Hpecker

anonymous asked: All this racist shit over a black Johnny Storm is hurting my insides.

Dear Nerds: If you’re getting upset that fucking Hollywood is too diverse for you, you need to have a long, hard look at the inherent racism of your racist-ass medium.

In 1730 Stephen Gray found that an orphan suspended by insulating silk cords could hold an electrostatic charge and attract small objects.

In 1845, C.H.D. Buys Ballot tested the Doppler effect by arranging for an orchestra of trumpeters to play a single sustained note on an open railroad car passing through Utrecht.

In 1746 Jean-Antoine Nollet arranged 200 Carthusian monks in a circle, each linked to his neighbor with an iron wire. Then he connected the circuit to a rudimentary electric battery.

“It is singular,” he noted, “to see the multitude of different gestures, and to hear the instantaneous exclamation of those surprised by the shock.”

• SWARTHMORE is an anagram of EARTHWORMS.
• The sum of the reciprocals of the divisors of any perfect number is 2.
• We recite at a play and play at a recital.
• Is sawhorse the past tense of seahorse?
• “Things ’twas hard to bear ’tis pleasant to recall.” — Seneca

In Book II, Chapter 9, of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, a sentence begins “For a time I stood regarding …” These words contain 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, and 9 letters.

(Thanks, Dheeraj.)

A “poem for stutterers” by Harry Mathews:

Mimi, our hours so social shall secede;
And answer surlily tie-tidied deed.

And a sentence composed by Leigh Mercer:

“Bye-bye, Lulu,” Fifi murmured, “George Orr pooh-poohs so-so Tartar cocoa beriberi Dodo had had.”

via charamander

Great school.

anonymous asked: are there degrees of racism?

YEAH IT’S CALLED AN MBA LOL

This isn't a real post. I'm going to post the real post tomorrow. But it feels like there should be some sort of intermediate thing to prepare everyone for the abrupt change of speed ahead.

Here's a picture of an airplane.

I realize that airplanes don't look like that, but this has been a hard year for me and learning how to draw planes accurately wasn't exactly a priority. I maybe could have chosen to draw something else, but I started drawing the plane, and there was already too much momentum.

Anyway, I feel like this is becoming way more about planes than I had anticipated. Let's move on.

If, at any point over the last eighteen months, you've wondered what was happening to me and why it might be happening, my post tomorrow should explain everything.

I've been working on it for the better part of a year (partly because I wanted to get it exactly right, and partly because I was still experiencing it while attempting to explain it, which made things weird), and I'm relieved and excited and scared to finally be able to post it.

At this point, you're all probably wondering what is it? What's in the post?? Is it airplanes? And no, it unfortunately has very little to do with airplanes.* It's a sort of sequel to my post about depression. It is also about depression. In parts, it might get a little flinch-y and uncomfortable, and if I succeed in making you laugh during those parts, you're going to feel real weird about yourselves. But it's okay. Just let it happen. I WANT it to happen. Because it makes me feel powerful, and also because there are flinch-y, uncomfortable things everywhere. Seeing them is inevitable. If we can laugh about some of them, maybe they'll be less scary to look at.

Okay, so that's what's going to happen tomorrow. Hopefully this transition post makes the experience less jarring for everyone.

*As it turns out, there is a plane. I had forgotten about it (it's small and not the main focus of the post) and the coincidence was entirely unintentional. I'd never tell you there aren't going to be planes while being fully aware that there's a plane.

propublica:

Federal data released for the first time shows the wildly different amounts hospitals are charging Medicare to perform the same procedure.

See how hospitals near you are charging with this New York Times interactive.

This chart from the Washington Post lets you compare the highest and lowest averages in your state. 

How Stairs Work

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Swords in the ancient Middle East were made of a substance called Damascus steel, which was noted for its distinctive wavy pattern and famed for producing light, strong, and flexible blades. No one knows how it was made.

In defending Constantinople against the Muslims, the Byzantine Empire used something called “Greek fire,” an incendiary substance that was flung at the enemy’s ships and that burned all the more fiercely when wet. But precisely what it was, and how it was made, have been forgotten.

(Thanks, Mike.)

Lyssophobia is fear of hydrophobia.

isomorphismes:

Population distribution of the United States in units of Canadas.

I tried making the new slang for that “yo, that dogg is looking bowflex as hell these days,” but it never caught on.

:-(

anonymous asked: Yo, FUCK THE POLICE! No, it’s cool, I can say that… some of my best friends are cops.

LOL BOOM

A Breakdown of Color in Film Stills

via Kurt White

anonymous asked: The Washington Redskins may become the Washington Redtails. Sounds a little too good to be true, right?

That is significantly going to impact my potato themed parody shirt, :-(

Are the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisks Violating the Constitution?

SENSUOUSNESSES is a circular palindrome — when written in a circle, it can be read both clockwise and counterclockwise.

Apropos of Eskimo, I once heard a missionary describe the extraordinary difficulty he had found in translating the Bible into Eskimo. It was useless to talk of corn or wine to a people who did not know even what they meant, so he had to use equivalents within their powers of comprehension. Thus in the Eskimo version of the Scriptures the miracle of Cana of Galilee is described as turning the water into blubber; the 8th verse of the 5th chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter ran: ‘Your adversary the devil, as a roaring Polar bear walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ In the same way ‘A land flowing with milk and honey’ became ‘A land flowing with whale’s blubber,’ and throughout the New Testament the words ‘Lamb of God’ had to be translated ‘little Seal of God,’ as the nearest possible equivalent. The missionary added that his converts had the lowest opinion of Jonah for not having utilised his exceptional opportunities by killing and eating the whale.

– Lord Frederic Hamiliton, The Days Before Yesterday, 1920

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poorlydrawnlines.com


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poorlydrawnlines.com


poorlydrawnlines.com


poorlydrawnlines.com


poorlydrawnlines.com

nevver:

Poorly Drawn Lines

anonymous asked: I think Ann Coulter has stupid hair. And ideas. But also hair.

Yeah, but mainly, let’s stop judging women, even evil, horrible, 100% asshole racists like Ann Coulter, in terms of their looks.

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Image: Wikipedia

Michael Craig-Martin’s 1973 conceptual artwork An Oak Tree presents a glass of water with a plaque explaining that it’s a tree — not symbolically but literally: “The actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water.”

This is a comment on transubstantiation and, by extension, on the patron’s faith in an artist’s presentation of his work, but it backfired: When the National Gallery of Australia bought the piece in 1977, customs officials barred it as “vegetation.”

This is how News Corporation is spinning off a new company and calling it News Corporation