#concatenate with formatting

[windsweptskies]

oh shit I'm onto something

Inspired by this post by @starlightwayfinder and @thetwilightroadtonightfall, I present the Brain Twitter Takeover!!!!

Each picture has a hidden secret- can you find them all?

[o-craven-canto]

From Cameron D. E. et al. (2014), A brief history of synthetic biology: a selection of simple machines that can be built inside living organisms by using gene expression and regulation as parts.

For the sake of illustration, the purpose of all these machines is to start the expression of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), which does exactly what the name suggests.

(Note: italics are used for the name of genes, and not for the proteins they encode. The gene GFP encodes the protein GFP.)

Toggle switch. Two genes, lacI and cI, repress each other's transcription (repression is represented by the T-shaped end of a line, an transcription by the bent arrow), so that exactly one of each can be expressed at any given time. This occurs because the expression of each gene is a repressor protein that binds to the control region of the other, making transcription impossible. Since GFP is consecutive to cI, the former is only expressed together with the latter. The enzyme called IPTG deactivates the repressor lacI, starting the transcription of cI and therefore GFP: the fluorescence switches on, and lacI remains inactive because cI is repressing it. If heat is applied, then cI is deactivated: lacI is expressed, lacI deactivates cI, and the fluorescence switches off.

Purpose: gene expression that can be cleanly switched on and off by simple inputs.

Repressilator. A circuit in which lacI represses cI, cI represses tetR, and tetR represses both lacI and GFP. In each cell, a signal of repression travels through the whole circuit: the repression of tetR allows the expression of lacI, which represses cI, which reactivates tetR, and vice versa. The expression of GFP, and therefore the cell fluorescence, fluctuates over time in a regular cycle.

Purpose: gene expression that cycles over time.

Autoregulatory circuit. The gene tetR, concatenated to GFP, represses its own expression. Whenever too much tetR and GFP are produced, the expression regulates itself down, so that in a large population there is much less variation in fluorescence: all cells converge to a moderate value. (remember?)

Purpose: gene expression that is kept moderated in a population of cells.

Modular riboregulator. Control acting later in gene expression: not on DNA -> RNA transcription, but on RNA -> protein translation. Transcribed GFP is connected to a sequence that inhibits translation by folding over and preventing the ribosome from attaching to the RNA. A separated activator RNA binds to this sequence and prevents it from preventing translation.

Purpose: a second tier of control over gene expression.

Two-input AND gate. Logic gates with genes! Expression of GFP requires a promoter encoded in T7, which in turn is only expressed in the presence of arabinose. However, the promoter only works if it's modified by by RNA produced by supO, which is only expressed in the presence of salicylate. Therefore, GFP is only produced if both arabinose and salicylate are present at the same time.

Purpose: protein synthesis that only occurs if multiple conditions are verified.

Multicellular pattern formation. This one is meant to be used in large cell populations. The gene luxI in the "sender cell" encodes an enzyme that produces AHL, a signal molecule. This molecule may bind to LuxR receptors in the "receiver cells". LuxR binding AHL activates the expression of cI, which stops the expression of lacI, which stops the expression of GFP. However, lacI can also be directly activated by binding AHL, so that only an intermediate concentration of AHL results in producing the fluorescent protein. By adjusting the sensitivity of LuxR, GFP and RFP can be produced selectively at different concentrations of AHL, and therefore at different distances from the sender cell.

Purpose: spatial control of gene expression.

Relaxation oscillator. Similar in concept and purpose to the repressilator, but the cycle it creates is more stable and regular. araC activates GFP, lacI, and itself; lacI represses GFP, araC, and itself.

Recombinase-based logic. GFP is flanked by sequences that can be inverted by the recombinase enzymes Rec1 and Rec2 (Rec1 inverts whatever is between the blue boxes, and Rec2 what's between the orange boxes, respectively). Arranging the markers around GFP in different ways allows the construction of different logic gates. In the case of the AND gate, the transcription in the blue region is going in the wrong direction, and GFP is also backward; both recombinases must be active for GFP to be expressed. In the case of the OR gate, transcription begins in both the blue and the orange region, but goes in the wrong direction in both; it's sufficient for either to be inverted by one recombinase to express GFP. In the case of the NOR gate, transcription already proceeds well, as long as both recombinases are absent.

Purpose: construction of arbitrarly logical circuits; very precise conditional control of gene expression.

Edge-detection circuit. A modification of the quorum-sensing system used for the multicellular pattern. The cell colony is exposed to light, half-covered by an opaque mask. Cells in the dark express the luxI gene, producing the AHL signal, as well as cI; the sensor that activates the expression of these two genes turns off in the light. The gene lacZ leads to the production of a black pigment; it is activated by LuxR (the receptor of AHL), and repressed by cI. Therefore, the black pigment is only produced in cells exposed to light (no expression of cI) which are adjacent cells in the dark (low-sensitivity LuxR receiving AHL from neighbors).

Purpose: mark edges between areas with different conditions.

[eiraeths]

list of assorted verbs to use in writings

they’re sorted a-z at least

Abjure - to renounce, repudiate under oath; to avoid, shun

Abnegate - to deny oneself things; to reject; to renounce

Abrogate - cancel; deny; repeal

Accrue - to accumulate; gradually increase over time

Acost - to approach and speak to first; to confront in a challenging or aggressive way

Adulterate - render something poorer in quality by adding another substance

Adumbrate - to sketch out in a vague way

Aggrandize - increase power, status, or wealth of

Allotted - give or apportion (something) to someone as a share or task

Alludes - hint or refer to

Amalgamate - combine or unite

Amble - walk at a slow, relaxed pace

Anneal - allow metal or glass to cool before working with so it won’t be brittle

Assailed - make a concerted or violent attack on

Attenuate - reduce the force, effect, or value of; reduce in thickness; make thin

Augment - increase

Augur - (of an event or circumstance) portend a good or bad outcome

Badger - pester

Balk - hesitate or refuse to accept an idea or undertaking

Bedizen - to ornament or dress in a showy or gaudy manner

Begets - to give rise to; bring about

Belabor - argue or elaborate a subject in extensive detail; attack or assault someone physically or verbally

Beleaguer - to cause constant or repeated trouble

Belie - fail to justify; contradict; conceal

Besmirch - damage of the reputation of someone or something in the opinion of others; to make dirty

Blather - talk long-windedly without making much sense

Bloviate - talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way

Bode - be an omen of a particular outcome

Burgeon - to grow or develop quickly; flourish

Cajole - persuade someone to do something by persistent coaxing or flattery

Careen - to lurch or swerve while in motion, especially with minimal control

Carouse - engage in boisterous, drunken merrymaking; to party

Chasten - to correct by punishment or reproof; to restrain or subdue

Chivvying - tell someone repeatedly to do someone, nag

Cicatrize - (with reference to a wound) heal by scar formation

Coarsen - to become rough or less polite

Codify - arrange into a systematic code; classify

Concatenate - link together

Connive - secretly allow something immoral to occur; conspire

Construe - interpret a word or action in a particular way

Coruscate - to give off bright flashes of light

Curtail - reduce in extent or quantity; restrict on

Defalcate - embezzle (funds with which one has been entrusted)

Dehisce - gape or burst open; in relation to fruit, seed, or open wound

Delve - reach inside a receptacle and search for something

Demarcate - set, mark, or draw the boundaries of something

Deride - to ridicule, laugh at with contempt

Descry - to catch sight of something distant

Desecrate - ruin something holy

Dissent - to disagree

Dither - to be indecisive; hesitant

Divine - discover something by guesswork or intuition

Dredges - clean out dirt from edges of a body of water

Drub - to defeat decisively

Educe – bring out or develop (something latent or potential).

Efface - erase from a surface, make oneself appear insignificant or inconspicuous

Emaciate - to make thin or feeble

Embroil - involve deeply in argument, conflict, or different situation

Emulate - match or surpass a person, typically by imitation

Ensconce - establish or settle someone or something in a safe comfortable place

Entreat - ask someone earnestly or anxiously to do something

Err - to be mistaken or incorrect; make a mistake; misbehave

Espoused - to take up and support as a cause; become attached to

Espy - to catch sight of

Estivate - spend a hot or dry period in a stage of prolonged torpor or dormancy

Etherize - anesthetize a person or animal with ether

Evince - to show or demonstrate clearly; manifest; reveal the presence of (a quality or feeling)

Expiate - to make amends; make up for; to avert

Exude - give off/ooze; of a person display an emotion or quality openly and strongly

Feint - to make deceptive movement; to make a pretense of

Foment - instigate or stir up an undesirable or violent sentiment or course of action or rebellion; to apply warm liquids to, to warm

Forfend - relating to some kind of real or pretended danger or other unpleasantness; ward off; (heaven forbid/forfend)

Galvanize - to startle into sudden activity

Garnered - gather or collect, especially information or approval

Glean - to collect bit by bit; to gather with patient labor

Hegemonize - subject a population, region, process, etc, to a dominant political or social power

Imbibe - to drink; to take in, absorb

Impel - drive, urge, or force someone to do something

Impinge - having effect or impact, typically negative

Impugn - dispute to truth, validity, or honesty of a statement

Inculcate - instill an idea or habit by persistent instruction

Indemnify - compensate for damage or loss

Indite - to write; to compose

Ingratiate - to make oneself agreeable and thus gain favor or acceptance by others (can be critical or derogatory)

Inundate - overwhelm (someone) with things or people to deal with; flood

Inveigh - to make a violent attack in words, express strong disapproval

Jettison - to cast overboard, to get rid of as unnecessary or burdensome

Jip - cheat or swindle someone

Kowtow - act in an excessively subservient manner

Lambaste - criticize harshly; to assault

Languish - lose or lack vitality; grow weak

Lionize - give public attention and praise to; celebrate someone as if they’re a celebrity

Mar - impair the appearance of; disfigure; spoil

Masquerade - pretend to be someone one is not

Mollify - appease the anger or anxiety of someone

Muddle - bring into a disordered or confusing state

Natter - talk casually, especially about unimportant matters

Occlude - to close, shut, or block

Opine - hold and state one’s opinion

Oust - drive out or expel someone or something from a position of power

Palpate - to examine through touch

Patter - make a repeated light tapping sound

Percolate - filter gradually

Perforate - pierce and make a hole or holes in

Pernoctate - stay up or out all night; pass the night somewhere

Peruse - to read thoroughly and carefully

Plod - walk doggedly and slowly with heavy steps

Prattle - talk at length in a foolish or inconsequential way

Prevaricate - to lie or deviate from the truth

Proffer - hold out something to someone for acceptance; offer

Prognosticate - to predict or foretell a future event

Promulgate - to make an idea, belief, etc, known to many people by open declaration; proclaim

Purloin - to steal (typically used in a humorous way to show the theft was not serious)

Purport - appear or claim to be something, especially falsely

Rankle - get under someone’s skin

Reck - heed to something

Recogitate - to think over again

Reify - make something abstract more tangible and real

Rend - tear (something) into two or more pieces

Renege - to fail to carry out a promise or commitment; to renounce, disown

Repress - subdue someone or something by force

Revile - to attack with abusive language; to call insulting names

Roister - to enjoy oneself or celebrate in a noisy way

Romp - to move in a lively manner

Roust - to get up and start moving; treat roughly

Rue - to regret, be sorry for

Satiate - to satisfy completely; to fill to excess

Satisfice - to pursue the minimum satisfactory condition or outcome

Skirl - (of bagpipes) to make a shrill, wailing sound

Spurn - reject with contempt

Stipulate - to arrange specifically; to require as a condition of agreement

Supersede - take the place of a person previously in authority

Supplant - replace

Surmise - to think or believe without certain supporting evidence

Tantalize - torment or tease, usually with something unobtainable

Tessellate - decorate or cover a surface with a pattern of repeated shapes, especially polygons, that fit together without gaps or overlapping

Traipse - walk or move warily or reluctantly

Trounce - defeat heavily in a contest

Uluate - howl or wail with emotion, typically grief

Usurp - to seize and hold a position by force or without right

Vacillate - to swing indecisively from one course of action to another; to waver weakly in mind or will

Vegetate - live or spend a period in a dull, inactive, unchallenging way

Venerate - to regard with reverence, look up to with great respect

Vie - compete for

Winnow - removing what is not wanted

Wreak - cause a large amount of damage or harm, inflict (vengeance)

Wrest - obtain by seizing forcibly or violently, also metaphorically

[hezacodes]

Concatenation vs. Interpolation

I have always used the string concatenation format with '+' :

console.log('My name is ' + myName + ', and I am ' + myAge + ' years old.');

but now while going through my JS review, I've been wondering why I wasn't using string interpolation:

console.log(`My name is ${myName}, and I am ${myAge} years old.`);

because it is so much easier to read. Major sigh. . .

[katzenklavierr]

x64 English UTAU Chorus - Bad Apple!!

I've had this idea for literally years. I love how many English UTAU banks exist these days and I wanted to show off as many as possible from different creators! Thanks to everybody who suggested voicebanks or submitted their own for me to use!

Every synth used here is a concatenative UTAU voicebank made with English as its primary language. All are some variant of CVVC, and specific formats are in the credits pastebin in you're curious.

I have other, smaller UTAU choruses I want to make generally, but it would be cool to find another English song that would work well for showcasing a lot of voicebanks like this.

Original Song by ZUN Original Vocals by nomico Translyrics from the Christina Vee English cover Arrangement, UST, & Mix by Salem Wasteland Full credits: https://pastebin.com/JTnqMDNs

[thosearentcrimes]

Read Bring No Clothes by Charlie Porter. If I followed the rule "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything", that would have been the only sentence in the review. Well, really, it wouldn't have existed, implicature is still a form of speech. For a while it didn't exist, since I read this book some time back now, but not out of moral concern, but rather simply because I'm not allowed to use the computers at work for personal shit anymore, and that's where I wrote these. So I finally got around to buying a new e-book reader instead, expect more reviews shortly, written from home this time. But I digress.

Bring No Clothes is a truly awful book about the fashion of the Bloomsbury group. I struggle to think of any redeeming features. It is shorter than the hardback makes it seem, but this is simply false advertising, and not a virtue. It chooses to give each chapter heading its very own entire page to sit on, to blow the letters up to an absurd size with liberal line spacing in the style of a panicking high school student, to pepper the book with black and white photos of dresses remarkable for their color. The hardcover copy I read pretends to have 340 A5 pages, and I would be surprised if it got to 100 with reasonable formatting. In truth it is a nothing but a handful of hastily concatenated half-written filler articles and a couple of unpublishable magazine features stuck between two hard covers for no apparent reason, an unfilmed script for a "video essay" (read: summary) that would be too long to watch and too short to say anything.

It is really quite literally a series of magazine articles. Charlie Porter is a fashion journalist, and his work on the book speaks to his total inability to adjust his writing style to the medium, the astonishingly poor standards in fashion journalism, and the seeming absence of any editing whatsoever on the part of the publisher. Though possibly it was edited, and earlier drafts were even worse. Somehow. There is no coherent theme to the book, no throughline connecting the individual chapters. There are entire chapters that are obviously unnecessary and poorly conceived, which would presumably have been removed if not for the desperate need to pretend the book is so much longer than it really is. Lastly, for some reason image descriptions are done in-line rather than through captions. Is this common in fashion journalism? It sucks to read, in any case.

The writing is shit. It's so unbelievably bad. Borderline unreadable, the structural issues with the book as a whole are reproduced even at the level of individual sentences. Porter's chief flaw is that he is preposterously self-absorbed. He is either unable or unwilling to separate his own impressions and delusions from reality. He spends substantial sections of most chapters writing about the personal experience of researching and writing the book, and plenty of other insufferable personal trivia besides. To pull that trick off without boring the reader takes extraordinary talent, personal charisma, and varied and interesting life experiences, none of which Porter seems to have. Not an amazing range of vocabulary on display either, and somehow I doubt this was a deliberate effort to keep the reading difficulty down. The miserable structure, constant pointless personal asides, and general inability to express what few ideas Porter may or may not have render the book a truly tedious slog.

When reading a non-fiction book, I would like to be able to pick out something I learned about the topic, some basic point of interest. It is impossible in this book, which contains nothing but boring accounts of relationships between seemingly insufferable people. Porter's narration does bring his protagonists to life in places, with some help from direct quotes. Unfortunately, they are brought to life as some of the most annoying egotists you've ever met in your life, which admittedly seems quite plausible for British upper class twits (well, mostly twits). Still, I don't put too much stock in that characterization, as it could very easily be projection by the blatantly self-absorbed author.

I generally try to recommend books to sorts of people who I think would like them, whether or not I was a fan myself. I suspect I am a poor judge of appeal, ultimately, but I try nonetheless. I think nobody should read this book, ever, for any reason. It is not that the book is evil. Reading evil has merit. The book is just bad. There are people who would like it, probably. Those people, in particular, should not read the book, as I suspect it would inhibit their development. Everyone involved in the production and distribution of the book should feel shame proportional to their degree of responsibility for what they have inflicted on the world in general, and on me in particular.

[mr-abhishek-kumar]

Python Operator Basics

x or y - Logical or (y is evaluated only if x is false)

lambda args: expression - Anonymous functions (I don't know what the fuck is this, I have to look into it)

x and y - Logical and (Y is evaluated only if x is true)

<, <=, >, >=, ==, <>, != - comparison tests

is, is not - identity tests

in, in not - membership tests

x | y - bitwise or (I still have to learn bitwise operation)

x^y - bitwise exclusive or (I read this somewhere now I don't remember it)

x&y - bitwise and (again I have to read bitwise operations)

x<;<y, x>>y - shift x left or right by y bits

x+y, x-y - addition/concatenation , subtraction

x*y, x/y, x%y - multiplication/repetition, division, remainder/format (i don't know what format is this? should ask bard)

-x, +x, ~x - unary negation, identity(what identity?), bitwise complement (complement?)

x[i], x[i:j], x.y, x(...) - indexing, slicing, qualification (i think its member access), function call

(...), [...], {...} `...` - Tuple , list dictionary , conversion to string

[pancakeke]

I genuinely could not figure out a normal way to make gsheets let me conditional format bingo card tiles that needed to be marked off so those sheets have a hidden tab that grabs all the tile options and uses TRIM to remove any potential trailing spaces from them. the tile options marked as hit have a single space added to the end via CONCATENATE. those modified tile options are then added to the card tab using WRAPCOLS, and finally conditional formatting highlights cells that end with spaces using =IF(RIGHT(A1,1)=" ",TRUE,FALSE)

[easylaunchpad]

Build a Full Email System in .NET with DotLiquid Templates (Already Done in EasyLaunchpad)

When you’re building a SaaS or admin-based web application, email isn’t optional — it’s essential. Whether you’re sending account verifications, password resets, notifications, or subscription updates, a robust email system is key to a complete product experience.

But let’s be honest: setting up a professional email system in .NET can be painful and time-consuming.

That’s why EasyLaunchpad includes a pre-integrated, customizable email engine powered by DotLiquid templates, ready for both transactional and system-generated emails. No extra configuration, no third-party code bloat — just plug it in and go.

In this post, we’ll show you what makes the EasyLaunchpad email system unique, how DotLiquid enables flexibility, and how you can customize or scale it to match your growing app.

💡 Why Email Still Matters

Email remains one of the most direct and effective ways to communicate with users. It plays a vital role in:

User authentication (activation, password reset)

Transactional updates (payment confirmations, receipts)

System notifications (errors, alerts, job status)

Marketing communications (newsletters, upsells)

Yet, building this from scratch in .NET involves SMTP setup, formatting logic, HTML templating, queuing, retries, and admin tools. That’s at least 1–2 weeks of development time — before you even get to the fun part.

EasyLaunchpad solves all of this upfront.

⚙️ What’s Prebuilt in EasyLaunchpad’s Email Engine?

Here’s what you get out of the box:

Feature and Description

✅ SMTP Integration- Preconfigured SMTP setup with credentials stored securely via appsettings.json

✅ DotLiquid Templating- Use tokenized, editable HTML templates to personalize messages

✅ Queued Email Dispatch- Background jobs via Hangfire ensure reliability and retry logic

✅ Admin Panel for Email Settings- Change SMTP settings and test emails without touching code

✅ Modular Email Service- Plug-and-play email logic for any future email types

✨ What Is DotLiquid?

DotLiquid is a secure, open-source .NET templating system inspired by Shopify’s Liquid engine.

It allows you to use placeholders inside your HTML emails such as:

<p>Hello {{ user.Name }},</p>

<p>Your payment of {{ amount }} was received.</p>

This means you don’t have to concatenate strings or hardcode variables into messy inline HTML.

It’s:

Clean and safe (prevents code injection)

Readable for marketers and non-devs

Flexible for developers who want power without complexity

📁 Where Email Templates Live

EasyLaunchpad keeps templates organized in a Templates/Emails/ folder.

Each email type is represented as a .liquid file:

- RegistrationConfirmation.liquid

- PasswordReset.liquid

- PaymentSuccess.liquid

- CustomAlert.liquid

These are loaded dynamically, so you can update content or design without redeploying your app.

🛠 How Emails Are Sent

The process is seamless:

You call the EmailService from anywhere in your codebase:

await _emailService.SendAsync(“PasswordReset”, user.Email, dataModel);

2. EasyLaunchpad loads the corresponding template from the folder.

3. DotLiquid parses and injects dynamic variables from your model.

4. Serilog logs the transaction, and the message is queued via Hangfire.

5. SMTP sends the message, with retry logic if delivery fails.

Background Jobs with Hangfire

Rather than sending emails in real-time (which can slow requests), EasyLaunchpad uses Hangfire to queue and retry delivery in the background.

This provides:

✅ Better UX (non-blocking response time)

✅ Resilience (automatic retries)

✅ Logs (you can track when and why emails fail)

🧪 Admin Control for Testing & Updates

Inside the admin panel, you get:

An editable SMTP section

Fields for server, port, SSL, credentials

A test-email button for real-time delivery validation

This means your support or ops team can change mail servers or fix credentials without needing developer intervention.

🧩 Use Cases Covered Out of the Box

Email Type and the Purpose

Account Confirmation- New user activation

Password Reset- Secure link to reset passwords

Subscription Receipt- Payment confirmation with plan details

Alert Notifications- Admin alerts for system jobs or errors

Custom Templates:

✍️ How to Add Your Own Email Template

Let’s say you want to add a welcome email after signup.

Step 1: Create Template

Add a file: Templates/Emails/WelcomeNewUser.liquid

<h1>Welcome, {{ user.Name }}!</h1>

<p>Thanks for joining our platform.</p>

Step 2: Call the EmailService

csharp

CopyEdit

await _emailService.SendAsync(“WelcomeNewUser”, user.Email, new { user });

Done. No controller bloat. No HTML tangled in your C# code.

📊 Logging Email Activity

Every email is tracked via Serilog:

{

“Timestamp”: “2024–07–12T14:15:02Z”,

“Level”: “Information”,

“Message”: “Password reset email sent to user@example.com”,

“Template”: “PasswordReset”

}

You can:

Review logs via file or dashboard

Filter by template name, user, or result

Extend logs to include custom metadata (like IP or request ID)

🔌 SMTP Setup Made Simple

In appsettings.json, configure:

“EmailSettings”: {

“Host”: “smtp.yourdomain.com”,

“Port”: 587,

“Username”: “noreply@yourdomain.com”,

“Password”: “your-secure-password”,

“EnableSsl”: true,

“FromName”: “Your App”,

“FromEmail”: “noreply@yourdomain.com”

}

And you’re good to go.

🔐 Is It Secure?

Yes. Credentials are stored securely in environment config files, never hardcoded in source. The system:

Sanitizes user input

Escapes template values

Avoids direct HTML injection

Plus, DotLiquid prevents logic execution (no dangerous eval() or inline C#).

🚀 Why It Matters for SaaS Builders

Here’s why the prebuilt email engine in EasyLaunchpad gives you a head start:

Benefit:

What You Save

✅ Time

1–2 weeks of setup and testing

✅ Complexity

No manual SMTP config, retry logic, or template rendering

✅ User Experience

Reliable, branded communication that builds trust

✅ Scalability

Queue emails and add templates as your app grows

✅ Control

Update templates and SMTP settings from the admin panel

🧠 Final Thoughts

Email may not be glamorous, but it’s one of the most critical parts of your SaaS app — and EasyLaunchpad treats it as a first-class citizen.

With DotLiquid templating, SMTP integration, background processing, and logging baked in, you’re ready to handle everything from user onboarding to transactional alerts from day one.

So, why should you waste time building an email system when you can use EasyLaunchpad and start shipping your actual product?

👉 Try the prebuilt email engine inside EasyLaunchpad today at 🔗 https://easylaunchpad.com

[essickmango]

Answer from the moon, eighteenth of june

cat [FILENAMES] is a very helpful program. It Concatenates All Text, allowing you to easily merge files together with cat file_a file_b > output_file. However, this works best with file formats that can be concatenated without syntax errors, like markdown and text documents and sometimes yaml configurations.

[pettirosso1959]

I never cease to be amazed at the deniers who claim that the entire space program was and is a gigantic hoax. I hereby challenge ANY of them to prove their absurd claims. I don't mean by pointing to a photograph and simply saying "that's fake", or by using some ridiculous concatenation of imagined "facts". I mean empirical evidence that we can put our hands on.

And I find it interesting that the deniers for the most part weren't even born during the time of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. I was - I saw it firsthand, I followed it religiously, I know people who worked in the space program. I have touched and handled hardware, including the Apollo 8 Command Module.

To all of the moon landings deniers, here are the answers to 10 of the most common moon-landing-denial stories, plus two bonus answers.

1. The flag is not blowing in the wind. Its top seam is held up by a spring-loaded rod, and the wrinkles are due to it being furled in a tight tube for transport and then shaken as the astronauts hammered it into the lunar surface. There was no wind because there is no air. This is on the moon.

2. There was no cameraman. Neil Armstrong's first steps were captured by a TV camera mounted on the equipment bay door of the Lunar Module. Later on, one of the astronauts moved the camera to a stand—you know, like a tripod?—to cover the whole landing site. Still photos were taken by Neil Armstrong using a Hasselblad medium-format camera loaded with 70mm Ektachrome film. The camera was attached to a bracket on Armstrong's chest pack. An additional time-lapse film was automatically shot using a 16mm data camera mounted in the LM window.

3. The footprints hold their shape because there is no air on the moon, not because the dirt ("regolith") is wet. The phenomenon is called "vacuum cementing," and it works especially well on the jagged edges of lunar dust particles.

4. There are no stars in the picture because the camera exposure was set for the lunar surface, the astronauts' suits, and the equipment, all of which were in bright sunlight. The stars are very, very dim. They would not show up without much longer exposures that would have left everything else completely washed out. I'm attaching a very good video clip from the Planetary Society which explains the phenomenon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxwWfJQjyx0

5. There's no crater underneath the LM descent engine for several reasons. First, at touchdown the engine was throttled down to about 10 percent of its full thrust, and in the lunar gravity the LM weighed only ⅙ of its earth weight. (This is also one reason why the footpads didn't sink into the regolith; see #6.) Second, there's no air on the moon to hold the engine exhaust into a tight jet. The exhaust gasses expand as soon as they clear the engine bell and spread out very quickly. Third, the regolith below the engine blew away in straight lines due to the lack of air. The low lunar gravity meant the regolith travelled a long distance before falling back to the surface. There is a crater, but it's very shallow and difficult to see in the photos.

6. The footpads didn't sink into the regolith because they're 3 feet in diameter and the lunar module touched down very gently. This spread the weight over a broad area. On the other hand, the astronauts' boots (see #7) concentrated the astronaut's weight on a small area, so they left deeper, well-defined boot prints. The lunar surface at the Apollo 11 landing site had a thin layer of loose material with a hardened layer just beneath it. Other landing sites had more or less loose material.

7. The boot prints on the lunar surface don't match the boots in photos of the astronauts on earth because they're not the same boots. All three crew members on Apollo flights wore full pressure suits with boots. The two men who landed and walked on the moon wore an additional garment over their suits to protect against punctures and wear and tear. This over-garment had additional visors for their helmet and overshoes for walking on the moon. The overshoes had the tread pattern seen in lunar photos.

8. The astronauts' backpacks (Portable Life Support System or "PLSS,") did not need to carry enough oxygen for an 8-hour moonwalk because the PLSS was a closed system. Carbon dioxide breathed out by the astronauts went through a chemical filter that removed the carbon and recirculated the oxygen. Only a small amount of oxygen had to be added to make up for what the astronauts had burned in their bodies. There was also a smaller, emergency oxygen tank just in case.

9. The Van Allen radiation belts do not extend to the moon so they were not a problem while the astronauts were in lunar orbit or on the surface. They did pass through the Van Allen belts on the way to and from the moon, but the transits were just over an hour each way. The short time, plus the protection built into their spacecraft, meant the Apollo astronauts received no more radiation exposure than Space Shuttle or Space Station astronauts who never got near the Van Allen belts.

10. President Nixon did not simply pick up the phone, dial Mission Control, and then ask the receptionist to put him through to the Sea of Tranquility. The call went from the White House telephone exchange via the AT&T network to the Goddard Spaceflight Center near Washington, DC. Goddard routed the signal to the Manned Spaceflight Center (now the Johnson Space Center) in Houston. From there, it went via communications satellite to NASA’s installation at Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, which was the primary link between earth and the moon during the moon walk. It wasn’t routine, but the technology of patching telephone calls into radio networks was common in 1969.

And here’s a bonus of two more…

11. By the time the cameras on Apollo 11 got to the moon they weren’t “normal film cameras.” The live video used a custom-made Westinghouse television camera designed for minimum size, weight and power drain. Its frame rate was only 10 frames per second to squeeze the video signal into the available radio bandwidth. (Broadcast TV at the time was 29.97 frames per second.) Still photos were shot with a Hasselblad medium-format camera that was stripped down to save weight, and rebuilt with lubricants that could work in extreme temperatures and vacuum. The film was 70mm Ektachrome that used a special base developed by Kodak. It was lighter, thinner and stronger than regular films of the time. There was also a 16mm film camera mounted inside the lunar module taking time-lapse footage of the astronauts on the surface. It was meant to collect data, not take pretty pictures, and it could be set to shoot at different frame rates.

12. Finally, there were something like 400,000 people around the world involved with Project Apollo. In addition, the Apollo missions were tracked by the Soviet Union, Great Britain and probably several other nations. The idea that all of these people could be involved in a conspiracy to fake the missions, a conspiracy that has been maintained for more than 50 years, is improbable to say the least.

Thus endeth the lesson.

[forevergulag]

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.

But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

-Lenin, "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism"

[kelemengabi]

The Universal Hermetic Harmony Principle

Gabriel Kelemen is a representative of Goetheanism, the simultaneous perception of the aesthetic and the structural in nature. Another descendant of Goethe is Rudolf Steiner himself, the founder of anthroposophy. And he illustrated his ideas with pictures - of which we have over a thousand left. And his images have the same status, as a component of a more complex message, both visually and verbally. This is also how the images in The Universal Hermetic Harmony Principle volume should be understood - or interpreted.

It's not just studies of geometry, fluid physics, atomic physics, astronomy, botany and human anatomy brought together by concatenating sphere/flow/vortex/torus, not just common graphic motifs, but common organizing principles.

Gabriel Kelemen, in fact, makes a recapitulation of the Creation, rather of the Formation of the world, Yetzirah. The volume therefore has a Gnostic charge. The author of these lines leaves to the Gnostics and Anthroposophists the more difficult task of commenting on the album - which holds of a visual gnosis.

[wordsandrobots]

*staggers in, looking like I went three rounds with a HTML validator [pretty-printed, technically valid, slightly concatenated in places]*

So, funny story. Wishing on Space Hardware (all 19 fics and counting) should now be considerably more screen-reader friendly. I have neatened-up the tagging, added in proper ellipses, made my flashback format slightly more consistent, and most importantly, replaced the text-based character section breaks with image equivalents.

500,000 words. Of HTML. That I have gone through. To fix. As many of these issues as I could.

*collapses in a heap*

Anyway, I think the only caveat on this is that I don't think the section break images will work on a dark-mode, because they are black on transparent, and I'm not sure how to fix that without redoing them with a background, which I would rather not do for neatness reasons. If something occurs to me, I'll implement it, but otherwise, it'll hopefully not be too huge of problem.

If anyone spots any issues with words cludged together, please let me know!

[janherdlicka]

Die Botschaft II

Site-specific mixed media Installation

250x250x80cm

2023

at

DRAGONER.01

"Super Contemporary Arts Fest"

Dragonerareal, Berlin-Kreuzberg

While "Die Botschaft I" was shown as an open-air installation as part of the "Labirynt - Festival of New Art" 2022 in the Polish forest in Urad, "Die Botschaft II" is shown in its subsequent state of development under the roof of Dragonerareals Adlerhalle.

While the multi-part installation began with a landing in a large-scale (spider?) web made of metal chains, the three figures are now shown hanging upside down, individually partitioned in a fabric structure of artificial spider silk framed by the same chains.

While "Die Botschaft I" reflected an initial collective entanglement taking place at the back of the human gaze to the heavens and human striving turned away from the earth - a self-induced, introductory concatenation with human and non-human structures - the position of the messengers, as representatives of the collectively human, already appears much more acute in the second part of the work cycle.

Enclosed tighter and tighter by the man-made structures of the metal chains, the messengers seem to have lost all freedom of movement and/or action. But are the fabric structures created underneath really spherical nets as markers of the imminent dissolution of the messengers in the planetary corpus? Or could they also be cocoons that herald the possibility of a transformation and new formation of the human in relation to the non-human?

[maedosono]

and it is not random. the ability to write involves much more control and politeness than speaking. as do all mental procedures about communicating, concatenating thoughts. our ability to speak does not involve an eraser, once said it is forever; unlike writing, which we can format, edit and embellish. speaking involves humor, social dynamics and mastery of the subject. in other words, the demands should be much lower on people's oral abilities