the more you know

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

anarchywoofwoof:

so international space station astronauts apparently dropped a tool bag during a spacewalk. and if you look outside when the ISS is in your region, you can see it with binoculars

The tool bag is now orbiting our planet just ahead of the ISS with a visual magnitude of around 6, according to EarthSky. That means it is slightly less bright than the ice giant Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. As a result, the bag  —  officially known as a crew lock bag  —  is slightly too dim to be visible to the unaided eye, but skywatchers should be able to pick it up with binoculars.

To see it for yourself, first find out when you can find spot the space station over the next few months (NASA even has a new app to help you). The bag should be floating two to four minutes ahead of the station. As it descends rapidly, the bag is likely to disintegrate when it reaches an altitude of around 70 miles (113 kilometers) over Earth.

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she’s fucking magnificent

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roach-works:

everyone enjoy earth’s newest and silliest satellite while she lasts

Tags:

#(apparently it’s now more than four minutes‚ increasing with time) #(but still up there for the time being) #the more you know #space #the brightest star in our sky #embarrassment squick?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

grayghostofthenorth:

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Borzoi White Mohair with zipper (box for pajamas), glass eyes

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elodieunderglass:

It’s so weird that pyjama cases were a thing. They went so abruptly out of fashion, too. The idea was (I think) that it was vaguely indecent to leave your pajamas around, and it definitely spoils the look of your nicely made bed, so lots of people put them under the pillow; but a cuter thing to do was to have a specially made empty stuffed animal or cute purse or pillow thing, with a zipper, and you’d stuff it with your pajamas in the morning and place it cutely on your nicely made bed. Then in the evening, you would unzip and disembowel the soft plump object, and reclaim the pajamas. It wasn’t just a thing for kids; adults did it too. In the kind of pre-1950s novels I like to pick up, authors describe a character’s pyjama case to reveal a bit about the character; but of course they never say why you’d have a pyjama case. “Everyone knows what a horse is.”

I suppose it’s been culturally decided that it’s an unnecessary step in the bedtime process. We’re busy bastards, aren’t we? Who makes their bed every morning, I mean, really?

Perhaps, also, our clothing is no longer of the material and methodology where you have to spend extra time/attention/tools on them. Pyjama cases may have had some benefit – extending the life of the pyjamas, or something. Perhaps it was more common in those days for mice to climb into your silk pyjamas, or they kept them from being attacked by dogs, or something. It’s possible that there are unspoken benefits to keeping your pyjamas in a stuffed toy, which previous generations knew instinctively and we have forgotten. Some people are like that, they maintain rituals and practices that don’t get written down, and so become arcana. My father-in-law owns special clothing maintenance tools such as shoe trees (which you place in your shoes every night at night) and trouser presses (in which you leave your worn-but-not-dirty trousers overnight so they are crisp in the morning). He irons his pocket handkerchiefs – why? so that they fold into a precise pocket shape, with the same fold pattern as plastic-wrapped disposable tissues: the optimised shape for pockets. You are not going to read in the literature about there being a reason for ironing pocket handkerchiefs. It is a habit that is not captured by history. You have to speak to a practitioner to even consider that there is a specific value in pocket handkerchief folding. Maybe we operate at a remove from the people who could have told us why they bothered with the idea and then stopped.

You can buy a selection of pyjama cases online, but with no explanation of why you’d want to, it’s hard to see how this helps. The only real thing i can see is that it’s cute and tidies the pyjamas up, but we’ve all decided that untidy pyjamas are a problem that doesn’t need solving.

Pyjama cases have no Wikipedia article; search engines have nothing to offer. Old books only self-reference them being a normal thing. Someone who knows about pyjama cases or textile history could heroically fill this in. Please do. Otherwise, this tumblr post is going to suddenly become the leading analysis of pyjama cases, and that would be sad.

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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:

Holy shit, I’d completely forgotten about pyjama cases

I had one as a kid (1990s) – it was a palomino horse, lying down but the perfect size for my doll to ride. I made a little saddle and bridle for it and kept it stuffed with newspaper to keep shape

God, the things that come back to you

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maryellencarter:

I had a plushie kangaroo where the pocket was for your pajamas! Late 1980s / early 1990s

Tags:

#history #clothing #love the decor fandom #the more you know #amnesia cw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{reblogged from maryellencarter}}

montybuggershop-hooty:

Hey! Just in case you never had the idea,

When you’re lamenting with friends online about how far apart you are, or a far-away friend is sick or going through some bullshit, don’t forget that you can just send them some Thai food. You can 100% send them some chocolate dough balls from domino’s or whatever. You can order pizza for both of you and compare your results. Most restaurants let you tip your delivery guy in the app. Get your friend some chicken makhanwala and sit in the dark together.

Tags:

#you must be at least a level 5 friend to unlock fine-grained location data #and restaurants are so expensive for what you get #(unfun fact: did you know that the Walmart-US website won’t let you pay with a Canadian credit card?) #(and don’t get me fucking started on Paypal’s international-transfer fees) #that all said‚ though‚ a while back I did have a pack of KF94s shipped to the person I’m reblogging this from #which in many ways fits the spirit of the thing #give your (not-so-)local extrovert the gift of accessible public spaces today #proud citizen of The Future #food #the more you know #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

pkann18:

Youtube vs. Adblockers

Copy and pasting from Reddit user Mike J Smith on the Reddit page for ublock origin, an adblocker extension:

Condensed Update for Newcomers:

  1. YT is making a concerted anti-adblock push via a tattler script tied to a “3 strikes and you’re out” style warning message.
  2. Each time you click on a video that WOULD have shown you ads, the tattler script detects that you blocked it and you’re given a warning popup. This can be X’ed out of quickly, it’s just a warning.
  3. After 3 warnings on a given account, it no longer allows you to close the warning popup, thus acting as a soft block on that YT account until YT’s tattler script no longer detects ad-block running. As of right now, it does not lock your other Google services and it does not count as a traditional account ban.
  4. To protect the new tattler script from our jamming efforts, YT is also updating it at least once a day and sometimes multiple times, basically trying to force us into a war of attrition in coding hours. This naturally has put a MASSIVE strain on the volunteer team and will probably result in extended outages on YT as they try to keep up. They are holding their own, but just barely.
  5. None of the uBO team are paid for this, they are volunteers with day jobs. The success of their efforts will depend largely on what YouTube decides to do next, because fighting their legions of paid coders off indefinitely would be impossible. If YouTube wants to kill adblock forever with sheer force, it’s within their power – we are all hoping they’re just “shaking the tree” to see what falls out and they’ll stop once their accountants are satisfied.
  6. The soft block is only tied to the individual account, not the IP. Thus, FreeTube still works fine and you can still view videos logged out. If you export your history, subs and playlists to Freetube, the only thing you’ve really lost is your ability to comment. I miss it, but not enough to give $20 a month to a pack of scavenging vultures.

So What Do I Do Now???

Look at the original post in the original thread, find the bold headline midway down that says “I followed the 4 steps, but I’m still experiencing issues”. Directly below that is a line that says “The latest fix for anti-adblock was made on [date] and currently corresponds to ID [xxxxxxx]”.

The ID refers to the version of YouTube’s tattler script that it is capable of defeating. Compare that number to the bottom line on this list: https://pastefy.app/G1Txv5su/raw. The listings look like: “https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ea2534f4/jsbin/desktop_polymer_css_polymer_serving_disabled.vflset/desktop_polymer_css_polymer_serving_disabled.js”. The bolded portion is the ID number you want to compare it to.

If the numbers are the same, then the tattler has been temporarily neutralized by the volunteer team. Once you purge and update your caches, soft locked accounts will be open again and no warnings will be issued. Use it while you can. Don’t forget to purge & update or it won’t work.

If the numbers don’t match, the volunteer team hasn’t caught up yet and the tattler script is still active. You will still be warned and soft-blocked. Give them 4-5 hours to catch up.

Tags:

#oh is *that* why I haven’t encountered the anti-adblock? #because I don’t leave my Google account logged in? #huh #the more you know #fun with loopholes #Youtube #disappointed permanent resident of The Future #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Anonymous asked:

thoughts on this kind of sunglasses (the link is a popular tumblr post)

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caspercryptid:

arsnof:

lmaonade:

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i’m not kidding this is cool as fuck

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oh I wore these to school for an entire year!! I had really bad migraines and the lights were a fucking nightmare so I just

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7233592adab8d9b575114f2343c873e7b93d7c69
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c8a5e4fb471cb65f82fd884a44e8ebf329c88107

The Orb

Tags:

#oh my god #clothing #the more you know #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

bedheaddeadhead asked: Hi i have a silly question. Was “pill me” in that ask a typo or is that how the hip kids are saying “fill me in” now? I like the idea of saying “pill me on that” and swallowing a little information capsule and then saying “oh i get it”

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

toasthaste:

Intentional! So, it’s an extension of the “[thing]-pilled” phraseology, which means approximately that the subject has embraced [thing] (and usually [thing] is positioned to be good, but not always. It’s contextual.)

“Pill me on [thing]” is essentially saying “Convince me that I should embrace [thing]” (with an implication that you have an open mind/want to be convinced.) I picked it up from my roommate @eiko-chatter, for better or for worse.

So, the post you’re referencing– I sent that ask in response to @chilope saying in the tags of a previous post “#im so fucking aeropress pilled,” meaning something like “I have accepted the aeropress into my life and I swear by it.” When I asked her to “pill” me on it, it was a request for information, but with an embedded request for her specifically to make a case for why I should also accept this thing into my life– and the phrasing indicates a lot of receptiveness toward the idea that the thing is good/correct.

Tags:

#this feels like one of those posts to etch into your monolith for the benefit of future historians #language #the more you know #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{woozymitts asked:}}

I’m so sorry if you’ve talked about this already but I just saw it and you were the first person I thought of

Anyways have you seen this absolutely INSANE rove beetle

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bogleech:

I HAVE HOPED TO SEE ACTUAL CLEAR PHOTOGRAPHS OF THIS FOR YEARS. I have seen nothing but scientific drawings and some microscopy slides!!! Oh my god it looks even sillier and more far-fetched than I thought it would. I want everyone to know before they carelessly continue scrolling that this is how the beetle pretends to be a termite and freeloads in termite society and the entire fake termite is just the beetle’s abdomen. If you look closely you can see that’s what it is, that it just has a massive weird butt so big it can hide entirely under its own butt and that it (the butt) is shaped like a different, inflatable decoy bug with fake antennas and fake legs.

Just four fake legs because it did not study entomology but luckily neither have the termites.

Tags:

#bugs #biology #the more you know #I’m so curious what the intermediate steps in evolving this shape looked like #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

transgenderer:

check (v.1)

ate 15c., in chess, “to attack the king; to put (the opponent’s king) in check;” earlier (late 14c.) in a figurative sense, “to stop, arrest; block, barricade;” from check (n.1) or Old French eschequier, from the noun in French. A player in chess limits his opponent’s ability to move when he places his opponent’s king in check.

The other senses seem all to have developed from the chess sense, or from the noun: “To arrest, stop,” then “to hold in restraint” (1620s); “to hold up or control” (an assertion, a person, etc.) by comparison with some authority or record (1690s); of baggage, etc., “to hand over in return for a check that serves as a means of identifying” (1846); “to note with a mark as having been examined, etc., mark off from a list” (1928).

Hence, to check off (1839); to check up (1883); to check in or out (in a hotel, of a library book, etc., 1909). To check out (something) “to look at, investigate” is from 1959

check (n.1)

c. 1300, in chess, “a call noting one’s move has placed his opponent’s king (or another major piece) in immediate peril,” from Old French eschequier “a check at chess” (also “chess board, chess set”), from eschec “the game of chess; chessboard; check; checkmate,” from Vulgar Latin *scaccus, from Arabic shah, from Persian shah “king,” the principal piece in a chess game (see shah; also compare checkmate (n.)). Also c. 1300 in a generalized sense, “harmful incident or event, hostile environment.”

As “an exposure of the king to a direct attack from an opposing piece” early 15c. When his king is in check, a player’s choices are severely limited. From that notion come the many extended senses: From the notion of “a sudden stoppage, hindrance, restraint” (1510s) comes that of “act or means of checking or restraining,” also “means of detecting or exposing or preventing error; a check against forgery or alteration.”

Hence: “a counter-register as a token of ownership used to check against, and prevent, loss or theft” (as in hat check, etc.), 1812. Hence also the financial use for “written order for money drawn on a bank, money draft” (1798, often spelled cheque), which was probably influenced by exchequer. Hence also “mark put against names or items on a list indicating they have been verified or otherwise examined” (by 1856).

think i may have already posted this but its so strange that “check” as in “examine” comes from check in chess

Tags:

#what *are* words? we just don’t know #language #history #the more you know #chess #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

shieldfoss:

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fnord888:

Thought 1: Hey, yeah, cool.

Thought 2: Wait, do they use more electricity than the rendering the same scene without a lamp? Is it just the background effort of the having the computer on, not the lamp itself? Hmm.

Thought 3: Calculating real-time lighting is one of the computationally expensive parts of modern video games, and power draw goes up with computational load, so adding a lamp to a scene plausibly does make rendering that scene use more electricity. So, yeah, cool.

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shieldfoss:

Even with the cheapest simplest light model: A lighter room draws a white, rather than black, screen – achieved with more electricity.

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eggman-is-fat-mkay:

Only if you’re using an OLED or one of those fancy multizone LCD panels that are actually more trouble than they’re worth. OLED screens work by starting from black and adding light you do want. LCD screens work by starting out with a bright white screen and filtering out all the light you don’t. They’re not perfect at this which is why OLED screens get deeper blacks. Fun fact! This is also how those cool “snowblind” PC cases work – they’re just LCD screens without a backlight.

Your average run-of-the-mill LCD will use exactly as much power displaying a plain white screen as a black one.

Also, barely tangentially related, but I just want to share a fun fact. You know those blinking nametag keychains they sell in gift shops?

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these?

they’re actually LCD screens with a single massive segment! the name is actually a printed page behind the LCD panel, which applies power to turn the LCD cell opaque and make it black. that’s why if you cover the solar cell on the top with your finger, the name stays showing and gets dimmer, and doesn’t completely disappear unless it has power.

If your desktop’s LCD screen works the way these do (some draw power on white, some on black), a plain black screen may in fact draw infinitesimally more power.

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shieldfoss:

HUH

Tags:

#fun with loopholes #the more you know #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once