whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

the man had a point

Object permanence: Banana split history; Heinlein plots; Hacking a jeep

Hey, German-speakers! Through a very weird set of circumstances, I ended up owning the rights to the German audiobook of my bestselling 2022 cryptocurrency heist technothriller Red Team Blues and now I'm selling DRM-free audio and ebooks, along with the paperback (all in German and English) on a Kickstarter that runs until August 11.

#20yrsago History of the ingredients in a banana split https://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0405/p18s02-hfks.html

#15yrsago Similarities between gold farming networks and drug dealing networks https://web.archive.org/web/20100722104318/http://www.aurumahmad.com/vwe/gold-farming/

#15yrsago Where the global rifts are in the secret copyright treaty https://web.archive.org/web/20100724061132/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5222/125/

#15yrsago How Heinlein plotted https://memex.craphound.com/2010/07/21/how-heinlein-plotted/

#10yrsago Paul Erdős’s FBI file https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/jul/21/nothing-indicate-nothing-indicate-subject-had-any-/

#10yrsago Hackers can pwn a Jeep Cherokee from the brakes and steering to the AC and radio https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/

#5yrsago Trump's spent a billion on re-election https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/21/the-thief-of-joy/#moneyball

#5yrsago As We May Think https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/21/the-thief-of-joy/#story-not-article

#5yrsago Luxury homes to be washed away https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/21/the-thief-of-joy/#schadenflooding

#5yrsago The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/21/the-thief-of-joy/#tomine

#5yrsago Christopher Brown's Failed State https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/21/the-thief-of-joy/#failed-state

Support me this summer in the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop! This summer, I'm writing The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux that explains how to be an effective AI critic.

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

If someone doesn't understand 24 hour time and is chill you can convert it for them because that's helpful and polite.

If someone primarily uses 12 hour time but understands 24 hour time and is chill you can leave it unconverted as a sign of respect for their abilities.

If someone throws a hissy fit whenever someone gives a time in 24 hour time you are obligated by sacred duty to exclusively give them the time in 24 hour time, even if you actually use 12 hour time.

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

hi gang. reminder that we are some of the best sweaters in the animal kingdom (second only to equines) allowing us to stay cool and keep moving in hot weather. we have 10 times the density of sweat glands compared to other great apes.

we are ALSO insanely good at smelling rain (specifically geosmin, found in the soil and activated by rain) with the ability to smell 10 parts per trillion. this is speculated to have helped our ancestors survive!

we ALSO have absolutely batshit diets compared to most other animals. caffeine and chocolate are completely toxic to most animals but we can eat it without even feeling sick. even avocados are severely toxic to many animals to the point where it can be fatal to eat, but humans love it!!!

we are ALSO the best endurance runners ON EARTH out of ANY other species. we beat horses in endurance running. you know, the animals that gradually evolved away most of their toes in order to be the best runners?? yeahhh.

and to top it all off. our lifespan is unusually long for our species' weight/mass. typically, the bigger a species is, the longer its average lifespan (e.g. domestic mice live for 1-3 years, whales can live over 200) but we're very small for how long our average lifespan is. big cats like tigers live around 14-15 years, brown bears 25 years, yet here we are expected to live around 75-85 years. that is NUTS.

humans as a species are so extremely cool. it's not just our intellect that makes us amazing. we may not be the fastest or the strongest in the animal kingdom but we're super cool in many other ways. next time you sweat you can go wow!!! humans are so cool I'm able to keep moving because of my absolutely insane number of sweat glands! thank you evolution!

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

i will never be immune to his dirty talking

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

i will never be immune to his dirty talking

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

i think it's important for most people's mental health to have a space where they can safely and unashamedly express being horny and i don't mean milquetoast tongue-in-cheek "oh step on me mommy" jokes or whatever i mean capital h Horny

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

ANNIE HSIAO-CHING WANG

ARTIST

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

... if you think electric bikes are the biggest threat on our roads, just wait until you hear about the slightly more common, slightly more deadly vehicle we’ve been quietly tolerating for the last hundred years. They’re called cars. And unlike e-bikes, they actually kill people. A lot of people. Over 40,000 people die in car crashes in the US every year. Thousands more are permanently injured. Entire neighborhoods are carved up by high-speed traffic. Kids can’t walk to school safely. But don’t worry – someone saw a teenager run a stop sign on an e-bike, so the real crisis must be those darn batteries on two wheels. It’s amazing how worked up people get over a few dozen e-bike crashes when many of us step over a sidewalk memorial for a car crash victim on the way to the grocery store. 

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

it’s so great for the mentally ill brain to talk to someone who just like. genuinely really likes you. to remind urself that you’re not fundamentally unlovable etc

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

crazy how every time a female character gets cliche misogynistic writing we have to explain to people again that fictional characters are not real and do not choose things for themselves.

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

Stephan Bakalowicz - The Walls of Pompeii (1885)

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

"A society that separates its lore masters from its horny posters will have its headcanons written by prudes and its erotic fanfic by fools."

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

I get that this is mostly a me thing but seeing so many posts making fun of "holy blood cannibalism pomegranate deer" style writing just makes me sad ;-; . guys that's a lot of people's first stab at poetry that's hobby art that's a vulnerable thing to post those are passion projects...

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

Y’know an awful lot of Terry Pratchett’s books are concerned with how powerful women are when they get angry and how important anger is as a driving force to defend what is right and to tackle injustice. 

A lot of his most interesting and most deeply moral characters are angry ones. Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, Tiffany Aching. All are to a large extent driven to do good by anger.

And that honestly means a lot to me.