Cary

Most of my friends are the sort of people who collect tools. You probably know folks like this. Maybe you are one, in which case we should hang out so I can use your stuff.

In the time of our ancestors, it was much more difficult to get ahold of specialty tools. If you ran into a job that needed a very obscure industrial tool, you would have to make that tool, or you’d have to head to a local machine shop, where some Actual Adults With Jobs would do the work for you at great expense. Nowadays, you just go on AliExpress and type in “least flammable ultrasonic cleaner.”

This is a big disappointment. We’ve lost that sense of community and making-do. Also, because those machine shops of yore used to contain people who would tell you that what you are doing is stupid. My dad would show up with a stuck bolt in a control arm, and they’d gently explain the concept of “lefty loosey, righty tighty” to him while pulling it out without a problem, right there in the parking lot.

Without this support network, I have thrown myself way into the deep end using an expensive-but-not-expensive-enough tool more times than I can count. Great-Grandpappy Switch, in his time, wouldn’t have even imagined that things like “inverter welders” and “home CNC-operated laser cutters” could possibly exist, but he also had very strong opinions about the Moon.

I wish I could tell you that I had a solution, that I’ve lured know-it-all machinists away from their high-paying jobs making space stations and space motions and forced them to man little info booths in your neighbourhood. That’s not the case. What is the case is that all of us are going to have to become experts who won’t fall back on the latest “surely this will fix my problem” gewgaws and doodads. And the best way for that to start is for you to send me your tools. For instance, I could really use a drill press right around now. I totally fucked up the bolt on this control arm.

vintascope:

somethingusefulfromflorida:

geologyin-blog:

“Yooperlite” on Lake Superior! These rocks are sodalite in syenite and the sodalite part glows when a long wave UV light is shined onto them! Hunting these is so much fun!!

📽️ By: Thecrystalcollector

Bryan Major

This looks like a meteor that fell from space and delivered an apocalyptic alien lifeform to a small midwestern town in the 1950s (and then remade in the 1980s)

pyrrhiccomedy:

I grew up in Maine and I don’t think it shows much except for how I get about blueberries. you guys they’re good. I swear they’re good. I know you’ve never had a good blueberry before, I know you think they’re mushy and flavorless and kind of sickly-sour, because that’s the kind of blueberries you get in the grocery store. those aren’t real blueberries. Real blueberries are much smaller and you pick them right off a bush and they are the most divine flavor. nothing “blueberry-flavored!” tastes anything like blueberries. you have never had a blueberry before maybe. you need to understand. you need to understand

I’m glad my words are reaching the good people in the berry-picking fandom

pyrrhiccomedy:

I don’t talk about it much but I do work at Google and I just want to contribute, as a small addendum to the wider conversation about AI, and how much it sucks, and how stupid it is, and how if you make garlic oil like it tells you to you will give botulism to your entire family -

we don’t use it.

like internally. we don’t use it.

I mean that we don’t use it for anything. because we know it’s years away from being better than human judgment in basically any way. sometimes they try to encourage us to use it, for low stakes things, like drafting an e-mail or something. and mostly we don’t.

we are the ones MAKING AI and SELLING AI and we don’t actually use AI because we know it sucks.

stocks are up through so that’s something

depsidase:

jensik:

personal-scientist:

draconym:

themaishi:

draconym:

Mutualistic pairs for an “Odd Couples” Valentine’s program at my work. (Why do so many of my big work projects revolve around Valentine’s programs?)

Also, by “sea bugs,” I obviously meant “gnathiid isopod larvae.”

The himan one is not as good as the rest

If you mean the mutualism between humans and honeyguides, I respectfully disagree. Human/honeyguide mutualism is one of the most sophisticated interspecies relationships in the animal kingdom.

While humans have domesticated many other animals for their labor, the honeyguide remains entirely wild while electing to partner up with humans. Both humans and honeyguides have each developed specific calls to signal to one another that they are on the hunt, and these calls greatly increase the likelihood of success. According to this paper:

The production of this sound increased the probability of being guided by a honeyguide from about 33 to 66% and the overall probability of thus finding a bees’ nest from 17 to 54%, as compared with other animal or human sounds of similar amplitude.

That’s fucking bonkers, you guys!!! There are people out there who over the course of human history have created a sound to communicate with birds, and the birds themselves have a Human Call they use to communicate with us. There is no other wild animal you can just make noises at and immediately communicate that you want it to come help you!!!

What’s more, many scientists consider this relationship more exploitative on the honeyguide’s end than on our end! That’s unprecedented!! These birds have essentially negotiated a trade deal with humanity!!!! This is the stuff of fantasy movies, except it’s real.

Here’s an article from The Guardian about the broader implications of this kind of relationship with wild animals. It’s a good read:

Apart from with our gut bacteria, we humans don’t really have any mutualistic relationships with other creatures. There is no special tune that we can sing to magically attract nearby hedgehogs into our gardens to feast on slugs. There will never be a special wink that fishermen can offer otters, encouraging them to catch fish that we might then de-bone for them, in return for some of the catch. The world is poorer for this.

OKAY BUT the noise we make at honeyguides is one of my favorite noises there is, and if y’all haven’t heard the “BRRR-HM?” call that hunters use to summon honeyguides you are SERIOUSLY missing out.

There’s an audio clip on the Audobon Society’s article about them [link]

Today I learned that a species of bird has domesticated humans.

augustheart:

ALT

ALT

i’m crying rn…. the fucking Torta…..

tiktoks-for-tired-tots:

millenniallust4death:

xn3city:

millenniallust4death:

millenniallust4death:

I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️

Reblog to have your dashboard be visited by the spirit of joy that death can end but not erase.

Thank you to everyone who commented in their tags or messaged me. Indeed, today is “Martin and Bosco Day”. I originally whimsically blazed this photo on 13 July 2022. I never expected Martin and Bosco to travel so far and make so many new friends. The experience has been such a gift for me.

snommelp:

jadewolf-writes:

jadewolf-writes:

wheelie-sick:

“oh, I live in a desert and-”

“wow that must be so terrible” “deserts are so ugly” “I would never want to live in a wasteland like that” “it’s just empty nothingness”

wishing 10,000 exploding hammers upon you

behold New Mexico

[ID 1: tall, snowcapped rocky mountains rising above a plain filled with desert scrub

ID 2: brightly colored banded cliff walls of several mesas climbing their way into mountains

ID 3: a desert prairie

ID 4: colorful hoodoos against a twilight sky

ID 5: white sand dunes as far as the eye can see

ID 6: a collection of hoodoos against a stormy sky at sunset

ID 7: a juniper tree standing with a cliff wall in the background

ID 8: several juniper trees on a rocky landscape]

And the Mojave!

No, wait. I’m not done. I love the desert too much.

Have some Utah! too.

And those last two should be a reminder that humans have been living and thriving in the desert for thousands of years!

My beloved Sonoran Desert

sufficientlylargen:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

marzipanandminutiae:

shredsandpatches:

upennmanuscripts:

theprofessional-amateur:

upennmanuscripts:

sighinastorm:

upennmanuscripts:

confidential to our Tumblr followers, we love you the most.

Reeeeeee, why AREN’T you wearing gloves? Digitization does not obviate physical preservation.

Gloves are not best practice for handling rare books! We follow the guidelines followed also by the Smithsonian Institution and the British Library among many others.

Basically there are very few instances where we might wear gloves, and it would probably be to protect us (in the case of, for example, bindings made with arsenic) and not to protect books.

Photographs and museum artifacts have different rules around gloves! But we only handle books on our channel.

Read more here and also here.

I made this a few years ago and stand by it

Signed, an archivist

YES THIS!!! I LOVE IT!!!!

There’s also this useful flow chart!

I had to wear gloves exactly one (1) time in library school and it was to handle magnetic tape reels.

it’s clean, dry hands for textiles, too, in my experience. for very similar reasons- gloves can impede fine motor control, which could result in accidental damage. also, touch goes a long way towards identifying blended fabrics or those that might otherwise be uncertain by appearance alone

as someone who seldom works with documents and more often with other collections objects, I’ve really only had to wear gloves when handling metal or leather. and my orgs tend to use nitrile gloves more than cotton, anyway

(interestingly, I’ve been told in the past that photos of me holding certain objects aren’t suitable for our Instagram because I’m not wearing gloves. even when it’s an object for which bare hands are Best Practice, just because the public expects gloves and will freak out. Reality Is Unrealistic.)

Will mickey mouse just be shot dead on sight if he enters the archives or

I misread the flowchart

I like the way the flowchart suggests that it’s ok to handle rare books with gloves on if you’re also currently performing a medical procedure.

“Scalpel.” I say. The surgical tech hands me the scalpel, and I make three tiny, precise incisions in the patient’s left kidney.

“Tome.” I say, and the tech holds up the ancient book, bound in unidentifiable leather. I carefully turn the pages with one viscera-stained glove until I reach the spell I’m looking for, and I begin my dark work.

oldshowbiz:

The Penguin, a midcentury diner, as seen in L.A. Takedown aka Made in L.A. aka Corrupcion Los Angeles aka Showdown in L.A.

petermorwood:

wizard-at-large:

typing up all my spells on my keyborb

That’s AI. This is real.

It’s the Hansen Writing Ball from 1865-70. More here.

Back at the beginning of mechanical writing and before QWERTY, nobody knew what a keyboard layout should look like and the Hansen is one example of “maybe like this?”

Here are a few others, some more familiar, some less.

The dial-letter-and-push mechanisms eventually got downgraded to toys, with their “real typewriter” appearance no more than a printed picture…

…while other toys were real typewriters in miniature.

My sister had the Lilliput typer on the left, whose metal casing and chassis even gave a realistic weight (good or bad depended on how far she had to carry it) while the Petite typer on the right had a TV ad which parodied one for British Airways (!)

Here they are; watch in order for best effect. :->

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Cuba neutralizes new terrorist plan from the U.S.

By Alejandra Garcia

Cuba thwarted the attempts of a network of Cubans living in the United States who were trying to enter the island illegally with weapons, with the purpose of starting a social outbreak. This week the Ministry of the Interior (Minint) disclosed details of a recruitment plan, neutralized in December 2023, directed from U.S. territory, to promote and organize terrorist actions in Cuba.

zzoupz:

trans-girl-nausicaa:

HOUSTON — Eating becomes more difficult when the power is out.

Ovens, refrigerators, microwaves, and electric stove tops become obsolete. L. Myra Gainous’ shopping cart displayed that at an H-E-B grocery store Friday afternoon. As the 83-year-old Houstonian left the store, her cart was stocked with chips, bread and fruit snacks — food she can eat until her electricity returns.

[Beryl power outage updates: About 777,000 Texans remain without power]

Gainous is one of nearly 1 million customers still living without power five days after Hurricane Beryl walloped the Texas’ Gulf Coast. The largest concentration of customers without power remains in Harris County, the nation’s third most populous county.

CenterPoint, the Houston-based electric utility that serves Harris and other surrounding counties, reported about 820,000 customers still did not have power Friday afternoon. And the company is scurrying to restore power across the area. Many of those customers may have to wait until next week to be reconnected.

“CenterPoint is the one that’s charging us,” Gainous said bluntly, “so they need to fix something quick.”

CenterPoint’s pace for restoring power has been faster than in recent storms. Yet, the Texas summer heat — the region is under a heat advisory by the National Weather Service — coupled with poor communication from the utility company is bringing tension to a boil.

Some are getting creative: A mural under Interstate 10 and shared on social media read “CenterPointle$.”

In other cases, customer frustration has turned violent. A man in Fort Bend County has been charged with pulling a BB or airsoft gun on a CenterPoint worker evaluating the area, ABC 13 reported.

“People are angry at the situation and the heat just by nature makes us all more frustrated and the tempers run higher, but these folks are here just to help us," said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, addressing the violence during a news conference. “And they’re working very hard for us, and very quickly for us, these linemen. So please please do not take it out on them.”

And state Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Cypress Republican, wrote on social media that a CenterPoint staging site had received a threat of a drive-by shooting and had to relocate. CenterPoint confirmed the threat, saying that the site is now only being used to store materials. The Houston Police Department reported that a security guard learned about the threat second-hand, which was made due to the ongoing power outages. CenterPoint called the violent conduct “counter-productive” to getting the power back on.

The company had to evacuate over 100 lineworkers from a substation after shots were fired at their crews on Saturday morning, CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells said in a social media video. The individual responsible was promptly arrested, according to Wells.

“This is unacceptable,” Wells said in that video. “The safety of our crews is paramount.”

Not all residents are prepared to point the finger at CenterPoint. Many of the outages were caused by trees on private property falling on power lines, CenterPoint said. That point hasn’t slipped Houston resident Alex Paredes’ mind. Paredes says that the responsibility falls on everyone, noting that officials are not incharge of trees on personal property that are overlooking power lines.

“I think homeowners bear some kind of responsibility as far as trees overlooking the power lines,” Paredes said. “No city officials are in charge of that.”

CenterPoint said in a press release that they have had tree crews working on lines “as soon as it was safe to go out after the hurricane passed.” CenterPoint maintains they are dedicated to restoring power across their customer-base.

“We are encouraged by the tremendous progress we have made as we track ahead of our restoration expectations. We are not going to stop until every impacted customer is back online,” said Lynnae Wilson, a CenterPoint Senior Vice President of Electric Business.

Conflict has only been exacerbated by blundered communications during the early days of the disaster. Two days into the outages and there was still no timeline on when power would be back. And the CenterPoint utilities map hadn’t worked since May, with Houstonians turning to a map of opened and closed Whataburgers to see where electricity was flowing.

Elected officials have also expressed frustration with the utility, calling the persistent outages unacceptable. Gov. Greg Abbott told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday that he wants the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates electricity in the state, to do a study on why the outages are lasting so long. He said that will include a look at whether staffing issues or flaws in the infrastructure were culprits. Abbott’s office did not respond to requests from The Texas Tribune for more information about what such an inquiry will entail.

Nim Kidd, the Texas Division of Emergency Management chief, said it will be up to the PUC to determine "whatever fines, fees or regulations” CenterPoint should face. The utility appeared before the PUC on Thursday, but regulators didn’t mention any potential fines — or rules that the utility may have violated. Commission Chair Thomas Gleeson told the company it needs to better communicate with customers — but didn't criticize its pace or staffing levels.

At that same meeting, CenterPoint updated regulators on its progress restoring power to millions of people over a wide swath of land that was battered by hurricane-force winds.

“We have never restored more than a million customers a little over two days after a hurricane before and you can only do that with significant readiness,” Jason Ryan, the company’s executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs, told state regulators.

Big news: director and screenwriter Richard Linklater; NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher; U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California; and Luci Baines Johnson will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/12/texans-angry-at-centerpoint-energy-power-outage-beryl/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

captain-price-unofficially:

damnpharos:

saintjosie:

rural-panoptes:

stupid-lemon-eater:

new reaction image

lacrimalis:

girlfromthenorthcountry:

He’s so real

peak lying on your resume behavior

unashamedly-enthusiastic:

recklesslyinfatuated2:

mutant-distraction:

There’s a damn good story here.

It’s the flip flop that’s turned into an anklet that really makes it for me

trollprincess:

A toast! To Shelley Duvall. May she spend at least part of eternity tormenting Stanley Kubrick as much if not more than he did to her during the filming of “The Shining.”

pomrania:

knighthawkchapter:

beardedmrbean:

chino1moreno

This person is too good to do this for free.

I mean, stop motion animation is always impressive in the abstract; but it’s even MORE impressive (at least to me) when we can see the person’s hand holding the figure, and the figure is a poseable toy much like stuff I’ve played with as a child, and it’s all taking place in what seems to be someone’s home; that removes the distance of “oh film artists can do a lot of cool things” with its abstract respect, and brings it into the realm of “WOW this is a thing that real people are somehow able to do, with a lot of work”.

antiterfbutch:

xvnot15:

mysharona1987:

This is why fat shaming can have tragic consequences.

My policy for the past couple of years is to go into the Doctor and state my symptoms. Then tell the Doctor. “STOP”  “I want your diagnosis and treatnment options for someone weighing 135 pounds.”  When they try to argue and immediately START with weight, I firmly reiterate they are to diagnose me as if I were 135 pounds. Eventually most grudgingly will think about it and answer me. I’ll allow them then to “triumphantly” go on to dismiss their previous diagnosis and pin everything on my weight. 

Then I point out I have been the same weight for 15 years and these symptoms are sudden and new. My weight is no factor in that. Give me the tests and treatment you first mentioned.

This is how they discovered a large fibroid that needed to be removed. From stories I’ve heard from others, if I hadn’t approached it this way it might have taken me years of pain and discomfort before they might have finally discovered the fibroid and treated it.

Just remember;

DEMAND A DIAGNOSIS FOR THE SAME SYMPTOMS FOR A PERFECT BMI FOR YOUR HEIGHT FIRST!!!

There are so many stories of fat people dying from perfectly treatable medical conditions that were ignored because of their weight, it is legitimately terrifying to me. It actually keeps me up at night. I can’t wait for the day fat people start suing for medical neglect.

bloody-monstrous-wolf:

murderandjam:

spooniestrong:

spoonie-living:

Just a little PSA for all our mental health (and chronic pain*) spoonies out there! A lot of doctors neglect to mention this little side effect, which means a lot of us are suffering extra from the heat without knowing why.

*Many psych meds are used to treat chronic pain as well, if you didn’t know!

What?!

steampunktendencies:

Old Pencil Sharpener in Action

feminist-space:

ALT

dropoutdottv:

smartypantsshow:

Fact: The bald eagle is a CHODE.

No she’s right. Cicadas spend their entire lives beneath people who they vastly outnumber but who hold power over the environment, and if they’re luck enough to get one chance to see freedom in any given 5-20 year period, they’re almost instantly consumed before having a chance to enjoy it.

And for those lucky enough to have children, they’re just buried back down deeper than before to start the whole thing over again. Each time they come out screaming and all anyone has to say about it is, “wow I hate them.” Truly, cicadas are the USAmerican way of life.