death tw

brin-bellway asked: For the age meme: 12 and 218

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

eponymous-rose:

I did 12 already, but ah yes, 218.

The year is 2206. I’m still breathing. I’m still active. It doesn’t make sense, they say. When I hit 150, news reports crop up in the local papers, which I manage mainly by ignoring them. At 160, bigger media conglomerates start knocking down my door. What’s your secret? Tell us your secret!

I avoid them, hire a reliable publicist to keep them off my back. Fire him when he sells an exclusive interview to the highest bidder. He gets a job working for the famous child prodigy who’s been accurately predicting the slow slump of continents into the rising oceans.

What’s your secret?

I think a lot about it, try to figure out what’s different about me, some easy trick I can share. The docs have got nothing, and after giving them every tissue sample imaginable for future research, I stay away from their tests. In a sort of cracked desperation, once I hit 200 I start attempting stuff other people have tried. “I lived to 140 eating only yogurt and potatoes!” so, hey, that couldn’t hurt, right?

Turns out it can. Turns out I now hate yogurt and potatoes. “I’ll never eat it for the rest of my life” is a pretty potent threat when you’re functionally immortal.

I start submitting my thoughts to a private log, which I know is about as private as a glass skytrain. But hell. I’ll put in the token effort. Maybe I want to be heard, a little. I try to reminisce about family, until that hurts to much. I try to get into politics. Read books. Stop when it becomes clear that people are actually paying attention to what I say.

Children send me pictures of their pets, together with heartbreaking, handwritten notes. Can you make Snickers live as long as you? And, with increasing hope, Can you bring Peaches back?

I can’t. I keep all the pictures, until my directory is full enough to begin attracting unwanted attention. And then, without much other choice, I start posting the pictures to my permanent, private log.

The pictures outlast the pets. The pictures outlast their owners. Millions upon millions of loving snapshots and videos of small creatures who were loved, once. I’ve dragged them with me into immortality.

For a long, long while, it’s enough.

Tags:

#origfic #awesome #I think I was expecting an uploaded-consciousness kind of thing #mostly because of that one time I proofread an acquaintance’s Eclipse Phase fic #but this is great #and I thought the rest of you should see it too

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Last Person That:
Slept in your bed besides you? Nobody else has ever slept in my bed. In October 2007, when I had the mattress but the rest of the loft bed hadn’t arrived yet, our dog slept on the mattress with me (and was very upset when my parents tried to make him stop).
Saw you cry?: Mom
You went to the movies with? Mom (in an unrelated incident)
You went out to dinner with? My parents and brother
You talked on the phone to? Mom
Made you laugh? Some Tumblrite

Would You Rather:
Pierce your nose or your tongue? Nose, I guess
Be serious or be funny? I dunno
Drink whole or skimmed milk? Whole
Die in a fire or drowning? I suspect drowning would be less painful, but I’d rather not find out.
Spend time with your parent(s) or enemies? Parents

Are You?:
Simple or complicated? Complicated, of course. Isn’t everyone?
Straight, gay or bisexual? A few weeks ago I was taking one of those surveys that pays you pocket change (I’m saving up for a Mass-Effect-capable laptop), and the demographic section had eleven different options for sexual orientation, with “asexual” top of the list (despite not being in alphabetical order). That was nice. Mostly they just give this “straight/gay/bi” crap, and I have to settle for “prefer not to answer”, even though I’m perfectly willing to answer if they’ll let me tell the truth.
Tall or short? Fairly short
Right handed or left handed? Right-handed
A lover of music or a lover of books? Both, but I’m capable of six-hour binges only with books.

Do You Prefer?:
Flowers or sweets? Chocolates
Grey or black? Both
Colour photos or black-and-white photos? Colour
Sunrise or sunset? Sunrise, though that might be the rarity value.
M&Ms or Skittles? M&Ms
Staying up late or waking up early? Waking up early, unless I’m expecting a particularly unpleasant schoolday. That’s why I woke up half an hour late today. (Yes, it’s Saturday, but I took Thursday off, so fair’s fair.)
Sun or moon? They’re both pretty awesome, though I do like looking up at the moon and knowing there are people’s footprints on it. Makes me feel proud to be Terran.
Winter or Autumn? Autumn
10 acquaintances or 2 best friends? Best friends sound nice. It’s been ages since I had them.
Rainy or sunny? Probably sunny
Vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream? Chocolate
Vodka or Jack? I’ve never had either of those, so I can’t say.

About You:
What time is it? 10:44 AM
Name? Brin
Nicknames? None online
When is your birthday? November 14 (no, I was not conceived on Valentine’s Day)
What do you want? For my computer science class to not have sprung a five-part writing assignment on me. (At least it doesn’t have a deadline beyond “get all of your coursework for the class submitted by the end of November”.)
How many kids do you want? The first three years or so (counting pregnancy) of child-raising sound extremely and near-unrelentingly unpleasant. I could maybe handle an older kid, but I’d really rather not.
What would you name a girl?: Naomi’s a nice name that doesn’t get enough use.
What would you name a boy? I haven’t thought about it.
What kind of music do you like? See this post.

Unique:
Nervous habits? I don’t know about nervous. I rub my fingertips together when I’m anticipating something.
Are you double-jointed? Don’t think so
Can you roll your tongue? Hmm…*tries* maybe a little?
Can you raise one eyebrow? Only my left one
Can you cross your eyes? Probably?

Random:
Which shoe goes on first? Right
Ever thrown something at someone? Of course
On average, how much money do you carry with you? Somewhere between $3 and $30.
What jewellery do you wear? A steel wristwatch (on my left wrist) and a hematine ace ring (on my right middle finger, of course).
Have you ever eaten Spam? …no.
Favourite ice cream? Thin Mint
How many kinds of cereal are in your cupboard? I’m not sure if we have any Cheerios at the moment. If not that, then nothing.
Can you cook?: A bit

Last:
Alcoholic beverage? A sip of grasshopper, New Year’s Eve 2012. I could have had the whole glass if I wanted, but I don’t like eating so close to bedtime, and it felt too much like eating.
Car ride?: Coming back from Buffalo Wednesday evening.
Song played? Um…*checks* “Believe Me” by Fleetwood Mac.
Person you saw? Mom, though she was asleep at the time so it might not count. But the one before that was also Mom, so I guess it doesn’t matter.

Tags:

#meme #Brin talks about herself for no particular reason

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

thelandofmaps:

The effect of ocean currents: Latitudinal comparison of the United Kingdom and Minnesota [1801×2343]
CLICK HERE FOR MORE MAPS!
thelandofmaps.tumblr.com

Tags:

#it always seemed very telling to me #that in the Christmas Invasion episode of Doctor Who #people are worried about the blood-controlled people’s lives only because they think the Sycorax might kill them #it never seems to cross anyone’s mind #that those people could die or suffer permanent damage just from standing on those rooftops #for hours on end #in late December #while too out of it to put on protective gear #…let’s just say it was a *very* fridge-horror-y episode #tag rambles

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

facts-i-just-made-up:

A mother helicopter tends to her newborn.

 

metalheadadam:

I wish you’d do some research before just spouting out any old crap. If you took two seconds just to LOOK at the picture, you’d see that it’s not a mother and her newborn. You can tell from the size and position of the rotors that it’s actually a hunting male. Also it’s a commonly known fact that whilst all helicopters are born with red tails, this fades to white in males, by the time they’ve reached adulthood. In females, the red has changed to a deep brown.

So this isn’t a lovely picture of caring parenting – in fact, this young ‘copter’s mother is probably dead, herself. There would be no way she’d leave her baby by itself at such a young age. The poor thing likely died mere moments after this picture was taken.

Have some respect.

 

facts-i-just-made-up:

You ignorant fool.

The common Red Tailed Boeing you’re basing your analysis on is endemic to Saudi Arabia, which has no climate zones even remotely resembling that in the picture. Helicopters being short range vehicles, there’s no way a Red Tail could be present in the picture above.

What you’re seeing is the red tailed variety of the Arboreal Russian UTair, which you’d know if you so much as looked at the distinctive markings on the parent’s flank.

The photo is a mother tending to her newborn as I stated, and you Sir have defamed the endangered helicopter with your inept observations. People like you who think Helicopters are dangerous hunting animals are why these noble beasts have been scrapped to near extinction. Arguments like yours are used to support the helicopter “blading” industry, in which millions of helicopters every year are deprived of their rotor blades and left to die of oil loss or starvation.

Support your local anti-blading protest group, and don’t listen to people like metalheadadam, if that’s even your real tumblr url.

 

metalheadadam:

No,it is you who are the fool here. You say it’s an arboreal helicopter, but no Russian Utair has ever been spotted out in the open in a tarmac environment before, and I think if this was the first photograph showing one, there’d have been some fanfare about it in National Helo-graphic.

I believe that what we can see here is the Lesser-Spotted Longbow, which, as has been very well-documented, has adapted itself superbly to urban life, and has also been known to disguise itself as other types of helicopter, in order to better stalk its prey. If you look at the smugness of the nose, you’ll see I’m right. Yes, the UTair is a peaceful contraption, but the LSL is a rapacious fiend, and should be removed from the world’s airspace completely.

 

facts-i-just-made-up:

You’re ignoring the clear signs here but the more important issue is your sickening disregard and characterization of the LSL as a “rapacious fiend.”

The LSL is a critical part of the airspace ecosystem. If there were no LSLs, then Piasecki H-21s would quickly grow out of control and soon the air would be downright cluttered with them. Do you want to live in a world where Piasecki noise sounds through the night at deafening levels? Where they land on the streets as you drive and on schoolyards where your children play?

Lesser-Spotted Longbows may seem dangerous but the fact is they kill less than five people a year across the globe. Piaseckis kill 80! And they crap all over the windshields of all those unfortunate enough to drive beneath them. Even still, we should not cull Piaseckis as some suggest, their meat is inferior and no significant research is to be done on their flesh. You’re operating from an old world point of view here, one that says mankind has the right, nay the duty to hunt and tame helicopters.

But the truth is, helicopters are our neighbors on this planet and they have every bit as much a right to it as we do. Support prohibition of industrial helicopter use, police helicopters and circus helicopters. Don’t eat helicopter meat. And donate generously to PETH, People for the Ethical Treatment of Helicopters.

 

metalheadadam:

Listen, PETH claim to be in support of helicopter freedom, but if you look at the statistics, you’ll see that is, in fact, a gigantic lie. People brought 652 sick helicopters into PETH’s “Care Hangars” last year, where PETH claim to repair and repaint them, and find them new owners. Of those 652, PETH dismantled and recycled 635 of them within one day, without even trying to find new owners for them.

You say we should support the prohibition of circus and police helicopters, but without the industries that have grown up around the many useful ways helicopters benefit our society, there would be many more wild helicopters, like the Piaseckis, in our skies, or roosting on the roofs of our homes and schools.

But that’s getting off topic. The LSL is still a menace, and although it helps to control the Piasecki population, there are other, more efficient ways to do that, without relying on the crudeness of nature.

Opening up factories to make clothes from helo skins, for example. Faux-helo has been all the rage on the catwalks for the last three years, and the designers have stated that they’d “love to get [their] hands on the real thing”. Paul McTarnabag said that “without the limitations of artificial fibres, [he] could create the most wonderful coats you’d ever see”.

Let’s be honest, here. Yes, it may involve some violent, painful deaths for certain, more… annoying breeds, but helicopters are basically vermin. Let’s make use of them.

 

facts-i-just-made-up:

“The crudeness of nature”

You lost me there. Nature is a perfect system where helicopters are concerned. It’s only humanity that throws the system out of balance. Before we came along, helicopters existed in equilibrium.

As seen in the opening of Disney’s “The Concorde King,” there’s a circle of life. Concordes and SR-71s prey upon the big 747s and Airbuses. Those in turn eat the Cessnas and puddle-hoppers, which feed on smaller helicopters and gyrocopters. When the Concordes die, they become fossil fuels which become jet fuels and which fuel the gyrocopters.

But when mankind tinkers with the system, it all goes haywire. A few rivet coats and meals of spicy Apache or Black Hawk aren’t worth it. And that’s not to mention the cruelty of foods like Chinook Gras, in which the noble aircraft are force-fueled to the point of illness so their filters can be harvested. Humankind needs to get out of the chopper business for good and focus on renewable sources of 3D printed parts and vegan alternatives, like Balloons, Zeppelins and Blimps. Human stomachs aren’t meant for heavier-than-air travel, as turbulence can convince anyone. Only lighter than air craft are meant for our fragile systems.

This is all a moot point for me as I don’t fly at all. I prefer a more natural means of transport- The whip driven dog-sled.

 

dduane:

…:)

Tags:

#Young Wizards #sort of #helicopters

Oregon trail

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

outofcontextdnd:

Barbarian: I’m just saying, if the game was more like the old dos games back in the day, we’d move a lot faster.

GM: Alright, we can do that. Roll a d20.

Barbarian: *rolls* 13.

Gm: Congrats! you have died of dysentery.

Tags:

#Oregon Trail #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(though Oregon Trail is in that uncomfortable place) #(where I was just old enough to remember *that* I experienced it) #(but not old enough to remember anything *about* the experience) #(not a pleasant feeling that) #(but in any case I’ve heard enough second-hand dysentery jokes to get this one)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

(sort-of-tagged by eponymous-rose)

1. What’s the weirdest thing you did as a child?

That’s the sort of question where you just know you’re going to think of something weirder ten minutes after you hit “post”, but I’ll try.

I used to collect coupons. I didn’t use them, just collected them. I would carefully cut them out, trimming off the dotted lines around the edges while leaving the bar codes and fine print intact (this sometimes required curving the cut, but I tried very hard not to do that). I kept them in the bottom drawer of my dresser.

2. Five things you love about you!

a. I managed to learn how to type 80wpm without looking at the keyboard, despite never putting any effort into it. (Well, I played a little Typer Shark as a kid, but not that much, and I never took a class on touch-typing or anything like that.)

b. I can be very persevering when other people are counting on me.

c. I’m very good at checking expiration dates. I once looked at a juice box’s jumble of alphanumeric code (a code Mom had found impenetrable) and discerned the expiration date at a glance without having to search for it. (Silver lining of a food poisoning phobia.) Back when Canadian Goldfish bags only had production codes and no expiration dates, I even learned how to calculate the expiration date using the production code. (I determined the shelf life by examining an American Goldfish bag, which had both.)

d. My introspectiveness. I like that I can untangle at least some of the layers of weird in my brain, especially when it leads me to practical implications. (How many books of a series do you need to binge on in order to induce perseveration?* Does caffeine act as a short-term libido suppressant?**)

*Four.

**I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, but I have every indication it ought to work. (I suppose I ought to do the test properly, with blinding. Mind you, even a placebo would be useful. It would be nice, about halfway through the 4 – 5 days of post-ovulation tiredness, to have a bit of a break.)

e. I have a pretty good body. Not a beautiful body, which I gather is what people tend to mean when they call a body “good”. (It looks plain, which is exactly how I like it.) Rather, it’s comfortable to live in.

3. Where is the one place you feel most at peace?

Floating in my bathtub. Unfortunately, I am now too tall to float in my bathtub. I’m pretty sure my quality of life noticeably decreased when that happened.

4. Do you have any summer plans?

Learning about geology and computer programming. The last ten days of May are the closest thing I’m getting to a summer break. (I am so taking December off.)

5. What is the most expensive thing you’ve ever purchased?

University education. Those two courses in question 4 alone cost me $1600, and that’s with Canadian subsidising. (Regarding the usual things: I’ve never bought a house or vehicle, and all of my computers over the years have cost less than $500 each, which is probably why they’ve been so crappy.)

(Well, I think part of why this computer is so crappy is because it’s lived too long. When I first bought it it was a five-year-old model: old, but young enough for developers to generally acknowledge that people are going to try to use their products on it. Now it’s an eight-year-old model, and nobody accounts for the possibility of eight-year-old computers. It would be too impractical.)

6. What is your sleep schedule like, if you have one?

I’ve found myself drifting back and sleeping less during my break from school, which probably says a lot about me. Right now it’s about 11:45 PM – 8:30 AM, give or take fifteen minutes on each. It’ll probably return to 12 – 9:10 once I start school again.

7. If you could relive one moment of your life, what would it be?

Well, my favourite memory is probably the time I went out dolphin-watching in the Atlantic (off Cape May) when I was about eleven or twelve. I felt…what do you call the opposite of sea-sickness? Sea-wellness, I suppose. The rocking of the boat made me euphoric rather than nauseated. And though I was having fun, time did not fly. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every second of those two hours.

The nice thing about having a favourite memory like that is that I might well be able to do something like it again.

(We did see dolphins, but as far as I’m concerned they were just a bonus.)

8. Do you have any secret talents? If so, what?

If I told you, they wouldn’t be secret anymore, would they.

(I suppose you could count some of the things in the “five things I love about me”.)

9. What do you hope gets invented before you die?

I have to agree with Rose on this one and say immortality. Failing that, a sufficiently effective and reliable treatment for Alzheimer’s soon enough that I need never worry about getting it myself. (An outright cure or a thyroid/HIV-style “you’ll be fine as long as you take your meds, but you can never go off them without becoming symptomatic”, either way.)

10. If you could have a super power, what would it be?

Wolverine-level healing factor (see also question 9). If it were only a milder healing factor on offer (does not extend lifespan, fatal injuries will still kill you), I’d probably rather go for unbreathing (in the Nethack sense), despite the potential for annoying side effects regarding consensual inhalant drugs. The number of water sports that I have seen people play on Daily Planet and thought “I would love to do that, if only I were immune to drowning”…

11. They say a friend will help you move and a best friend will help you move a body. Do you have a best friend?

I don’t think I know anyone who cares more about me than they care about not being an accomplice to murder/not allowing a murderer to go free. That’s probably for the best.

If we take a broader interpretation of “body”, I expect Mom, Brother, and possibly Dad would assist me in being someone’s caretaker (which would likely involve moving their body at some point). Not sure about non-relatives.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #(you may have noticed I talked about tiredness and heightened sex drive as if they were the same thing) #(that is because they are) #(and let me tell you once you figure *that* out there are all *kinds* of practical implications) #(caffeine is just the first one that came to mind) #meme #Possible TMI #you can be sort-of-tagged too if you like

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

lb-lee:

ananthymous:

Girl with the Skeleton Hand 2

One of several comics collected in CUTTINGS, the upcoming Johnny Wander book! It’s up for preorder on Kickstarter right now!

Fact: Cecilia has a secret fondness for elephants. There are small figurines scattered around her apartment!

johnnywander.com

Johnny Wander is awesome!  And I especially enjoy their Girl with the Skeleton hand comics.

Tags:

#Girl with the Skeleton Hand #comic #death #ghost #neat

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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ubungmachtdenmeister:

So you know how every language has that word/phrase/sentence that native speakers can pronounce just fine, but foreigners can almost never pronounce it correctly? And the natives have a lot of fun telling the foreigners to try and say it and laughing at their attempts?

They’re called Shibboleths, and wikipedia has a whole article on them. 
Even better, wikipedia has a whole article on examples of them.

Some of them are ridiculous, I can’t stop reading this article.

 

jazzypom:

Wow. Cheers for this. 

 

nenya-kanadka:

“Art thou an Ephraimite?”

“Um, uh … No?”

“Prove it. Say ‘shibboleth.’”

“Sibboleth.”

“Aha! Die Ephraimite!”

“Oh sit.”

(Judges 12 according to Fred Clark)

 

slepaulica:

re: your tags, native speakers of hebrew probably, not native speakers of english

 

brin-bellway:

Well, English is known for its extensive use of “th”, and that’s where the problem comes in for me. (In fact, the original Hebrew word might have used a perfectly pronounceable “t”, though it’s not clear from a few minutes of looking things up.)

 

slepaulica:

dunno, don’t speak hebrew. but the shibboleth part of the shibboleth is the sh sound.

according to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth 

The term originates from the Hebrew word shibbólet (שִׁבֹּלֶת), which literally means the part of a plant containing grains, such as an ear of corn or a stalk ofgrain[3] or, in different contexts, “stream, torrent”.[4][5]

which means that you would be able to pronounce it, because it was shibbólet, not shibbóleth :)

Yeah, I saw that, but then I saw the Wiki page on Hebrew pronunciation in general:

Some historically distinctive Hebrew phonemes have merged in modern Hebrew, such as historically distinctive /t/, /θ/, /tˤ/ (now all [t]), written respectively by the letters Tav (תּ), Ṯav (ת) and Ṭet (ט).

This would seem to imply (note the use of tav-with-no-dot in the Hebrew you quoted, for whatever that’s worth) that it was soft-“th” at the time and only became “t” later.

(What do you do if someone fails a shibboleth in an unexpected manner? People who say “shibbolef” aren’t the kind of Them you’re killing on sight (well, hearing), but they’re not Us either.)

Tags:

#language #reply via reblog #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #fun wif forn fronting

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

slepaulica:

nenya-kanadka:

jazzypom:

ubungmachtdenmeister:

So you know how every language has that word/phrase/sentence that native speakers can pronounce just fine, but foreigners can almost never pronounce it correctly? And the natives have a lot of fun telling the foreigners to try and say it and laughing at their attempts?

They’re called Shibboleths, and wikipedia has a whole article on them. 
Even better, wikipedia has a whole article on examples of them.

Some of them are ridiculous, I can’t stop reading this article.

Wow. Cheers for this. 

“Art thou an Ephraimite?”

“Um, uh … No?”

“Prove it. Say ‘shibboleth.’”

“Sibboleth.”

“Aha! Die Ephraimite!”

“Oh sit.”

(Judges 12 according to Fred Clark)

re: your tags, native speakers of hebrew probably, not native speakers of english

Well, English is known for its extensive use of “th”, and that’s where the problem comes in for me. (In fact, the original Hebrew word might have used a perfectly pronounceable “t”, though it’s not clear from a few minutes of looking things up.)

Tags:

#language #reply via reblog #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #fun wif forn fronting

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

nenya-kanadka:

jazzypom:

ubungmachtdenmeister:

So you know how every language has that word/phrase/sentence that native speakers can pronounce just fine, but foreigners can almost never pronounce it correctly? And the natives have a lot of fun telling the foreigners to try and say it and laughing at their attempts?

They’re called Shibboleths, and wikipedia has a whole article on them. 
Even better, wikipedia has a whole article on examples of them.

Some of them are ridiculous, I can’t stop reading this article.

Wow. Cheers for this. 

“Art thou an Ephraimite?”

“Um, uh … No?”

“Prove it. Say ‘shibboleth.’”

“Sibboleth.”

“Aha! Die Ephraimite!”

“Oh sit.”

(Judges 12 according to Fred Clark)

Tags:

#I can never decide whether it’s very fitting or very *un*-fitting that I can’t pronounce ‘shibboleth’ #if it were just ‘word that is extremely difficult to pronounce’ #it would be fitting to have the word for that be extremely difficult to pronounce #but it’s ‘word that native speakers can say easily and everyone *else* finds extremely difficult to pronounce’ #and I am a native English speaker #and I can’t say it #I swear I’m not an Ephraimite please don’t kill me #language #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #fun wif forn fronting

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