(via tastefullyoffensive: seoreswandor)

(comic by Big Foot Justice)

unagiiiii:

malekkleston:

IF U EVER FEEL SAD REMEMBER THERE IS A FLOWER CALLED HANGING NAKED MEN AND IT LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE PURPLE MEN WITH THEIR DICKS OUT

ISNT NATURE WONDERFUL

can i just say DO NOT go on google images and search ‘HANGING NAKED MEN’ because you will probably be traumatized for life.

these are actually called ‘ORCHIS ITALICA’ or ‘THE NAKED MAN ORCHID’

blazepress:

Mercedes Formula 1 steering wheels from 1954 and 2014.

"Helping the princess" by Port Sherry

Ittyblox is a modular collection of 3D-printed miniature buildings that can be arranged, SimCity-like, into little urban dioramas. The 1:1000 scale buildings fit into base plates, which can be arranged to form city blocks. Ittyblox are available at Shapeways.

photos via Ittyblox

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Weather photographer Mike Hollingshead, whose impressive storm photography we first featured around this time last year, has taken his editing a bit further by importing his supercell thunderstorm photos into Photoshop and setting them in motion. Hollingshead says these animations aren’t created like more traditional cinemagraphs, where moving elements from a video are isolated and the rest of the image is masked out. Instead, he uses only a static image and creates the animation from thin air. Most of the photos you see here were shot in Nebraska between 2004-2013. You can see many more examples on his website.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. A handy flowchart by Scott Bateman.

Tags: flowchart, vaccination

nuttersincorporated:

geekartgallery:

“The Problem With Actually Having Superpowers" by JHALL Comics

Source: Dorkly

If you ever get a superpower, what are the chances that a second power develops at the same time to counteract the negative effects of the first power?

That last one though

The innermost arm of the Trondheimsfjord now holds an estimated 40,000 tonnes of the helmet jellyfish, only a few years after the fiery red peril first appeared in its waters.

"We took up 3.5 tons of monster jellyfish in under ten minutes," he said. "There was a tremendous amount more than we expected. The trawler winch was just about to give way."

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Sort-of transcript follows:

Dr. Sherry Tenpenny is an osteopath who spends most of her time these days preaching against safe and effective vaccines, encouraging people to not vaccinate their children, which leads to outcomes like the current “Disneyland” measles outbreak that California is currently dealing with. Thanks Dr. Tenpenny, and thanks Dr. Oz for promoting her!

Tenpenny came to my attention recently because she was due to tour Australia spreading her misinformation, but has now canceled the tour due to “security concerns.”

When I first read that headline, I assumed that the concern was that Tenpenny would be like that one lab monkey from Planet of the Apes who bit that guy before he got on that plane and spread that monkey disease all over the planet. We don’t want your monkey diseases, Dr. Tenpenny! Just stay inside please.

But no, it turns out that Tenpenny claims vaccine proponents are sending violent threats to organizers of her speaking tour. This is awful, and as a vaccine proponent I’d like to go on record as saying I condemn any threats of violence against anti-vaccinationists. I believe that people like Tenpenny cause immeasurable harm to the health and safety of society’s most at-risk people, like infants and immunocompromised patients, but the way to fight them is using education and compassion.

I’m really upset to think that other people who understand the effectiveness of vaccines would do such a thing as threaten anyone. And that’s why I’m relieved to be able to report that in actuality, there was only one bomb threat and it came from an anti-vaccination activist who wanted to scare the venue into going forward with Tenpenny’s lecture despite peaceful public pressure to cancel.

That movement isn’t long for the world anyway, but I’d rather it go away before diseases like polio make such a comeback in the western world that wealthy hippies and libertarians are forced to acknowledge the horrific consequences of allowing these diseases to run rampant.

Stephen Fry gives a fairly standard atheist answer to the question, “What would you do if you died and found yourself in front of God?” — exceptionally well-stated, of course, but unsurprising. The best part is to watch the expression on the face of the interviewer in the various reaction shots.

Another factor, to me, is that if their afterlife were true, they expect us to stand before a deity as a supplicant, with a vast power differential, and then essentially grovel. There is no human dignity and no hope in their vision of death — your choice is to submit or suffer. If this god could see into our minds what we were truly thinking, then there is also no point to pretending, and it would know it: this would be a monstrous alien passing judgment on a humanity it regards as corrupt, debased, and wicked, and the only propitiation it could get from us is our terror.

Fortunately, there is no evidence and no reason to think we will continue to exist beyond the death of our bodies, or that there is such a cosmic tyrant, so I’m relieved that I don’t have to worry about a Christian afterlife.

oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy

Fans have long speculated that a LEGO Avengers Helicarrier was in the works, and today LEGO officially confirmed those rumors. The new set, 76042 The SHIELD Helicarrier, is a gigantic microscale ship which rings in just shy of 3 feet in length. This is the first time LEGO has used tiny microscale figures (originally designed to be trophies) as characters in a playset. The set also comes with 5 regularly-sized minifigures, and can be motorized using LEGO Power Functions (not included). It will be available from LEGO Shop@Home in March.

You can see all of the photos of the Helicarrier on the official Brothers-Brick flickr account. Here’s the press release from LEGO, along with the designer video:

76042 The SHIELD Helicarrier

---

Ages 16+
2,996 pieces.

US $349.99
CA $399.99
DE 349.99€
UK £269.99
DK 2999.00 DKK

*Euro pricing varies by country. Please visit shop.LEGO.com for regional pricing.

Build and display the huge SHIELD Helicarrier!
Take on the challenge of building this awesome LEGO® model of The SHIELD Helicarrier. Construct the flying aircraft carrier with 2 runways, microscale Quinjets, fighter jets and ground support vehicles. The set also comes with many of your favorite LEGO Marvel Super Heroes minifigures, plus 12 microfigures to display on deck and within the highly detailed interior. Includes 5 minifigures: Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Maria Hill.

• Includes 5 minifigures: Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Maria Hill, plus an iconic SHIELD eagle stand to display them on
• Features 3 microscale Quinjets, 3 fighter jets, a gasoline truck, 2 forklift trucks, 2 runways, 4 road blockades, armored exterior with translucent elements, detailed interior, plus 12 microfigures (Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Captain America, Iron Man and 8 SHIELD agents)
• Also includes a detailed runway
• Weapons include Hawkeye’s bow, Black Widow’s gun and Captain America’s shield
• SHIELD Agent Maria Hill minifigure is new for spring 2015!
• Includes a plaque with facts about The SHIELD Helicarrier
• Add lights and spinning rotors to the Helicarrier with the 88000, 8883 and 8870 LEGO® Power Functions sets (sold separately)
• Rotors can also be turned manually
• Includes a display stand
• Helicarrier measures over 11” (29cm) high, 31” (80cm) long and 17” (45cm) wide
• Each Quinjet measures over 1” (3cm) high, 2” (7cm) long and 2” (7cm) wide
• Minifigure stand measures over 4” (12cm) high, and 2” (6cm deep) and 6” (16cm wide)

One of the cardinal rules of live television is that you've gotta be able to roll with whatever happens. (more…)

We’ve all noticed that, in the Spiderman movies, the hero ejaculates tremendous amounts of protein constantly to make those spider threads he’s swinging on and splattering all over the bad guys. Part of that is plausible; spider silk is amazingly strong stuff, and if you could produce it, sure, thin strands would support your weight. The problem is the volume. Mark Lorch calculates how much protein Spiderman would have to consume to make the thread for one scene in the movie.

From the time of Spidey’s fall, we can calculate that he fell about 240m (wow, that’s one high balcony). Plus, assuming the silk stretches to its maximum, a stopping distance, it will be a fall of about the height of the Eiffel Tower. The impact force on the silk rope as they slow down would be about 35 times their weight.

Which is about six times greater force than when Spidey is just hanging around on the end of his line of silk. But taking into account the length of the fall (240m) and the extra force, he will need 1.3 kg of silk to catch his fall. So I reckon he must have had about 900 eggs for breakfast that morning, just to have enough silk for that one scene. I think Aunt May might have noticed.

In the movies, he is spontaneously producing this stuff biologically, but as I recall from the comic books he instead built some gadgets that squirted the spider silk. That doesn’t solve the problem! He’d then have to carry around a silk reservoir that, in that scene, would have weighed roughly 100 pounds, and would have been completely depleted at the end.

This is the kind of thing that just ruins comic book movies for me. Good thing I really enjoy reality.

Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? How big would the teams have to be?

—Markus Andersen

A couple dozen people could pull a half-inch iron rod apart.

Tug-of-war, a simple game in which two teams try to pull a rope in opposite directions, has a surprisingly bloody history.

I don't mean that there's some kind of gruesome historical forerunner of modern tug-of-war.[1]Although it's definitely an ancient sport, so I'm sure people have come up with all kinds of horrific variations over the centuries that I don't really want to spend hours reading about. Humans seem to be creative when it comes to that kind of thing. I mean that modern tug-of-war involves a lot more death and mutilation than you might expect—precisely because people underestimate how few people it takes to break "strong" things like heavy rope.

As detailed in a riveting article in Priceonomics, recent games of tug-of-war have resulted in hundreds of serious injuries and numerous deaths—all caused, one way or another, by ropes snapping. In particular, this seems to happen when large groups of students try to set a world record for largest tug-of-war game. When a rope under many tons of tension suddenly snaps, the recoiling ends can—and do—cause a terrifying variety of injuries.

Before we answer Markus's question, it's worth noting that the physics of tug-of-war can be a little tricky. It seems like common sense that the "stronger" team has an advantage, but that's not quite right. To win, you need to resist sliding forward better than the other team. If you can't resist sliding, then increasing your arm strength means you'll just pull yourself forward. Since sliding friction is often proportional to weight, tug-of-war on many surfaces is simply a contest over who's heavier.[2]Champion tug-of-war teams focus on body angle, footwork, digging into the ground, and timing pulls to throw off the other team. The strongest team in the world would lose a tug-of-war with a six-year-old and a sack of bricks, as long as the sack had a firm grip.

So, how much force can tug-of-war players exert?

A 2011 paper analyzing the immune systems of several "elite tug-of-war players"[3]The paper notes that "Few studies have been done to examine the effects of [the] tug-of-war sport on physiological responses," which seems likely enough to me. measured their average pull force (on a school gym floor) to be about 102.5 kilograms-force, or about 1.5x their body weight.

The ultimate tensile strength of cast iron is about 200 megapascals (MPa), so we can use a simple formula to figure out how many players would be needed to break one.

\[ \text{People required}=\frac{\pi\times\left(\tfrac{1}{4}\text{ inch} \right )^2\times200\text{ MPa}}{102.5\text{ kg}/\text{person}}\approx25\text{ people} \]

Two teams of 25 people[4]I originally wrote 25 people total, forgetting that two people pulling with 100 units of force each will produce 100 units of tension on the rope, not 200! Thank you for Gordon McDonough for pointing this out. could probably pull a half-inch iron bar apart. An inch-thick iron bar could be torn in half by teams of 101 people,[5]People often play tug-of-war with their dogs. Going by weight alone, 30 humans would probably be about evenly matched against 101 dalmatians. and a 2-inch-diameter bar would need over 400. It's hard to have a tug-of-war with something thicker than about 2 inches. Since you're not allowed to install handles on the rope,[6]Or wrap it around your hand, for reasons which will become clear if you read some of the articles on tug-of-war injuries. it has to be narrow enough to grip easily.

While "400 people" may be the limit for plain iron bars, there are much stronger substances out there. Common types of steel, for example, have a tensile strength about 10 times that of cast iron. Common half-inch rebar, for example, would in theory take teams of over 200 people to pull apart, compared to 25 for cast iron. Other substances are even stronger; a half-inch shaft made from high-grade steel or a polymer like Kevlar (or, theoretically, a solid silicon crystal) could handle the pulling force from teams of anywhere between 500 and 800 competitive tug-of-war players.

If we limit ourselves to a two-inch diameter rope, which seems to be about the maximum size for tug-of-wars,[7](William Safire returns from the grave to point out that it should really be tugs-of-war.) then the maximum number of tug-of-war players given a super-strong rope like Kevlar is in the neighborhood of 10,000.[8]Or several times that many, if they're not very athletic.

If we figured out how to manufacture large ropes out of graphene ribbons, which have tensile strengths over 10 times higher than existing materials, we could theoretically support a tug-of-war between teams of up to 100,000 players each. Such a rope would be over 200 miles long, and could stretch from New York to Washington.

If our experience with nylon ropes failing is any indication, when the graphene finally snapped, the death toll could be enormous among both players and bystanders. Lengths of graphene would crack across the landscape like bullwhips, slicing down forests and demolishing buildings.

In the end, trying to develop stronger ropes leads only to greater danger to everyone, both participants and bystanders. In the ultimate game of tug-of-war ...

... the only winning move is not to pull.

Training for the 2016 Summer Olympics

These red pandas at a Japanese zoo are very, very interested in the apples and grapes their caretaker has brought them.

(more…)

Lake Cingino in the Italian Alps has a near-vertical dam that attracts ibex herds, who climb out on the dam hundred of feet up to lick minerals from the rocks. More acrophobia-inducing footage below: Read the rest

Yes, there’s already a meme.

Have you heard? The upcoming Ghostbusters reboot will feature women in the lead roles. Men who hate women seem to be taking the news hard.

And nowhere do they seem to be taking it harder than on MGTOW HQ, a forum devoted to men who are “Going Their Own Way” from women by talking about how much they suck online all day every day.

The assembled MGTOWers have not only determined that the movie will suck but have also figured out why.

So here are the Top 3 Reasons the New All-Female Ghostbusters Will Suck According to a Bunch of Guys Who Hate Women:

1) Because women can’t invent things.

As some dude calling himself TheShaman writes:

Obviously its not gonna be a team of women who created the technology to be ghostbusters- women don’t create anything nowadays except thugspawns and epic fails.

2) Because women are a bunch of copycats.

Mongolking explains:

Your movie’s a gimmick because men did it first. …

[H]ow often do women ever take a risk and do something different that was a success?

Everything they celebrate – from getting the vote, to being elected politicians, to becoming clergy, to going to college, to getting on company boards, to winning Nobel prizes – men had not only done first, they created it out of nothing.

So now we have a group of low ambition women wanting to feminise “Ghostbusters”. That’s the very definition of “uninteresting”.

3) Because everyone knows that women are scared of ghosts. And mice.

TheShaman again:

Women are usually the ones screaming ABOUT ghosts- In an already outlandish plot, we’re now expected to suspend our sense of disbelief to the extent that the very segment of the population that is usually victimized BY ghosts is going to “protect us?” Hell, anything to do with ____BUSTING, whether it be rodent busting, bug busting, etc- its done on the whim of a women who is terrified of whatever it is she wants to eradicate!

Unless the proton packs in the new movie are activated by women pissing themselves in fear, I can’t imagine me enjoying anything out of this new movie.

PhilosopherStoned adds:

I’m not going to suspend disbelief and say that a gender that will jump on a chair when they see a mouse will all of a sudden not only fight ghosts, but have the initiative to start a company that does so. For a movie that where guys trap ghosts in machines, an all female crew just does not seem plausible.

So a 100-foot-tall Stay Puft marshmallow man that is an incarnation of a Sumerian god is the epitome of plausibility, but the idea of women actually starting a company is beyond the pale?

H/T — VforVanarchy on Reddit’s GamerGhazi subreddit, who found the meme I used to illustrate this post on Twitter