@slightlyspooky / slightlyspooky.tumblr.com
I would love to get some feedback on my writing and world building. It's all under my #unnamed fantasy setting12345 tag right now.
Currently I need name suggestions for the closest pass my very normal moon makes on each of it's second longest cycle types.
I also need name suggestions for the second less normal moon.
More info about this is in my unhinged rambling post
so ummm welcome to my jar:) lemme show you around! theres some holes poked in the top so i can breathe, theres some leaves to munch on, and ive even got a twig! #mytwig
God I miss season 1.
I love this in every way possible. What is it from? Where can I read more?
The pitfalls of experimental archaeology and puppies.
link to source:
βUnraveling the Linothorax Mystery, or how Linen Armor Came to Dominate our Lives.β
holy shit read the article. itβs short but wild
We found that even more of a threat than rain was oneβs own sweat on a hot day. So, yes, it does need waterproofing, both inside and out. We did a number of experiments along those lines, and found that rubbing a block of beeswax over all sides of the armor provided nice waterproofing. It also makes the armor smell nice! When you wear it for a couple hours, your own body heat softens the glue a bit and makes it conform to your body shape, so it is much more comfortable to wear than rigid types of armor. Our reconstructions weighed about 10 poundsβabout one third the weight of bronze armor that would provide the same degree of protection.
Honey i gotta go to war⦠not to smell my bee armor or hang with the boys or anything no.. uhh we need to uh do war things?
#i've definitely read this before and i've probably reblogged it before but like.#no one in this thread is mentioning that they actually shot someone with an actual arrow in this armor.#they were like 'we've got to test this in practice' and instead of getting a mannequin or something they had an actual person wear it.
They what?
from the article:
While all of this mayhem (both scientifically controlled and free-form) convinced us that our linothorax was ancient-battlefield-ready, we still felt compelled to try a real-life scenario, so Scott donned the armor and Greg shot him. And while we had confidence in our armor, our relief was still considerable when the arrowhead stuck and lodged in the armorβs outer layers, a safe distance away from flesh.
a good life-size mannequin is expensive but i guarantee it would've cost way less than they were spending on all that linen.
Academics are just like that.
Gotta love ye Olde composites
(Could be interesting to try with carbon fiber instead of linen, and maybe a modern material with the same heat molding capabilities as hide glue)
seething about the fact that i will never experience photosynthesis in my own useless cells. i bet it feels so good when the light of the sun both warms you and fuels you at the same time. a bone-deep satisfaction mixed with a heated sugar-rush and endless brightness. not that i would fucking know
Reports are coming out that Harris is leading in Iowa.
So what does this mean for Iowa voters?
Iowa was red in 2020 and has historically been red. As someone who lives in AZ, a red state that is now a swing state, it is entirely possible to flip a state or at least make the Republican Party sweat. So if you are in Iowa and were considering not voting because βyour vote wonβt count in a red state anywaysβ, please get out and vote.
Obviously polls can be inaccurate, but how great would it be if we could flip a state that republicans considered an easy victory?
Iowa also allows same day in person registration!!! So if you are over 18 and a U.S. citizen who resides in Iowa it is not too late! Click here for info on voting in Iowa: https://voterready.iowa.gov/registertovote/
the choice is simple: freedom or fascism. this election is too important to sit out. the only poll that matters is who shows up to cast their ballots. lives are on the line.
As I grow older I feel my capacity to understand that Miss Piggy is not a real person reached a peak in my adolescence and is now on a steady decline. I watched a Wendy Williams interview and there's this part that's like "can we get a ring cam!" and Miss Piggy shows her bling and I'm just like fuck she's so iconic. Miss Piggy who are you wearing? Miss Piggy have you ever considered running for office??
Like literally every time I see Miss Piggy there's a period where I need to readjust to the fact that it's not a person, and I feel that period is getting longer and longer with every instance
now all my Youtube recommendations are filled with Miss Piggy interviews. Iβm not complaining. Miss Piggy whatβs your secret to ageing so graciously
It's not just the audience; professional journalists, hosts, and actors report it is legitimately difficult to not see the Muppet as a person, and it is, in fact, incredibly easy to interview or act with them once the performer gets properly set up.
Like that one time they couldn't figure out why Kermit's audio was so garbage... then realized they'd put the mic on him instead of the performer.
this has been a very longstanding issue - before the muppet show was even a thing some muppets appeared in commercials, such as rolf the dog they had a continual problem where when people directing/shooting the dogfood commercial would give dirrection to rolf that they would be speaking to the muppet, to which rolf REPEATEDLY had to tell them βi cant hear you, you have to talk to himβ and point at the performer underneath him rolf is one of the most embarrassing muppets to need this direction as the performer is this, damn, obvious when not on camera
βsir, i am a bathroom mat, the man you need to talk to is back thereβ
I did an interview with Gonzo one time, and when I got into the Zoom call, it was the actor on screen trying to figure out his audio. And then once he did, he went likeΒ βOKAY!β and then just like dove to the floor and it was Gonzo and there was never a moment when I doubted that the dude was just Gonzoβs tech guyΒ
I have met a muppet-like puppet in real life and when I tell you that my brain was hacked FUCKING INSTANTLY..... It was a person, I swear it was a person. I asked it for a hug (no i was not 5 years old, i was like 28 at this time). i genuinely don't know what came over me, it was just. It was a person???? Witchcraft
A couple years ago, I was invited to the birthday party of one of my former preschool students. I decided to bring my teaching puppet (a big rat) along because I knew several other kids from that class would be there, and she was always a huge hit with them.
They were, of course, very excited to see her. But what surprised me was that after the kids ran off to play in the sprinkler, the parents around me struck up conversation with the puppet. They continued for at least fifteen minutes, asking her questions like, "how long have you been teaching?" and "eaten out of any good dumpsters lately?" until one dad exclaimed "why have I been talking to a rat puppet this whole time!"
Honestly after years of watching Ben Shapiro play the genuine good faith debater so his fans can talk about how smart and reasonable and fair he is before going back to his real persona on his show, it is amazing to see someone tear that shit apart while he could do nothing but grin and take it. He comes into these βdebatesβ pretending to be nice and respectful while not truly respecting a single person heβs talking to, sneaking in insults whenever he can, and fully planning to laugh behind their backs for being so dumb as to think their opinions matter, and people have to take it because otherwise they look like the unreasonable ones. Itβs all a con for his outrage grift machine, and not a single word of it is in good faith.
So this guy decided to take one for the team and give back overtly the same disrespect Shapiro was dealing covertly. He flipped the chair around to throw him off his game to start (getting Shapiro to praise his masculinity right before revealing he was trans), ripped apart his charade, gish galloped him into silence, and then topped the whole thing off by faking the handshake that Shapiro had been doing insincerely with every participant. All while Shapiro, because he has to play the role, canβt do a thing about it. Donβt know if he just saw one thing too many and pulled this all off the top of his head, or if he planned to make a fool of Shapiro from the jump and was just waiting for the right moment, but either way go off king.
I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.
I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.
Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine β for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:
But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.
Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."
As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metasized into every kind of device imaginable.
Garage-door openers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain
Refrigerators:
Dishwashers:
Treadmills:
Tractors:
Cars:
Printers:
And even printer paper:
DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.
I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.
I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:
The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?
No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.
Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.
No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.
Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?
Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally β without any help from anyone else β figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.
That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.
I wish that more people knew how absolutely heinous these kinds of laws were, so that there would be more mass outrage over just how much they hold society back and make everything worse.
glimpse into my beautiful imaginary world where arthropods are really big and we domesticated them
edit: people are starting to say some "my worst nightmare" or "eeeww no that one is yucky and scary" comments on this like they do on any bug post and id like to say. it's fine if you don't like bugs it's fine if you're scared of bugs but don't put that on MY post clearly talking about how much i like them and how cute i think they are. you can make your own damn post about how much you hate wasps or spiders or whatever. i'm blocking people who make these kinds of comments.
This post was directly under your bike post. No one has ever posted about bikes ever on my dashboard but this can't be coincidence. Also. Love that you found a new fun thing!
ππTHIS IS HOW IT FEELS!! Especially if I canβt look behind me and I can hear cars coming upβ¦ itβs like, please sir or maβam Iβm just trying to liveβ¦ look how cute I am peacefully riding my bike, you want me to have a nice day, you donβt want to hit me with your car
ok but the way he's still kind of getting outcunted by the guy on the left
Me only scrolling down enough to see the first photo: they should fuck about it
Scrolling down further: oh they are fucking about it. Excellent!
ok but like. there are two different types of privilege. there's type a "everybody should have this, but some people don't" and type b "nobody should have this, but some people do"
there's having parents who can pay for your application to any college, and then there's having parents who can bribe your way into any college. there's owning your own home, and then there's owning 50 houses and getting rich off hoarding a vital resource. there's not fearing for your life whenever cops are around, and then there's being the cop and being allowed to murder anyone at any time.
idk i just feel like that's an important distinction to make.
god i hope the cpsc takes the shot. i think this would dramatically change their entire business model. amazon makes so much money by selling defective or mislabeled or just plain dangerous products and then faces little liability because this stuff is actually being sold by random third-party sellers that don't get vetted at all and can be hard to prosecute because they're in china or wherever. this is a big part of what makes amazon so powerful and it would be good for everyone if they were forced to bear more responsibility for the damages caused by the crap available on their website
Here's the link if someone can paste the article into the reblogs
www.wsj.com WSJ News Exclusive | Should Amazon Be Responsible for Everything It Sells and Ships? A U.S. Agency Will Soon Decide Dana Mattioli and Khadeeja Safdar is facing a government order that could make it responsible for the safety of goods that it sells for outside vendors on its website and ships for them through its logistics network. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is preparing an order that could classify Amazonβs online retail business as a distributor of goods, according to people familiar with the matter. That designation could give Amazon the same safety responsibilities as traditional retailers and potentially open Amazon up to lawsuits and extensive recalls over items sold through its website. Amazon accounts for nearly 40% of all e-commerce in the U.S., according to eMarketer, a research firm. Amazon has fought the distributor designation because of the nature of its online marketplace. The company sells some items from its own inventory, as bricks-and-mortar stores do, but more than 60% of sales on Amazon.com are by outside vendors, known as third-party sellers. Amazon has said that it invests in product safety across its site. It also has argued that for those third-party sales it is merely a platform for sellers and buyers to connect, and therefore isnβt responsible for ensuring the quality and safety of products sold by outside vendors on its site.
Note that it is not an accident that this is happening now. One of the things Biden has made a point of doing is appointing aggressive and anti-corporate people to Federal agencies, such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission. There have been a string of rulings and rule changes from such agencies that have been good for the average American and/or good for labor unions, but bad for the big corporations.
UPDATE: Amazon is officially a distributor who is legally responsible to recall dangerous defective products! The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued the decision and order on 7/30/24 by a commission chair nominated by Biden in 2021. Democrats are the party of consumer safety and improving lives.
Can't express how stress free being open minded is.
Some lesbians use he/him? Oh cool.
Some people have people inside their head and sometimes it's fictional chars? Sick your brains like a pirate ship they're all working to run.
Some people like being treated like a pet dog? Bark bark bro.
Being fat isn't unhealthy but a perfectly normal type of body to have? Kinda beautiful how different we can all be.
Something doesn't make any fucking sense? Cool an opportunity to learn. And even if I can't figure it out it's cool we still have mysteries today.
It's just... idk man. People are weird. Being a person is weird. Society is weird. The universe is weird. Rather than having to "normalize" everything, just accept that some people are weird. So are you. Nothing is normal. the rules are all made up. I once saw a Klingon pushing a baby stroller down the street in toronto. The world is a weird place, man. Just roll with it.
Just antagonized a guy being a dick to service workers. Told him he needed some manners
He left really mad and I hope he has a bad day
kiki and bouba. the usual π¬π¬
