Numbers that can’t be divisible by 5 are funnier than numbers that can be divided by 5 because they’re needlessly specific. Except in some cases for very small or very large numbers.
The answer to life, the universe, and everything being 42? Funny because it’s needlessly specific.
Patrick from SpongeBob looking at a store stacked with hundreds of mattresses and saying there’s ten of them? Funny because it’s a small number.
If a character wishes to estimate how many soldiers are approaching a nearby town and you want to make it funny you can do one or the other or you can combine the two.
My lord, there are five soldiers coming, we must strengthen our defenses!
Or
How many soldiers are there? Nine thousand, three hundred and forty seven, sir. I counted twice. They lost one the second time to falling off a cliff.
Or
There’s sixteen soldiers approaching, sir. Only sixteen? Yes. It’s a good number, sixteen. Divisible by four.
A guy in the back is yelling this after the scout gives his report.
A guy in the back
is yelling this after the
scout gives his report.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
The federal government is about to get useless for at least a bit. This is a GREAT time to get involved in state level environmental orgs. That’s where you’re gonna be able to do the most for the next few years. Even a bit of casual volunteering can make a big difference.
I’ve done this off and on for years and when we go local we WIN. And friends winning feels good. This is how a lot of progressive agendas have won in this country. The whole US isn’t out of this. People ARE still fighting climate change all around you.
You could be one of those people, in community with other people who are doing something.
doom and gloom “oooh everything is pointless oooh I’m so deep and edgy because I love trying to be the death of hope” people will just get blocked. I’m not talking to your crab-bucket ass.
I like this post because it makes getting involved seem positive and fun. So many of these are like ‘you MUST do the hard work of stewarding your local government! I don’t care if you don’t like it!’ And I think that’s just as demoralizing as saying you can’t do anything.
I think you WILL like it. If you don’t, you don’t have to be married to it. You can check out several places and see what sticks. Make an event out of it! Bring cookies! If we work together, we win! We have so much to look forward to!
There’s a bunch of right-wing people posting memes about “”DOGE”” making the government more efficient by removing funding from “”dumb bug researchers”” and I am now realizing how little the average person knows about entomology and its importance
Excuse me while I get sad .
There is a community note correcting this post about the importance of researching insects - including the reproductive habits of insects. But still the fact this was posted and 2k people liked it makes me sad 🥲🥲
“stupid researchers studying the mating habits of beetles” people when they can’t afford groceries because an invasive beetle species is decimating crops
An actual conversation I had with a colleague.
Colleague: so they were using the wrong species to pollinate their crops.
Me: what do you mean?
Colleague: well they were using a fly species from Canada and they’re growing onions in Texas. The fly they were using was dying in a day in their greenhouses because it’s frigging Texas in May/June.
Me: and no one was studying this or telling them otherwise?
Colleague: not till me.
Me: so they were wasting all that money on an inefficient pollinator and losing out on crop yield.
Colleague: yep…
And yet these idiots want to cut entomological research funding. Yeah, good luck with that. Come back to us when there’s huge outbreaks of pest insects and arbovectors that we were studying but y’all decided it was “too stupid” to fund.
i want to coin a phrase that’s the opposite of writer’s block. call it the muse’s fire hydrant. thirty thousand story ideas are being beamed directly into your brain and if you don’t write them all at once you will die.
im still reading about redditors’s worst concert experiences and im losing it at this guy who has accidentally seen buckcherry 5 times because they either opened for the act he wanted to see or replaced an act. and now every time he goes to a concert he’s scared theyll be there again
Wrong: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because she was Lord Byron’s daughter.
Right: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because that was the closest you could get in 1850 to being a Super Mario 64 speedrunner.
This is how I found out that Ada Lovelace was Lord Byrons daughter
Well, yeah. That’s why she received the unusual education which laid the foundation for her later discoveries in the first place. Her mother, Lady Byron, firmly believed three things:
It was her responsibility as a mother to ensure that Ada didn’t turn out like her father;
Fundamentally, the thing that was wrong with Lord Byron is that he was a poet; and
The opposite of poetry is math.
Ada Lovelace’s biography handily illustrates how well this theory worked out in practice.
I think part of why I can’t get into any Tolkien stuff outside of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is because I immediately lose interest once the gay little hobbits stop being center-stage. “The main hero is CeleFinElfidor the Bold, an immortal warrior who slew three thousand balrogs with a song” makes me go to sleep. but “his name was Blorbo Boffin and his neighbors said he was a queer creature who liked to eat strawberries” is Intriguing. Instantly you’re invested. You immediately see the vision
Even if this invention goes back to a man, we have a woman to thank for the fact that they are used at all. Pyrotchnic flares were invented by Benjamin Franklin Coston, but he died before he could give them to the US Navy. His wife Martha Jane Coston (born 1826) eloped with him at the age of 16 and married him early. Benjamin quickly became a naval scientist for the U.S. Navy’s scientific laboratory in Washington, D.C. At the Washington Navy Yard, he developed a signaling rocket and a percussion primer for cannons. Due to a disagreement with the Navy, he left that post in 1847 and joined a gas company, but had long been battling health problems from the chemicals he had been working with. This led to his death in November 1848.
It was Martha who attended to his affairs and found a note on the subject of night signals. However, it was only a note and not elaborated and so she did for the next 10 years. With limited knowledge of chemistry and pyrotechnics, she relied on the advice of hired chemists and fireworks experts - with mixed results. Her breakthrough came in 1858 when she watched the fireworks in New York City to celebrate the completion of the transatlantic telegraph cable. She realised that her system needed a light blue flare in addition to the red and white signal flares she had already developed. She formed the Coston Manufacturing Company to produce the signal flares and entered into a business relationship with a pyrotechnic developer to procure the necessary blue colour.
On 5 April 1859, she was awarded US Patent No. 23,536
and sold this for $20000
for a pyrotechnic night signal and code system. Using different colour combinations, ships could communicate with each other and with the coast.
But the patent was granted to her as executor of the estate of her late husband, who is named as the inventor. Captain C.S. McCauley of the U.S. Navy recommended the use of their beacons to Secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey in 1859. After extensive tests that proved the effectiveness of the system, the U.S. Navy ordered an initial set of 300 flares and later placed an order for $6,000 worth of flares. However, she then secured the patent in Europe.
In 1871, however, she introduced her own system of different colours and patterns, which allowed ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication and sold the signals to navies, ship owners and yachts around the world.
Eventually, in the USA, every United States Life-Saving Service station was equipped with Coston flares, which were used to signal ships, warn of dangerous coastal conditions and call surfers and other rescuers to a wreck. Many accounts of shipwrecks and rescues describe the use of the Coston flare, which helped save thousands of lives. Although Martha Coston died in 1904, her company, later renamed the Coston Signal Company and Coston Supply Company, continued until at least 1985.
These flares are still used today:
White flares are used to warn other ships of a boat’s position in order to avoid collisions. They are also useful for illuminating the water by night if there is a man overboard.
Orange distress flares are designed to be used for distress calls in daylight as they are easier to see than red flares due to the substantial clouds of orange smoke that are produced.
Red distress flares are used only in an emergency that requires immediate assistance. Because of their meaning, it is illegal to fire or ignite a red flare either on the water or along the coast in order to prevent calling out emergency services for lesser reasons. Red distress flares are used mainly at night because they are easier to see in darkness.
There’s been something I’ve been meaning to gif for a really long time and I figured the 32nd anniversary of the DS9 premiere was an appropriate time to finally do it. 30 years ago, there was a short TV series called Movie Magic that detailed how FX were done for both movies and TV. And one of the episodes focused on the model work for the first DS9 episode Emissary.
In the BTS, they showed the moment when Sisko and Jake get their first view of the station. And I had noticed the way in which Avery Brooks had to step over something on the floor. Whether it was the track for the camera or the wiring I don’t know. But whenever I rewatch Emissary I notice the way Brooks moves in this scene as he steps over something.
IIRC, this episode of Movie Magic talked about how expensive it was to make Emissary because of all the motion control work necessary to shoot the battle with the Borg. And they were really anxious not to screw things up when they filmed the explosion of the Saratoga as there wouldn’t be a second chance.
And speaking of filming models of spaceships exploding, Trek at least always did it right with the cameras pointing straight up at the model as it exploded so that as debris fell towards the floor it would be falling towards the camera. When you watch an exploding spaceship in classic Who, you see debris tumbling downwards after the explosion as they didn’t bother to do this.
