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im growing! im changing!

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Photo finalist: Natural World competition, Animal Antics

taylor.nature.photography

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True Neutral: Three points define the plane on which they lie

Chaotic Good: Two points (ordered) define a plane by describing its normal vector

Chaotic evil: One point defines a plane. Pick whichever twisted assignment of planes to points you like (|ℝ|=|ℝ^3|)

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I really enjoyed this video by Angela Collier as someone who is of the "Feynman Bros" generation without being a member of the thing itself. I was of course part of the "XKCD science nerd culture" of the 2000's where he was a valorized figure, but never read any of his books, and generally just wasn't a science person in general so the whole vibe didn't appeal. I certainly noticed the 2010's culture shift where people - rightly so in my opinion - noticed that many of his "anecdotes" were casually misogynistic or harassing. I know both sides of the track here decently well without having any stake in it.

So it was quite shocking to me to learn - spoilers - that Feynman never wrote a single book. Every one of those texts with his name splashed on it is by someone else, and sometimes with quite minimal involvement by him! He had this weird coterie of fans who just loved his stuff so much they collected his anecdotes, recorded lectures, and so on, and made books out of them, often well after the fact. And of course at certain point "cashing in" on the brand took over.

Which leads, inexorably, to the fact that it is a little difficult to glimpse the "real" Feynman, because half of the published stuff is just made up. Surely You're Joking is the exaggerated stories of a 50 year old man trying to impress a 20-something dude with how cool he is, telling tales decades after they happened. I had never read the book, so hearing direct quotes from it of Feynman "pretending to speak a language he didn't and being So Clever he tricked his audience" are just...obviously not true? What the fuck are you talking about??? The best part for me is that the book, of stories from the life of a physicist, never involves...other physicists. It is always random people at a bar or hotel. Because, you know, they can't contradict them? The one time he did name someone, Murray Gell-Mann, in a story, Murray objected on the grounds that it was false and they were forced to change it! You had one job and you fucked it up, person-who-isn't -Feynman-pretending-to-be-Feynman-while-writing-the-book.

This is very much a video in my wheelhouse of cultural history - Feynman is just a guy. His brand, like all brands, is manufactured, and so there is a story behind how it was manufactured & why. I think I can see Feynman's rise as part of the general rise of "nerd culture" that accelerated in the 1980's, and the very deep need to both be "pure" nerdy (something finally dropped in the late 2000's) but also cool, to fight back on the rep. A womanizing scientist deeply appealed at that time, one who can Have It All. The idea of being the Smartest Guy In The Room was admirable, not insufferable. Then times changed, and the whole edifice can be a bit cringe. With, of course, a real person behind it all that one has to sift through to see.

Also, you do sometimes look at the past and go "man, people really did act differently back then". And that is true! But part of that story is that people just felt way more comfortable bullshitting you about it. Makes it a bit hard to say how things really were.

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DISHONORED (2012) Boyle Mansion

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I'll never be over how criminally underrated the expanse is, like it should 100% be up there with the best/most viewed series of all time. It's consistently spectacular in its acting, visuals and storytelling and from its first to its last episode across 6 seasons it never drops in quality, like it just baffles me that a show THAT good is barely known/talked about

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i am 6 books and 5 short stories/novellas into The Expanse and im gonna be real w yall i still have no idea what the titles mean. *little mermaid voice* what is a cibola and why does it — what's the word — burn

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That time Shohreh shared a video of her house and she had a giant wall of fanart with a huge painting of her character's lesbian ship 💖💖💖

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I'd like to see the ocean before I leave.

Frankie Adams as Roberta "Bobbie" Draper THE EXPANSE (2015-2022) — Cascade (2.10)

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Expanse Text Posts 1/?

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lying down for 50 minutes to imagine in real time the experience of walking to trader joes and buying a single pea and walking back home and getting out a cutting board and a knife and skinning and chopping one pea and sprinkling it into a tank with one fish in it

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UK doctor's testimony of Assrael war crimes

This post has been compiled in Record of Genocide.

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people on this website say things about me being anti-artist because of my opinions on AI or whatever but like, the truth is that I'm not anti-artist, I'm pro-art, and I think that art is something that is good and should be cultivated and cared for, and that I care about art far more than your average "professional artist" by way of not having to sell it to survive. For Art to be fundamentally liberated from the choking presence of capital, it is necessary to free all from capital.

TL;DR I care about art way more than you do, more than you can imagine.

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Booktok should die and I’m serious

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on a side note I know that "harm reduction" can refer to multiple things but it's been weird to see the term "harm reduction" popularized in a voting context by people who would seethe at the idea of giving clean crack pipes or sterile syringes to addicts

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i dropped by my favourite secondhand bookstore and found what is possibly the most incredible knitting book iver ever seen. that teaches you how to knit little gardens and sew them into a massive quilt 3d. the photos i took are atrocious and do NOT do this book justice

thats a PRIORY GARDEN WITH MONKS

IT EVEN TEACHES YOU HOW TO MAKE ALL THE TOOLS ABD BASKETS AND POTS AND PLANTS

LOOK AT THE SOME OF THE FOLIAGE

i have never been more upset to not have $30 ready to buy this. its incredible. i have to find it online somewhere. i knew the moment i saw this i had to share it with EVERYONE

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There’s this guy in town who owns this little house, and a while back he rescued a street dog that was going to get put down. Turned out she was pregnant.

Problem is, he has mental health & drug issues and couldn’t afford to get them all spayed & neutered, so now there are 6 grown bitches with 15 puppies total, and they’ve dug under his fence in multiple places but he can’t afford to fix it so they go roaming all around town. (When I say can’t afford it, I mean his house is currently running on a generator because he can’t afford his electric bill.) He’s also a day laborer so he cannot take multiple full days off work to take them to the vet an hour away. He’s in a really rough spot.

He’s not a bad person. He’s just overwhelmed.

And this little conservative town with 6 churches for 300 people, have they tried to help their neighbor? Have they adopted the puppies he’s been trying to give away? Have they offered resources?

NOPE! All they wanna do is talk shit about him and complain about the dogs but never lift a finger of their own. And they come to his house to yell at him and cuss him out about the dogs, which does not exactly engender in him a cooperative attitude, as you might imagine.

So after a while of this going on, my mom gets fed up with all the NIMBY bullshit and starts talking to the guy, because she’s done animal rescue for 20-odd years and has Connections. He’s resistant at first, but when he realizes she’s not being an asshole to him on account of his addiction or the dogs, he decides to let her help.

She gets to work organizing and networking. Finds a non-profit that will cover vaccinations, spay/neuter, and flea treatments for all the dogs. Talks the next-door neighbor into paying for materials to fix the fence, since this guy can do the work of it himself. Gets him in touch with another non-profit that will adopt out the adult dogs.

Less than 2 weeks after she decided to do something, all puppies have been to the vet, 10 puppies and 4 adult dogs have been adopted out, and the second non-profit is coming by next week to pick up the remaining 7 dogs to ship them out for adoption.

I’ve learned a lot of things from my mom—some good, some bad—but I think the most important positive message she lives as an example of is this: sometimes, when something needs done and no one else is willing, you gotta stand up and say “I’ll do it.”