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The Nerd of Most Trades

@ryisdafterthanu

Ry | Ryan | uhm | 25 | I'm a dumb blog, I reblog whatever I see fit I won't bite so feel free to meme Disclaimer: This blog is 99.99% on mobile, so don't hold that against me...

I laughed way too hard at this

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in case anyone is looking through the notes trying to find the original artist it’s will mcphail !! feel free to check out his site but also here are some other things he made too !!

OOOHHH CLICK ON THAT LINK THIS GUY IS FUCKING GREAT

HOLY SHIT

this guy GETS IT

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

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Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

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I can’t begin to describe how happy and flattered and a little teary I am that this just broke 100k.

I may be the actual only human being on Tumblr with a post this popular that I not only don’t regret making, but am actually HAPPY whenever I notice a surge in its circulation. 

I never intended this to gain any traction at all (you’ll notice there’s no sources or anything–this was a personal ramble, prompted in good humor by a friend after I jokingly said that I wished someone would give me an excuse to cry about Carpathia on Tumblr so I could get it out of my system.) I literally expected to get, like, maybe 20 likes and a reblog, from friends, indulging me in my nonsense.

It just….means a lot to me that it’s touched so many people. I see a lot of tags to the effect of “HOW DARE YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS AND MAKE ME CRY ABOUT A BOAT” that are often really funny, but overwhelmingly the tags on this post are from people saving it for a rainy day, or remarking in a sort of quiet awe that they never even really thought about her role in the story–and God knows I never did, I learned it by complete accident much as most of the people who’ve found this post. 

And so many of you guys are taking strength and reassurance from the reminder not only that people are capable of amazing things together, but simply that kindness matters and that a simple, tiny act of compassion is never wasted. I’m just really glad to have been able to do that for some folks.

If I can just add one personal note. I need to emphasize something I only touched on in the original post.

I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed.

A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of…despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic

They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not even have saved a single life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care.

If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: It matters that they tried. 

Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off–it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died.

You don’t have to fix the world. You’ll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It’s hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late.

It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn’t stop. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have read this far.

lil 16 page zine that i made at the coffee shop this weekend! a sort of pick your path style mini game, because i love wizards + interactive fiction. hope you get out of the wizard dungeon!!

Life path unlocked. He’s a scientist now.

If your dad is telling you in great detail about something he’s passionate about, you’re going to be hooked even if you don’t understand a word.

So now I have to deliver a quiet lecture on the Standard Model every night. He loves lists of things, like all the streets home from daycare, or the train stations between here and Central, so he loves hearing the list of leptons and quarks and bosons.

Anyway, I made this poster for him, based on the CPEP ones we used to have at uni . 

Alas I ran out of room for antimatter, colour charge and confinement, but hey, maybe there can be a second poster later.

It’s funny though — on the surface of it, it seems like it must be far too advanced for a 3yo. But when you think about it, quarks and leptons are no more or less real to him than, say, dinosaurs or planets, and he loves those too. And he recognises the letters on the particles.

I am absolutely overwhelmed by the kind and sweet things people are saying about this, thanks everyone ❤️

Addendum: he has really grasped onto the “everything is made of atoms” part of this, so tonight he listed just about every object he could think of and asked if it was made of atoms.

“And my bed?” Yes, and your bed. “And that wall?” Yep. “And the armchair?” Yes, the armchair too. … … “And… the book case?” Y—

“And my home?” Yep, the whole apartment block. “And your home? Oh wait, your home is my home.” Haha, it is. … … “But is it made of atoms?” Yep. “And… [best friend]’s home?” Yes, it is. And [other friend]’s home, and [third friend]’s home.

“Is [yet another friend]’s home?”

Update from the other night:

“Is my… is… [extremely long pause] is my atoms poster made up of atoms?” —Yes! Yes it is.

I have never heard such a contemplative silence. I think the next poster will have to be on the philosophy of referential language.

Update from this morning: after listing everything in sight (mummy? daddy? fridge? milk? cereal? table? etc.) he asks “is [baby sister] made up of atoms?”

yep!

*runs over to her on the floor* *puts face up real close to hers* “HI! YOU’RE MADE UP OF LOTS OF ATOMS! DID YOU KNOW?”

“HI! YOU’RE MADE UP OF LOTS OF ATOMS! DID YOU KNOW?”

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This is so pure and good.

this South Korean birthday ad for Jesus is… interesting

to everyone unfamiliar with the concept (because, for example, birthday ads aren’t done in your country like they aren’t done in mine), usually fans buy ad space in honor of their favorite celebrity’s birthday and display an image of them there, example:

fans of singer Kim Taehyung organized this ad among others for his birthday (source: x y z)

but I have never expected to see Jesus fans do the same with an edit like that

jesus fans

they prefer the term christians

I can’t believe no one has added yet how the Korean says “Mr. Jesus! Congratulations on your 2017th birthday~!” 

Happy birthday, Mr. Jesus!

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YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

This is actually info I didn’t know

Seriously folks review my books! Review everyone’s books!

It’s the difference between Amazon giving a damn about you verses pushing your book to the bottom of the food chain. 

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I didn’t know this!! Now I must review all the books!

What you can do to support THE RED DOOR.

KILL!!!

KILL THEM NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Killer Wail can also kill them, but you have to aim at the center for Flyfish. I don’t really recommend using Wail for Mudmouths unless it’s last wave (at least just use 1 special if you still have both of them, especially if it’s for Gold Mudmouth). I do recommend using them for Flyfish, especially if there are 2 of them on the map

Edit: Booyah Bomb and Tristrike’s too, but they apply with the Killer Wail rule (but Tristrike especially for Flyfish. You have to throw at the middle of the cockpit for them)

A new mode of production arises out of the newly networked masses.

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Fanartists:

Thingiverse users:

Royalty free sounds

Flash games

Productivity has always been there

Because shockingly when people enjoy what they do (you make it enjoyable instead of just hammering on them) people WANT to do things!

Fanfiction authors!!

Where is the button to shout this from the rooftop?