pengychan:

rumbutt:

screenageralex:

Being 18-25 is like playing a video game where you’ve skipped the tutorial and you’re just sort of running about with no idea how anything works

Being 25-30 is like later on in the game when you’ve figured out how things work, but have made poor leveling decisions along the way and are now horribly underpowered for what you’re supposed to be doing.

Being 30-35 is coming to the conclusion that if wildly swinging a sword at random while screaming has gotten you this far, may as well keep at it. 


Tags:

#I’m 26 and #yeah pretty much #sometimes I wonder if sending a message back to 18-year-old me telling her to major in accounting would actually result in a better timeline #or if I needed to take the long road to that realisation #maybe I should just tell 18-year-old me to take up MMO merchanting as a hobby and trust her to come to the appropriate conclusions herself #still‚ though‚ maybe there are universes out there where I figured it out sooner and took fewer fallthrough courses #I can see her now‚ sitting at the dining room table with a work-issued laptop‚ remotely updating their databases #until it’s safe to return to her cubicle #meanwhile here I am preparing to go out there #and serve rotting food to those few assholes who insist on getting takeout in the middle of a plague #spraying everything down with sanitiser after each one #(except sometimes they show up one after another and there isn’t time) #go home and spend 40 minutes carefully decontaminating #wipe down the laundry basket with store-brand Lysol after I put my uniform in the wash #every time I hug my mom I wonder if by doing so I am sealing her fate #(she insists that I not lock myself in my bedroom until and unless I start showing symptoms) #tag rambles #in which Brin has a job #covid19 #illness tw #death tw? #adventures in University Land

etirabys:

CJ and I were trying to find the proportion of severe cases in Shenzhen by age in this horrible little paper (me, after failing to find the pertinent information after looking at all the important looking graphs: maybe it’s time to read the wall of text. / CJ: I have a better idea. Let’s buy plane tickets to China, find the authors, then murder them.)

At the end, we’ve ‘found’ the right figure for the 30-39 range (The only age range with non-zero severe case proportion under age 40) by… using the screencap tool to measure how many pixels the center of the yellow square at 30-39 is from the bottom, and then measuring how many pixels are between the 0 line and the 0.1 line, and determining that 7 pixels over 53 ~= 0.13, so the fraction of severe cases for that age is 0.1*0.13.

2f7d889b6cc27ab20ed963e8e8221a851724a3cf

Civilization is maddening!


Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #illness tw #covid19 #fun with statistics #death tw? #murder cw?

{{previous post in sequence}}


prokopetz:

Bad: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, but nobody picks up on it for various implausible reasons.

Good: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, and everybody “knows”, but in spite of countless people’s best efforts nobody can actually prove it.

 

yudkowsky:

“Literally everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose,” said the woman sitting across from me in our candlelit dinner. “The superheroes know it. The villains know it. The guy on the street knows it. Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon know it. The Enquirer doesn’t break the mask code when they print your picture because they don’t even bother mentioning who you are. If I need to have conversations with you pretending not to know that Bruce is the ‘Goose, we’re going to be the only two people on the planet pretending that.”

My expectations for this date’s viability were starting to sink. She was saying intelligent things, and saying them with remarkable confidence and self-possession for somebody who thought she was talking to the Masculine Mongoose himself. It was impressing me and more than slightly turning me on. But the conversation had taken a turn I’d been down before, and not a promising one. “I don’t want to get into a relationship under false pretenses,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Like if I slept with you under the impression that you were just an ordinary playboy millionaire, instead of a superhero.” She sipped from her champagne glass, visibly trying not to smile.

“Look,” I said, trying to make my voice as persuasive as I could. “Just like you say, everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose. People have believed that for eight years. And in all that time, nobody has ever managed to prove anything – never mind suggestive evidence, nobody has ever shown it for certain. Shouldn’t that give you pause?”

Keep reading

 

mirasorastone:

I would read an entire novel series about this concept. 

 

yudkowsky:

To her dying day, reporter Terri Green would remember the look on Bruce Kent’s face as the assassin stepped out of the crowd, holding the gun.

Keep reading

 

yudkowsky:

(5000 words.  This story takes place chronologically before the first two Bruce Kent fics, but should be read afterwards.)

There was no warning. One moment I was waiting in line at the Gothic Cityville branch of the First Financial Bank to get a cashier’s check made out, trying to ignore the whispers coming from before me and behind me. Bruce Kent is very rigorous about pretending to not be the Masculine Mongoose, as everyone knows by now. Bruce Kent acts uncomfortable around people who whisper when they recognize him, just like he would if he was a normal human being who’d gotten mistaken for the Mongoose somehow. Keeping up the act at all times, yeah, that’s me all right.

The next moment, the glassed front door of the bank shattered into pieces around a woman stomping through in giant flaming power armor.  She was followed shortly after by ten other goons in smaller suits of flaming power armor.  When I say ‘flaming’ I don’t mean that it was decorated in red and orange, I mean that the powered suits were emitting gouts of fire from built-in spouts.

Professor Pyrofessor had somehow, God help her and both of us, managed to pick that exact moment to rob this particular bank branch.

Keep reading


Tags:

#storytime #oh look an update #embarrassment squick? #superheroes #death tw?

Anonymous asked: concept: tma and mbmbam crossover but its just a haunted doll watch bit with The Stranger

itsbenedict:

iamalivenow:

justin: boobobubobuboo its a haunted doll watch this is nikola she’s a haunted doll

nikola: i sure am : )

*incomprehensible scream*

J: “Okay, so we’ve got another Yahoo from- BOOP BOO-BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP BOO-BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP BOO-BOOP BOOP”

G: “Oh, Christ.”

T: “Yeah!”

J: That’s right, it’s a Haunted Doll Watch; I know I’ve been talking about retiring this bit forever but ladies and gentlemen-”

G: “Wait-”

J: “-even though it’s in its sunset years, Haunted Doll Watch is-”

T: “No, Justin, that’s another-”

G: “That’s another bi-”

J: “-Haunted Doll Watch is- it’s always time for- see, haunted dolls never go out of style-”

G: “Were they in style?”

J: “-extremely fashionable, haunted dolls, there’s clearly a market- this one comes to us from an overseas seller, the listing is in- jolly old Brrrrritish Pounds-”

T: “Justin, I love you, but that was the worst-”

G: “-the best British accent anyone has ever done including all actual British people, can we please move on to the doll-”

J: “-seller ‘TMI Artifact Storage’ appears to be some sort of haunted artifact wholesaler, y’know, one of those places that acts like they just happen to come across so many haunted artifacts that they just need to-”

T: “They just need to get rid of ‘em all!”

G: “For many, many dollars, get rid of these real haunted items. Please. I need these gone but also I have a wife and kids who are starving-”

T: “It’s a starvation curse from all these haunted artifacts-”

J: “So- no, see, they’re selling these things on behalf of other people, is the idea, they- it’s more of a resale shop, I guess, they come with these statements from-”

G: “So- wait. There’s a store, where you can go, if you have a haunted doll-”

J: “A haunted anything, the next item in the lot is a haunted calliope-”

T: “I thought it was pronounced ‘cal-ee-OH-pee’.”

J: “This isn’t Haunted Calliope Watch, Trav, I’m trying to get to the-”

G: “-you can go to this store if you have a haunted ass, and you can sell your haunted ass to the store and now it’s not your problem-”

J: “Yes, I believe that to be the case.”

T: “Oh, ‘Doctor, my ass is haunted!’ ‘Well, I know just the place to sell your ass’-”

G: “Okay, say a haunted toilet brush-”

J: “Haunted Doll Watch, please let me get on with the listing. Statement comes from Leanne Denikin, regarding an antique calliope organ she possessed briefly in August 2004.”

G: “Juice, you just said it’s not-”

J: “Okay okay okay. Strange music, yada yada yada, creepy clown, okay, something something, here’s the doll… sending you a picture of the doll…”

G: “Oh, God.”

T: “Where’s its mouth?”

J: “This haunted doll is named Josh, and-”

G: “Josh?!?”

T: [hysterical wheezing]

G: “Your fucking haunted-ass doll that you’re selling on eBay to spook people out is named-”

J: “Yes, his name is Josh! Josh is a tormented spirit of the seller’s ex-boyfriend, who was brutally murdered in an unsolved-”

T: [still wheezing] “Please, he’s-”

G: “You’re SELLING your BOYFRIEND’S GHOST on eBAY?!”

J: “No, TMI is selling-”

G: “Your boyfriend was brutally murdered and you sold the doll containing his immortal soul to a resale shop and then they SOLD IT ON eBAY?!”

T: “No, it’s a scam, see? That’s the beauty of it! You disrespect his ghost like that, what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna come back and haunt you!”

J: “Come back and-”

T: “You sell the doll, it comes back to exact vengeance, you sell the doll again- it’s infinite free money!”

G: “Infinite free money that will eventually get angry enough to succeed at killing you.”

J: “Says ‘Josh is a nervous spirit who will-”

T: “The Prestige, Griffin! But- hey- I’ve got an idea right here.”

G: “Trav, tell me you’re not gonna-”

T: “If it’s trapped on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean-”

G: “Please don’t-”

J: “If it’s trapped on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean then what?!”

T: “Buy It Now, two hundred and three BrrrrrrRRRRrrrRRRRRrrrrRRrrrritish pounds-”

J: “Oh my god.”

G: “You bought this lady’s boyfriend off eBay?!”

J: “That’s not the problem-”

G: “Trav, we can’t just do this for every haunted doll-”

J: “-the problem is two hundred pounds is like, four hundred dollars US-”

T: “Not since Brexit it ain’t! That was 265.41 plus shipping!”

G: “Okay, so imagine the extra shipping costs when the package escapes to hunt down his human trafficking ex-girlfriend-”

T: “Doll trafficking. Ghost trafficking. We’ve been over this, it’s not-”

G: “Yeah, you’re going to die-”

J: “Okay, we’ll get back to this Haunted Doll Watch when Travis ends up with his jaw mysteriously torn off or something- Griffin, can we please get a Yahoo?”

G: “Thank you. This one was sent in by Level 9000 Ya-drew Druid Drew Davenport, it’s from Ya-drew Answers user MBlackwood, asking… ‘coworker keeps recording all our conversations, how do i make him stop’…”


Tags:

#Magnus Archives #My Brother My Brother and Me #fanfic #ghost #crossovers #I’m not actually in either of these fandoms but #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death tw?

fanfic

seacreaturefeature:

poison ivy wearing muddy overalls n rubber gloves on the set of a gardening show w the hosts tied up n gagged behind her stroking a genetically modified carnivorous plant like a lapdog: hello fume-spewers of gotham city. its your hostess with the most…the mostess…its me, poison ivy. sorry to interrupt your resource-guzzling evening’s entertainment by taking over every channel of your worthless old-media network. oh wait. i’m not. at this very moment the bouquet of roses i sent to strangle the mayor will be

heavy static followed by sudden cut 2 the penguin, drinking straight vodka and crunching icecubes wearing a feather boa and a velvet dressing gown covered in grease-strains and reclining in the hosts chair on a talk show set, which is being visibly smashed by themed muscleboys in th background: GOTHAM CITY YOU FUCKERS, YOU ABSOLUTE SWINE, HERES THE DEAL I WANT (crunch) A BILLION DOLLARS LEGAL TENDER TRANSFERRED TO MY PAYPAL AT vintage_cloaca_1937@icberglounge.com.org OR YOU CAN (slurp) SAY GOODBYE TO-

sudden cut back 2 poison ivy, furiously gesturing to the hypnotised crew to do whatever damnable technological things they do to unfuck the broadcast: (high pitched screeching)

sudden cut to the penguin: -YOUR PRECIOUS “SUN”. I-

the penguin: (hears phone ringing) OH WAIT UH HOLD ON A SECOND

the penguin: (pullS a gold rotary telephone out of his purse) HWEH?

poison ivy, shreiking thru reciever: fuck off oswald im doing a Bit!!

the penguin: TO FUCK WITH YOUR BIT I BOUGHT OUT ALL THE NETWORKS FOR 1 HALF HOUR SLOT AND NOW I HAVE MINUS A BILLION DOLLARS AND I NEED A BILLION DOLLARS

poison ivy: these airwaves arent big enough for the both of us you horrendous little animal. i swear to piss i will

sudden cut to the riddler, sitting atop a giant rubix cube w the squares flashing neon at intervals wearing 2 pairs of 3D glasses and a coquettish mod ensemble w so many sequins on it that the studio lights reflecting off it cause at least 3 lens flares a second: GREEEEEEEETINGS CITIZENS OF GOTHAM CITTTYYYYYY! i, the RIDDLER, have interrupted your intellectually unstimulating broadcast to bring you some entertainment you’ll hopefully find a little more…challenging. a new game show….with a DEADLY TWIST. for you see

the riddler: (hears his 2001 nokia beeping) uh…well, it seems we have our FIRST CALLER of the evening

the riddler: …and our SECOND CALLER. um

poison ivy: (garbled screaming)

the penguin: (choking on an ice cube in pure rage)

the riddler: woah now hey now hey there woah there just a second

the penguin:-THE SUN

poison ivy:-THE MAYOR-

the penguin: -A BILLION DOLLARS

poison ivy: -A TRILLION DOLLARS-

sudden cut to harley quinn, sitting at home on the couch in front of her webcam wearing a sweaty sports bra and loony toons pajama pants and eating a hotdog: whats up folks! just wanted to hang out


Tags:

#Batman #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #my past self has good taste #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #death tw?

blunt-science:

Spurious Correlations by Tyler Vigen.

These charts were made to depict that correlation does not always equal causation, showing that although statistics always arise, they aren’t always necessarily useful. 


Tags:

#fun with statistics #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

oh-mother-of-darkness:

oh-mother-of-darkness:

oh-mother-of-darkness:

Top ten quotes from law school, week one:

  1. “So the rules thus far are ‘don’t be late’ and ‘don’t be absent from class,’ unless you are absent because of circumstances outside your control. In that case, notify me before class. If I walk in here and you are not in your seat, and I don’t already know why that is the case… I will assume that you are dead. We will hold a brief service in your memory and then continue on, as we know you would want.”
  2. “Yeah I mean if you don’t know the answer that’s fine, but I’m gonna make you pick the next person I call on. It’s a social experiment I run. I like to see if people pick their friends or their enemies. Wildly amusing. Anyway, be prepared for that.”
  3. “So as the plaintiff’s counsel, you review all the possible venues and pick the one that’s the fairest to everyone….. haaaaahahaha I’m just kidding. You rig the court in your favor as much as you possibly can.”
  4. “You’re supposed to go to a basement during a tornado. Why don’t y’all have basements?” “Can’t watch from a basement” “You’re going to die”
  5. “My own law professor once described admiralty jurisdiction as ‘shit that happens on boats’ so [writes ‘boat shit’ on the board]”
  6. “So then Congress gave itself a raise and America shouted, ‘Give it back you evil bastards!!!’ so loudly that they did.”
  7. “I will provide you with pizza. For beverages, you’re on your own, but please abide by Baylor policy. Which is that we can’t have FUN.”
  8. “And WHAT do we find outside the cities????? C O W S”
  9. “All the desks on the third floor are reserved for 3Ls in practice court. Since you’re dying like, 100% of the time, they kindly give you a place to die. Sometimes you can see the lost souls wandering past the balconies….”
  10. [makes a list of twenty-four things that could go wrong] [writes TRUMP in all caps as number twenty-five]

Round two:

  1. “You don’t want conservatives! You want someone that will redistribute a little wealth! Get some commies! But don’t ask for them out loud, or it won’t end well.”
  2. “Occasionally someone will walk into your office and start with ‘well just as a matter of principle…’ and that right there? That’s when you pull out your extra-strength Advil, because it will be a long day.
  3. “You can walk into a restaurant and just say, ‘I want tea.’ Sweet is implied! If you don’t want it sweet, it’s ‘tea, hold the sugar,’ and I like that!”
  4. “My biggest goal is to die in Texas. When Gabriel’s trumpet blows, I will be resurrected from Texas dirt… if at all. Depends on his standards.”
  5. “And I say, ‘How much will you pay me?’ and they say ‘a shitload!’ And I say, ‘how much is a shitload?’ and what do you know? Our definitions match”
  6. “So you see that it’s an unincorporated association, and your reaction to that should be ‘shit!’ That is absolutely the proper reaction. That’s a good reaction.”
  7. “You know it’s not perjury if you cross your fingers, right?”
  8. “I would definitely shank someone for pizza.”
  9. “Right now you’re… you’re lawyer larvae. I have a sense for these things.”
  10. “So obviously Congress sprang into action. Why are you laughing? Oh yeah, BECAUSE IT’S BEEN A QUARTER CENTURY”

Round three:

  1. “And by that I mean CRAC, the acronym, not c-r-a-c-k as in crack. Although I was a defense attorney for a long time, so if you want to know how to make crack, we can cover that in a side session. It’s good information. Very interesting.”
  2. “And then I file a complaint against my employer for discriminating against me as a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant. You know… [sarcastically] the historically discriminated against crew”
  3. “Listen, I like money. It’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil. You can like it just fine.”
  4. “With the well-pleaded complaint rule, we take a scalpel and we carve out the cause of action. We lift it out of the body, bleeding! It is BLEEDING in your hands! You hold it in front of your face and you ask it, ‘WHO CREATED YOU?’ [groaning] ‘A federal law.’ ‘THEN YOU ARE A FEDERAL CASE!’ If it’s a state case, you cast it, still-beating, aside. And stomp on it.”
  5. [with deep respect] “You would make a really good anarchist”
  6. “Beaumont? How’s your family doing?” “Pretty well. I mean, everything is underwater, but it’s fine.”
  7. “Your argument is what? ‘You can’t make that much money because it isn’t fair?’ This is America. Fair doesn’t matter.”
  8. “We need ONLY one more thing: someone rich to sue. Can she help us?? We don’t know… until she describes one word on the side of that truck…. ‘Walmart.’ CHA  C H I N G (don’t say that part out loud)! What’s forty percent of thirty million?? TWELVE MILLION. Forty percent is the ONLY math I can do in my head, because that is PRIVATE JET MONEY, BABY! The ONLY POINT of being rich is to HAVE A PRIVATE JET, because THOSE THAT DO can MANIPULATE TIME. As you can see, I am passionate on this point.”
  9. “See this is a tough question because legislators are supposed to make laws, but how would you know that? They haven’t done it in YEARS.”
  10. “Listen I don’t condone murder-suicide, but like… I feel it.”

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #there is probably some warning tag I should put on this but I am not sure what

Harry Potter and How the Scene Should Have Gone

argyle-s:

Umbridge: Mr. Potter, do you expect to be attacked in my class?

Harry: Yes.

Umbridge: What?

Harry: Well, I mean, I’m running four for four.

Umbridge: Mr. Potter-

Harry: Quirrel tried to choke me out.

Umbridge: Mr. Potter-

Harry: And Lockhart tried to wipe my memory.

Umbridge: Mr. Potter-

Harry: Of course, Professor Lupin didn’t mean it. He just forgot his potion, but still, totally went werewolf on me.

Umbridge: MR. POTTER-

Harry: And then Moody turned out to be an escaped Death Eater in disguise.

Umbridge: POTTER!

Harry: So, yeah, I figure it’s 100% you’ll attack me in June, 50/50 you’ll try to kill me, with a 25% chance of an Unforgivable curse.

Harry: (Turns to Hermione)

Harry: Did I get the math right?

Hermione: Yes.


Tags:

#Harry Potter #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog

shedoesnotcomprehend:

I have some medication bottles with timers built into the lids that automatically tell you how long it’s been since you last took a dose (opened the lid), and these things are so convenient I’m actually kind of stunned they’re not more common.

You don’t have to go through the whole rigamarole of “wait, did I just take my meds five minutes ago, or did I just think about doing it? … great, should I maybe miss a dose or maybe take a double dose?” every other time you take them. You don’t have to try to remember what time it was when you woke up in the middle of the night and groped around for the bottle and took the next dose and fell back asleep. If you’re taking more than one medication, you don’t have to keep track of which you took when. And of course doing all that when you’re sedated or have a fever or are just in pain is extra fun.

Plus: pediatric medicines. When I or any of my siblings got sick as babies, my parents used to write up a chart on the whiteboard, every time, with medications and dosages and times. Because they’d be switching off taking care of us, and it would just be way too easy for Mom to give the baby something that Dad had just given them ten minutes before but not thought to mention (and with a baby, that can be pretty dangerous). With timer-caps, you’ve got perfect information-sharing: you don’t just know what’s the last time you gave the baby the medication, you know what’s the last time the medication was used.

So it really seems like this should be more of a thing! I mean, ordering them online cost me a couple of bucks each; so if the manufacturers were just building in timers by default, what should that actually add to the price, maybe a quarter for each bottle? A dollar at the outside? That’s definitely within the store brand – name brand variation for even cheap over-the-counter medications. I’d happily pay fifty cents extra to buy a bottle of advil off the shelf at the grocery store that had a timer built into the lid to count out four-to-six-hours for me.

At the very least, I’m kind of surprised that this isn’t a default feature on, like, prescription painkillers. My parents did the whiteboard thing again for me after I had jaw surgery, because I was on the good drugs and in no condition to keep track of whether I’d had a dose recently or not. I strongly suspect that having a timer that set itself automatically – so that even someone pretty drugged up could look at it and see if it had reached 6:00:00 and turned green – would make a nontrivial difference in the rate of accidental overdoses. And given how much those drugs cost, adding a dollar timer to the lid is completely insignificant.

So I’d really expect consumers to be demanding these for the convenience, federal regulations to be pushing them for safety, and drug manufacturers to be happily showing them off as a “check out the cool fancy bonus gadget our brand has, because we care.” And yet as far as I know this happens literally zero – you can buy the timer lids online, if you know they exist, but no medication I’ve ever seen is just sold in bottles that have timer lids by default.


Tags:

#… #interesting idea #the more you know #remind me to get some of these #(right now I’m only on iron pills) #(where it doesn’t really matter if you skip a day or two) #(so when I’m not sure if I’ve taken any today I just don’t take it and it’s not a big deal) #(but I expect at *some* point in my life I’ll be on important-timing meds for *some* length of time) #(I was going to use one of those pillboxes with separate divisions for each day of the week) #(but that gets rapidly less helpful with anything more complicated than once-a-day)