Oakfairy

thatbadadvice:

Dear Abby, 10 November 2014:

DEAR ABBY: May I have some advice about a touchy subject? One of my boyfriend’s close friends is going through his third bout with cancer and the prognosis is not good. He is married with a healthy 3-year-old son. So imagine our surprise when his wife announced she’s pregnant. This is a decision we do not support. I don’t know what they’re thinking, but if you are facing the reality that your spouse will not be around much longer, we don’t feel it is wise to bring another child into the world who will never know his or her father. Some of her close friends want to throw her a “sprinkle,” and although I am only an acquaintance, I have been invited. How do I handle this? Should I attend and keep my thoughts to myself, decline and/or send a small gift in my absence? I have a hard time making small talk about subjects I don’t agree with. Did I mention she does nothing but complain about how hard her life is now? I’m afraid if I go and get involved, I’ll be on the hook down the road when she wants to complain about how hard it is to raise two children alone. — ISN’T MY CHOICE

Dear Isn’t My Choice,

My heart goes out to you in this difficult time. How crushing it must be to deal with the fact that another human being made a decision to carry a pregnancy to term without your express permission.

What a terrible situation your boyfriend’s thoughtless, probably dying friend has put you in; not only must you disapprove of what this likely widow has decided to do with her uterus, but you must listen to her bitching and moaning about how difficult it is to watch her husband stare death in the face as they try to raise a family together with what little time he may have left on this mortal plane.

This says a great deal about what this douchebag couple’s dumb priorities are—ignorantly doing what they think is best for their family—and what they should be: making sure a near-stranger gives the thumbs-up before a dude with cancer has a kid.

It isn’t your choice, Isn’t My Choice, but it should be. That’s what’s so terribly unfair about this whole situation: here’s a guy in the prime of his life who’s had three run-ins with cancer while trying to raise a family with what’s left of his time on planet earth, and he fails to put your feelings about it first.

The universe has been unduly cruel to you, Isn’t My Choice. But this couple, who are clearly just having a load of bullshit children to piss you, specifically, off, will never understand the depths of the pain they’ve put you through.

(And I loved that the labels were: Filed under death dear abby assholes assholery buttbags buttbaggery bad advice holy shit reproductive health pro-choice leave other people the fuck alone about their reproductive health care decisions cancer dying childrenchildrearing parenting incredible edible douchebags what in the actual fuck happens to people to make them say and do things like this)

vbartilucci:

'It’s actually only since I took over that we have said it’s actually possible within the logic of the show.'

This is a good conversation.  But this bit may raise an eyebrow or two - 

He adds: “The very first lines I wrote were Matt Smith checking if he had become a girl and then I put some dialogue in The Doctor’s Wife about it and in Night of the Doctor.

Did Steven Moffat just steal credit for The Corsair sometime being female from Neil Gaiman?

I’m REALLY hoping Neil chimes in on that.

Well, the lines about the Corsair sometimes being female were mine (I was nervous, because I thought Steven might cut them), but he actually went in and buttressed them up — the “Oh she was a bad girl” line was his, to make sure people got it. I don’t think he’s stealing credit at all. After all, Matt checking to see if he was a girl in the Eleventh Hour was where I got the idea.

Like a lot of people, I watched the Orion mission last Friday. I missed the launch (time zones reared their sleepy head), unfortunately. But I did see most of the mission—the capsule completing its first orbit, getting boosted to its second, much higher orbit, then falling back to Earth for a safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Baja California.

Twitter was bursting with live commentary, and nearly every person I follow was breathlessly excited about the achievement.

I myself… well, I wasn’t. Despite the mission going nearly flawlessly, I watched the whole thing with serious misgivings.

I can’t help it. After reading quite a bit about Orion, and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket planned to take it into space in the coming years, I have come to an unhappy conclusion: Both are almost certainly the wrong direction for NASA.

Don’t get me wrong: I want us to go to the Moon, and eventually to Mars. I’ve written about this countless times. But I don’t think SLS is the way to get there.

The cost is a major factor—it’s underfunded, and likely to hobble NASA unless the White House and Congress give a lot more money to the agency—and the politics involved on a more detailed level are very likely to ensure cost overruns and scheduling delays. And even then, I’m just unconvinced that we really need this rocket that will cost many tens of billions of dollars, when far less expensive alternatives are possible.

Orion is figuratively and literally attached to SLS, and carries many of the same problems. Plus, I don’t think building these rockets and capsules is what NASA itself should be doing, anyway.

I’m not just blowing off steam here; I have plenty of evidence, as well as corroboration from ex-NASA personnel and other space experts who are even more skeptical of SLS and Orion than I am.

I put all this together in an article for Slate. Please go read that, and think carefully on it.

This brings me no joy at all to write this. None. I want NASA to be the can-do forward-thinking agency I knew as a kid, the one that put humanity on the Moon and would soon have us kicking up the rusty dust on Mars. I worked at a NASA research center for many years, and I’ve seen the heights the people involved can reach, and the stultifying politics that in so many cases has prevented them from doing so.

I know what NASA can do when it’s allowed to, and that’s why I wrote that article. Not to hold NASA down, but to make sure it has the chance to free itself so we can reach for the stars.

I know that future is possible. We just have to take one small step… but it has to be in the right direction.

mostlysignssomeportents:

Polish jeweler Mage Studio offers a wide variety of extraordinary accessories made from polyhedral dice, a gamer’s accessory that has become very ornamental in nature, perfectly complementing pieces like: the dragon/D20 necklace, the D12 cufflinks, and this pendant D20 necklace.

Read the rest…

digg:

They grow up so fast!! (via)

[video]

[Meghan McCarthy]

[reddit]

joilieder:

Spidercats in training.

This might very well be the world’s cutest and most awesome dog costumes ever. This was for this year’s Halloween.

Want to see what the owner did last year? Check it out.

OMG.

[Source: tomato_sauce on Reddit | Via]

[Source Business Cat – Happy Jar]

I slutet av 2012 introducerade ryska tillverkaren Yota Devices sin ovanliga mobil YotaPhone. Nu har företaget meddelat att uppföljaren YotaPhone 2 börjar säljas i Europa i december. Telefonen har dubbla skärmar: en på framsidan och en på baksidan.

Främre panelen skyddas av Corning Gorilla Glass 3 och är fem tum stor, med AMOLED-teknik och 1920 x 1080 pixlar. Det intressanta med YotaPhone 2 är att på baksidan sitter även en 4,7-tumsskärm med elektroniskt papper (960 x 540 pixlar).

Skärmen är av samma typ som är vanlig för exempelvis e-boksläsare. Bakre panelen är alltid på och kan visa väderinformation, tid och datum eller aviseringar. Om du är på utflykt och börjar få slut på batteri kan du välja att exempelvis lägga en permanent karta på bakre skärmen. Även skärmen av e-papper skyddas av Gorilla Glass 3.

Om endast e-pappersskärmen utnyttjas i ett särskilt läsarläge sägs YotaPhone 2 erbjuda fem dagars batteritid. Specifikationsbladet nämner Android 4.4, Snapdragon 800, 2GB RAM, 32GB lagring, en 8MP-kamera, främre 2,1MP-kamera och ett 2500mAh-batteri. Konstruktionen mäter 144,9 x 69,4 x 8,95mm och väger 145 gram.

I nuläget saknas definitiv information om svensk lansering, men Sverige går att ange som land i formuläret för de som vill få mejl när YotaPhone 2 blir tillgänglig. Priset verkar preliminärt ligga kring 495 euro.

Inlägget Dubbelskärmade YotaPhone 2 kommer i december dök först upp på Swedroid.

Update (Dec. 3, 2014 at 04:30 UTC): LIFTOFF! The launch went very well, and Hayabusa2 is, as I write this, on its way. It's in orbit, coasting for a little over an hour to get into position to reignite its second stage engine and head off to the asteroid 1999 JU3. I'll post another update when I hear more.

Update 2 (Dec. 3, 2014 at 14:00 UTC): Success! After its orbital cruise phase, the second stage reignited, setting Hayabusa2 on the path toward an asteroid rendezvous in 2018. Congratulations to everyone at JAXA and to asteroid scientists everywhere. Next update: 2015, for the Earth flyby. 

The Japanese space agency JAXA is scheduled to launch a very important mission tonight: The Hayabusa 2 space probe, set to visit the asteroid 1999 JU3. This is a very ambitious mission: It will land on the asteroid, collect samples, deploy three small rovers, and then send the samples back to Earth for study.

And that’s only part of the mission; you can read articles by Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society and Paul Sutherland at Sen for more details.

JAXA will have a live webcast for the launch. (It also has channels on YouTube and Ustream.) I don’t know if other space agencies will carry it, but just in case here are the links for the ESA live feed and NASA’s Ustream channel. If I find out more, I’ll update this post.

Now if you want to watch, pay attention here: The launch is scheduled for 04:22 UTC on Dec. 3, which is 23:22 Eastern U.S. time tonight, Dec. 2. Living on a round planet can be confusing. Remember, launches are frequently delayed (this one already has been from an earlier scheduled date), so check the JAXA news page for updated information.

If you miss the launch, don’t worry overmuch. The asteroid rendezvous isn’t until June 2018 (with an Earth flyby to gain velocity in 2015), so there’s plenty of time to learn about this mission. If it goes as planned, it’ll be amazing.

femsplain:

"It’s Not Ebola, But It’s Something"

Now, that America is over its Ebola fever, at least according to CNN, FOX NEWS, or any other 24 hour news outlet…I feel comfortable committing my tale of hospital woes to beyond short anecdotes to friends and family.

Read more

Weird how EBOLAmania pretty much ceased to exist on November 4th.

French graphic designer Damien Hypolite took it upon himself to travel accross Paris and match printouts of famous locations he took in “Assassin’s Creed: Unity” to their real world versions. As you’ll see, even though the game is set in 18th-century France, the “photos” still match up pretty well!

[Damien Hypolite | Via]

Mom Google is mostly for ‘that one YouTubes with the cute cat doing the funny thing’.

Artwork by Chris Gugliotti [webcomic | tumblr]

All new Frog Shorts over at Runt of the Web! Read it early, click here!

seanbonner:

cah:

The ad was very misleading.

Actually it’s about ethics in bullshit marketing.

blogdogz:

hangingoutwithdogs:

and we’re back.

BREAKING NEWS: Officials are still searching for where that fucking ball went. Sources say that they totally saw Jeff throw it so it has to be somewhere. We’ll keep you updated as events unfold.

(via Cartoon: Black and white)

Did someone just eat the primary buffer panel off my gorram ship?

[Via]

Jonesy’s first snow by Elizabeth Bouras [flickr]

magicalspacetaxi:

unexplained-events:

The President

The 3200 year old tree so massive that it had never been captured in a single image until recently.

This giant sequoia stands 247 feet tall and measures 45,000 cubic feet in volume. The trunk alone measures 27 feet and the branches hold 2 billion needles (more than any tree on the planet).

This picture took a team of photographers from Nat Geo, 32 days and stitching together 126 different photos to make.

SOURCE

i love redwoods because they are at the very limit of what the dynamics of capillary action allows to exist i’m glad an evolutionary niche exists for “THE BIGGEST FUCKIN TREE THAT CAN BE”

[reddit]