Unusual Volcanic Inactivity: Detected

terrypratchettappreciation:

stupidphototricks:

I think that the Tiffany Aching books, for all of the crazy Nac Mac Feegle antics, have at least as much that hits hard and makes you think as the main Discworld series. It’s crazy that these are children’s books, except really it’s wonderful that there are children’s books like this.

“Ye ken how to be strong, do ye?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Good. D'ye ken how to be weak? Can ye bow to the gale, can ye bend to the storm?”
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“We dinna mourn like ye do, ye ken. We mourn for them that has tae stay behind.”
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
(Actually in large part that’s what we mourn for too)

“Ye’ll find the way if ye tak’ yer time. Just don’t stamp yer foot and expect the world to do yer biddin’.”
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Them as can do has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

She wasn’t being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it.
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

I’ve been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

He just looked like someone who’d been frightened for so long, it had become part of his life, like freckles.
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

But you had to start small, like oak trees.
– Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Truth. And thank you. I’m very proud of these books. They are the most significant publishing I’ve ever been a part of.

inquisitorgrand:

squeakitties:

softlyfiercely:

pervocracy:

dysgraphicprogrammer:

pervocracy:

How to hack any hospital computer

-Use the password taped to the monitor

How to hack any hospital computer (L337 version for advanced security systems)

-Use the password taped to the back of the monitor

As a computer guy: This is what happens when you have too much security. It reaches a tipping point and then suddenly you have none.

Security at the cost of convenience comes at the cost of security.  

This is true of so many things in healthcare.  Example: our software is designed to automatically alert the doctor if a patient’s vital signs are critically out of range.  If someone has a blood pressure of 200/130, the doc gets a pop-up box that they have to acknowledge before doing anything else.  It makes sense, in our setting.

But then some mega-genius upstairs realized something: the system was only alerting for critical vital signs, but not for all vital signs that could possibly be bad.  Like, yeah, 200/130 is potentially life-threatening, but 130/90 is above ideal and can have negative effects on health.  Should the doctors be allowed to just ignore something that could negatively affect a patient’s health?  Heavens no!

So now the system generates a pop-up for any vital signs that are even slightly abnormal.  A pressure of 120/80 (once considered textbook normal, now considered slightly high) will create the pop-up.  We have increased our vigilance!

Well, no, what we’ve actually done is train doctors to click through a constant bombardment of pop-ups without looking.  We’ve destroyed their vigilance and made it much easier for them to accidentally skim past life-threatening vital signs.

But you can’t tell that to management, because you’d have to confess that you are a flawed human with limited attention resources.  They’d tell you “well, all the other doctors take every abnormal vital sign seriously, it sounds like you’re being negligent.”  And if you’re smart, you back down before you start telling the big boss all about your habit of ignoring critical safety alerts.

The end result is exactly the same as if we had no alerts at all, except with more annoying clicking.

this here is an absolutely fascinating overview of how and why this happens

armchair-factotum:

shangheists:

becherdireinen:

bastille is correct. how AM i gonna be an optimist about this?

well if you close your eyes

No good. It almost feels like nothing changed at all

blakbonnet:

as an indian person, my favourite thing is seeing what people who aren’t from here have done with my food; i’ll go to an indian restaurant in a random corner of the world and they’re putting oregano in their palak paneer or a balsamic wash on their naan and it’s like “yes good tell me how you folded your culture into mine and came out with something new and lovely, we’re holding hands across oceans bestie”

fantaboy91:

petermorwood:

authoratmidnight:

hecate-hallow:

authoratmidnight:

thelibrarina:

squeeful:

zarekthelordofthefries:

acceptableduraz:

zarekthelordofthefries:

Not to critique evolution, but I would think orange and black stripes wouldn’t be as good for camouflage in a forest as, say, green and black would.

It turns out a lot of animals can’t see the difference between orange and green!  Elephants, for instance, have dichromatic vision (two types of cones, rather than three like most humans.) 

Check out this diagram from ResearchGate.  It deals with the color vision of horses, who are also generally dichromatic.  (I think, though I’m not sure, that zebras would have the same color vision as horses.)  See how orange and green look to them?

Not to critique evolution but I think prey animals should be better at telling when their predator is dressed like a traffic cone.

It doesn’t matter what zebras see, because tigers are not native to Africa and do not naturally hunt zebra.  Tigers are Asian and mostly hunt animals like deer, elk, and buffalo.  These aren’t animals with great color vision.  They don’t need to have it because they don’t eat fruit and so don’t need to know when the berry is ripe vs when it’s not.  Good color vision is too expensive to have if you don’t need it.  Deer put their vision stats in a wide field of vision that is sensitive to motion, low light capabilities, and possibly seeing UV light.  They don’t have great color and lack a lot of acuity, but have a great sense of smell and good hearing.  That’s way more useful if you’re prey.  Deer see well in the blue end of the color spectrum and less well in the red.  This makes sense because deer are most active in the dawn and dusk periods, when there is more blue in the light.  Tigers are taking advantage of deer eyesight by being orange.

We see tigers are being obviously colored because tigers are fruit colored to our tree ape brains.

I don’t know what the best part of this is: implying that deer chose their attributes on a character sheet, or the fact that we get to see tiger colors because they look like a snack.

Ok but like, I think you underestimate just how well they blend in when actually in the environment. Like, just using tigers as an example.

or how about a leopard?

It’s called ‘disruptive colouration’ because the markings help to break up the animal’s outline against the grasses or rocks. And the rosettes on leopards and jaguars? Sun spots shining through the trees and leaves on the ground.

And this is how hard it is to spot them WITH colour vision. Now imagine the above images but with the limited coloured mentioned above?

I’m sorry but there is not an animal in that first leopard picture

Are you, sure about that?

How Not To Be Seen meets How Not To Be Lunch.

Yeah it’s not like tigers are usually bright neon orange. Their orange colors are closer to browns and blend in well with dried leaves and sun spots

yeahokayillreblogthat:

tinktoks:

yeah okay ill reblog that

discoursedrome:

nothing is worse than software that tells people when I’m online or when I read their message or when I’m typing something. I always want to be as unknowable in my silence as god

curliestofcrowns:

andromachos:

jamaicanblackcastoroil:

okayysophia:

afriendlyblackhottie:

This was riveting

Hold the fuck on…😟

Took “stranger in my house” literally huh

transcription: four screenshots from r/nosleep in reddit

“My missing husband came home, but I just know it isn’t him

My husband went missing six months ago. Just… went out to work one day and never came home. It was a horrible shock to the whole neighbourhood, because things like that just didn’t happen in our little slice of white-picket-fence suburbia. The police launched an investigation, and the neighbourhood watch sent out search parties, but no one ever found any evidence to indicate what had happened to him. Our families were devastated. Recently, the missing posters have been taken down or papered over. The updates from the police became less frequent and dwindled away. I accepted that, hard as it was to admit, my Rick wasn’t coming back.

Until he did.

A week ago, I was in the back garden watering my petunias when I heard the garden gate creak open. I jerked my head in that direction and- there he was. Exactly the same as he was the day he disappeared. Same windswept blond hair and bright blue eyes, same curl to his pink lips. I was in shock. Our families had mourned for him, and yet there he was, standing in our garden like he had just popped out for milk or something. When I asked where he had been, he said he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anything about the last six months.

All our family and friends are beside themselves with joy. They almost can’t believe it. But that’s just the thing: I don’t believe it.

Look, I understand how crazy this all sounds, I do. Our families would never believe me, and I can’t go to the police unless I want to end up in a straightjacket. But I just know that the man sleeping next to me isn’t my husband. I don’t know what to do. I know I should be happy, but I’m not. I’m terrified. I don’t know much about anything supernatural or paranormal, I don’t even like watching horror movies. But something about this whole situation makes my skin crawl.

Just let me explain why I’m so sure. Once I’ve done that, hopefully one of you will believe me, and you’ll be able to tell me what to do.

The morning after "Rick” came home, I made him a cup of tea. When I handed it to him, he gave me the brightest smile. Then he took a sugar cube from the dish on the table and dropped it into the cup. Our house was in chaos with his return, and I was still in shock, so I didn’t think much of it at the time, but its been replaying in my mind ever since. I know it doesn’t sound very significant, but my husband never put sugar in his tea. He was always adamant that it ruined the taste, and he’d get so frustrated if I ever put sugar in his cup by accident. And yet, this man had sugar.

Then it was the golf. A few days ago, when he was out visiting his mom, I recorded a golf tournament that was showing on the TV. It was one of Rick’s favourite golfers that was competing, and he never missed it. Once, he even skipped out on an anniversary dinner just to watch a championship. Only, when he came home from his parents’ and I told him what I’d done, he just seemed… unbothered? Like, he said thanks and everything, and then he asked if I wanted to get dinner. He didn’t even watch it, and that’s just so out of character for him.

Then one night I woke up around 2 a.m. to see Rick’s face inches from mine just… looking at me with these blank eyes. I kinda gave this nervous laugh and asked “Baby, what are you doing?” And he didn’t answer. For like a solid thirty seconds. He just stared, almost like he was looking right through me. Then he suddenly smiled and said, “Sorry, honey. Sometimes I just can’t believe this is real”. Then he just rolled over and went to sleep. I didn’t get much sleep after that, myself.

Yesterday, about a week after he came home, the neighbourhood threw a street party to celebrate his return. Everyone from our street and the streets on either side turned up to see him and tell him how happy they are that he’s alright. When he wasn’t standing with his arm around my waist, he was milling around chatting amicably to each and every one of our neighbours, even the little kids. Jackson, our next-door neighbour Sally’s toddler, wanted to play peek-a-boo, and Rick happily played along with a smile on his face. Now, my husband never did that. Rick always said he didn’t like kids - that’s why we never had any - and so he never wanted to play with any of the neighbourhood children. Especially not Jackson: Rick all but avoided him. Before he disappeared, I had started to suspect it was so I wouldn’t see them together and notice the subtle but unmistakable similarities.

The final nail in the coffin, proverbially speaking, was Sally. Just this morning, she came knocking on our door. Her excuse was the tray of brownies she carried, but I think she just wanted to push her way into our morning so that she could see for herself what the situation was. After she left, I called her a nosy busybody. Rick laughed, kissed my head, and agreed with me. That was when I knew for sure that it couldn’t really be him. Rick always used to get so mad whenever I insulted Sally, like I didn’t have any right to hate her even though she’d been fucking my husband for years. But today there was none of that. He didn’t even try to defend her.

I know what you must be thinking. If he was in an accident or something, he might’ve had some kind of traumatic brain injury that caused him to forget some things about his life, maybe even change his personality. And that’s a valid, reasonable explanation. I have no doubt it’s what the police would tell me if I reported all this.

But you know why I’m dead certain that man isn’t my husband? He doesn’t have a scar. If he was really Rick, he’d have a scar on the side of his forehead shaped like the golf club I hit him with. But there’s nothing. Not a mark. Honestly, I’m this close to going out tonight and digging up my petunias just to make sure he’s still under there.

I don’t know what I’m sharing a bed with, but I know it’s not my husband. So what the hell am I going to do?“

https://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/01.html

emcarroll.com

His Face All Red by Em Carroll is a very similar story that i think about a lot

mercurialmilk:

When the corporate customer service quiz has this as a question:

And you have to decide if you want to pass the course or be true to your heart.

mostly-funnytwittertweets:

everythingfox:

I’ve just been manipulated