~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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nostalgebraist:

TBH I kind of enjoy the style of file hosting sites that make their money by getting people to sign up for their premium service

“Do you want to PREMIUM DOWNLOAD this file?  I think you want to PREMIUM DOWNLOAD this file.  To help you make this (non-)decision, here is a GIANT TABLE comparing the stout, healthy PREMIUM DOWNLOAD to the wretched, pathetic ‘free download,’ which we retain only out of pity.  PREMIUM DOWNLOAD is going places in life.  PREMIUM DOWNLOAD hails from a noble lineage, stretching back to patriarchs of a less sickly age.  Cast your lot with ‘free download’ and you will waste your years in a purgatory of tickets and CAPTCHAs.  You will curse with your dying breath the pivotal moment when, as a rash young thing, you made the wrong choice.

Why are you scrolling down?  Here, we’ll make this easier for you.  Here are five gigantic green buttons reading PREMIUM DOWNLOAD.  Do you occasionally feel self-conscious about your performance in bed?  Those who have chosen PREMIUM DOWNLOAD do not.  The price is so, so low.  You will not even notice it.  After all, PREMIUM DOWNLOAD comes with free, cutting-edge financial-decision-anesthesia technology.

We notice you are continuing to scroll down.  We are becoming very concerned.  Do you need to talk?  We have many therapists on staff, although, naturally, they are perks of our PREMIUM DOWNLOAD service.  We will slow your fall from grace with this CAPTCHA.  It will not work and you will have to re-load it.  Then it will show you a grainy picture of the number ‘6513′ and instruct you to ‘type the three words.’  There are not three words, only one number.  Do you see what things are like in the meaningless, debauched void of ‘free download,’ unbound by denotation or logic?  We beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken!

We see you are lost.  We weep.  Enjoy your ‘free download,’ and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Tags:

#I know I just reblogged this #but…wow #it’s been less than a day #(and only 242 notes) #and this post just bumped into me again #but this time as a branch that hasn’t been in the rationalist-sphere in several moves #Tumblr is a coincidental place

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

doctopus:

what if you spoke in your icon’s voice for an entire week

Tags:

#well being mute for a week could get annoying #but on the bright side I would have a iron-clad excuse for wanting to talk to meatspace people through text #(this is assuming I *know* it’s temporary) #(and that I know it’s not a symptom of some larger more terrible thing) #(otherwise it gets a lot scarier) #icon #that excuse for communication called speech

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

ilzolende:

nostalgebraist:

TBH I kind of enjoy the style of file hosting sites that make their money by getting people to sign up for their premium service

“Do you want to PREMIUM DOWNLOAD this file?  I think you want to PREMIUM DOWNLOAD this file.  To help you make this (non-)decision, here is a GIANT TABLE comparing the stout, healthy PREMIUM DOWNLOAD to the wretched, pathetic ‘free download,’ which we retain only out of pity.  PREMIUM DOWNLOAD is going places in life.  PREMIUM DOWNLOAD hails from a noble lineage, stretching back to patriarchs of a less sickly age.  Cast your lot with ‘free download’ and you will waste your years in a purgatory of tickets and CAPTCHAs.  You will curse with your dying breath the pivotal moment when, as a rash young thing, you made the wrong choice.

Why are you scrolling down?  Here, we’ll make this easier for you.  Here are five gigantic green buttons reading PREMIUM DOWNLOAD.  Do you occasionally feel self-conscious about your performance in bed?  Those who have chosen PREMIUM DOWNLOAD do not.  The price is so, so low.  You will not even notice it.  After all, PREMIUM DOWNLOAD comes with free, cutting-edge financial-decision-anesthesia technology.

We notice you are continuing to scroll down.  We are becoming very concerned.  Do you need to talk?  We have many therpaists on staff, although, naturally, they are perks of our PREMIUM DOWNLOAD service.  We will slow your fall from grace with this CAPTCHA.  It will not work and you will have to re-load it.  Then it will show you a grainy picture of the number ‘6513′ and instruct you to ‘type the three words.’  There are not three words, only one number.  Do you see what things are like in the meaningless, debauched void of ‘free download,’ unbound by denotation or logic?  We beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken!

We see you are lost.  We weep.  Enjoy your ‘free download,’ and may God have mercy on your soul.”

It’s still better than sites that make money by advertising arbitrary things.

Because inevitably, all the ads look like download buttons, larger, crisper, and more prominent than the one you want to click.

Anyway, I digress, this post is awesome.

Tags:

#advertising #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

jtotheizzoe:

Pluto Through The Years…

NASA’s New Horizons probe completed its fly-by of the dwarf planet Pluto this morning at 7:49 AM ET, completing a 9+ year, 3 billion mile journey to our favorite Kuiper belt object and is now continuing off into the outer reaches of the solar system. 

On its way by Pluto, New Horizons snapped the clearest and most hi-resolution images ever taken of the dwarf planet, but since the probe can’t upload data back to Earth while it’s scienceing, we won’t see the best ones until tomorrow (also keep in mind that it takes 4.5 hours for signals to travel between Earth and Pluto, even at the speed of light!). New Horizons’ multiple instruments are collecting so much data that it will take nearly 16 months to get it all sent back to Earth! So keep following the NASA mission page and official Twitter account for plenty of Pluto updates over the next year.

Above is a collection of Pluto as we’ve seen it through the years, from its 1930 discovery at Lowell observatory (bottom), to Hubble’s 100-pixel Atari version taken in 1996 (middle), to New Horizons’ most recent color image taken July 13, 2015. 

Here’s to the New Horizons team, congratulations from everyone on Earth! 

image

(scale image of Pluto and its moon Charon compared to Earth)

Interesting side note: The dwarf planet Pluto’s name was suggested in a letter by an 11-year-old schoolgirl named Venetia Burney. But what about this Pluto?

image

While there’s no documentation to back up the claim, Disney’s Pluto character debuted just nine months after the dwarf planet’s discovery in 1930, and it’s widely assumed that Walt Disney’s animators were capitalizing on Pluto fever. I’d say we’ve got it again, wouldn’t you?

Tags:

#history #space #the power of science #Pluto #oh look an update

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

prokopetz:

One of the distinctive features of Old Norse poetry is the use of kenning: a circumlocutory device in which a straightforward noun is replaced with an allusive phrase.

For example, a ship might be referred to as a “wave’s horse”; a sword, a “wound-serpent”; a shield, “the shame of swords”, and so forth. Sometimes, kennings could be embedded in other kennings – thus, one might have “feeder of war-gulls” = “feeder of ravens” = “warrior”; this is known as a doubled or extended kenning

Though many conventions of English literature can be traced back to Old Norse roots, kenning isn’t much encountered these days – at least, not in most genres. There’s one particular genre where the art of kenning is alive and well, though.

I’m speaking, of course, of erotic fanfic.

Whether you’re referring to a penis as a “porn-truncheon” or a vagina as “squish-pocket” (both examples I’ve seen employed in all apparent seriousness, incidentally), that perfectly fits the form and function of a kenning. Indeed, these examples even adhere to the idiosyncratic grammatical structure of many Old Norse kennings, with the base word being modified by an uninfected noun determinant inserted as a compound prefix.

Euphemisms for sex acts, meanwhile, can be even more baroque, forming multi-level allusions in the manner of doubled/extended kennings. “To ride the baloney pony”, for example, employs the act of riding a horse as an allusion to penetrative sexual intercourse – but the contained phrase “baloney pony” is, itself, a kenning of the simple type, with “pony” as the base word and “baloney” as the determinant, making the whole phrase a doubled kenning.

There are practical reasons for this sort of practice, of course; e.g., complex euphemisms can help sexually explicit works sneak through content filters. Still, it’s kind of fascinating that smutty fanfic has managed to preserve – in virtually unaltered state – a poetic form that’s otherwise been largely extinct in English literature for the better part of a thousand years.

Tags:

#interesting

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

phantomdoodler:

pharcydes:

uggly:

To celebrate the 38th anniversary of the liberation of Da Nang, the government of Vietnam has constructed the world’s largest dragon-shaped bridge over the Han River. Not only is it the steel bridge the largest of its type in the world, but it is covered in over 2,500 LED lights also it breathes fire. Construction on Vietnam’s massive 545-foot dragon bridge began in 2009. Now, four years and $85 million later, the eye-catching bridge is complete. More info about this here

“the worlds largest dragon shaped bridge”

how many other dragon shaped bridges am I missing out on

Tags:

#awesome #this kind of seems like it belongs in the #love the decor fandom #tag #it’s not really decor but it goes well with the stuff in that tag

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

brxkenpetal:

oldhollywoodmoxie:

These lockets are anatomically correct. The locket is held shut by the trunk of the aorta, which acts as a snap. The chain attaches to the pendant through the superior vena cava and left pulmonary vein, causing the heart to hang slightly anterioinferiorly, just like our hearts!

someone get me this, it’s amazing

Tags:

#pretty things #jewellery #neat

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

nihilsupernum:

my eleven-year-old brother took my sunglasses and put them on

and when i told him to give me back my sunglasses

he said “i took your sunglasses. deal with it.”

and then he put on a second pair of sunglasses

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog