Hpecker

When stencil artist DS added his “Bad Kitty” to a London wall in 2012, he was dismayed to find a man removing it only eight hours later.

So he took a photo and used that to create a new stencil on the same spot.

He returned the next day, hoping to get a photo of a man removing a stencil of a man removing a stencil. “I thought it would rip a hole in the space-time continuum or something,” he told the Daily Mail.

But “He came when I was across the road having breakfast, after a while, and having his photo taken next to it lots of times, he left it.”

We know that Sherlock Holmes lived in London — we have this on the authority of Arthur Conan Doyle. But we would resist saying that the residents of London have included Sherlock Holmes. How can the one be true but not the other?

Suppose that Doyle had written a story in which Holmes had had tea with prime minister William Gladstone. Then it would seem correct to say that Holmes had had tea with Gladstone, but wrong to say that William Gladstone had once had tea with Sherlock Holmes. What can we make of this? Can Doyle be wrong about his own character’s actions? Is all fictional discourse false?

We don’t normally regard it so. “If you say that Sherlock Holmes lived in Baker Street I may wager that you are mistaken,” writes philosopher John Woods. “Then, as we all very well know, what you say wins the bet; what I say loses it. … It is an interesting and important curiosity of the affair that [the argument] that Holmes could not have lived in Baker Street because he could not have lived anywhere, he being but fictional, is not automatically, or always, if ever, deemed a satisfactory endorsement of my claim at the expense of yours. The bet is still yours.”

(From The Logic of Fiction, 1974.)

A college professor once offered the following creative final exam: Write a suitable final exam for this course and supply a key. The first paper handed in read ‘Final Exam: Write suitable final exam for this course and supply a key. Key: Any reasonable variation of the previous sentence = 100%.’

– Michael Stueben, Twenty Years Before the Blackboard, 1998

We [Einstein and Ernst Straus] had finished the preparation of a paper and were looking for a paper clip. After opening a lot of drawers we finally found one which turned out to be too badly bent for use. So we were looking for a tool to straighten it. Opening a lot more drawers we came upon a whole box of unused paper clips. Einstein immediately started to shape one of them into a tool to straighten the bent one. When asked what he was doing, he said, ‘Once I am set on a goal, it becomes difficult to deflect me.’

– Ernst Straus, “Memoir,” in A.P. French, ed., Einstein: A Centenary Volume, 1979

(Einstein said to an assistant at Princeton that this was the most characteristic anecdote that could be told of him.)

If a “dog year” is equivalent to seven human years, then time passes seven times more quickly for dogs than for humans. So in 1990 Rodney Metts invented a novelty watch that reflects this by advancing at seven times normal speed. This is a reminder as much to you as to your pet:

If a dog is kept locked in the basement of a house during an eight or nine hour day, for example, while its owner is away, the elapsed time on the dog watch will be 56 to 63 hours, or approximately two and one-half days. A one-hour ride in an automobile will register seven hours on a dog watch. Thus the value in dog time of a human activity will become quickly apparent.

That’s the actual patent figure. Part 10 is “dog.”

Fuck that’s a depressing observation.

jtotheizzoe:

skunkbear:

A couple months ago I shared some GIFs of invisible things, and I finally got around to putting them together in this video:

When light travels through areas of different air density, it bends. You’ve probably noticed the way distant pavement seems to shimmer on a hot day, or the way stars appear to twinkle. You’re seeing light that has been distorted as it passes through varying air densities, which are in turn created by varying temperatures and pressures.

Schlieren Flow Visualization can be used to visually capture these changes in density: the rising heat from a candle, the turbulence around an airplane wing, the plume of a sneeze … even sound.  Special thanks to Mike Hargather, a professor of mechanical engineering at New Mexico Tech, who kindly provided a lot of these videos.

I’m totally Schlieren right now. Amazing sights of sounds.

deathbeforediet:

My hero

I work at a design firm with a couple of other people. I was closing up shop the after a long day on the job and I was very keen to get home. Just as I shut the door, a client from over a year ago ran up.

Client: I need you to edit this logo for a product unveiling tomorrow at noon! Turns out the boss isn’t happy with this one.

Me: Sorry, I’m closing up.

Client: But I’m here!

Me: … and?

Client: You have to help me if I’m here.

As I’m about to compare this situation to a train leaving the station, he interrupts.

Client: I’ll pay you double!

I reluctantly accept. After three hours of work and five revisions of the logo (including what was nearly a complete re-design), I had enough. I told him to go make a coffee, come back, and tell me which version he liked the most.

Client: Yes! That’s it! That’s the one! The boss will love it!

He picked the original logo. But I actually got paid at the promised rate. 

- chrismohney

Even More Evidence Obama Is The World’s Worst Socialist

Social Studies As Taught By The First Ten Pages Of Google Search Results

okkultmotionpictures:

EXCERPTS >|

Tests of Vestibular Function (1925)

We invite you to watch the entire gif set HERE

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Excerpts by OKKULT Motion Pictures: a collection of GIFs excerpted from open source/unknown/rare/controversial moving images. 
A Digital Curation Project for the diffusion of Open Knowledge.

>|

Almost like those motherfuckers are a buncha idiots tho.

What are we trying to pass off as performance art?

I’ll tell u this much… I don’t work here.

David Green, Asshole of the Day for April 2, 2014

by TeaPartyCat (Follow @TeaPartyCat)

Hobby Lobby CEO David Green has become a religious conservative hero for fighting the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. His lawyers have argued that some of the contraception methods required to be covered are abortifacients, meaning they effectively cause abortions, which violates his religion. The Supreme Court is currently deliberating on his case.

But funny thing— it turns out that the very same contraceptive methods he doesn’t want to cover are made by companies his 401K is invested in:

When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, the company’s owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm’s owners cite in their lawsuit.

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company’s owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).

Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby’s health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.

So apparently his religion won’t let him contribute to a plan that allows employees to purchase abortifacients, but it’s just fine with him making money off women not in his employ taking abortifacients.

And of course that’s if you even believe the methods of contraception he doesn’t want to cover are abortifacients— medical science says the drugs in question aren’t abortifacients at all.

So, for insisting on purity in his employees’ subsidized insurance that he doesn’t insist on in their subsidized retirement plan, David Green is the Asshole of the Day.

It is David Green’s first time as Asshole of the Day.

Full story: Mother Jones

The Top-Grossing, Bechdel Test-Passing Movies

There’s probably a big enough asteroid out there that could end racism.

“The Ironwood Collection Of Alpha Moves” is an ebook that promises to teach a married man how to use pickup-artist manipulation to improve his relationship with his wife. I strongly recommend you hit the “Look Inside” link to take a peek into this man’s attempt to cajole his wife into intercourse, but if you can’t stomach reading something that begins with a picture of a fedora, you should at least know that he refers to sex as “nookie.”

You should also know that to “make her panties wet”, you should text your wife, “I want Golden Corral tonight. I’ll meet you there at 7:30. Order me a Coke if you get there first.” A man’s man, you see, always gets a Coke. It is the most alpha of sodas, m’lady.

Palm Reading for Millennials

This Week, Gemma brings us the International Landlubber Code Flags

Everyday Awards — made from stuff in the garbage

Client: Can you change the phone number?

Me: Of course. What number would you like it changed to?

Client: I don’t want the actual number changed, I just want it in lower case.

Me: I’m not sure I understand. Numbers don’t have an upper or lower case. They’re just numbers.

Client: It doesn’t look right. Just make them lower case and get back to me when it’s done.

The client hung up. I continued the work and pretended that conversation never happened. He never mentioned it again after that.