#measurement device

[meilleurchoix92]

M Cube Système de mesure intelligent tout en un

[utilitycaster]

Ludinus Da'leth, to Fearne and Imogen:

The security footage of the gods he's showing them a couple months later:

[dreamsaflame]

i wonder if one of the reasons yang cheng never confessed to xia qing is because, though they were good friends even before the whole e-soul saga, though she says she recognized him in his homemade e-soul suit very early on, neither she nor little pomelo believed in him enough to break through that 0 trust value.

and maybe that was because she was waiting for him to believe in himself first, but it's hard to do so when you have an objective metric that straight up tells you no one has confidence in you. and maybe she didn't understand what that would be like, but from his perspective, it'd probably just be another reminder that, outside of being e-soul, yang cheng the person isn't enough.

it wasn't enough at first and then it still wasn't enough and now it will never be enough. shang shao was confident and rich and intelligent and charming, and worse, he was a true friend, a true believer, he was kind and determined to pursue justice. he even recommended yang cheng to the finalists bracket. but he didn't believe in yang cheng either.

and maybe he did in the end, both him and xia qing and even little pomelo, after yang cheng becomes e-soul for real. but it wasn't enough, after all. yang cheng the person failed to save shang chao. yang cheng the person hesitated at the most crucial moment. in the end, he has no value outside of being e-soul.

[one-little-nerd-stayed-home]

Ok I said this was coming weeks ago so here it is: FURTHER THOUGHTS ON WEIGHT AND NADDPOD

Weight: A common point of comparison in Animal Agriculture. There are number of important types of weight when dealing with livestock:

1 - Live Weight - The actual weight of a live animal. This weight may feel lighter than it is because live animals instinctively balance themselves when lifted.

1.a) Calder - Its strange being the biggest. But Calder knows what that means. He has to look after Callie and Sol because they’re smaller than him. He has to carry them even when they flail and attack things behind him and twist in his arms. He can’t drop them when they cuff his ears accidentally because you have to be gentle when things are smaller than you. But he can’t get to them every time. He can’t save them every time and he’s always been the littlest but he isn't anymore. He needs to save them. So he takes the helm. He makes the deal because it saves Callie and Sol and they’re alive and if he has to wait on the frozen plain for them to come for him well it’s easier to wait knowing they're still alive.

1.b) Live weight is easier to carry because it is Alive

2 - Adjusted Weight - The calculated weight of an animal at a particular age. Commonly used for comparison between slightly older or younger animals of the same herd.

2.a) Sol - 'If I’m dead weight just drop me.' Sol is always a little surprised when he comes back staring into Calder or Callie’s face He’s surprised when Swag says looking at him isn't like a broken mirror at all. Calder and Callie talk about siblings and families and how you have to stick together. They grew up bickering and fighting for their places but Sol grew up alone. He stares into his own eyes and sees a glimpse of a life slightly to the left of the one he's lived. Defined by absence the same way his was. It doesn't feel... good. But it is good right? To have a blood relation - a family… that's what family is isn’t it? It’s hard to account for something he’s never had before. 2.b) Adjusted weight is used for comparison but as a calculation it may not reflect the real world

3 - Rail Weight - The weight of a carcass once it’s been prepared for butchering. Usually about 60% of the live weight.

3.a) Callie - It feels… different, nice maybe, to watch Glen fumble and scramble and beg and to feel nothing but a mild disinterest. He’s a hollow man and anything left in her heart for him pales in comparison to the cold fury at the fact that they lost Calder to his stupid scheme. Calder saved them and Callie… doesn’t like being saved it turns out. So she reaches for her mother's cool logic. Oberon speaks to her and Callie feels the anticipation of the hunt in her veins but she remembers the gutted eladrin hung from the branches of the enormous tree. 3.b) a gutted, prepared animal, though lighter is still a load to carry.

4 - Dead Weight - The weight of a dead animal. this weight can feel heavier than live weight as there is no instinctive balance when lifting a dead animal.

4.a) Hardwon -No matter how much he’s done or how far he’s gone Hardwon has always been the human kid in a dwarphenage who never fit anywhere quite right. He fits with Moonshine and Beverly, as long as he can pull his own weight and take the hits then they can be Beverly and Moonshine and he can be a titan too, at least for a while. Except that when he can’t take the hits. When he isn’t fast enough, strong enough, hero enough... then people get hurt. And Hardwon has never been good at keeping the people he loved alive. 4.b) Dead Weight is harder to carry because it is dead.

[thedenofravenpuff]

I can be trusted in thrift stores without supervision.

I don't have a problem.

[fisheito]

A while back you made a post talking about yakumo and his sensitivity to temperature and I haven't stopped thinking about it. imagine when winter comes around and yakumo becomes progressively sluggish, usually staying in the kitchen and not leaving for hours, always making something near the stove to feel a little warmth from the flames or from a little taste of the things he's making (soup probably), or him picking up the habit of bundling himself up and staying in the library to read and nap. maybe when it starts getting even colder he barely leaves his room because its too uncomfortably cold for him, and if he does he's probably looking for eiden to help him warm up, but if eidens not around he gets antsy and looks for somebody else in the mansion, but he's too shy to ask and looks at whoever with his wet eyes so they know he's cold and wants a cuddle

*inhales deeply* ah yes. you understand. you envision it all so clearly. rightly so. gEt in the wAy, everybody, snake burrito walking the halls very very slowly!!!!!!! (i was about to say get OUT of the way but that would probably make yakumo colder so why not do him a favour and collide with him on your way to another room)

[quilveor]

The laboratory used to be a terrifying place, rumors passed in whispers about the torture that happened behind the closed doors. With peculiar interest he managed to find its way there, where he found the purpose he spent his life searching for. Ace's the front side of the coin, trapped in a precise balancing act between what his boss wants, and what his boss needs. And he couldn't be happier.

Ace, or The Argent Soaring Nebula Over Forty Nine Legions Unified For The Third Lord's Banner, alongside the scientist, are the quiet backbone of that team I sometimes occasionally mention, and you can see in the tags. The research department, the two of them work on things that the public doesn't really get to know.

The scientist was done first, with the clear idea that it would be the sort of person you genuinely wouldn't want to meet. The only thing it cares about is its research, and it only stays as part of that team because the leader lets it do that.

Ace was made to be the explicit perfect match for the scientist - friendly, outgoing, kind, character-wise everything it is not, but sharing the same deep passion for biology and being somehow even more stubborn about it at times. [The name thing is also obvious - the scientist has no name, only titles; Ace's name is fourteen words that would make a rain world ancient BLUSH from their fanciness. "Ace" is just a convenient nickname because TASNO49---- didn't fit the system.]

And so he's working away, learning and studying, while also making sure the reputation of both laboratory and its boss is slowly restored. To a degree, at least. A labcoat to be more personable [and also because labcoats are cool], a smile, always some advice. Ace knows what he's doing!

And he is truly, genuinely, happy.

[by the way, they both are physiologists. Scientist also focuses in neurology, while Ace's side passion is a study I made up considering the world of pokemon - bioenergy, the effect of type energies on living things]

[allegorypaintings]

Allegory of Reason (Mathematics and Geometry)

Artist: Attributed to Charles Lucy (British, 1814-1873)

Date: 1760

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Trust Collections, London, United Kingdom

[livvylives]

hmm since Clary also has the scar from having contact with an angel, do you think all of Clace's kids will inherit it? like will it stop being the "one of our ancestors fucked in a cave" scar & start being the "our ancestors were child experiments" scar?

[trivialbob]

I could not select better weather conditions than what I'm going to experience today.

Overnight and into this morning: 50-55 degrees. I slept under an extra blanket. The windows open all night and the furnace was off.

Today's forecasted high is 74 degrees with plenty of sunshine.

We already had some April showers here. The lawn is plush. I also cut the grass during my lunch hour yesterday. Today I look out my windows and enjoy the fruits of my labor while the temperature is perfect.

There is one really loud bird around here with an annoying song. It reminds of of my first computer's modem connecting. That bird must have slept in this morning. The other birds I can now hear better and they sound nice. This hot cup of coffee I'm holding suddenly tastes even better.

The only adjustment I will make later is removing my fuzzy sweatshirt when the house warms up.

[kply-industries]

[taryn40k]

"Though I suppose 3 years of actively avoiding my requests isn't much, compared to your 70-ish years in office, is it?"

[random2908]

We're going through the absolute dumbest drama at work lately with a funding agency. It was looking like it was all going to turn out in our favor (through, like, the stupidest means possible). But today they just threw a curveball at us that is so insane. So insane for a funding agency to meddle in that. That even though we're probably going to win in the end, they might drag our reputation through the mud in the middle.

So. Ok. This guy pretty high up in the DoD got Congress to put a pretty big earmark for our tech in the 2024 budget. (And by big, I mean, if we asked an investor for help they'd laugh and give us twice as much just for us, rather than having to split this government money between us and our competitors; maybe they'd introduce us to their investor friends and it would be 10 times as much. But we're an employee-owned company, and most of us employees are afraid of investors, so that's not happening.)

The catch ended up being that a specific agency within the DoD got the rights to distribute most of it. And that agency decided to make a rule that they were mainly going to consider small-business/giant-corporation partnerships. Well. That's not great for us, a small business who was hoping to just, like, get some of this money. But luckily we already had existing partnerships with two giant corps. The agency split the money into three pots, and two of them were for projects we thought we could do. So we told our favorite company we'd apply for the easy one with them, and our not-favorite company we'd apply for the hard one with them. (Not-favorite because we think they're semi-secretly trying to steal our IP and then use their fleet of literally thousands of engineers, compared to our 35 total employees, to run us out of business.) Favorite company said, great, let's do it. Most-detested company said, wait, we could do both these projects, shouldn't we apply for both? We (and by we I mean my bosses) told company-we-don't-like that we'd apply for one section with them but we didn't think it was a good idea to apply for both because we might look greedy; but they could do whatever the hell they wanted with the other section, if they didn't mind looking greedy.

Both our applications got rejected three months ago. For the harder project, we suspect it went to a completely different technological approach, so, ok I guess. For the easier project, though.... Evil-corp's application won... in which they said they'd hire us to do it under their supervision.

Which means they'd have all the IP. But also, stupid stupid them, they'd have none of the physicists, just the engineers. What the fuck do they expect to be able to do, hiring physicists as simple artisans rather than collaborating with us as thinking physicists, and having no physicists of their own who understand how the tech actually works.

And, here's their hubris, here's the first step from over a year ago when we realized they were trying to steal our own project out from under us: even in the existing partnership, they originally purchased a quantum device and a control box from us. And then collaborated with us on a new device design, but said they'd make their own control boxes from here on out. But they seem not to understand what's actually in the control box, and how tailored it is to the quantum device.

So, ok, we thought: they'd hire us to make the quantum device that they design (oh, cue tangent about how the current iteration--from our existing partnership--that they've designed with their fleet of engineers is unmachineable, i.e. we can't get a vendor who is willing to make the chassis for us; their design skills are hopeless). We'd do our level best to build it very well for them. I'd use one of my spare control boxes (I build/supervise the control boxes) and test it out for them (I'm one of the two testers), and do whatever I needed to to get it working. We'd send them those results, and the device. Then they'd hook it up to the legacy control box they bought from us last year (that doesn't have my newest upgrades), and one of their untrained just-out-of-college techs would try it out, and wouldn't get anything out of it. But we'd have proof that it's just user error, and so they'd lose (can't finish the project) and we'd win (reputation intact, plus the bit of money they'd give us for building it--not much, but something anyway).

This is the scenario that my coworker (the other tester, and supervisor for building the devices) and I have daydreamed about to each other frequently over the past month, to console ourselves about having lost the contest to actually get the grant money.

Meanwhile, our CEO went to talk to the government agency like, we're the leaders in this field, why did you reject all our applications?? And he was like, we didn't reject all of them! We accepted the one with dumbass-corporate-thieves! Our CEO was like, that wasn't our application, we're just a subcontractor on it, it wouldn't involve any of our IP or physics knowledge. And the government official was like... Oh fuck. But I hate Nice-company, you know that right? You know I couldn't let that application through because I hate them? Why did you even write an application with them? (If you knew the name of nice-company, you'd immediately be like, "oh that makes sense." Even though the department collaborating with us on quantum devices has nothing to do with the department making, oh, let's say, airplane doors.) So the government official was like, well, the contract with the smug-idiots isn't finalized yet, I can try to steer it so that you're less subcontractors and more partners in this. And of course, our CEO couldn't say, well, we don't want to be partners with them, because they're thieves and also stupid and mean. But he also knew they wouldn't agree to it in any real way and it was moot. So he just said ok. It's at least comforting to know... I guess... that the government did intend to fund us, in particular, they just didn't read the applications very carefully.

Ok, so that's the first fork, that's been playing out over the last couple months since the applications were due.

But meanwhile, in addition to our partnerships with those two large corps, we also had project funding from a certain branch of the military, and from an unnamed government agency (even I'm not supposed to know who it is, I think). The latter project is sunsetting--it's six years old, a full year past the end of the contract. But the director of that project told us, we should go quietly asking around in Washington DC to see who's disgruntled that the one agency got to distribute all these funds, and see if anyone wants to compete with them by directly sponsoring us (without asshole-corp tagging along). The other project, the military-branch project, is right in the middle right now: we're approximately half done and have about a year left to finish. And it transpired that right after this agency, the one with all the money, announced who the money was going to at the end of September, they then announced who their liaisons would be in each military branch. And they picked some random dude that they're personally friends with in this particular branch, rather than anyone out of the relevant department for this type of tech. So now, the actual department is like "we can't trust whatever end product comes out of this other agency's project." So suddenly, someone who is already funding us--already feels personally invested in our success--has become exactly who the secret-person told us to look for: someone in the government who resents the contest judges and wants to hold a separate competition against them. So, two months ago, they were like "next year we'll end your project, because the future of the technology is this big grant from this other agency." And now suddenly they're looking for more money to throw at us, longer term and in larger amounts. (Not as much as if we'd won the grant competition, but still. Like I always say, we're academia-adjacent; even a million dollars is a lot to us.)

And the third fork: nice-corp is pissed that there's so much prejudice against them for the doors thing, so they want to renew their partnership with us, just to show up that government agency that held the contest.

So we lost the contest, but we might be getting two new projects out of it.

And then today's wrench, back to the first fork. The government agency just told the idiot-assholes that they were going to require the quantum tech be made of a different quantum material than originally planned. (I suspect because it's the material that JPL/NASA really likes.) There is absolutely no reason for this requirement, no reason for them micromanage something like material choice. What's really, deeply hilarious about this weird bit of meddling is that for us physicists, this barely matters; you can make some arguments one way or the other in terms of how well it works for the tech, but we can work with either material. My whole previous job was with the material we're currently using--between that job and this job, I've been using it for 8 years. But my whole PhD and postdoc was with the material that the government agency wants dumb-corp to switch over to. I know both these materials equally well, and so do all the other physicists here. Mainly the difference this makes is... You need to change all the components in the control box to match the material it's controlling! The one part of the project that now-seriously-screwed-corp contractually doesn't want our input on! And changing that many components all at once is never a risk-free undertaking, from a simple engineering perspective; except that we suspect they don't even know how to build a control box in the first place, so "risk" doesn't even cover it.

When my boss broke the news to me this afternoon, I was like, wait, are you telling me I have to build a control box just to test this thing, for free because me building a control box is outside the scope of the project? My boss was like, no. They'll build a control box and send it to us, so we can test the quantum device that we're going to build for them, out of the new material, based on their designs that we have very little input on, even though we're the physicists and they're not.

I was like ...but their control box isn't going to work. My boss was like, nope! I was like, so then the project isn't going to work. My boss, no :) it isn't :). I was like, ok, I know this won't be for another two years, but... how hard should I try to make it work? Because I can try really hard and probably do something. My boss was like no, don't do that. Absolutely do not try to fix their box. If it doesn't work, just tell them it doesn't work. Tell them what doesn't work about it, but not why, don't give them hints. Maybe you won't even know why! You don't know what they're putting in the box, how can you diagnose it for them!

So, yeah, this project isn't going to work, and we're going to look bad for it. But hopefully we'll be getting two additional projects out of it, thanks to spite! And if two of our three projects work then who cares, I guess.

[arcadian-vampire]

Redoing all the grid measurements on my site 🫠 Wish me luck 🫡

[falseandrealultravival]

Fiction about a secondhand bookstore (sonnet)

Secondhand bookstores

I was given the books of a philosopher

Whom I have known for a long from his family.

They were voluminous and full of meaning,

But I was short of money at the time.

I decided to sell them to a secondhand bookstore.

A large swamp was nearby,

And the store had a unique smell,

Perhaps the stench of the swamp or the stench of old books.

The owner of the secondhand bookstore

Took the books to the back of the store and began to appraise them.

She was using an electrical measuring device to value them.

After a little over an hour, she concluded

That they were worth next to nothing.

I missed out on the money.

Rei Morishita

2024.12.17

古本屋に関するフィクション（ソネット）

私は旧知の哲学者の遺族から

彼の蔵書を贈られる。

夥しい分量で含蓄もあるが

その時私はお金に困っていた。

私はこれらを古本屋に売ることにした。

近くに大きな沼があり

沼の腐臭か古本の古臭か

店内は独特な臭いを漂わせている。

古本屋の女主人は店の奥に本を持っていき、

鑑定を始める。彼女は

電気的測定器を使って値踏みをしている。

小一時間使って彼女が出した結論は――

二束三文。

私はお金を得損なった。

[boyslit-moving]

(Prohibition AU) in which Ren uses a discussion of obtaining contraceptives to provoke Luocha into fucking him 💀

(word count 145, snippet)

"Do you think of me often with the fingers of other men inside me?" Ren grinned. "Do you fantasize about sharing me with so many others I lose count of the touches?" He grunted as Luocha pushed him against the wall, glaring down at him. "I will share you with no one," Luocha growled, pulling him by the chin into a biting kiss. He could feel Ren still smirking through it. "If you are mine, you will be mine alone." Luocha kept his thumb on Ren's chin, frowning down at the man who had clearly baited him into this reaction. Ren's grin was mischievous, eager, and so very pleased. He'd gotten exactly what he wanted. "Well, then. Stake your claim, demon." Without another word, Luocha picked him up by the back of the thighs and kicked the bedroom door closed behind them.