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that’s a good one

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remember when teachers would tell you to fold paper hamburger or hotdog style. kind of sounds like some fake shit but just another example of burger centric american thinking

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for more exciting science send ice cream

today's discovery is that according to a textiles bulletin from the university of Illinois from like, 1912, you can tell the difference between linen and cotton by dripping oil on the fabric!

Nev: but. fire. Meg: Sometimes you are at a store in 1920 and you can carry a vial of oil but you cannot carry fire.

I hadn't heard of this test before (most fabric tests indeed involve fire on account of the distinctions in how the burned material looks and smells -- or a lab, which is more accurate but also less accessible to a housewife in 1912 squinting suspiciously at a bolt of sale fabric) but I was immediately sure it was accurate, which kind of bothered me because I usually KNOW why I think something is accurate. an hour later --

Meg: wait linen is a bast fiber and cotton is a seed fiber THATS it

TLDR: linen is made from the inner part of the plant and is in long fibers and cotton is made from the seed pod and is in short, fluffy fibers, so of course they'd react to oil differently. Also I have accidentally gotten oil on paper made from other bast fibers and it does indeed go translucent.

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Okay, so, friends. Occasionally I see an American post on here about “guillotine the rich,” and it turns out that “rich” means “anyone making over $50k.”

We need to clear this shit up REAL fast, because otherwise it’s gonna wind up like the French Revolution, where more middle class and poor people were killed for being “class traitors” than actual nobles. (Did you know that France has more nobles today than during the French Revolution? While there were a few showy executions, many nobles did just fine or experienced minor setbacks.)

If someone makes $60,000 a year, they are making about twice as much as a full time worker making minimum wage in California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, or Washington State.

Brian Thompson, the CEO of United HealthCare who was just assassinated in New York City, earned $10 million a year, which means he earned 333 times minimum wage in those states. Basically, he cleared an annual minimum wage salary in just over a day. And that “rich” person making $60k/year that you want to guillotine? He made their salary in a bit over two days of a year.

So he was rich, right?

Well. Tesla is trying to give Elon Musk a pay package of $101 billion. That is 10,100 times what Brian Thompson earned and 3,366,667 times more than a minimum wage worker. (Tesla hasn’t been successful yet because of a complicated lawsuit from a shareholder, but they’ll get there.) If you are a minimum wage worker, Elon Musk makes more every SECOND than you do in a year. And that “rich” person who you want to guillotine? He makes their salary in about 1.6 seconds. Even when he’s sleeping.

Now, remember. The Muskrat also is the head of SpaceX, the Boring Company, X.ai, and X.com, so this is just ONE pay package for him.

What I’m saying is — you have much more in common when it comes to economic grievances with someone earning $60,000 (or even $200,000) than the ultra wealthy that have real power. They are not the people you should expend your energy on.

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I love it when the same character honorifics are basically used as a barometer for an evolving relationship over the course of a story.

"...Princess" (Derogatory)

"Princess." (You have disproven several of my previous assumptions but I'm still guarded and critical.)

"Princess," (Mildly impressed but still snarky)

"Princess," (I am coming to terms with how much your office has demanded of you and am finally considering you an equal)

"Princess," (I genuinely respect you, your office, and how much you have grown beyond it since we have met.)

"Princess." (Uh oh I've started catching feelings and am now using your title to remind both you and myself of the distance between us.)

"PRINCESS!" (You are in danger and I am now utterly devoted AND DOWN SO BAD.)

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i don’t know how to explain to you people that no matter what a country’s government is like i do not and will not support the US indiscriminately bombing that country’s civilians and i don’t know why that’s a controversial take tbh

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As a society we have benefited so much from successful public health measures that we now have the privilege of declaring that we must not need them anymore

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history

You might say “oh well today we all have access to vitamins and toothpastes and dentists so we don’t need those things in our food supplies” and boy do white people on social media loooove to fucking say that. But here’s the thing: no, people don’t all have easy access to those things. That’s privilege talking yet again

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S is for Sacrilege!! Yay!!!

This is my contribution to the RQG A to Z fan project!! wahoo!!

You should check out everybody's at this link!!

https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/170943904

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Something to watch for, which I learned from stage magic but which is extremely relevant to detecting scams as well:

The magician or scammer will *tell you* how he is going to prove his honesty.

The magician rifles through the deck until you say "stop", then he says, "Are you sure? I'll keep going if you want." and asks "Now, you agree that you could have stopped anywhere you wanted, so there's absolutely no way I could know which card you got" and because it's a magic show and you aren't paying close attention you didn't notice he didn't deal a card from where you stopped, he dealt the bottom card of the deck.

The magician doesn't ask you, "What would it take for you to believe this" because you might say, "I'd need you to use a sealed deck" or "I'd have to personally shuffle the deck" or some other proof that would make the trick impossible.

Magicians say "You agree that if I did *this*, it would mean *that*, right?" and you say yes, and it feels like you are the one who got to verify things, but of course the magician is lying and the proof is nothing of the kind.

Scammers do the same thing. A really concrete example is phone scammers pretending to be working for the government will say, "Look, I see you're skeptical if I'm who I say I am, I'm going to hang up and call back, and you'll see on the caller ID it says, 'FBI' and that tells you that I'm really working for the government."

Now, caller ID can be spoofed pretty easily, so it doesn't prove anything at all.

But it *feels* to you like you demanded proof and the scammer was willing to give you the proof.

But you didn't tell the scammer what out would take to prove it to you, the scammer told you what the proof would be.

This is actually like a really basic thing to look for if you want to start decoding magic tricks and scams.

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Not at the end of RQG yet but so far I am LOVING how Alex uses Skraak to dismantle common Kolbold steryotypes/ Archetypes. Like the Kolbolds are introduced the same way dnd/pathfinder Kolbolds often are ie Mooks or pets but we discover Its because they're drugged and nothing to do with Kolbolds generally. Lots of the PC's ideas are dismantled about Kolbolds especially Hamid's and I LOVE how Skraak is a full charecter who at least atm Hates Hamid's guts and HAS AGENCY .

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helen “trans people are perpetuating gender steriotypes” joyce is now upset that the scientific american is writing about how women were hunters too back in the day, not just mothers and caretakers. feminist win!

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Who has that website with a music map that suggests you songs. Its maybe multiple websites Im thinking of (???)