That’s not a coincidence! Naturally, it’s less work to transmit shorter sequences of dots and dashes, so we try to use up all the shorter sequences first. Basically, this means that we fill in all the branches at one level of this tree before moving onto the next. The result is a perfectly balanced decoding tree.
The placement of the letters is also far from arbitrary. Here are all the letters in English ordered from most common to least common:
ETAOINSRHLDCUMFPGWYBVKXJQZ
Notice something? The shortest morse code sequences were assigned to the most common letters. This makes the common letters easier to remember, and makes messages as short as possible in the average case.
Numbers are sort of an exception to this. All numerical symbols are encoded with 5 dots and dashes. But there’s a pretty clear pattern to these as well.
1 = .—-
2 = ..—
3 = …–
4 = ….-
5 = …..
6 = -….
7 = –…
8 = —..
9 = —-.
0 = —–
So if the listener hears a series of 5 dots and dashes, they immediately know it’s a number. To decode it, they count the number of dashes. If the dashes came before the dots, the number is 5 + the number of dashes. Otherwise, the number is 5 – the number of dashes.
Morse Code is neat.
Tags:
#Morse code #the more you know #things I have vague aspirations to learn someday #but suspect I will always have higher-priority things to do
(AFAICT there’s not even a markup! except on the Visa, but the Visa is one of the few you can’t buy with gift-card credit anyway)
The bad news is, it looks like none of them are stores I normally shop at. But some of them (such as Starbucks and Panera) would only require going a *little* out of my way, and in general this vastly increases the likelihood that Amazon credit will become useful in the future.
(there are occasional complaints of cards arriving empty, but most reviews are excellent even after the “not bothering to review because nothing to complain about” effect, and most of the empty-card people get it sorted out eventually (note that the cards are sold by Amazon directly and not shady third-party sellers), so it’s probably okay but one might want to check the balance before trying to use it just in case)
(also they Technically Don’t Ship to Canada, but who cares, half of them aren’t even physical and I can just funnel them through my cousins anyway)
I encourage anyone who has excess Amazon-US credit lying around or otherwise gets a discount on Amazon purchases (especially if they’re a US resident, so they don’t need a funnelling contact) to investigate this themselves. None of them are stores *I* normally shop at, but they might be stores *you* normally shop at.
Tags:
#adventures in human capitalism #oh look an original post #the more you know #home of the brave
If the ocean ever disappears DONT GO LOOKING FOR IT… go in the other direction
i know this sounds like a shitpost but isn’t this like, real advice regarding tsunamis
Yes this was about hurricane Irma it is not a shitpost
This is actually really good advice so let me elaborate a bit: if you notice the tide is retreating very quickly at a very odd time of day, get as far away from water and as high up as you can. I live along the ocean and a long time ago we had a small tsunami and a relative of mine tells me how her father saw the tides retreating so he just picked her up and just ran, which probably saved their lives.
So yeah DONT LOOK FOR THE MISSING OCEAN just run away
ocean not lost, ocean is actually winding up to kick you very hard in the nuts.
Tags:
#hurricanes #PSA #the more you know #(yes I’m reblogging this very late) #(I haven’t gone through my ”consider whether to reblog this” tabs in a while) #((but good information for next time))
80% of the eyeglasses in the world are made by Luxotica, that’s right, no matter the brand name, the source is the same, but not only do Luxottica make the frames, they make the lenses, they own the stores, they even own the largest eye insurance company, Eye Med – which is why they can charge you 400$ for a pair of glasses that costs maybe $20
75% of people who purchase eyeglasses need them out of medical necessity (as I do) so I went and tried the online shop Zenni Optical, and was able to buy no line bifocals with UV coating for less than $70, when LensCrafters wanted to sell me a pair for $550 – and that’s WITH insurance!
Nicest thing about Zenni? You can upload a photo of yourself to try on glasses, and if you don’t like them – YOU CAN RETURN THEM for credit! This is because you don’t need to gouge your customer to make money, glasses really cost only pennies to make. Now I can buy a couple of pairs, and have choices in what I wear, rather than investing hundreds of dollars – sometimes for quality that sucks.
Regardless of whom you buy from, don’t feed Luxottica any more.
Probably also applies to countries outside of US, Luxottica is Italian, and French lensmaker Essilor has agreed to buy Luxottica in a bid to create a new global giant in the sector. The combined group will have a market capitalization of around 46.2 billion euros ($49 billion), based on both companies’ closing share prices on Friday.
just google online eyeglasses and you’ll find plenty of links.
Zenni is international! I’ve been buying my glasses there now for years and I’ve never had any issues. Not with fit, not with lenses, not with breaks – nothing.
I have a strong, difficult prescription and was regularly paying upwards of $700AUD every two years for a single pair of glasses. I bought my current pair of glasses a couple years ago from Zenni and guess how much I spent?
…$7. In total. Frames and lenses. And they are singularly the best glasses I’ve ever had. I wear my glasses every waking hour of my life and these babies have not just survived but they look almost as good as when I first received them.
And because they are so cheap I also have a pair of sunglasses, and TWO pairs of alternative glasses I can wear when the mood strikes me. Since then my mom AND my dad, my uncle, and my cousin have all started to buy from Zenni.
BUY YOUR GLASSES FROM ZENNI! I cannot stress this enough. If you’re paying retail then you’re being ripped off.
I’ve reblogged this before and Ima reblog it again…
Zenni ain’t the only place out there. In fact I shopped there first then found other’s I liked better. I primarily buy off Eyebuydirect but I have also shopped at coastal and Zenni. Eyebuydirect has been overall my favorite. There prices are in the same price bracket as Zenni which is like $12-$80 for frames and where as zenni you can get lenses for free Eyebuydirect the lenses I think are like $14-18
but the quality of the glasses I have gotten from Eyebuydirect felt far superior to those I got from zenni, Eyebuydirect also has great customer service. Basically please look around the internet. Like just cause glasses are fucking awesome and deserve to be a fashion statement as well as a need.
I am currently wearing a pair of glasses from eyebuydirect that I paid a little over $100 I got frames that where $35 and I got those fancy blue coated lenses that help protect your eyes against looking at screens for extended time (I get way less headaches with them!) those lenses where a bit pricier.
but. in comparison, last I checked in at walmart (fucking walmart.) my lenses alone base cost would of been $140 that’s just the stupid glass discs not even the frames.
You do need to get a prescription from an optometrist, that you can’t avoid, however you don’t have to buy the eyeglasses from your optometrist, some don’t like that because that’s where they make their money – others are paid salary by their stores so they don’t care. Part of the prescription is the pupillary distance, and you’ve paid for that, so they have to give it to you. If they still don’t, Zenni has a ruler you can print out, so you can figure it out yourself.
Also, if you eyeglasses are not correct (I have no line bifocals and those can be an issue, though I’ve never had them with Zenni) you just send them back no charge to get re-made, or send them back for a refund. You don’t lose anything for trying except time.
I have gotten glasses from Zenni since 2013, and at this point I’ve probably saved thousands of dollars with how terrible my eyes are and how expensive my lenses turn out in stores.
Also, you should probably go to an ophthalmologist instead of an optometrist, at least if you haven’t been in a while. They are more trained in dealing with eye problems other than just getting your prescription right, but they do that too.
Tags:
#glasses #the more you know #I’ve had the same pair of glasses for over a decade now but I’m sure I’ll need new ones *eventually* #(the prescription won’t be a problem) #(I keep a copy of my glasses prescription in my wallet) #(and replace it every two years with the most recent one) #(it tends to change *slightly* each checkup but not significantly enough to be worth replacing my lenses just for that) #(and so far it doesn’t change in a consistent direction and thus doesn’t add up over time) #I should probably get a poverty/frugality tag; I’ve been talking about that more lately #I will take my cue from the ”who needs dragon capitalism” bit in the electricity post and call it #adventures in human capitalism #(note that ”adventures in dragon capitalism” is an already-established tag)
(Specifically, they flip which times are mid-peak and which are on-peak. Which means if you’ve been trying to move some of your on-peak electricity usage to mid-peak times, you need to change your strategy when the seasonal rate changes or you’ll end up making things *worse*.)
So the bad news is, my family’s been severely fucking up our attempts to reduce our electric bill for three and a half months, and moderately fucking it up for years. Good news is, now that we actually know what our cards are and how to play them, between that and the recent drops in electricity rates we can probably cut our electric bill to, like, $10 – $20/month (our 2016 average was ~$130/month; 2017’s been more like $100 so far, but they just dropped the rates again, so an equivalent amount of usage would now cost ~$80).
I don’t think I actually have any Ontarian readers, but the rest of you might want to check if anything analogous is going on in your area. That’s a lot of money that could be going towards food, shelter, etc.
Tags:
#shown above: an example of why I haven’t played Flight Rising since December #why play dragon capitalism when you’re playing *real* capitalism #(I suspect in the long run I’m going to end up with some serious miser issues) #(we’ve been bleeding savings to some extent or another for so long) #(I’ve gotten used to the idea that my future selves will always need my money more than I do) #(that the overall trajectory of one’s finances is always downward) #(but the sooner you start acting as if you’re already broke the longer it will take for you to become *actually* broke) #(and the softer a landing it will be when you inevitably get there) #(so if I ever end up in a position of true financial stability) #((rather than the one-time cash infusions that have kept us afloat so far)) #(I’m going to have a hell of a time convincing myself of it) #(I think part of me’s always going to believe that the good times are temporary and I need to be preparing for when they end) #anyway I’m glad I double-checked the electricity-price rules #there is probably some warning tag I should put on this but I am not sure what #oh look an original post #the more you know #tag rambles #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism
After experimenting with different approaches and formats for the last year or so, we’re putting an indefinite pause on the partner program that we announced last summer. We’re still excited by the possibilities of the project, and may revisit it in the future, but we haven’t quite figured out the best way to deliver on our goal.
For the time being, we’ve also taken down all the ads that were appearing on individual blogs across Tumblr while we determine how to deliver the best overall experience for both our users and our advertisers.
Thanks for being a part of all this, and we greatly appreciate your patience.
my job as a detective is made harder by the fact that i am physically incapable of telling a lie or bluffing but made easier by the fact that i have no emotions about anything but trains. once a train was murdered, and i couldn’t stop crying
she had curves in all the right places. she was a graph i was making about trains. in the other room, my dad was crying because i wouldn’t make eye contact with him
i got into this job because one time in fifth grade i asked my special teacher why people don’t like me, and she told me to be a detective and figure it out. i took that completely literally, and here we are today
the only mystery i cannot solve is the mystery of why these nice ladies keep making me play with special blocks. i have literally no theories about why this is happening
“i didn’t solve the case, and i let a second train get murdered!” i cried. “i’m a bad detective!” “oh, honey, no,” my mom soothed, “you’re not a bad detective, you’re just special, and sometimes that means things are a little bit harder for you”
“ain’t she a beauty?” i asked. my special teacher had been working with me on saying “isn’t.” “a genuine Horse .75. i got her 12 years and 37 days ago and she weighs exactly 14 ounces. i call her Melissa, after my special teacher. she’s almost as good as a train.”
the ceiling fan moved slowly in my grimy office, slowly like someone about to give up on the world. i stared up, up, up at it, distracted from my obsessive cleaning. it had curves in all the right places
#(it took me a while to understand that last one though) #(I think the joke is that the protagonist is using “elope” to mean “run away”) #(oblivious to the specifically marriage-related meaning it has in practice?)
That term is actually often used to describe “autistics wandering off”, do a web search for “elopement autism” or something.
Ah, okay. I don’t think I’ve heard that usage before. (Or maybe I just haven’t heard it in ages: most of my experience with autism-blogging was in the late 00′s.)
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #the more you know #autism
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)
Got a cosplay idea but the character has lots of arm (or leg) tattoos? Don’t feel like painting on yourself with body paints or hunting down that horrendously expensive temporary tattoo paper? Here’s a quick tutorial for making tattoo sleeves using nylons and sharpie markers!
Upsides:
– Supplies are cheap! You may even have many or all the supplies you need right at home.
– Quick and not very messy! No paint is involved, and sharpie marker dries instantly.
– Easy! Great artistic skill not required.
– They move with your skin! People have legit thought these were real tattoos. From a distance, yes, but I had guys at cons with actual ink on their arms come over to compliment on my full (fake) sleeves.
– You get to eat pringles! More on that later.
Downsides:
– They are delicate. Nylons get holes in them super easy and forearms run into stuff, lean against things, and generally make it hard for the sleeves to survive. But if you only need them for a weekend, that’s ok.
– I haven’t experimented too much, but unfortunately this technique probably doesn’t work for wearers with darker skin tones. Sharpie ink is transparent, so any color it rests on just multiplies and the tattoo won’t show up very well. You’ll want to go the fabric paint or body paint route to get the best bold, bright tats.
– Can’t do white sections, because sharpie ink is transparent and doesn’t come in white. I leave them blank and they read OK, but the white areas will always be pink, tan, brown, etc. unless you dab in a little fabric paint, which will not be covered in this tutorial.
– Sharpie is supposed to be permanent marker, but on skin…it’s not. The ink will most likely wear off onto adjacent clothes. Not that big of a deal for me, as I tend to wear my tats with white shirts that can be bleached, but other shirts may not survive as well.
OK, let’s go! Here are your supplies:
You’ll need a pair of nylons, scissors, tape, a set of sharpies, your designs printed out on 8.5 x 11 paper, some bracelets, and a can of Pringles. You can use any design you want, of course, but Here is the link to these fine Newt Kaiju tattoo designs.
If your nylons have an undies part, cut the legs off and wear the undies on your head for the rest of the tutorial, if desired. Put the legs on your arm like so, and cut the toes off so you can slip your hand through. You can cut some of the top of the sleeve off as well, but don’t cut too much because you can’t put it back on if your sleeves are too short.
Here are my creepy sleeves. Now for the pringles.
Tape your design template to the Pringles can. It doesn’t reach all the way around but eh. The Pringles can gives you a nice stable surface to draw on that is roughly the shape and size of an arm. It’s a little short, so just roll up the rest of the nylon above the workspace and adjust both template and nylon down when you get to working on that part of the sleeve.
Color with the markers! I recommend doing the colored areas first and then doing the black outlines on top of it, to avoid the black ink contaminating the ink pads of the lighter markers. Remember how that always happens to the yellow ones? Eww. Nylons are thin and slide around a bit, so it’s best to use short strokes and dotting to get the ink on.
Take the template off the Pringles tube, flip the paper to the blank side and put it back on again. The paper collects the extra ink, so it’s hard to see any missed spots. Now you can see any bits you may have missed. Fill them in for completion. Also, the paper doesn’t manage to wrap all the way around the Pringles can, so now is the time to free-hand a bit of the design where the template doesn’t reach. For Newt tattoos, that’s the back of the arm.
When you’re all done coloring, put them on!
There’s a rough end to the tattoo right at the wrist, of course. Disguise where the sleeve ends and your skin begins with some pretty bracelets:
This is amazing. Particularly “if your nylons have an undies part, cut the legs off and wear the undies on your head for the rest of the tutorial, if desired.”
Not surprisingly, this is Loki approved. He loves it. Now I have a painless and temporary way to try tattoos (reasons I said no). He’s scheming. Damn you.
Tags:
#art #the more you know #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog
The tumblr /tagged/ function returns all the posts in a tag in reverse-chronological order. Popular tags on tumblr may have years worth of posts in them.
So start with the important tags for tracked tags / search, then add tags like “my edits” or “mine” for your own blog organization, and then add FEELINGS and TAG COMMENTARY at the end.
Only new posts will show up in public tracked tags or search. Reblogs will not show up in tracked tags or search.
Avoid unnecessary punctuation. Apostrophes ’ are ok to use, but tags with a slash / or a hyphen – or a plus sign + or an equal sign = will NOT show up in tracked tags.
If you use anti tags like #ANTI SHIPNAME, everyone who is searching for SHIPNAMEwill see your anti post. Don’t use SHIPNAME when creating your anti tag if you don’t want people to get upset about it.
Don’t put something that isn’t an edit in an edit tag. People are going into the edit tag to look for edits and if your post isn’t an edit, it defeats the purpose of the edit tag.
The OP (original poster) will often read your tags when you reblog a post, so if you say something nasty in the tags, the OP will (probably) see it. Say something nice instead!
Reblogging for future reference! Very helpful, Tumblr – thank you!
reblog to save a life
Tags:
#Tumblr: a User’s Guide #the last time I saw a guide to tagging it was before the search function #apparently this is how the search function affects things #good to know
Brinens and Things - Tumblr Mirror 