Month: March 2019

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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rustingbridges:

brin-bellway:

rustingbridges:

yesterdaysprint:

The Evening World, New York, March 24, 1904

Has anyone tried this? I feel compelled to at least take the idea seriously

The trouble with *holding* it upside-down is that gravity works against you, and some or all of the butter may fall off.

I generally compromise by holding it butter-side-up, then using my tongue to flip each bite over inside my mouth.

—

*looks up “voluble”* Wait, hang on, is this a joke about oiling your tongue in order to make your speech-producing mechanisms work better? I thought we were talking about how to best enjoy the flavour.

So having tried this, here are my findings:

1) I didn’t have any trouble with the butter coming off, it was all pretty well into the bread. If you used a lot more butter than I did though perhaps that could become a problem?

2) The flavor profile is definitely a little different. I get the butter first and then later the flip side (my test was performed with end pieces of a wonderbread style loaf, I do have some dough rising so maybe I’ll see with some normal bread).

3) However the butter flavor is still very available eating it butter side up. It’s more of an accent though. I didn’t find it made a big difference, although if you wanted to maximize the butter flavor (to skimp on butter, maybe, or if you just really love butter) butter side down might be worthwhile.

4) The actual inconvenience to me was that I had to hold my slice in a nonstandard configuration.

My conclusion is that this approach is probably not, generally speaking, for me, but I think it’s a reasonable preference.

It may be worth noting that in many cases my buttered bread has room-temperature bread, and butter partway between refrigerator-temperature and room-temperature. In these cases the butter does not melt into the bread at all, and is often not even that firmly attached.

(I *try* to bring butter up to room temperature before spreading it, but I don’t always get enough advance notice.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #food

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WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

drethelin:

By Eliezer Yudkowsky

MORPHEUS: For the longest time, I wouldn’t believe it. But then I saw the fields with my own eyes, watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living –

NEO (politely): Excuse me, please.

MORPHEUS: Yes, Neo?

NEO: I’ve kept quiet for as long as I could, but I feel a certain need to speak up at this point. The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you’re telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to the living? Haven’t you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?

MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?

NEO: Anyone who’s made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!

MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?

(Pause.)

NEO: …in the Matrix.

MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.

(Pause.)

NEO (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?

MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn’t run on math.

Tags:

#I’ve read this before but it’s still great #The Matrix #fanfic #unreality cw #death tw

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

best-of-inspirobot:

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tearlessrain:

tearlessrain:

this is in perfect iambic meter and sounds like the first line of a weird poem

Rule #2

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you see one on the street,

For decorum is essential when a lobster you must greet.

You may comment on the weather, compliment his choice of hat,

But crustaceans like their space if one should stop them for a chat.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you’re strolling down the coast,

Simply nod and give a greeting, or a handshake at the most,

For a lobster’s first priority is formal social graces,

And one seemes over-familiar if a lobster one embraces.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you meet one in the sea,

For a lobster’s spines and chitin make it difficult, you see,

And he might become self-conscious if you bring that fact to light,

So don’t ever hug a lobster, simply put, it’s impolite.

Tags:

#lobster #poetry

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sigmaleph:

glumshoe:

“Ah, yes, the tropical rainforest planet.”

“By ‘tropical rainforest planet’, do you mean it’s got rainforest around the equator, or that it’s entirely covered in rainforest?“

“The whole thing is rainforest, yes.”

“Huh. Wild! Still, calling it all ‘tropical rainforest’ is misleading, as the tropics refer to the areas around a planet’s equator.”

“Oh, the jungle planet doesn’t have an equator.”

“It—what? Of course it does. It has to! All spheroid planets capable of sustaining life have equators, it just refers to the division between the poles along the axis of rotation.”

“No, no, you see, I know that. But the jungle planet doesn’t have a single axis of rotation. Instead, it wriggles around so that every part of it is equally heated.”

“That sounds fake, but I don’t know enough about planets to tell you how stupid that is.”

“The inhabitants call it Sous-vide.”

fun fact: the tropics are the area around the equator, but how much area around the equator depends on the planet’s axial tilt. a planet with a 90° axial tilt would be entirely tropical. in our solar system, Uranus is 99% tropics by surface

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #story ideas I will never write #overly literal interpretations #fun with loopholes

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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rustingbridges:

yesterdaysprint:

The Evening World, New York, March 24, 1904

Has anyone tried this? I feel compelled to at least take the idea seriously

The trouble with *holding* it upside-down is that gravity works against you, and some or all of the butter may fall off.

I generally compromise by holding it butter-side-up, then using my tongue to flip each bite over inside my mouth.

—

*looks up “voluble”* Wait, hang on, is this a joke about oiling your tongue in order to make your speech-producing mechanisms work better? I thought we were talking about how to best enjoy the flavour.

Tags:

#food #reply via reblog

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

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malformalady:

Approximately 90% of any iceberg is below the surface, making iceberg flips a rare occurrence. These photos were taken by the the U.S. Antarctic Program in Iceberg Alley, a region in the western Weddell Sea. Large old icebergs contain centuries of windblown sediment and minerals, visible as layers when they roll over as seen in the photo

Photo credit: Ethan Norris

Tags:

#pretty things

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

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yieldsfalsehoodwhenquined:

sindri42:

stljedi:

It’s going to be a bad night.

Look, if it’s a real ghost, the busters get custody. If it’s just a real estate developer in a costume it’s out of their jurisdiction so we gotta hand things off to these meddling kids and their dog.

i’d watch a case of the week PI procedural about a paranormal investigator and a paranormal debunker that have to work together to figure out if this week’s ghost is bullshit or not

Tags:

#Ghostbusters #Scooby Doo #crossovers #story ideas I will never write #(duelling genre conventions to create suspense is so neat) #(I read a novel once that was both ”sci-fi dystopia adventure” and ”erotic horror”) #(which have opposite conventions for which side wins) #(so you end up *genuinely uncertain* which side is going to win) #(unlike most sci-fi dystopia adventures the good guys *might actually lose*) #(because the audience wouldn’t feel betrayed by that and the author *knows* they wouldn’t)