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unsolicited musings

Using my Bluetooth mouse to turn off Bluetooth on my laptop... it's like the executioner turning the sword onto himself

His Soviet cousins got to go...

They love this shit.

"The Internet is so US-centric"

Well maybe if you invented any of the services that form the backbone of the Internet you wouldn't have this issue. Perhaps Europe should spend less time bloviating about cheese and more time creating the modern world

I weep for the birds, for they will never know the joy of entering Daylight Savings Time

Mark Zuckerberg is a fucking loser. I hope that he will lie on his deathbed surrounded by nobody he has any human connection with and realize this when it's already too late. I hope it's the last thought that crosses through his mind as he slips away.

If you're gonna pull up to class 25 minutes late just don't show up. You missed it, man

I am actually shocked that playing first person shooters does not lead to increased violence

I'm sympathetic to people thinking their phone is listening to them because they saw an ad about their conversation but like, I see NYTimes crossword clues that mention things I had a conversation about. When there are so many clues there's bound to be one that relates to my life, just like seeing dozens of TARGETED ads means some are going to be similar to a conversation you had.

"Nine men's morris may be the world's oldest board game, dating back to pre-Christian times. Versions of it were played in ancient Egypt, and Shakespeare referred to it in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the 1990s, though, computer analysis discovered a strategy that meant you'd never lose. That knowledge made playing a lot less appealing, as mathematician Marcus du Sautoy notes in his book Around the World in Eighty Games. Against a true expert, the best anyone could hope for was to eke out a draw. "And so," du Sautoy wrote, "after thousands of years of people enjoying playing nine men's morris, it would seem that the computer has finally succeeded in killing the game off.""

- Kit Chellel

Every time I'm forced to use a self-checkout I want to fucking kill someone

Will the sun rise tomorrow?

99% YES --- 1% NO

This market will resolve to "Yes" if the sun as observed in New York City rises above the horizon by Jan 9, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".

The resolution source for this market will be a consensus of credible sources.

Like ten thousand fish scales shimmering in the desert

Rainclouds: When humidity has nowhere to hide

The map is my safe space on a flight. Do not show me ads. Do not take over the screen and play animations. I just want to see where we are and any plane stats!!!

Lecture Hall Seating Design Prompt:

How might we create the most uncomfortable seat and tiniest desk for a room that people have to sit in for three hours at a time?

LED screens shouldn't be on top of any building. On this issue, there can be no debate.

As a young able-bodied pedestrian, the day I yield to cars when I have right-of-way is the day I put a bullet in my head

Every time I'm at the grocery store and see a product like this I am extremely disheartened by the amount of people who feel that if their food does not contain meat it simply will not be a meal. They don't even care what animal it is or what part of the animal it is. As long as there's a formerly living being in their food they're happy.

Hey, at least they're not some pussy vegetarian salad muncher

Whenever I dig through a bag and feel my way to find the item I'm looking for or tuck something under my chin for a moment to free up my hands I'm reminded how far humanoid robots have to go before they're even close to the utility of an actual human.

In my mind there are two different ways something can be "dirty." There's the classical definition where something has dirt or some other kind of grime on it. And there's also a definition where something outwardly appears to be clean but you know is in fact completely covered in germs and filth. It's the difference between dropping an apple slice in the woods or on the floor of the subway. I would much rather eat the woods slice. Sure, it's "dirtier," but it feels like natural dirty instead of city dirty. Just brush it off.

I have a similar conception of "healthy." Of course many natural foods are unhealthy, but they're not processed foods. Is butter healthier than Doritos? I mean probably not on paper but at least it's natural.

This is definitely the kind of thinking that gets people convinced that all health issues would be solved if we fried french fries in beef tallow instead of canola oil. It's not true but appealing to a more natural alternative is hard to argue with.

What is it about 8 millimeters that's just... so?

Marcel Breuer's 1968 proposal for an office building on top of Grand Central Station

The problem with alarms is that I can redo my entire alarm schedule in the morning while I'm half asleep instead of hitting snooze. I'm beating myself at my own game.

Isn't it a little unnerving that dishwashers are completely dark inside while they run?

Millenials love to be reminded of an area's "industrial heritage" so they can pretend that their jobs aren't completely disconnected from the physical world and often reality.

"Just stare straight at the camera while we light your eyeballs, freak"

The Wordle today is a machine tool, on the day of my thesis midterm presentation about machine tools. This is some kind of sign from the NYTimes gods.

I think printers get too much hate! They're absolute marvels of engineering. Can you even begin to imagine how to design a system that can take literally anything 2D and create it from nothing? Text, images, patterns. In full color no less!

A Selection of Drawings by Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728-1799)

It must be awesome to be someone who litters. Never carrying trash around in your pockets, just throw that shit on the ground and make it everyone else's problem.

The shortest biking route through 57,912 Dutch national monuments.

Dronten flopping frfr

"Mike Dukakis in a tank" would've killed as a halloween costume 37 years ago

To me, this is unironically what great design looks like

If I recieve a text that has the little "edited" tag, you best believe I'm always checking what was edited.

I love cutting fruits and vegetables. If you ever need a huge amount of fruits and/or vegetables cut for a feast just hit me up I'm there. I'll bring my own knife and cutting board, you just supply the produce. Also I reserve the right to sample 5-10% of what I cut.

I'm not even a train guy like that but damn is the Kawasaki M8 one fine looking locomotive

Must be nice to be Norway. Homogenous population of 5 million people, exporting more oil per capita than Saudi Arabia, and for some reason the rest of the world listens raptly when you lecture them about sustainability and how to run a country.

I can't believe that everyone's conspiring against me to constantly have me flying out of the gate that's at the furthest possible point from security

Toilet paper math is ridiculous. "12 rolls = 28 rolls!" "22 rolls = 96 rolls!" "34 rolls = 114 rolls!" IT'S ALL ONE ROLL JUST GIVE ME THE PRICE PER OUNCE

Pretty amazing that US sports teams have been the slowest to put sponsor logos on their uniforms while the entire rest of the world has airlines, used car marketplaces, and construction companies plastered on the front of their uniforms larger than the player's names

I do think it's funny that after 9/11 Bush started wearing an American flag pin on his lapel and since then every president has been locked into wearing one as well for fear of bad press

You shouldn't be allowed to publish a table of data on the internet without making it possible for the user to click the categories on top to sort the data high-low or low-high.

I always wait until it's so late to remember to turn on my alarm for the next morning but I NEVER forget

If I see Gavin Newsom polling at like 38% in the Democratic primary in early 2028 so help me God...

"Introducing our new humanoid robot! Look how advanced it is!"

Cut to: the shakiest robot you've ever seen sorting colored fucking blocks and putting them in a paper bag slower than an actual infant could accomplish

Ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, soft serve. It's all cold and it's all good

Also people that support electric vehicles and battery storage while opposing mining for lithium in the US. The lithium's gotta come from somewhere, bud. You're just saying you'd rather stay blissfully ignorant about where products come from and what their impact on the natural environment is.

Mfs will buy single-use vapes with full color screens and still solely blame corporations for pollution.

Personal responsibility is too difficult, it must be someone else's fault

One of the most beautiful sights in the world is a vast field of solar panels or wind turbines. Just looking at them fills me with such a sense of happiness. All these devices generating essential electricity with NO inputs at all beyond what nature has to offer. You put a solar panel in the sun and it generates power! It feels too good to be true and yet there's no catch.

I don't understand why we place any weight on the political strategy opinions of politicians who have lost elections. Clearly you don't understand the winning strategy otherwise you wouldn't be a loser. We don't ask the losing NBA team on their advice for winning championships, because in a situation where there's a clear winner and loser the loser should be immediately cast aside as a loser. They didn't have what it took. It doesn't matter if "on paper" they're a better team or politician, in the real world their strategy didn't work for whatever reason and so they clearly are not the right people to ask about how to win. I don't give a fuck what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have to say.

When part of a Soviet probe destined for Venus crashed in New Zealand in 1972 people didn't know what the mysterious "space ball" was so the local police locked it up in a jail cell.

"This mystery object... has committed no crime other than its persistent refusal to identify itself"

"The card reader's gonna ask you a few questions"

Don't play coy with me, you and I both know damn well what question the card reader's about to ask

Wheelchair from the 1600s. Can you imagine how many times you'd have to turn those handles before you went anywhere? Holy shit we've come a long way

Traffic is a construct. Just go, man

2024 is so last year

Cheese manufacturers seem to be in an arms race to see who can create the worst packaging. So far goat cheese logs are winning.

Whenever a product says where it was designed you know it was made in China. If it was "made with <3" in Seattle you know they'd just say that

YouTube knows that my ideal video is no more than 2 minutes long, the title is in an Asian language I can't comprehend, the thumbnail is a dirty factory, it has less than 2000 views, and it's just some machine doing its thing while the cameraman walks around it. They always have the factory's WhatsApp or WeChat information in the description, it's really a great system.

My magnum opus. Sound on

Just took a nap like you wouldn't believe... one for the history books

It's actually shocking that powerful magnets don't have an effect on the human body. You'd think they'd be bad for you at some point

Lymph and Chyle were two brothers, almost as close as blood brothers but not quite

How do I get a job at the print shop that all congresspeople use to print and mount big pictures onto foamcore and display behind them as they deliver an impassioned speech ostensibly to congress but in actuality for their social media feeds? seems like a pretty sweet gig

If you're going to be a fly at least be quiet about it. Cool it with the constant buzzing, I'm allowing you to be in my home.

We can make fun of them all we like but eventually we're gonna have to accept that electric scooters are actually the best form of micromobility.

Elkay stock up 203% over the past 5 years, call that a Green Ticker

Side note: despite Elkay marking the phrase "Green Ticker" on their site with the trademark symbol (and a Wired article saying they've trademarked the term), I cannot find any sign on the USPTO site that they've actually trademarked this name.

Since you're trying to shoot under par in golf you'd think that subpar would mean that something is better than average

I've been looking for a PDF of Space Age Management: The Large-scale Approach by James Webb (of James Webb Space Telescope fame) for a while, but it's surprisingly elusive. Best version I've found is a rip from the Internet Archive by Anna's Archive.

It's expensive to buy a copy and many libraries don't have it so even if I felt bad about book piracy this seems justified.

Here's the PDF in case anyone else wanted to read this excellent book:

Commit a victimless crime and download me!

Will humanity ever be satisfied?

We really live in a golden age of being able to search for any medical condition and look through hundreds of the most disturbing images you've ever seen

What could be better than optimum dry?

something something bird flu something something cured egg yolks

Neéflix: it's just like regular Netflix but all the married actresses use their maiden names

We're so back

Only about an hour until all problems in the world are solved. Daylight is our collective saving.

The real sign of the seasons changing is when we shift from sun-seeking behavior to shade-seeking behavior

The Floating Church of the Redeemer

Built in 1849, removed from water and placed on brick foundations in 1853, burned down in 1868

The flavor delta between an average and an excellent carrot is perhaps the largest of any vegetable

I feel like nobody's talking about how daylight savings starts in 9 days... why isn't this at the top of everyone's mind?

2 year site-iversary was yesterday and I forgot but hey, better late than never

National Capital Poison Center jingle - Sing along!

US Department of Energy National Laboratories, Ranked by Campus Beauty

According to natural landscape, architecture, striking shapes, and general ambiance

-----------------------------

1. Argonne National Laboratory (IL)

2. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (TN)

3. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (IL)

4. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (CA)

5. Brookhaven National Laboratory (NY)

6. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (NJ)

7. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (VA)

8. Sandia National Laboratories (NM & CA)

9. Savannah River National Laboratory (SC)

10. National Energy Technology Laboratory (PA, WV, OR)

11. Los Alamos National Laboratory (NM)

12. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (CA)

13. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (CO)

14. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (CA)

15. Ames National Laboratory (IA)

16. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (WA)

17. Idaho National Laboratory (ID)

Disclaimer: These rankings are heavily influenced by the available photos of these campuses

We often overlook the miracle of typing

Yeah I like wind turbines, what are you gonna do about it?

The truest expression of losing your mind

If The X Files has taught me anything it's that the weird looking guy will definitely kill you and is also probably an alien

I bet mountains just get together and talk shit about valleys

I VISITED THE NORTH SENTINELESE AND INTRODUCED THEM TO THE CONCEPT OF MONEY (not clickbait)

PDFs are and will forever will be the GOAT file format

Sorry Ohio, just because the Wright brothers happened to be born in Ohio doesn't mean you get to claim that it's the "Birthplace of Aviation" since their first flight was in North Carolina. I'm sure many exciting events have happened in your state find one of those things to put on your license plate. <3

Oh Mr. Priebus is my father's name, call me Reince

---Photographs of Child Laborers in the Early 1900's---

Lewis W. Hine (1874 - 1940) was an American photographer who was hired by the National Child Labor Committee in 1911 to explore child labour conditions in the United States.

Callie Campbell, 11 years old, picks 75 to 125 pounds of cotton a day, and totes 50 pounds of it when sack gets full. "No, I don't like it very much."

- October, 1916 -

Jim Waldine, 6 years old, been picking cranberries two years. Also Sam Frohue, 9 years old, been picking two years, could not spell his own name.

- September, 1910 -

Ten-year-old Mollie Steuben topping beets. Many children of this age put in a full day's work, and many begin younger. Mollie and her two sisters, 12 and 14 yrs. old, work from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M.

- October, 1915 -

Laura Petty, a 6 year old berry picker on Jenkins farm, Rock Creek near Baltimore, Md. "I'm just beginnin'."

- July, 1909 -

These boys were playing pool and smoking in the pool room while waiting for papers . The smallest boy is 9 years old and sells until 9 P.M.

- May, 1910 -

Amos is 6 and Horace 4 years old. Their father, John Neal is a renter and raises tobacco. He said (and the owner of the land confirmed it) that both these boys work day after day from "sun-up to sun-down"

- August, 1916 -

In my mind helicopters shouldn't work and yet......

Good thing everything except my mind operates outside my mind

MARCH 15, 1930

The submarine V-6, later renamed Nautilus SS-168, shortly before being christened by Jeanne Keesling with a bottle of cider instead of champagne due to Prohibition restrictions.

"Wolf Moon." when will the nonsense stop

Products made in the US now are like

"Representing the pinnacle of American craftsmanship, we've reinvented the grill brush. It's $60"

holy shit the pope just posted him doing the apple dance you gotta check this out

Oops! All cob

Mfs talk about hyperfixations as if being deeply interested in something is only possible if you have ADHD

Paul here managed to grab the holy grail of custom plates

Soft-close drawers and cabinets. Truly a wonder of the modern world.

May 1 - Sep 30, 1982

Conceptual artist Agnes Denes plants 1.5 acres of wheat at Battery Park Landfill in NYC. She describes the project as a "symbol, a universal concept. It represents food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It refers to mismanagement and world hunger. It is an intrusion into the Citadel, a confrontation of High Civilization. Then again, it is also Shangri-La, a small paradise, one's childhood, a hot summer afternoon in the country, peace. Forgotten values, simple pleasures."

Nobody talks about microfiche anymore :(

Urinals with no dividers should actually no joke be illegal

I can't believe automatic convertible roofs actually work

Dick pic diptych

Modulator-Demodulator, Modem

Best part of winter is ice cold water straight out the tap

"City streets are unsatisfactory playgrounds for children because of the danger, because most good games are against the law, because they are too hot in summer, and because in crowded sections of the city they are apt to be schools of crime. Neither do small back yards nor ornamental grass plots meet the needs of any but the very small children. Older children who would play vigorous games must have places especially set aside for them; and, since play is a fundamental need, playgrounds should be provided for every child as much as schools. This means that they must be distributed over the cities in such a way as to be within walking distance of every boy and girl, as most children can not afford to pay carfare."

-Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

People with small noses have a very slightly larger field of vision, one eye at a time

If the Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight now than it was in the '60s then it causes me to disregard the entire concept

We need to stop inventing new plugs for things.

I wonder how BrooklynDad_Defiant! is doing

Trump impersonators are the new Elvis impersonators

WHY DO WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES ARE WE INSANE HAVE WE NO REGARD FOR OURSELVES FUCK THE NORTHERN STATES JUST HAVE YOUR OWN TIME ZONE I DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN MONTANA CAN SOMEONE PLEASE BE A SENSIBLE ADULT AND GET RID OF STANDARD TIME I GUARANTEE POLITICIANS WILL BE SAYING THAT THEY'RE GONNA GET RID OF IT BUT THEY WON'T THEY NEVER DO IT'S ONLY MARCO RUBIO SAYING HE'LL GET RID OF IT OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

Sweeping up fallen leaves and putting them into bags. Man's futility knows no bounds.

Got a houseplant native to China and India, call that horticultural appropriation

I'm a single issue voter and my single issue is instituting year-round Daylight Savings Time

The absolute largest obstacle to Puerto Rico becoming a state is that 50 is such a nice number

Can you wreak anything other than havoc?

why is there a Transformer on the TV telling me to download an app

ipcamtalk.com, you're on thin fucking ice

Kinda underground but I think this da Vinci fella was really onto something

pig latin

When the trolley pulls up and the doors open before it fully stops like a getaway car

Gonna hand out mini bottles to the children on halloween this year

RIP BRITISH COAL INDUSTRY

JAN 12 1882 - SEP 30 2024

OVER 142 YEARS OF COAL POWER GENERATION

HOLBURN VIADUCT POWER STATION
RATCLIFFE-ON-SOAR POWER STATION

Tragedy! At the SEPTA gates

I love apple juice on a flight so much that it's gotten to the point where I can't have apple juice on the ground because it just reminds me of being on a flight

Can't trust a mf who leaves the window closed as the plane takes off

What could be better than looking out the window?

I saw this meme about four months ago and I've been looking it up every once in a while because it kept crossing my mind.

I'm declaring it now, Meme of the Year.

The most tragic thing a person can be is ahead of their time

According to this NYTimes article, globally by 2050 wind turbine blades in landfill will be an equivalent weight to three years worth of New York City's landfill.

To repeat: In 25 years the amount of landfill generated GLOBALLY by wind turbine blades will be equivalent to THREE YEARS of landfill in ONE CITY.

It goes on to say that the blades "do not exude toxic substances when buried in landfills but take up a great deal of space." Ok whatever maybe it matters if you're Luxembourg but we have so much goddamn space here. Bury them.

The article also mentions that by grinding and burning a 7 ton blade it can offset 5 tons of coal. So why do we care at all just burn them. Dump them in the ocean I don't give a fuck.

Imagine an egg so poached it's not even there

There's no amount of money I wouldn't pay to see a live nuclear test

It's 5 o'clock somewhere

Studies for Maximum Mass Permitted by the 1916 New York Zoning Law - Hugh Ferriss, 1922

So much of celebrity is made up but Frank Sinatra probably had a pretty sweet life

What would be better, a donut with cream cheese or a glazed bagel?

If I didn't know about lava and you told me rocks could melt I would've said you were full of shit

InDesign my love... I spoke so harshly about you but I've seen the error of my ways. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive my indiscretions.

The perfect review...

I love metal water bottles but Nalgenes have the volume advantage

Apollo 11 suits are obviously iconic but the suits from the later Apollo missions with the commander stripes and extra helmet flaps are so good.

Without fail, every single demonstration part for 5-axis milling is a turbine blade

When I search Google for any noun I want the first result to be a Wikipedia page

Is it possible to overpickle something?

The city is a cold, cruel place.

A seamstress makes you fashionable, a jeweler makes you glamorous, but only a furrier makes you furrier.

People get so hype for all these moons because they have nice names but they're just named like that as a calendar event not a lunar event.

Blue Moon - Just when there are two full moons in one calendar month

Strawberry Moon - The June full moon is always the Strawberry Moon because it's near the season for harvesting strawberries

Harvest Moon - Same deal but the full moon nearest to the Fall equinox

The only real one that actually changes color is a Blood Moon because it's a total lunar eclipse.

There's always something a bit unnatural about looking out at a city from a tall building. Feels like a view reserved for God.

The best thing about film photography is that none of the names for anything make sense.

120 film is larger than 135 film

4x5 is larger than 6x7

Every manufacturer has models that end with -flex or -matic

Do you want to buy the Pentax MX, ME, MV, MG, MF, K2, K2DMD, KX, KM, ES, SL, LX, or AP?

If I could take two years off my life to never have to deal with another mosquito again, I would do it

No competition.

Not really a hobby but I've been pretty into dew point recently

All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,
And the floodgates of the sky broke open.

Ate a whole canteloupe yesterday, now I have no canteloupe :(

I didn't realize it until this moment, but I have a deep desire to see a sculpture made of butter

It's either that or magnet tiles

Digital photography is a miracle and is maybe the greatest invention of the last 50 years

to have a firepit is to have it all

A really is the best looking letter

it's all downhill after A.
N? come on. S? get real

Gene Cernan's view back at the Gemini 9A capsule during EVA on June 5th, 1966

"Unsupported image type"

Are you fucking kidding me?? Aren't there a finite number of image formats? Shouldn't every program be able to covert one to another without me having to do anything? Why is this even a problem I have to face?

The two greatest products I've ever seen were both in use at the same machine shop

Automatic paper towel dispensers face a dilemma.

The desires of the building's management and the desires of the people using the bathroom are complete opposites. Buildings want to give out the least amount of paper towels possible while users want the absolute most paper towels.

I have stared into darkness and seen the light

Trenton, NJ - Capital of the United States from November 1st to December 24th, 1784.

Must've been an exciting 53 days for them

All I've ever wanted is a microscope

Air travel is a goddamn miracle. Wake up in Barcelona and go to sleep in Philadelphia

Spain is full of the most pathetically small playgrounds i've ever seen. My only theory is it's purposeful to make the youth bored so they have to get good at soccer

Where are all the pigeon corpses?

Nvidia announced they're working on humanoid robots that use AI to process the world and respond to inputs. When asked "can you give us some cool moves?" it immediately dabbed. Fuck yea

I miss SkyMall.

I was at the natural history museum in NYC a couple weeks ago and they had a meteor that you could just go up to and touch. No signs saying be gentle or only touch in one spot. I was surprised at first but then I realized that it's literally a 34 ton hunk of iron. What could anyone possibly do to damage it

we're back, baby

site had some minor technical difficulties

A world without t-shirts is no world at all

When it comes to eclipses, give me totality or give me death

If you're not pro year-round daylight savings i actually don't know if i can associate with you. clearly your judgement is fundamentally flawed and you're probably of bad moral character

The beginning of daylight savings should be a national holiday. A celebration of the sun. Children playing in the streets, music festivals, fireworks, hot air balloons

that daylight savings feeling...incomparable

it's been far too long since i held a snake

daylight savings

daylight saVINGS

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS

WE WILL AWAKE TO A NEW DAWN, A NEW DAY, A NEW LIFE

THE END OF SUFFERING AND THE BEGINNING OF A NEW AGE OF JOY

WE SAY GOODBYE TO DARKNESS AND HELLO TO THE LIGHT SHINING THROUGH OUR EVERY WAKING MOMENT

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

French horn was/is the coolest brass instrument because it's got all those swooshes and twists. like if you could play a pretzel

A guiding princicle of my life is that if I go to use a pen and it doesn't work, that pen should immediately be thrown away without hesitation

You spend four years eagerly anticipating leap day and then it comes and goes with no celebration. no fanfare

dropping your airpods down a sewer grate is the modern day equivalent of a child falling into a well

If you showed a salt lamp to someone in 1200s Germany would they be more amazed by the fact that you can turn a light on and off or by the value of the salt in front of them?

probably two years ago I looked up how tides work for like the millionth time and it finally clicked. I understood how the moon caused the tides and where the water went and why they were twice a day.

It all made sense.

Then later i realized i forgot, so i looked it up again for a refresher and it didn't make any sense and it's continued to not make sense. But i've tasted understanding, I can't go back to this world of darkness.

omg it's also the one year anniversary of this very site.

To many more years of laughter, tears, and white space

Feels like paper bag technology has improved tremendously in the last few years

If it was 2012, Corn Kid would've had his own movie by now

Big fan of this new captcha I just had to complete

Man's name was John Z. DeLorean and you expected him NOT to traffic cocaine??

I can't believe people living in the 1800s thought they were in the present. Like look around you're in the 1800s, clearly it's the past.

Thank God I ACTUALLY live in the present

Fusion reactors look like an exercise in spending as much money as possible by making a bunch of people create the most complicated one-off parts using exotic materials to ridiculous tolerances

Golden Girls theme lowkey banger

film student mfs probably ask their doctor if they can be given anamorphic astigmatisms

Old things are kind of inherently cool. As we stop using things because they've been rendered obsolete, being reintroduced makes them new to us again

The same principle used for the Rapatronic shutter is now used in optical isolators for fiber optic communications to eliminate unwanted back reflections that could interfere with data transmission

also i'm pretty sure this diagram is wrong. the backward direction panel has the light polarization turning 135 degrees counterclockwise when it should be turning 45 degrees clockwise

During early testing of nuclear bombs in the 40s and 50s, Harold "Doc" Edgerton developed a method of photographing nuclear explosions with ridiculously short shutter speeds. The Rapatronic (rapid action electronic) camera could capture exposures as short as 10 nanoseconds (1/100,000,000th of a second).

Using two polarized filters at a 90 degree angle, all light is filtered out. A Faraday Rotator rotates polarized light when activated, so by placing one between the two filters the light could be instantaneously un-filtered to expose the film. Since it's completely electronic the exposure can be controlled very precisely. The shutter was triggered by the bright flash of the nuclear explosion.

Using this method, Edgerton was able to capture these photos only 1 millisecond after the explosion began:

people say matter can't be created or destroyed but those towers holding the nuclear bombs are definitely just Gone

this mf also played a crucial role in coordinating D-Day and invented stroboscopic industrial inspection

93 day wordle streak gone... life is fleeting

Imagine being a tortoise in the Soviet Union in 1968 and they send you around the goddamn moon

It's impossible to have too much seating in public. Flood the streets with benches

not really a hobby but recently i've been watching a lot of train videos on youtube

60lbs of concrete is $3.08 at Lowe's

I would've said that there's no way you could get 60lbs of ANYTHING for $3 but turns out there are still some deals in the world

the metric system is not created in the image of God

doorbell cameras that go "Hi! You are being recorded" when you so much as pass by on the sidewalk are the surest sign we're currently living through the end of days

Brick buildings with big windows have my heart

were you aware that MSNBC stands for Microsoft NBC??

if you think about it, an egg is not really a fruit

I can't believe the sun is free

Elkay has a stranglehold on the water bottle filling market

You don't totally realize the size of the VAB until you see people repainting the NASA logo

In 1976 the US celebrated its bicentennial, and in 2026 we get to celebrate the semiquincentennial.

rolls off the tongue

just saw a cat drinking snowmelt. i feel like i'm in the himalayas

fucking awesome

whoever decided to make the new World Trade Center 1776 ft tall? brilliant

Of the top 10 selling candies in the US, only one was introduced in the last 40 years. Half are pre-war.

Have American's tastes stagnated or are we on the verge of a candy renaissance?

If a building has a normal door and a revolving door i'm taking the revolving door 100% of the time

how many crimes can you commit before it becomes a spree?

Belgians are lucky their country is irrelevant cuz they'd be catching a lot more flak for colonialism

1996 Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique performing a dialup modem handshake

What is US News & World Report?? Do they do anything besides ranking colleges? I've never once seen somebody use them as a source for literally anything

60 day Wordle streak. My greatest accomplishment to date

The reason museum gift shops are so successful is because everyone has been walking around looking at cool things that they will never be allowed to touch or own and suddenly a gift shop is there...you can touch everything and maybe even buy it

Spiral Staircases: Fun at any age!

When I see the size of oil tankers, container ships, and mining vehicles all I can think of is the ungodly amount of money they must generate to make it feasible for them to be built. It makes me sad that in a more ideal world with less consumption they might not exist at all. Potentially some of the largest moving things humanity will ever make

The beginning of seasons according to different ways of tracking them (2024)

	Meteorological	Astronomical	Solar
Winter	Dec 1	Dec 21	Nov 1
Spring	Mar 1	Mar 20	Feb 1
Summer	June 1	June 20	May 1
Fall	Sep 1	Sep 22	Aug 1

Nobody actually buys umbrellas they just appear in your life

I truly believe that if Greek/Roman sculptures still had their original garish colors people wouldn't respect their cultures as much. the pure white is just so much classier

If i had unlimited access to good bananas I'd probably eat 3-6 every day

The real problem with society is that there are no more mongers. Gone are the days of fishmongers and cheesemongers, now we just have salespeople :(

Things from older things:

1. Arrows to represent direction come from the bow and arrow

2. When you take a photo on your phone the viewfinder blacks out like an SLR camera

3. Instagram "filters" were real lens filters

4. Timestamps were real stamps with clocks built into them

5. Digital buttons/sliders/switches on a screen represent physical versions

6. "Bookmarking" a "page" comes from bookmarking an actual page

7. "Grain" in photos comes from the actual silver halide grains in film

8. "Rewinding" a video from when a tape actually had to be physically rewound

9. Referring to the media as the "press" comes from the days of the printing press

10. Digital desktop/folders/files used to be physical versions

11. "Upper case and lower case" letters come from the cases where the type was kept

12. Digital photo "albums" used to be real photo albums

Every Goodwill book section has at least 1 copy of the 9/11 commission report

Imagine having no weather forecasting

"what's the temperature tomorrow?" fuck if i know

Ports have roads made of water

Fidget toys would be fun if they didn't all make the most annoying sounds known to man

Considering roads are just paved areas with lines as suggestions, I'm amazed car travel isn't deadlier

We all know you can buy Chevron gas with Techron, but did you know you can buy just Techron?

https://www.amazon.com/Chevron-Techron-Concentrate-System-Cleaner/dp/B00092893E?th=1

i've been thinking...

Saturdays are for Du Bois

I think that if your house address is the same numbers as the year that it's changing to, you should have to throw a new year's party for the whole neighborhood

hot take but being able to text from a plane is bad. leave me alone i'm in the sky

People who eat steak seem to be in a competition for who can eat it the rawest before getting food poisoning

flush wood joinery is a construct invented by Big Sandpaper

just learned about triple ferris wheels. I didn't even know this kind of technology existed

i'm just trying to read about health conditions wikipedia i don't need to see an infant undergoing reconstructive ankle surgery

The most fucked up unit has gotta be arcminutes. You take a perfectly fine unit like degrees and instead of making something 50.5 degrees, it's 50 degrees and 30 arcminutes. It honestly would make sense if the way it was used kept up with powers of 60

- 360 degrees in a circle, 60 arcminutes per degree, 60 arcseconds per arcminute -

But INSTEAD, it's abbreviated as degrees, then arcminutes, then DECIMALS of arcminutes. Isn't the whole point of this unit system not using decimals?? If we're gonna use decimals why not just use decimals of a degree?

I have no idea what the difference is between seratonin, oxytocin, and dopamine

Whenever you can't sleep and you're tossing and turning all night it really makes you appreciate just how LONG you're asleep every night

The UAE hosted in 2020 - Here are Latifa and Rashid, surrounded by Opti, Terra, and Alif.

2020 also had a villain, Mr. Scrap

Italy hosted in 2015, and presented the mascot Foody

China's 2010 mascot, Haibao

Japan hosted in 2005 with the mascots Kiccoro and Morizo

Twipsy, Germany's 2000 mascot

Kurro, Spain's 1992 mascot

Japan is hosting the 2025 World Expo and this is the mascot for the event. Its name is Myaku-Myaku. It's "A mysterious creature born from the unification of cells and water. Its identity is unknown."

November 16, 2009 - Snoop Dogg rings the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange

how the FUCK does spotify have 9200 employees?? What are all these people doing? Even if you had 5000 people just making playlists what else is happening?? you'd think that with the 4200 employees left over their app wouldn't be constantly getting worse, with the desktop app like 6 months behind the mobile version. Took em like 3 years to get lyrics working and after the wait they just licensed it from the same service as everyone else!! Why can't I make folders for playlists on my phone? Why can't I see a transcript of a podcast? Why can't I send someone a song over Spotify? Do they pay 1000 people to sit around all day thinking of ways to make the shuffle button not actually shuffle? is everyone just working on wrapped?? I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION

Gen Z Could Revive the Christmas Tree Industry Despite Fear Mongering TikToks, Reports Show

Beeing a bee keeper would bee cool but I think I would lose track of the bees

the world isn't ready to hear the truth that honeycrisp apples aren't that good and we should all be eating fuji

oh, to work for a multinational conglomerate...
a boy can dream

The world is so polarized between inside and outside. we need more midside spaces like gazebos

Easiest way to make headlines as a regular person? Go to your local museum and punch a Van Gogh

Daylight savings time in the US was federally established in 1966 with the passage of the Universal Time Act, with daylight savings beginning on the last Sunday in April and ending on the last Sunday of October.

In 1986, Congress passed legislation shifting the beginning of daylight savings forward, with it now beginning on the first Sunday of April.

In 2005 the Energy Policy Act was passed, moving the beginning forward AGAIN, to the second Sunday in March. It also pushed the end of daylight savings BACK, now ending on the first Sunday of November.

Gained 7 weeks in 57 years, at this rate we'll have year-round daylight savings by 2169

How do people come up with optical illusions?

I swear the nytimes is being paid by the pickleball lobby. nonstop coverage

We all know and love California's official state song - "I Love You, California"

Sing along!

Serbia's had a quite an eventful last hundred years, name-wise

Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918) to Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929) to Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (1943) to Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (1945) to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1963) to Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992) to State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (2003) to Republic of Serbia (2006)

like we should drop everything and figure out how to make wind turbine blades recyclable. burn them for all i care it's still better than coal and fossil fuels

So many articles about wind turbine blades being hard to recycle. who cares. what percent of global waste is used wind turbine blades?? like 0% this isn't a real issue

People say Elon Musk is an innovator but he's just following in the footsteps of other antisemitic industrialists. the REAL trailblazers in obscene wealth while espousing hatred are Henry Ford and William Randolph Hearst

If I were a beaver i'd just go around all day gnawing trees down. wouldn't even care about building a dam

When Space Shuttle Endeavour was being moved through the streets of LA in 2012, road crews put up these signs

Just saw a leashed rabbit on a walk

I think if Balzac was born today he'd be bullied so hard about his name that it would change his entire life trajectory

"The Science Behind Why Some People Are Always Late"

yeah it's pretty simple actually, they don't plan well

Breathalyzer from 1972

Feels like wifi is finally good. Anywhere that has wifi it's almost always plenty for everything you need to do

YouTube has over 500 hours of video uploaded every minute. can you even begin to imagine how to process such a colossal amount of data

Getting recruitment texts from the military is like being pressured to join a frat

this shit suckssssssssss

Steve Jobs is half Syrian?? my mind is being blown today

For some reason i was under the impression that giant isopods had gone extinct like 60 million years ago but apparently they're alive and well

Ziggurat Daydreams

Just came across this excellent series of photos from when Sunny, the Obamas' dog, knocked over a 2 year old child in 2013

uspsjedimaster.com

a real URL made by your US government

you ever pick up a piece of paper and it's like MAN this is some nice thick paper. i live for that feeling

"digital nomad" is just a way to make people feel cool about their job that doesn't actually provide anything of value to society

Sure seeing the northern lights would be sick but then you're stuck in norway in the winter with two hours of daylight what else are you supposed to do

I can't believe video compression is technically possible

Intel's hold music is fucking great

If it was the middle ages and someone showed me a magnet i'd probably burn them at the stake for being a witch

The Daughter of the First Woman Who Saw Jesus on a Tortilla Shares How It Changed Her Family's Lives

George Eastman had a very different approach for his suicide note:

To my friends
My work is done
Why wait?

-GE

His NYTimes obituary is exceedingly beautiful:

Lucretius imagined that all the objects in nature are constantly giving off films or images, in infinite complexity yet in no confusion, keeping their forms on their way to the senses.

GEORGE EASTMAN, who died yesterday, will be remembered pre-eminently for giving to mankind a means of catching these images in their flight by a film more sensitive than the senses themselves. Untold millions have availed of this scientific magic which bears a name that has become familiar as a noun in every language and has even found a permanent place as a verb in the English lexicons-meaning to photograph with his "kodak" and figuratively to " catch or describe quickly or vividly."

There is not a corner of the earth that has not been brought within reach of his films, so that one may stay at home and yet see around the globe. Every year enough of these strips of film are made to reach ten times around it. Before his going, Eastman found a way of filling the shadow world with colors, such as nature herself uses in brightening creation. Flowers have in his films been made to bloom in all seasons and even in the desert. The tropical jungle is made to flourish amid the snows of the frigid zones. The little gleaming patches of light on the walls of schoolrooms have come to aid teacher and supplement textbooks. And the chronicles of the years are written in pictures that cannot prevaricate or forget. A stupendous factor he has been in the education and life of the modern world.

Of what he got in return for his great gifts to the human race he gave generously for their good: fostering music, endowing learning, supporting science in its researches and teaching, seeking to promote health and lessen human ills, helping the lowliest in their struggle toward the light, making his own city a centre of the arts and glorifying his own country in the eyes of the world.

His was in very truth a Promethean labor, bringing the flame to mortals in a new form. That labor was over. His work was done. Like the ancient Titan, who also suffered, he had helped by his film of light to give man new speech, creating "thought, which is the measure of the universe." to make man "equal, unclassed, tribeless and nationless."

Yet those to whom he gave such gifts could not bring him solace in his own Promethean suffering.

"Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight it any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V."

-Virginia Woolf's suicide note to her husband

second only to Skylab's deorbiting in 1979 when huge chunks of it unexpectedly landed in Western Australia instead of in the ocean. The San Francisco Examiner offered $10,000 to the first person who could bring a piece of Skylab debris to their office, and NASA was issued a $400 fine for littering.

also one of the greatest events in the history of spaceflight was when the Mir space station was being deorbited in 2001 and Taco Bell put a 40x40ft target in the Pacific and promised a free taco for every person in the US if the station hit it

The US has a lot of problems but at least we've been one of the top 2 countries in space since humans started shooting things up there and we've been undisputed #1 since at least the late 80s. and it's NOT EVEN CLOSE

Only Bill Clinton can unify the nation and make everybody feel safer

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with colitis goes by

1967 movie from the USPS introducing ZIP Codes to the public through a series of original, choreographed songs.

Are there even pictures in dictionaries? What's with that insult

I think it's really fun when competitive events are hosted by the last place that won

pineapple sucks and it poisons any fruit dish it's in

The 2 vs 4 wheel suitcase is a generational divide

My favorite little fun fact is that Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank founded the Exploratorium

On a flight from JFK-Heathrow (3400 miles) each passenger on a Boeing 737 MAX-9 burns 32 gallons of fuel, equivalent to 93mpg. Same amount of fuel as driving about 1000 miles.

Joey Chestnut. The perfect name for a man who can eat 70 hotdogs in 10 minutes

When does retro become vintage become antique become relic become artifact

Costco and Google Flights are the last bastions of good capitalism

If the US ever gets nuked i'm gonna be so pissed. We better have some sort of missile shield or what are we spending $600 billion a year on

Until 1827, it wasn't possible to take a photo. Took until 1890 to record sound. Amazing that for all of human history until then there was no way to objectively document the world.

It boggles my mind how many businesses Amazon is in. Did you know Amazon manages satellite ground stations?? They own Goodreads, Audible, Zappos, Ring, MGM, and Whole Foods. They make movies, run servers, own livestreaming sites, and sell prescription drugs. It's unbelievable that one company can be in so many fields and somehow be extremely successful in all of them. We're less than 10 years out from a company town for sure.

Fragrance is in the nose of the besmeller

whenever people get hit by a train it's obviously a tragedy but also...how does that happen. trains famously stay on course if you're not on the course you won't get hit. the vast majority of the world isn't train tracks

Are you tired of having to remember 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, and 24 hours per day? Wouldn't it all be easier if everything was in units of 10 like the metric system?

Enter...
Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Claude Boniface Collignon, and Joseph-Louis Lagrange, who in the mid to late 1700s proposed a new system of timekeeping with 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour, and 10 hours per day. Each metric second would be equivalent to 0.864 classic seconds. Minutes would be 1.44x what they used to be, and 1 metric hour is 2.4 classic hours.

"Meet you there at 2:00pm?" No longer!!!! Now you're meeting at 5:83

Smoking at 4:20 metric time? That's an early start, just after 10am classic time

If you are what you eat then I wanna be a cold vegetable of a man kept ripe by machines

Being lightheaded is such a fleeting experience. Never happens for more than 15 seconds at a time

feels like you don't see much skywriting anymore

somehow we still don't have the technology to make a good automatic paper towel dispenser

Tongue tricks, listed in ascending order of impressiveness

1. The Taco Fold

2. The Nose Touch

3. The 180 Twist

4. The Clover

bagpipes. excellent name

your phone CHARGER has more computing power than the Apollo 11 guidance computers

all sauce lorraine

If you lean your seat back on a flight, odds are you're not a good person

Will articles ever stop saying "X, formerly Twitter"? what a stupid name for a social media platform

what are the odds that two people named Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Phoebe Bridgers would independently rise to fame around the same time

When I'm driving and waiting at a red light and it turns green and someone in a different lane who didn't have to wait just speeds by I take it so personally. Like ok you think you're better than me because you didn't have to wait?? I've BEEN waiting at this light. You don't deserve to pass me - I put in the time, ingrate

I don't anticipate needing to buy more than two microwaves my entire life

THESE ARE MY DEMANDS:

1. Cantelope and Honeydew melons switch names. It's confusing.

2. Airport gates must be laid out in ascending order. Starting at gate 31 and walking to gate 23 doesn't make any sense.

3. Thermostats should not be designed by people with obvious mental deficiencies. If the room is 65 and I set the temperature to 70, why on earth should I have to specify that I want it in heat mode?

4. Fake plants are banned

5. Nobody is allowed to post pictures from Santorini

Every guy I see on those electric unicycles is armored up like he's ready to go storm the capitol

Yes Raytheon is a defense contractor that makes weapons of war but they also invented the microwave so you know, pros and cons

ignorance is highkey bliss

i am never closer to actually committing a homicide than when i'm at the airport

interesting...

non-ethical monogamy

WARNING: GORE

people really used to be born, live their entire lives, and die with absolutely nothing changing in their world except the people around them

I'm having such a bad technology day literally nothing is cooperating

ok i just learned that timestamps were real physical stamps with clocks in them to record when documents were processed. how cool is that

I'm really bad at remembering which middle months are which number. Like Jan-April i've got DOWN. Oct-Dec? No problem. But May-Sep? what's the 6th month of the year? idk. I only remember september is the 9th because i know it's before october which is the 10th.

some people are visual learners, some are auditory learners, but you never encounter any olfactory learners

Hippolyte Bayard was an early pioneer of photography, but he was sidelined and recieved very little recognition for his contributions while Louis Daguerre (of daguerrotype fame) got all the credit. In 1840 he staged a photo of himself as a suicide victim who drowned himself because he didn't recieve credit.

such an emo move

His note on the backside of the photo:

"The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you, or the wonderful results of which you will soon see. As far as I know, this inventive and indefatigable experimenter has been occupied for about three years with the perfection of his discovery. The Academy, the King, and all those who have seen his pictures admired them as you do at this very moment, although he himself considers them still imperfect. This has brought him much honor but not a single sou. The government, which has supported M. Daguerre more than is necessary, declared itself unable to do anything for M. Bayard, and the unhappy man threw himself into the water in despair. Oh, human fickleness! For a long time, artists, scientists, and the press took interest in him, but now that he has been lying in the morgue for days, no-one has recognized him or claimed him! Ladies and gentlemen, let's talk of something else so that your sense of smell is not upset, for as you have probably noticed, the face and hands have already started to decompose."

weather in kabul is nice this time of year

In De Architectura, Vitruvius lays out his beliefs on the skills an architect should have:

"Let him be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."

He goes on to write:

"But perhaps to the inexperienced it will seem a marvel that human nature can comprehend such a great number of studies and keep them in the memory. Still, the observation that all studies have a common bond of union and intercourse with one another, will lead to the belief that this can easily be realized. For a liberal education forms, as it were, a single body made up of these members. Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all."

I, for one, forgot that crabs have eyes.

Every single time daylight savings comes around congress says they're finally going to put an end to it. i swear they just say that to make us like them. it's never actually gonna happen is it

"Five Tips to Being Happy, According to a Happiness Expert" what the fuck is a happiness expert and why do we care at all what they think

nutritional yeast has gotta be the least sexy product name ever

Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi?? when was someone gonna tell me

whenever i'm using something that comes in a big quantity like a tube of toothpase it really feels like it's going to last forever. I can't quite comprehend that it will ever run out and i'm shocked when it inevitably does. i would forreal be the 19th century industrialist dumping chemicals in the river and then being surprised when the river gets polluted.

sleep is a construct created by Big Bed

Hottest temperature ever recorded in Death Valley? 1913. Chicago? 1934. Seattle? 2021. Phoenix? 1990. Lincoln? 1936. New Orleans? 1939 and 1980. San Francisco? 2017. Bozeman? 1892. New York? 1936.

I just know there are gonna be a billion articles when death valley sets a new record but sometimes places just get really hot for reasons other than climate change

if they really don't want people to smoke why is carcinogen such a cool word

-- Tracked Landing Gear, a Brief History --

Or: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Question Unnecesary Military Research

In 1939, the idea for tracked landing gear was presented to the US Air Corps as a way to spread out the weight of an aircraft on unpaved surfaces like dirt and snow. The first contract to design a set of tracked landing gear for the Douglas A-20 bomber was awarded in June 1941. By February 1942 the design was completed and a contract was issued in June to Goodyear to actually build the landing gear. The final assembly weighed twice as much as conventional wheeled landing gear and was not retractable. Testing began in spring 1943, finding that takeoff distance was increased by 15%.

While this program was happening, another contract was awarded to create tracked landing gear for the Curtiss P-40 figher plane. Testing began in 1944, but the belts kept getting filled with ice, snow, and mud. Further testing showed that tracked landing gear was not compatible with light fighters because of internal friction issues, inability for the track to get out of ditches and over obstacles, the size of the units, and that they were not self-cleaning.

Despite these flaws, in November of 1946 a contract was awarded to create tracked landing gear for the larger C-82 heavy cargo aircraft. This assembly increased the gross weight of the aircraft by 1,200 pounds. During sand testing in 1948, the entire main belt peeled off the landing gear. Testing concluded that while it worked decently enough on grass, it could not operate on sand or snow.

Boeing decided to try their hand at tracked landing gear and began a program to install them onto the even larger B-50B bombers. When they recieved the belts from Goodyear and Firestone, the belts were unusable at the speeds needed for flight testing and so tests were conducted by pulling the plane along the runway by a tow truck. While the tracked B-50B eventually flew in early 1949, Boeing decided not to pursue further development.

As if to demonstrate of humanity's hubris, the Air Force began a program to create tracked landing gear for the largest plane in their inventory, the B-36 strategic bomber. Testing began in February 1950. The tracked gear weighed 5,600 pounds more than conventional gear, but put down 57psi of pressure compared to the conventional 156psi. The first and only flight test took place on March 26, 1950. Takeoff was described as "very rough and noisy", and parts from the assembly left a trail on the runway as it fell apart. The plane landed and the entire program was abandoned.

In summary -

Testing on the A-20 (61ft wingspan) - Partial success
Testing on the P-40 (37ft wingspan) - Failure
Testing on the C-82 (77ft wingspan) - Partial failure
Testing on the B-50B (141ft wingspan) - Failure
Testing on the B-36 (230ft wingspan) - Failure

Why the military kept throwing money at this problem we may never know. Especially when there was already a solution for landing on snow that uses 0 moving parts - skis.

"environmental impact statement" come on. it's a new building on an empty lot in a city, a place where the environment has been completely eradicated. there will be no impact

also while i'm on the topic of apple changes. The main feature I desperately need in the weather app is the ability to look at yesterday's weather. ok it's gonna be 90 degrees and 53% humidity today but how does that compare to yesterday, the weather i've most recently felt?

remember a couple years ago when apple started allowing third party keyboards and everyone had hot pink or just straight up photos behind their keyboard? I'm glad people came to their senses about that

I fear that we're living in the golden age of museums. Never has so much of humanity's history been compiled in so few locations. When the next war breaks out and a major museum inevitably gets bombed, we're going to lose thousands of precious artifacts along with countless works of art. So go out to your local museum and look at everything while you still have the chance

Haggling with a large rodent? Call that a capybarter

Chris Christie darling, I know it's hard to hear but you need to stop running for president. It's not gonna happen

Mental illness is all in your head

Ferris Bueller's Day Off only has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes which shows that democracy actually doesn't work because the voters are morons.

The absolute gall to steal territory from Mexico, then turn it into a state called New Mexico

I thought USA was #1 we gotta up our brick size. Russia gets 91% more brick per brick!

Hucker's Soil Formulation:
45.8% Distilled water
13.8% Evaporated milk
9.2% Jif Creamy Peanut Butter
9.2% Salted Butter
9.2% Arrowhead Mills stone ground wheat flour
9.2% Egg Yolk
2.7% Shaws saline solution
0.9% Printer's ink with boiled linseed oil

a work can be labeled "obscene" in the united states and is thus not protected by the first amendment if (among other things) "...the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Which is a ridiculous measure because if something meets all the criteria and becomes censored then it inherently gains literary, artistic, and political value.

Imagine getting mugged by someone with a french accent. How embarrassing would that be

being an economist is easy. just say over and over again that we're heading into a recession and eventually you'll be right

people in the 1700s also didn't have to remember any passwords or live in industrialized society. And all they had to deal with was dyptheria, sewage flowing through the streets, and extremely high infant mortality. Remind me why we advanced as a civilization again we seemed to have had it figured out

cemeteries are such a silly idea. just gonna be paved over in 200 years by people who don't give a fuck. bury me in the woods

When NASA launched the Voyager missions into interstellar space in 1977 they also sent two identical golden records with images, sounds, and greetings from Earth in 55 languages. These are my favorite greetings recorded.

Amoy: Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.
Turkish: Dear Turkish-speaking friends, may the honors of the morning be upon your heads.
Arabic: Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday.
Persian: Hello to the residents of far skies.
Sotho: We greet you, O great ones.

Cars used by diplomats can't really be penalized for unpaid tickets because of diplomatic immunity. One Egyptian car in NYC owes the city over $220,000 for 1,985 separate tickets, including blocking fire hydrants 126 times. The city is owed $16 million from unpaid tickets accrued by diplomats.

also potential hot take but people who eat meat are far more militant about their diet than vegans and vegetarians.

spending time with friends is overstated yet underrated

in 2009, the Blue Gene supercomputer team was able to simulate 1% of the human brain. roughly equivalent to the brain of a cat. 1.6 billion neurons with 9 trillion connections, running at 1/600th the speed of a human brain.

people from the 1700s probably didn't need to know any acronyms

at this point Canada's main export is smoke

Enjoy life. Throw a Lobster Party.

hull an oat? that's a groat

Jugglers depicted in the tomb of Baqet III. ~21st Century BCE

"DOD terminated the DarkStar ACTD in January 1999...after it was determined that DarkStar was not aerodynamically stable..."

holy shit shocker who could've seen this coming

Derivative of:

Velocity --> Acceleration
Acceleration --> Jerk (or Jounce)
Jerk --> Snap
Snap --> Crackle
Crackle --> Pop

There goes the 29 day wordle streak no it's fine im not devastated

Water with and without ice is just chunky vs creamy

butter

every day i go to complete the wordle only to find that I already did it last night at 12:01am

and while we're on the topic of calendars. We all know that July is named after Julius Caesar and August is after Augustus, but did you know that 4 other Roman emperors also tried to change the names of the months?

- Caligula renamed September Germanicus
- Nero renamed April, May, and June to Neroneus, Claudius, and Germanicus respectively
- Domitian renamed September BACK to Germanicus, and October to Domitianus
- Commodus renamed all 12 months (in order) Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, Pius, Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, and Exsuperatorius

i'm excited to announce that henceforth October shall be referred to as Rafus

also why does Gregory get all the credit for the calendar? literally the only thing he did was have us keep the leap year every 400 years. apparently that's all it takes to get a calendar named after you

Britain switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Because of the changes made, September 3-13, 1752 do not exist in British history

lightning is maybe the craziest thing that happens on this planet

In Education Through Recreation (1916), George E. Johnson conducted a survey of the children of Cleveland to see how they spent their free time. Over 40% of children surveyed were reported to be "doing nothing," and the other 60% were doing such activities as "tying can to dog," "chasing chickens," "stealing apples," and "roughing a peddler."

commercial flights are an exercise in seeing the minimum amount of space and amenities you can give 300 people for 2-14 hours without them staging a mutiny

Herman W. Lay
1909 - 1982

building under construction near me seems to have wooden framing

the deep dark underbelly of the optometry industrial complex

Reverse Sisyphean task: something so finite and easy to complete that you can't bring yourself to begin it

Metal recycling campaign publicity photoshoot at Douglas Aircraft Company. Long Beach, October 1942

Imagine a lizard named Eel

teensy tiny banana bunch

John Wick: Antebellum

mmmmm, Flavor Shapes

2.5oz of vodka, 6oz of orange juice, 1oz blue curacau, 1 dose of the Pfizer vax

fred and dreakbast

SOMEtime do you doa/?

old pot sitting in the ground for 2600 years is so sparkly clean in its display case

i know this may be old news to you missouriheads but i'm just a western lad who never learned these kinds of things

Across the border from the Kansas City, MO we all know and love, there is a different, smaller city in KS also called Kansas City. And the Missouri Kansas City was incorporated 22 years earlier than the Kansas Kansas City.

J and M have no business being so close together in the alphabet

when i was little i saw one of those compostable plastic cups that said it was made of corn so i took a bite

this is definitely human trafficking right

they should invent something between guitar and ukelele

i'm not gonna make it but i really feel like a fancam of elizabeth holmes and ramesh balwani set to "Sunny" by Bobby Hebb would make a splash

WATCH OUT!!!

i've been stubbing my toe a lot lately. i would say i've been stubbing my toe left and right but it's exclusively been my right foot

in the future, everyone will have their own website

Gastrointestinal Joe

according to every social media and ecommerce platform the only small businesses that exist are soap and candle making

isn't this putting your infant in the crumple zone

pier 39 is a scourge upon humanity. we would all be better off if it was wiped off the map

i can't believe Fleets were a pre-elon twitter feature

drivers of the 23 really blaze the heat. it's like the tropics in there

Two space probes, Voyager 1 and 2. Which was launched first?

WRONG

somehow China and the US are so close together in size (less than 3% difference), that they're either #3 or #4 globally depending on if you count lakes as part of a country's area.

people think that the perfect job is one where you're fulfilled because you contribute to society and can see that your actions directly make people's lives better. they're all wrong. the perfect job is the guy who comes up with convoluted acronyms for the names of bills in congress

as an aside, it is absurd that the peninsula between Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia is called Delmarva

- Punkin Chunkin -

This is Colossal Thunder, a machine competing in the trebuchet division. In 2015 they launched a pumpkin 3,278 feet.

This is Chunk Norris setting the new mechanical record in 2019 with a launch of 4,091 feet. They compete in the catapult division.

My favorite machine is Bad to the Bone. Here's their 2012 launch, they've reached distances of up to 3,245 feet. They compete in the centrifugal division.

But the competition is in danger!! Since 2019 they've faced extreme difficulties, especially finding a space to hold the event. If you own or know somebody who owns "any property that is 200 acres or more in size" (ideally on the Delmarva Peninsula) please please email info@punkinchunkin.com!! For more information about what they're looking for in a site, go to https://www.punkinchunkin.com/location/. Spread the word and HELP SAVE PUNKIN CHUNKIN

maybe the coolest thing i've ever seen

kinda fucked that we put babies in cages almost immediately after they're born. i guess babies can't be trusted.

i gotta get me some JFK sunglasses

white space is my middle name

every rocket engine test video has audio and every single one sounds exactly the same. PSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"set it and forget it" "plug and play" "automagically" these are the words and phrases that will remain in our society for thousands of years

Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) wears a bicycle pin instead of an Amerian flag on his lapel

just learned that seinfeld was filmed in LA. how could jerry do this to me?

these fucking doctors want us to stop switching clocks back and forth by PERMANENTLY HAVING LESS DAYLIGHT

disregard my previous post about general dynamics, just found out about General Atomics

nissan cube with the license plate "POOCAKE"

do you think i could land a plane? text me if yes and otherwise keep your opinion to yourself

i also lowkey feel like i could probably land a small plane. how hard can it be

i feel like i could probably smoke crack once and not get addicted.

General Dynamics has the best name of any US defense contractor

realized i bought the wrong domain, i've made a huge mistake.

Happy National Automatic Door Day to all who celebrate! #AAADM

we don't talk enough about how Biden's middle name is Robinette

moving truck with an ad for tanzania

It's the most wonderful time of the year

when i was little i misread CD-ROM as CD ROOM and i thought some people had whole rooms just to use cds

the more photos i upload to this site the slower it loads but I have neither the knowledge nor the desire to make it run faster so, yet again, suck my dick

I don't know how to code so for the time being the assorted jpgs sections is gonna have a lot of white space

ignorance is piss

didn't crash the CNC today, but I did spend the entire day worried that i would

crashed a CNC machine today at work, i am a good employee i am a good employee i am a good employee

After 21 years of sleeping mostly on my right side I'm very excited to announce that I've begun to sleep mostly on my left! Looking forward to see how this develops over the coming months, thank you all for being part of my journey.

the photo for this listing looks like it was taken during a nuclear meltdown

so all these mf schools better let me in

if i ever, EVER have to apply to schools again i might seriously off myself

Your tongue is trapped in a cage made of teeth

i swear to god i'm this close to shaving my head

is it bad if i want to buy every can of amy's soup and display them in my home

ironically by uploading that chart the site now loads slower. Still, see my previous message

as you can plainly see, rbernst.com is already achieving unprecedented levels of efficiency. all with one employee and no revenue. suck my friggin dick

be'f

you ever get the urge to stick your hand directly into a spinning endmill? haha yeah me neither

wordle in 2, this day's gotta be a banger

i was wrong

whenever you best wordlebot you know it's gonna be a good day

is it just me or did a solid chunk of the craziest shit ever happen in the late 1800s

The zeppelin is named after its creator, Ferdinand von Zeppelin

you all want to regard me as some sort of coding genius and i'm willing to accept that responsibility

last year i briefly had an onion plant that was much like a child to me. unfortunatley he didn't make it. please join me in mourning the loss of my sonion

what's the earliest recorded incident of someone getting shit on by a bird. somebody had to be the first to write it down

damn girl, if you were a legal disclaimer you'd be fiiiine print

Apollo 13 was an inside job

major update to site layout, lots of dev work going on behind the scenes im kind of turning into a zuckerberg of myself

sure the sun would rise at 9:30am in the winter but it's a small price to pay

I say we abolish standard time but take it one step further and push sunrise another hour forward. 7:00pm sunsets in the winter and 9:30 in the summer. sign me up

has anyone calculated 1/3 to the ten billionth digit like with pi

never try to tell me there's a cooler job than astronaut

is this what it feels like to be a sovereign nation

no copyright rules on this site so here's a full episode of better call saul

just realized funyuns is a portmanteau of fun and onions

this website costs money and makes 0 money, thus it is a nonprofit and any venmos to me are tax deductible

the party has begun

rafi's positivity corner

Route
of the Moment

reader's column

link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link

Ado (fuss)

Adore (absolutely love)

Aesop (of fable fame)

Age, Eon, Era (long stretch)

Ape (mimic)

Arena (large event center)

Arlo (Guthrie)

ASAP (quickly, in a hurry)

Asea (on the ocean)

Ash (what's left after a fire)

Asia (largest continent)

Asp (snake)

Atop (on or above)

Brie (soft white cheese)

Demo (floor model)

Des (___ Moines, Iowa)

East/West (Division of Germany)

Eel (slippery fish)

EGOT (awards quadfecta, in brief)

Elect (appoint)

Elena (Kagan)

Eno (Brian)

Epee (fencing sword)

ER (hosp. area)

Err (make a mistake)

ESP (supernatural ability, for short)

Etsy (handmade goods storefront)

Etta (James)

IPA (beer)

Ire (wrath)

IUD (implant to prevent preg.)

NGO (Greenpeace, WWF, etc.)

NNW, SSE, ENE, etc. (dir.)

Oboe (instrument)

Odor (smell)

Ole (soccer chant)

Ono (Yoko)

Oreo (cookie)

Sass (backtalk)

SNL (weekly comedy show on NBC)

SSN (ID #)

TSA (airport org.)

Ulna (arm bone)