Alliteration

I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.

Time to drop some links again.

– https://searchmysite.net/ Search engine for the indie web, personal websites, digital gardens. You can also find them in websites like Neocities, Indieweb, Blogarama, and write.as. There is also a big list of personal websites.

– https://search.marginalia.nu/ Search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and promotes websites that aren’t usually at the top of the list.

– https://www.worldcat.org/ Search engine for items in libraries (books, but also maps, articles, sound recordings, theses, etc.)

– https://scholar.google.com/ Search engine for scientific papers, reviews, etc. It’s still google, but a lot better than the normal search engine counterpart.

– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines A list of search engines sorted by subject, area, and more. If you’re searching on a specific area, it might be worth checking if there is one focused on that area.

– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines A list of academic databases and search engines.

– https://tineye.com/ Reverse image search alternative to Google’s. Also, P.S.: Please stop using Google, and start using more privacy focused search engines, like DuckDuckGo or SearchX (opensource; personally haven’t used it yet, but it looks promising for privacy-focused users)

That Google and Meta can get away with this during an era of intense misinformation and disinformation signals that we cannot rely on large tech companies to provide reliable access to information and news:

If you REALLY wanna give your plants a treat, when you're planting them dig the hole extra deep and plop some leftover chicken bones in the bottom of the planting hole. Cover with some compost. Plop your plant in it. Watch your roses go apeshit as they feast on all that tasty phosphorus and calcium!

This is all awesome, but I think we’re skipping over the fact that “shout out to the forces of decomposition. can’t wait to meet ‘em” is a KILLER line.

public service announcement

I keep getting people asking about bowling on this post so I’m just gonna repost this drawing I made on Twitter

How did her grandmother fill 4 vases?

She was a very large woman. Easily 12 feet tall.

then why the heck is her family not tall too?!?!

Pop-pop was very small so it canceled out.

This was originally part of its own post, but I figured I should add it here so all the Bawling/Balling/Bowling family lore can be in one place, sorry if you’ve seen it before.

So 12-foot-tall Grandma was actually a star basketball player back in the 70s for a very brief period of time– her career as a professional athlete only lasted between October and December of 1972.

The reason for this was because John Basketball, the inventor of the sport, realized that the WNBA had not yet been established, so he asked her to please sit out until the Basketball Elders got a chance to make a space in the sport for women. Grandma thought this was pretty bullshit, but she decided to leave the NBA anyway because nobody could keep up with her balling, and the sport had lost its novelty.

After she settled down in her new-but-less-exciting career as an astronaut, she met Pop-pop on the moon. It turns out that he had been a big fan of her and had recorded all her matches on U-matic, and had fallen in love with the sport.

Anyway things happened, the two fell in love and got married, and Grandma and Pop-pop had a beautiful family together. She became especially close with one of her granddaughters, Ballin’ Jessie, who inherited her propensity for basketball. The two would often dunk hoops with each other, and developed trash-talk as their love language.

Pop-pop also had an interest in the sport, but his height had made it difficult for him to keep up with the others. In fact, he had actually lost about a foot in height as a result of being compressed by Earth’s stronger gravitational pull. Despite this, Pop-pop was never really bothered by this because of his exceptional love for Grandma, who was always more than happy to lend him a helping hand. 

surely this is a good idea that doesn’t have the capacity to end real fuckin badly

Bridges aren’t supposed to have weight restrictions on them. That is, they don’t come with weight restrictions on them when they’re new. So a bridge with a weight restriction on it is a sign that something has gone wrong and the bridge does not meet current standards.

The maximum weight that a vehicle is allowed to carry on the Interstate System per federal law is 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (with a max of 20,000 pounds per axle). That’s 40 tons. That limit applies to every inch of pavement, not just the bridges. Since this is a known cap, a new Interstate bridge will be designed to accommodate an 80,000 lb GVW load on it. You could say the bridge’s weight limit is 80,000 lb/40 tons but that doesn’t really have much meaning, because a load higher than that would be illegal to transport on public roads anyway, and the road leading up to the bridge has the same weight restriction. (In practice, the bridge doubtlessly will be designed to have a little bit of let to it just in case some idiot tries to squeak by a few hundred extra pounds.)

Now, note that that law applies to the Interstate System only, because the federal government only has a governing interest in the Interstate System (and other roads that together make up something called the National Highway System) because they partially fund it. Most long-distance roads are owned and funded by the states. The states could theoretically set lower standard weight limits and/or design bridges with lower weight limits…but in practice they don’t.

One, because all of that 80,000 lb GVW traffic on the Interstate system has to go somewhere when it exits the system.

Two, because a group called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO, who are best known for picking the road numbers) maintains a catalog of standard components for making bridges that meet Interstate System requirements. Engineers are expensive on a per-hour basis, so if you can direct your engineer to use standard components and make a standard bridge, that’s a lot cheaper than having them design a bridge from scratch to go over the creek in Nowheresville. As a result, most new bridges meet Interstate standards and have an 80,000 lb GVW rating even if they aren’t on the Interstate system. (This is also why all new bridges kind of look the same, but we’re not worried about how boring the bridges are for the sake of this post.)

So a bridge only has an explicit weight limit if it has been damaged in some way (through failure to properly maintain it usually) or because it predates the application of Interstate System standards and the standard AASHTO bridges.

Older bridges often have other problems in addition to the weight limits: many older designs are what we call “fracture critical”, which means that if one component of the bridge fails the whole thing collapses. Modern bridge designs have redundancy designed into them so that if one beam fails the other beams will carry the load until the damaged beam can be replaced. Older bridges also often don’t meet other standards, like height (16 ft clearance) and width (12 ft per lane plus 14 ft for shoulders) requirements.

Biden isn’t advocating eliminating weight limits and letting it be a laissez-faire free-for-all where trucks can just go wherever they want. He’s advocating for replacing bridges that carry weight limits with new ones that don’t have them.

wow i got absolutely schooled thank you for all this this is really informative. i have learned so much

This is a great explanation of what the fuck Biden was talking about in his tweet. because I will freely admit that I also went “…….wtf?????” when I read it. So thank you.

Today I learned about civil engineering.

sick of other trans people looking like a deer in the headlights when reminded that amabs can be nb too. there are really still people in our own community who think a nonbinary person is like. a woman wearing jeans

i've had people treat me visibly different after hearing my voice or seeing my face as if i'm some sort of predator or interloper. this attitude towards amab trans people especially nonbinary people really paints a picture of what the lgbt community thinks of gender in general

anyway did i mention: amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

amab enby rights

(I love my amab enby friends.)

amab enby rights!!!

amab enby rights!!!!!!

Just so everybody knows, the mirror is actually more reliable than the camera. Even though people say “the camera never lies”, it distorts your photographs a little bit. It has to turn a 3d image (you in real life) to a 2d image (a photograph) and consequently skews the proportions a little bit.

Also, “photogenic” is a real thing. Certain faces photograph well and others don’t. It’s all down the angles, proportions and size of your features.

Have you ever seen someone stunning who looks great in professional photographs and not in candids? Yeah, that’s because there’s a huge difference between a professional and an amateur. Professionals know how to minimise the issues cameras have. Lighting, angles and even the distance you are away from the camera plays a part (the amount of distortion varies depending on how close you are).

TL;DR if you think you look great in the mirror but not in the photo, trust the mirror. You look great!

NOT ONLY THAT, but when you look in a mirror, you’re seeing your face in motion, how others would see it. In a photograph, you’re still, and it can make small flaws and the like seem a lot more prominent, despite them being quite minuscule in person.

Also! Also, when you see yourself in the mirror you are looking at you face reverse of how a camera pics it up. No face is perfectly symmetrical so you get so used to seeing a mirrored version of your face that when it’s flipped in a picture you subconsciously notice the tiny differences in your face and thus you think you don’t look right.

I have never felt so relieved and beautiful thank you guys

when a mutual posts a poll you know nothing about, but they say "orangutan johnson my beloved, orangutan johnson sweep!!!!" you vote for orangutan johhnson. it's called loyalty.

Remember if you’re out at a store and someone says “This is a robbery” you can say “no it’s not” and then the robber will leave because theyre a robber and this is no longer a robbery .

You can not just say this without dropping the whole story

Ok so,

My dads coworker is at the front and this man comes Up and hands him a document.

The coworker took a Look at the document and while he couldn't read the things written by Hand, because he wasn't wearing his glases, he did notice the Logo of a different Bank so he's like:

"Oh, sorry sir you can't do that here! You have to go to the other Bank for this :)"

The man, visibly confused leaves, but dosen't take the document with him.

The coworker, now just as confused as the Guy actually Takes Out his glases and reads the hand written part:

This is a robbery

Can you imagine trying to rob a god damn bank and the teller just cheerfully tells you to go rob the competition instead

I worked as a bank teller for several years and a few things you should know, bank robberies happen far more frequently than you might think and they come in waves. When a bank gets robbed a notification with photos goes to all banks in the area to be on the lookout. And there are two kinds of robbery, the pass the note and the takeover (what you see in movies).

So our branch had had a big takeover robbery as well as a note one. We also had a teller that had transferred to our branch after having been through a robbery. She was sweet as apple pie, hair up to the ceiling, southern lady who had just been through multiple robberies.

A guy comes in and hands her a folded note. Her immediate thought was “this guy needs to learn you don’t hand bank tellers notes. I am just not going to read that.” So how the conversation goes:

Her: how can I help you today?

Him: I’m here to get money

Her: great *hands him a withdrawal slip*

Him: all the information is on the paper

Her: to process the transaction I need you to put it on my piece of paper

SO HE FILLS OUT A WITHDRAWAL SLIP. Meanwhile another coworker is looking at her latest robbery notification email thinking the guy at the window looks a lot like him but the teller is calm and seems to be following standard transaction.

Back at the window the teller notices his name on the withdrawal slip doesn’t match the name on the account so she asks for his ID. He once again tells her all the relevant info is on the folded note but also gives her his ID and says it is his dad’s account. She tells him he will need a check from his dad to get cash. He grabs the note and leaves.

ONE HOUR LATER

Two new robbery notifications hit our emails, both branches within a mile. It is our guy. Teller goes over to the manager and sheepishly informs them he was here and the time. Security department is notified as are local police and the FBI. The FBI comes over believing that these poor tellers had been robbed for the 3rd time in a month and take her statement. She is completely embarrassed telling them how everything went down and he kept signaling to the note and telling her to read it but she was just done.

To which this FBI agent of 40 years who has been to the scene of many bank robberies (several at this branch in recent weeks) says: Ok. Let me see if I got this right, he came in fully intending to rob you. He gave you the note and you just…refused to read it? So he left and went to the bank literally across the street, handed them the exact same note, and they just handed him five grand? Do I have that correct?”

Her: I am so embarrassed

FBI: this is best thing I have ever heard. He even handed you his ID! Holy-

Her: I feel so dumb!

FBI: don’t! This is the best thing I have ever heard. This is going to be in training courses. (He sat there giddy for at least 5 more minutes)

I have a similar story from my friend Fred, who is a great human and I like him lots.

He was working at a 7-11 that got robbed a lot, working nights. And he was bored and read though his entire contract and learned if you're shot at work you get $200,000. Also, he hated his boss and the job.

So when a guy came in to rob him at gunpoint he got excited and was able to hatch the plan he had been pondering while dealing with a Shitty Boring Job.

"Dude. Shoot me in the leg. Right here- it'll go through and not hit anything vital and I'll be able to quit this fucking job. I'll give you fifty fucking grand to shoot me in the leg then you can take everything in the register."

This ended with him chasing the weeping attempted burglar out of his store screaming "SHOOT ME YOU FUCKING COWARD I WANT THE MONEY".

@rmilkies

One of my uncles was a branch manager at a local bank when I was a kid. His branch had the dubious honor of being one of- if not the- most robbed bank in the area. There was a bullet hole in the wall behind his desk where he'd been shot at once.

One day, this guy came in and announced he was there to rob the place. This man was smoking a cigar with one hand and had a gun in the other.

My uncle pointed at the "No Smoking" sign and told him in no uncertain terms, "Put that cigar out, or finish it outside first."

This guy, bless his heart, went back outside to finish his cigar.

My uncle locked the door behind him and waited for the cops to show up.

everyone look at my seal rolls

there is no ice floe big enough to save these seals from my orca maw

there is no ice floe

big enough to save these seals

from my orca maw

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I spent a good chunk of my weekend scrambling to finish this comic. I hope you like it. I was really trying to push myself with the colours.

You know what’s wild? This comic still gets reblogged every single day. I made it so long ago it doesn’t even feel like my own work haha. Anyways, I guess I’m glad people still like it but it’s very weird to have One Piece of Art that Doesn’t Fade.

That human (…presumably) was NOT lying about being strong!

This was really sweet to read and I’m glad OP is still getting people reblogging this :)

Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!

It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.

Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this

ten years of fighting and when shit hits the fan tumblr instantly has reddit’s back. the greatest enemies to lovers story ever told.

you understand

Oops, my hand slipped–

humanizations of websites have returned. nature is healing, capitalism is the virus

THE FANART

FAMOUS AUTHORS

TEXTBOOKS

MATH AND SCIENCE

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

PLAYS

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

HISTORY AND CULTURE

RARE BOOKS

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

MYSTERY

POETRY

MISC

… and here is a gift for all of us.

So I can find this again! Great list!

reddit

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how. did you do that

[tumblr] [ tumblr ] fish, you put it in brackets!

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the world. it is full of wonder, and majesty. I really like being alive. thanks

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oooooooh

cool :)

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Ooooooh it works on mobile!!!

Thanks, goose!

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