss at stuff louder and louder until she hears him#A nervous old man and his emotional support homicidal maniac tags by @gallusrostromegalus

I couldn't reblog without the tags because the context is hilarious

[gallusrostromegalus]

A Nervous Old Man (right) and his Emotional Support Violence Machine (Left)

Yes, he is more than twice her size. Yes, he is five times her age. Yes, he cries like a big baby until she kills Unacceptable Scary Things (earwigs) for him.

[cm8x-insanity]

I couldn't get these two and their dynamic out of my head, @gallusrostromegalus I doodled them (guessed on their collars)

[gallusrostromegalus]

OH MY GOD MY CATS HAVE FANART

[hutsonwoolyums]

It’s vitally important that people remember that no matter how many followers someone has on here they’re still literally just some person with a blog and not, like, The Authority on anything.

[crazy-pages]

Wait no, please come back here and tell me about the librarian rifts. I need to know!

I can offer laser facts in trade.

[asmallmadhope]

Well laser facts are too good a deal to pass up!! A few of the Big Discussions in librarianship right now (and my correct opinions about them) (sorry this is so long this is literally the thing I think most about please don't feel obligated to read everything!)

Do cops belong in libraries? - As other public institutions and social services continue getting defunded, libraries (at least big urban public libraries like mine) are seeing upswings in threats or violent incidents in the library. To me, the solution is to focus on de-escalation training for staff, improved partnerships with social services that can meet underlying needs, and a better tolerance for behavior that is potentially uncomfortable but not harmful in the library. To some of my peers, having cops in the library to handle any situations and throw people out, then ban them from using the library for a month to a year is preferable. (In my experience, involving the cops makes everything worse, and I say this as someone who's dealt with sexual harassment, threats, and near-violence between patrons while in charge of a library, all without calling the cops.)

Does AI belong in the library? - Somehow, despite being literal information professionals, some of my colleagues still think that using AI for library work is a good idea. As someone who values correct information over shortcuts to faulty information, I feel strongly that it is not.

Are libraries neutral, and what does that mean? - "Libraries are neutral" is a phrase that's been bandied about for at least a decade. Mostly, this has been used to say that libraries shouldn't be taking sides politically, shouldn't be restricting information for patrons or judging their information needs, and should be accessible to as many people as possible. To me, these are actually three different concepts! Surprise bonus bullet points:

1) In attempting to be politically neutral, often libraries elect to ignore that one political "opinion" is backed by facts, or that some political stances are in direct opposition to the ostensible values of the library. This is also the version of library neutrality most likely to be weaponized against library staff and patrons pushing for social change (I have seen it especially used against pro-Palestine staff). I think we have an obligation to our patrons and staff to act on information that we have, even if that results in politically controversial actions

2) I agree that we should not restrict information; however, we are not able to provide complete access to every book in existence because of issues like budget and space. This means our collections are necessarily curated, and curation choices can be very controversial. For example, do you buy a book with misinformation about vaccines simply because your community is requesting it? What if that purchase prevents you from buying another book that is scientifically-backed, but is not currently being requested? This point can be more gray to me (there are many reasons someone might read the former book besides being anti-vax), but in my own curation decisions, I typically am aiming to create a collection that's as high-quality and accurate as possible.

3) Access to the library is the most important pillar of this to me, and where I am most aligned with a "neutral" opinion. I believe that the library has an obligation to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. Part of this hearkens back to my point about cops in libraries; the existence of a cop in a library immediately makes the space inaccessible to people who have reason to fear cops in their spaces. Another element of this is library rules which are intentionally designed to punish houselessness; odor rules, baggage limits, no sleeping etc. These make the library immediately less accessible! However, there are often conflicting access needs (e.g. someone who has a strong body odor vs. someone who gets odor-based migraines) that have to be taken into account. My general opinion is that it's our responsibility to navigate these needs in such a way that as many people as possible are able to use the library, but again, some of my colleagues would just prefer that some people don't use the library at all.

Anyway, this is the terribly long version of several major library questions right now! There are so many more (as I'm sure there are in every profession) and some of these, I might be wrong about! Again, I am not the authority, just one person doing a job. I'm deeply curious to hear more about lasers though!

[crazy-pages]

👀

I was aware of these issues, but it's fascinating to get to hear about it from the perspective of someone who needs to actively debate the merits with their colleagues! Thank you very much!

As for laser facts, let's talk about-

Plasma shielding!

High power lasers transmit wayyyy less energy into materials than you'd expect - a back of the envelope calculation calculation of how quickly a laser should drill though matter based on its spot size, power, and the energy it takes to vaporize the material will overestimate the drilling speed by almost 100x or more! In fact this is a big part of the reason why laser weapons are so rare and have such limited uses (mostly anti-drone), lasers just kind of suck at melting and abalting things.

But how does that work you might ask? Where is the energy going? It can't just vanish.

It's going into plasma!

Plasma is what you get when you jiggle electrons strongly enough that they are torn off of atoms and float around semi-freely. Now a cool (heh) thing about plasma is that plasma can absorb and reflect light, but only if it's very dense. To strongly absorb and reflect visible light, you need a density of free electrons approaching or even exceeding the density of atoms. That's not usually possible because there's not much binding a plasma together, it would really rather fly apart like a hot gas.

Normally, to turn matter into a plasma that dense before it can fly apart, you would need very extreme temperatures. Hundreds of thousands of degrees celcius, many times hotter than the surface of the Sun. But lasers cheat! Even a sparse plasma can absorb a little bit of light. And when a strong laser starts melting or ablating a surface, it creates a tiny bit of plasma. That plasma doesn't absorb much of the laser light, but there's also not many electrons in it. So when they eat a tiny bit of the laser light that's still a lot of energy per electron. So those electrons get very hot and move very fast, and they collide with other electrons that are bound to atoms in the material. And they hit them so hard they they tear those electrons off, making more plasma, making the plasma absorb more light, making more fast electrons, making more plasma! And it just keeps going!

This is called a plasma cascade and it turns matter into plasma very effectively. (Yes it's an awesome name, I love it.)

And the result is that lasers strong enough to melt or ablate matter make a tiny layer of plasma a few microns wide (just tens of thousands of atoms) that's as dense as solid matter. In fact it can even be denser, because each atom has multiple electrons, you can get a plasma which has more electrons in a volume than the matter it was made from.

But then this plasma eats the laser! The laser energy pours into the plasma rather than the material beneath it! If this makes the plasma extremely hot, thousands of degrees Celsius at a minimum and easily over ten thousand degrees Celcius, even with lasers that are only powerful enough to melt tiny spots of metal. (It's very tricky to measure and simulate so we don't have a ton of data on this, but it's always VERY hot with the data we have.)

Okay, you might say, so the laser makes a bunch of plasma right on top of the material and then superheats it hotter than the surface of the Sun. This doesn't exactly sound like it's going to *stop* the laser from melting things.

But here's the thing, remember how I said plasma doesn't like being that dense? Well this plasma is no exception. The moment it's created, it is already blasting off the surface as close to the speed of sound as it can get. So all of the laser energy the plasma eats gets carried away from the surface! It just goes poof! Off into the air. Goodbye heat, it was nice knowing you!

But it gets even worse! If you can power past this effect and the laser starts drilling into a material, the hole it creates limits the directions in which the plasma which forms at the bottom of the hole can expand. So it stays denser longer and eats even more laser power. And then on top of that, the molten edges of the hole tend to reflect laser light and bounce them around, reflecting some of it out and also getting even more of it absorbed into the plasma. It becomes really difficult for the laser light to sneak past the plasma it made and heat up the material.

All of which is called "plasma shielding"!

The result is that lasers are kind of self-defeating when it comes to cutting things and drilling holes in them. They make a plasma that shields against them!

Now of course, laser cutters and laser welders still exist. Some lasers are hit by this less badly than others. And we've gotten really really good at figuring out ways to sidestep and mitigate and ignore and overpower plasma shielding. But it's always a hassle and it typically requires very carefully controlled industrial environments. Contrary to what sci-fi may have you believe, the future probably doesn't involve a lot of handheld laser blasters (which I am grateful for). It's just really hard to overcome plasma shielding outside of very controlled conditions.*

*Full disclosure, this is somewhat controversial with some other laser scientists I know who work with really big building sized lasers that behave differently. But I maintain that me and the other normal-sized-laser scientists I work with are more right about what can be done with future normal sized lasers.

Anyway, that's my laser fact for the day!

Anyone else have any fun niche knowledge about their job they want to share?

[corrya]

I think about this like once a day

[vaspider]

I have heard a variant on it that I really like: "You cannot hate yourself into someone you can love."

[analytically]

Can astrologers use astrological charts to understand people's character and lives? Our new study put astrologers to the test

Astrology is very popular — both Gallup and YouGov report that about 25% of Americans believe that the position of the stars and planets can

Astrology doesn't seem to work.

[intimate-mirror]

[performativezippers]

Some highlights:

Astrologers helped design the study

No one did better than random chance, even though they only included people in the study who are experienced with astrology and stated that they expect themselves to do better than random chance

They gave every astrologer a set of 50 things about a person and 5 birth charts to choose from. They weren’t even coming up with the chart themselves!

After taking the test, most thought they nailed it. Zero out of 152 did better than 5 out of 12. None nailed it

Astrologers who rated themselves highly experienced (“world class experts”) did the same or worse as those who said they have limited experience. Both performed the same as random chance

This is hilarious

[o-craven-canto]

That's got to be the funniest graph ever published in a paper

[howarethosenuts]

Leupagus is right.

[animepopheart]

★ Emmm | FMA Major Arcana collection ☆ ✔ republished w/permission

[insomniac-arrest]

this is literally one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen

the detail…