May 21, 2018

"Weird that Jordan Peterson's whole thing is lobsters, but he never suggests making men less violent by closing their hands with rubber bands"
--http://twitter.com/rajandelman

May 20, 2018

"La Croix tastes like when my foot falls asleep"
--http://twitter.com/chieferke1fer

May 19, 2018

"Minty is just cold spicy"
--/u/dsardella18
"And so, without intending to adopt any sort of triumphalist attitude toward sports, I became that most despised of figures in the eyes of the diehard: a fair-weather fan. For most of my life, this has been a heavy shame. I have muttered shy apologies to friends for not standing by the hometown teams, even as most of them failed to escape the vortex of mediocrity.

But I'm done apologizing. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm right and everybody else is wrong. Rooting for winners is more than acceptable--it's commendable. Fans shouldn't put up with awfully managed teams for decades just because their parents liked those teams, as if sports were governed by the same rules and customs as medieval inheritance. Fans should feel free to shop for teams the way they do for any other product."

--Derek Thompson, America Needs More Fair-Weather Fans. As a guy who used to change sports cities a lot, I always thought it was good karma to develop an affinity for the local team, just so you're rooting with your neighbors.

What I think is really weird is that it's not enough to dig your guys, but the other guys have to be bums - Peyton Manning was probably not as much of a clutch player as Brady, benefited form the dome, etc etc, but he also took a delightfully nerdy approach to the game and didn't have Evil Hoodie helping him out - but it kinda wasn't ok to like him over our hometown Ugs-wearing pretty boy.

Or- true blasphemy here - the Yankees have assembled a great and likable and youthful team and are spending like 2/3 the cash the Red Sox are this year. The teams are roughly tied atop their division. This should be great! But it's all "our cave yay, your cave boo!"'

I'd dig the tribalism more if the local flavor of a team showed up in anything deeper than maybe the business owners who own 'em (and often extract way too much in terms of tax and financing breaks from politicians who would have a lot of angry voters if the team drifted for another deal)

And/or if we had a proper league system with relegation - if the bottom 2-4 teams in the NBA were fighting to stay in the top league, and the top 2-4 of the next league down would get to come on up to the big leagues? That would be brilliant.

May 18, 2018

"He knew my daughter Jennifer because Trump has this horse show thing down in Florida, and he went up and talked to Jen and was being super nice," [Bill] Gates said. "And then, about 20 minutes later, he flew in by helicopter to the same place, so clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter."

"When I first talked to him, it was actually scary how much he knew about my daughter's appearance," he added. "Melinda [Gates] didn't like that too well."

--Ladies and Gentleman, your President of the United States. Who wasn't certain there's a difference between HIV and HPV. Bill Gates' daughter was 22 at the time.

"[Watching a video] Awwww noooooo not an ad! I thought all content waaas freeeeeeee and I just paid with my privacy!"
--Melissa just now

May 17, 2018

NY Times made an excellent widget to play with Do you hear Yanny or Laurel, this years "Is the dress blue and black or white and gold?" (Another, I built a widget to see a similar ambiguity, but in the mood and feel of faces at different distances, the Mr. Angry and Mrs. Calm illusion)

I'm very Team Laurel, and have to put the widget way to the side to hear Yanny. On the one hand, yay me, that's objectively more accurate, on the other hand, dang, I'm old and don't hear high sounds as well as I used to. But there are other anecdotes that support the idea my subconscious attention is much more bass-centric too, not surprisingly.


May 16, 2018

"Crazy Kong" is Donkey Kong software running on Galaxian hardware. Foxes are cat software running on dog hardware. Humans are angel software running on meat hardware.
Keytar Bear got injured on a motorcycle turn and is out for the summer Nuts!
Keyless Cars Have Killed More Than 2 Dozen People Since 2006: Report
1. My ancient Scion beeps at me if I am in the driver seat with no seatbelt. Why is it so much smarter about "oh a driver is there!" than these systems?
2. Why don't cars have CO detectors on their interiors and exteriors?
Awesome. Anti-Vaxers are keeping us from a lyme disease vaccine. F'in brilliant.

I attended a UUSS church that weathered or a horrible interpersonal storm that was very very likely affected by the mood-altering aspects of the disease. This sucks.



Blender of Love

May 15, 2018

At work we have a Slack channel "#stupid-idea-buddies" where people propose ideas and no negativity is allowed. (I know some other workplaces have followed our lead - I'd recommend it for any office using shared chatrooms) Here's my latest:

#2226 Life in a zero-G or microgravity environment (like on an orbiting station or a spaceship that is not maneuvering) offers many challenges. When you're exercising on the treadmill or just sitting at a work console, you need to strap yourself down with elastics and velcro. Exhaled CO2 silently pooling around your head is a constant threat if the air circulation system isn't perfect. And if you lose momentum in a large open area, like thanks to air resistance, it can be nearly impossible to get moving again. The solution to all of these is clear: astronauts should always wear old-school propeller beanies at all times when not in their helmets.


"Boy With a Propeller Beanie" (1948) by Guy Pène du Bois
"The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand."
--Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
Beautiful - Old memories, accidentally trapped in amber by our digital devices. I have a folder that's a snapshot of the files on an old Windows Desktop (back when I used to use that as temporary storage) - it has the most random stuff in it, and is a slice of life I'm loathe to give up.
"It's terrifying that these two things are true at the same time in this world: computers drive cars around & the state of the art test to check that you're not a computer is whether you can successfully identify stop signs in pictures."
--/u/lts_stuck