Hpecker

In 1982, MIT physicist A.P. French received this letter from a writer in New Rochelle, N.Y.:

Being a safety minded individual I thought I would write you before experimenting on my own. Is it safe to mix Antipasto and Pasta together and could this be a future energy supply?

He responded:

I believe that your thoughtful and interesting suggestion about the mixing of pasta and antipasto deserves some acknowledgment. This process might well be a significant energy source — but only, I think, intragastrically. I estimate that the digestion of 1 lb of the mixture would release energy equivalent to about 0.001 megawatt hours or 0.000001 kilotons of TNT. I would not foresee any unusual hazards.

(From Robert L. Weber, ed., Science With a Smile, 1992.)

That’s pretty good, actually.

Hovertext: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself to be a REAL BOY!

Hovertext: I just wish your sister would settle down one day and emit some self-replicating positronium assemblages.

Artist Jason Shulman has an interesting exhibit this month at London’s Cob Gallery: Photographs of Films condenses the entirety of a given film into a single exposure.

“There are roughly 130,000 frames in a 90-minute film, and every frame of each film is recorded in these photographs,” Shulman says. “You could take all these frames and shuffle them like a deck of cards, and no matter the shuffle, you would end up with the same image I have arrived at. Each of these photographs is the genetic code of a film — its visual DNA.”

Some examples:

Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902):

The Wizard of Oz (1939):

Citizen Kane (1941):

Rear Window (1954):

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968):

The Shining (1980):

More at Shulman’s site. Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto was conducting similar experiments about 20 years ago, and Kevin L. Ferguson has assembled an impressive collection of his own.

Hovertext: Also, you can tell humans from replicants, because a human will literally walk 10 miles to use an elevator instead of stairs.

 I'm doing a guest series over at Drive!

A Quaker objector in the Civil War:

I was ordered out and required to fall in line with the company and drill, but I refused. They tried to make me and I sat down on the ground. They reminded me of the orders to shoot me, but I told them my God said to fear them not that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather to fear him that is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. The company was then ordered to fall back eight paces, leaving me in front of them. They were then ordered by Colonel Kirkland to ‘Load; Present arms; Aim,’ and their guns were pointed directly at my breast. I raised my arms and prayed: ‘Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.’ Not a gun was fired. They lowered them without orders, and some of them were heard to say that they ‘could not shoot such a man.’ The order was then given, ‘Ground arms.’

After weeks of such punishment, William Hockett was captured at Gettysburg and released to live in Philadelphia. He remained there until the end of the war.

During World War I, cable censors would sometimes change a word here and there in a telegram, preserving the meaning but hoping to interfere with any enemy codes the messages might contain.

‘Father is dead,’ ran a cablegram from Sweden to New York which passed through the British censorship.

For some inexplicable reason the censor didn’t like the word ‘dead.’ He changed it to ‘deceased.’

Within a short time this question, sent from New York to Sweden, passed through the hands of the same censor: ‘Is father dead or deceased?’

“What did that word ‘dead’ mean? It might have covered a whole volume of enemy news; it might have provoked a disaster on land or sea. And yet the censor had no better reason for cutting it out than a certain ‘hunch’ which came over him that the word ought to be changed.”

(“Our Dear Friend, the Censor,” American Printer, June 5, 1917.)

“it’s not loaded — we’re hoping satan will be so surprised to see you, that he’ll just do the thing where you kneel, and put your hands on your head. then you can arrest him.”

what if someone tries to perform a citizen’s arrest in a bathroom… but they’re not a citizen? please present a valid US passport to the toilet officer before going poo poo. thank you

Client: Why is this purple? It should be orange!

Me: Yesterday you texted me that you wanted it to be purple

Client: Autocorrect, am I right?

daytimeblogger:

elysedc:

The ultimate dad joke compilation

what a country

I offered him earplugs at a concert and he popped them into his mouth.

the above is a david lynch-ian dream that bill had, an instant before dying on the floor of the saloon

Between 0 and 100.

A guy approached me to do the UI/UX design for his app and website. His startup was about sharing pics of stray animals for adoption and also selling pet-related items. Honestly, it was a pretty good idea, except for one major problem.  

He insisted it be called Petophile.

I did the best I could to warn him of the OBVIOUS problems with this name. His response?

Client: I don’t think most people will think of that.

I turned down the job.

sanzameku:

Here are all the Presidential candidates if they wore sweet ass fingerless gloves

Hovertext: Okay, but this fanny pack is PACKIN' HEAT

SMBC is now 83% jokes about poor fashion choices among aging men. 

When u a Marxist but u fucks w Nintendo

demigaybird:

engrprof:

tiny-with-a-bang:

queennubian:

secretlifeofateenblogger:

I keep forgetting what the differences are in the over the counter pain relievers, so I made a handy chart.

THANK YOU OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As someone who suffers from migraines too often, this is perfect. Please share this helpful chart!!

Also, tylenol is good for nerve pain, like fibromyalgia.

Excedrin is also great for migraines because it contains caffeine, they have a line called Excedrin Migraine, but the original is just as effective

flyartproductions:

DRAKE IS KILLIN IT

The Death of Marat (detail) (1793), Jacques-Louis David / If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Drake

Hovertext: Meanwhile, in the humanities, we would like to see a bit less whimsy.

The post Do it once a year. appeared first on Indexed.

“if he had devoted his entire life to plotting the murder of his neighbor, why is he not plotting his neighbor’s murder right now? he’s merely sitting there, sweating and benignly twitch-smiling”

from a much worse conversation with @RyanHartmanWins

maybe I’m bringing forward Time Racists, I don’t understand how time travel works.

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