yoooooooo

tf2 heritage post

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glad we're all on the same page

the internet archive could murder me in cold blood if it benefited archival, also where can i buy some of that internet archive heroin?

IBM 1401

In 1959, IBM debuted the 1401 computer.  It greatly lowered the threshold at which a serious computer could be purchased.  Paired with the IBM 1403 line printer, which boasted massively improved reliability and a new consistent level of quality compared to all computer printers that came before it.

On Saturday of VCF West, I demonstrated the Cactus to an older gentleman who was wearing Computer History Museum attire, unaware of his specialty.  Then on Sunday, I had the pleasure of attending the 1401 demonstration, only to find that same man standing inside the barrier, leading the talk!  What a fun surprise. 

The CHM happens to have two IBM 1401′s, matching 1403′s, vacuum column tape drives, punch card readers, and a handful of keypunch stations.  I got to punch my name on a card, after which it was fed through the reader, and then printed out on paper in big graphical text, after the computer had processed it.  Thing is, this is a 6-bit machine which predates the ASCII standard.  It has no lower case characters.  I was given a decoding card showing how the characters are represented for the 1401 – mighty fun. 

The IBM 1401 is a class-act of a machine. I highly recommend seeing this demo at the CHM if you ever get the chance, because it is truly a magnificent computer.

Apparently there's an evolutionary theory that the reason why Africa has so much wild big-ass megafauna while the big-ass megafauna on all the other continents went extinct is because they evolved right beside humans, and knew us well enough to not get hunted into extinction.

So while everything from giant koalas to giant sloths barely had the time to think "what the fuck is that" before getting pierced by a spear and getting their bone marrow gently fed to babies and the toothless elderly, Africa had elephants who had all the time in the world to learn to tell apart human languages and teach the next generations of their herd which human sounds mean that this tribe won't hurt you, but humans who make this kind of sounds are a danger. And hippos learned to conclude "I think I'll fuck up this two-legged weird shit on sight."

That’s true about African Elephants being able to distinguish between human languages, BTW.

The original study they did on this is really cool, and it showed that not only can elephants distinguish languages, they respond differently depending on the general age and gender of the person spekaing. The researchers played recordings of different people speaking either Maasai or Kamba. All the speakers were saying the same thing, "Look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming."

What they found is that when presented with voices speaking Kamba, the elephants were supremely unbothered. The Kamba are mostly farmers, many work for the park services, and they rarely present a danger to elephants.

When presented with the voices of adult men speaking Maasai, the elephants drew close to each other and started investigating. The Maasai are largely cattle herders, and they sometimes come into conflict with elephants over water and grazing lands.

However, the elephants did not seem nervous when presented with the voices of women or young boys speaking Maasai. They were aware that only humans with deep voices were a threat to them.

They also seem to recognize that if humans are talking, they aren't necessarily a threat. Humans pursuing large game like elephants are stealth hunters. If you can hear them coming, they're probably not trying to hurt you.

Anyway, elephants are amazing and one of the creatures high up on my list of "non-humans who are probably people."

Reblogging for those fabulous details.

if homestucks so good how come nobody went super saiyan

#i like to think data took him all the way to the brig tossed him in and left#and then came back 60 seconds later and was like ‘i believe i have successfully played a ‘practical joke’ on you :)’#riker loses it & claps him on the back like ‘wow. good job u rly had me going. dont ever fucking do that again’ Perfect.

Actually it’s 73 seconds. Data, knowing something of how human minds work, estimates that Riker will give him 60 seconds to come back (because humans prefer “round numbers”, however arbitrary the units). After 60 seconds it will take 4 seconds for Riker to fully process the conclusion that Data is, in fact, not coming back after all, and an additional 9 seconds to build to the optimum level of anxiety. 

After all, comedy is timing.

Unironically though I am still super suspicious of ppl being SU crit, the show was a milestone in kids tv and a focal point in a lot of Culture War BS, like maybe think abt WHY the show that's based on magical girl anime where everything is pastel and the aliens are nonbinary she/her and the main character is a fat boy who completely inverts traditional masculinity and rejects violence is Cringe to you.

This is trippy

hey science side of tumblr, if you’re not on your union mandated lunch break, a question for you

when these resin casts are made and the top is sorta like, opaque (if that’s the right word) how come when the liquid resin is poured on top and then sets, that it becomes perfectly clear

Because of light refraction! Basically when you sand Resin casts (or in this case, from sanding the pinecones down) you wind up with an absolute fuckton of tiny scratches in the surface, and light that hits it bounces in all kinds of weird directions. But, since liquid resin can still bond with set resin, pouring a *very thin* layer of it over the top fills in the imperfections and makes the surface smooth like glass, so the light travels in a normal pattern again

thanks nerd >:3c

god science is so cool

The person I reblogged this from is someone I enjoy seeing on my dashboard.

I compiled together the sketches I made while playing thru twilight princess 🫡

a chonker

Pokemon Heritage Post

reminding myself there are no truly "bad days", because every single day, someone somewhere in the world has taken a photo of an extremely tiny animal and shown it to someone else, and that's very good actually

look at this absolutely fucking MINISCULE rabbit. i am sharing it with you. i hope it improves your day

(photo credit to frobunnius on twitter)

i took a bunny photo too!!

Mines not a baby but I do have one that routinely comes to my yard because it's overgrown. I caught him in the act lol

I haven't seen this version anywhere so I made one!

This flag is pissing off TERFs of course but i am seeing so much colorful JOY from trans lesbians and other lesbians in the notes like I've never seen a set of tags so happy before omg

autistic people of a particular flavour will master the art of expressing mundane sentiment in amusing ways because their most successful jokes as children were primarily accidental. and when you realise you have that spark of a weirdo it's just a matter of intentionality and comic linguistic optimisation to make yourself a regular sayer of things in funny ways.

Maybe you're just hot?

I mean it helps also

"do X to piss off a terf" what about doing things to make a trans person feep safe? what about building camraderie and community? what if you chose to center your actions around building bonds and uplifting others instead of making your main motivators spite and cruelty?

reblog to let your trans mutuals know that your blog is a safe space

y’all i had this cute idea for making shitty abstract pride flags and i love them

"Hey what's your gender?"

"Well actually I'm *modem dialup noise*"

a few more

we appear to be having gender difficulties