Last August, the Curiosity Mars rover looked up into the sun and watched Mars’s moon Phobos cross its surface. Technically, the event was a transit rather than an eclipse, because Phobos is too small to blot out the sun the way Earth’s moon can. Whatever you call it, a year later we still think it’s staggering to see pictures like that from another world. Hail curiosity, and Curiosity!
Has anybody here listened to the 50th WTNV episode? It has… rabbits in it. *shudder*
Wow, what a photo!
Re: Luna on the last thread– what would your definition of a fandom be?
For instance, as I was discussing with my brother, I find it interesting that people will describe other people as being “fans” of nearly anything, but the word “fandom” seems to be reserved for fans of fictional things. e.g., We might say causally that someone is a fan of the Yankees, but would we describe that person as being in the Yankees fandom?
There are some people who have fandoms around bands that they call bandom. I think I’m in the fictional fandom camp, but I don’t quite know why it is that way.
Apparently (I just did some research), the word actually originated with sports (in the 1800s), and then it kind of got taken over by sci-fi fandom in the ’20s and ’30s and then it kind of expanded.
I’d like to talk about what I think fandom is, but it’s complicated, and I don’t feel like it right now–but I may get around to it at some point. I don’t really have a specific definition; for me, it’s a pretty vaguecategory like… fish. I can see something and tell you whether it’s a fish or not, but I don’t know any hard-and-fast rule for saying that something is or isn’t one.
It also appears that when sci-fi fandom started using the world, they would say less “I’m in sci-fi fandom” than “I’m in fandom”; I’m not sure to what extent this is still the case, but using fandom together with a specific source material (“I’m in Doctor Who fandom”) does seem to be a relatively recent development.
The Wikipedia article about fandom makes some interesting points. For example, it says that until the early 1970s, science-fiction fandom was mainly concerned with “serious” criticism of books and stories. Then TV-show and movie fandom took over and changed everything.
I can remember when that was happening. For a while the old-style print fanzines drew a sharp, often caustic distinction between “s.f.” (what they read and discussed) and “sci-fi” (schlocky, mostly electronic mass-market fare that “serious” aficionados wouldn’t touch). Many old-school types were ambivalent about “Star Trek.” Some tried to divide fans into serious “Trekkers” who took a critical approach to the show and frivolous “Trekkies” who went overboard with role-playing and other delusional weirdness, but I suppose distinctions like that became unsustainable as the fandom went increasingly mainstream.
I read a post on wikipedia about Trekkies vs Trekkers, that had a quote about how Trekkers were the serious one and Trekkies would sell their mothers for a pair of Spock ears. I busted out laughing maniacally and announced to my empty apartment in a highly amused voice: “Yup. Definitely a Trekkie.” Which I amended by informing my (still empty) apartment that “Well maybe I wouldn’t sell her for a pair of Spock ears since I could easily convince her to buy those for me, but to actually meet Spock. Yup. Definitely.”
Trekkers sound like snobby jerks. I am proud to be a frivolous Trekkie who goes overboard with delusional weirdness.
I’m sure this comes as a great surprise to all of you.
… Pretty much.
Yeeeees!! With my performance for the industry people today, they liked it. Maybe I’ll finally get picked up by a casting director up here. :3c That’d be cool.
Good luck, Daekie!
Stage 1 of deep cleaning the common areas of my apartment before the new roommate arrives (in 3 weeks) brought to you by “I really need to be studying”.
It’s hard to believe it’s already August and I’ll be headed east in just a few weeks. I guess it’s better feeling like it’s gone quickly than feeling completely burnt out.
I’m trying to get excited about going back to school and having the usual “agh I’ve gotten so out of tough with everyone will it be weird HOW WILL I ADJUST?!?!” funk.
Yeah, I always feel like I’m not as excited to get back to college as I’m “supposed” to be. Too much anxiety about the upcoming social situation. (Of course, then it’s excellent once I’m back. We’ll see.)
This is my first post from my new laptop!! Tax Free Weekend is the best time to make huge purchases and my new Macbook Air is beautiful~~ It feels so nice to actually have a working computer that is actually mine. And I’ve forgotten how much faster I can type on an actual keyboard than on a touch screen. This is so great. Also school starts on Monday and I am quite excited about that as well!! Even though my college classes don’t start until MUCH later this month I will be doing some online courses on writing and research so that will be interesting.
Also!! Adventures in Asheville, NC which I am reminded of by the previous post by Fiddler!! We were wandering around downtown and passed a leather sandal store and long story short I ended up with a free pair of handmade leather sandals that fit my feet perfectly. Perks of having tiny baby feet. So yeah I have Nice Sandals now!!
Life update time now. So I went to go see my new doctor for the first time and he is gREAT and my life makes so much sense now!! In the first ten minutes he could tell me I needed new glasses, needed better arch support for my feet, and diagnosed me with hyper-IgE syndrome which explains SO MUCH of my life. Having that diagnosis is honestly such a relief. It’s a auto-immune disorder caused by a rare specific mutation and explains my awful allergies and reactions to various foods and chemicals, explains my hyper-extendable joints, my back pain (which I am praying is not turning into scoliosis), and best of all gives me an outline of how to better deal with it. Unfortunately it isn’t something treatable or curable so my life will always be just coping with the symptoms and effects of it, but knowing precisely what is going on inside my body helps so much with that.
And I finally got a job, after applying to open positions all summer!! Amusingly enough it’s the first job I applied for back in late May, which I just didn’t hear back from until a couple weeks ago until they called me to tell me I had an interview at 8AM the next morning. Tonight was my third day of training as a server, and I’ve got fifteen hours already. Considering minimum wage is $7.25, I’m pretty caking happy with the situation even though I can’t get tips yet as a trainee. But when I finish training I get tips which I am very much looking forward to! Today was actually mostly paperwork; boring but then again at least I had a break from running around bussing tables and taking drink orders for five hours like I’ve been doing the past two days.
tl;dr Life is good and fireh is very happy.
GUYS this is really exciting I am really excited that LEGO is making female figures portrayed as an astronomer, paleontologist, and chemist!!! I currently have a lot of problems with how the “women in tech” problem is being dealt*, and I think this is a GREAT step in the right direction. Also I love paleontology, so that’s really cool too.
On a completely unrelated note, I recently opened a door into my toe while wearing flip-flops because I am clumsy and don’t realize that my body physically occupies space and now a third of it is sheared off and I’m hyper-aware of it at all times. I also really don’t want it to fall off (as a few of my friends have told me it will) because, first of all, I find it viscerally horrifying to have a nail fall off; and second of all, because I have pretty poor circulation in my feet and it would take forever for the nail to grow back.
* — don’t want to really start a debate, inquire further if you are curious, I could rant for a little while. Also, I believe that grammar is a little questionable
CLARIFICATION: None of my nail has actually fallen off. It’s just hanging on, with a huge gash / area where the nail was lifted off but now has settled back into its original position. Will continue updating with this saga if no one minds.
On the subject of LEGO:
A guy at my church recently remodeled a room of his house to be used specifically and solely for LEGOs. There’s work counters along the walls with raised edges so the pieces don’t slide off, a bunch of sorted storage cabinets, the whole nine yards. I envy his children enormously.
That is awesome.
I’d be really interested in hearing what you think about the “women in tech” problem, as someone who is pretty involved in it (e.g. both of the tech conferences I’ve attended were specifically aimed at women only). I read a lot of articles about it and follow a lot of activists in this field on social media, but that’s not really a substitute for talking to people. Of course, it is your decision if/when/where/how we talk about it – if you don’t feel comfortable engaging, then don’t.
Preface: Most of my experiences with these things are reading about things like the women-only tech conferences, or programs like the NYC Hacker School, which gives scholarships to women only and leaves it up to men to fund their time in NYC. I am totally all for more women in STEM fields, but I think programs that specifically help women and only women are the wrong way to go about it. It’s a little hard to explain, but to me it gives the impression that there are programmers (or scientists or whatever), and then there are female programmers (etc.). It just doesn’t seem like equal opportunity to me.
I find it tough to justify my stance adequately, especially with so many of my friends in programs like Girls Teaching Girls to Code (my thinking with that is why do girls need extra help? if one truly believed in gender equality then allow anyone to teach anyone to code, right?). Basically, I think that girls shouldn’t be catered to in STEM fields because guys aren’t catered to either. It comes across as a little condescending to me — as if everyone is going “aww, girls can’t do things! here, let us help you do things. shhh, everything is going to be okay”. People don’t get unreasonably helped in the real world, and I consider being helped just because you’re a girl somewhat unreasonable.
ALSO: there is this toy called Goldiblocks, which as far as I can see takes K’nex and makes them pastel-colored. Which seems beyond stupid to me, and is why I like these new Lego figures — they don’t just take “regular” toys and make them “for girls”, they’re just regular toys. Which happen to be girls. If all that makes sense.
Anyway. That’s my small rant. I could be taking everything completely the wrong way though. (Also, in case anyone is unaware, I am in fact a girl pursuing a STEM major, inspired by my parents, who met while they were both engineering majors in college.) Feel free to challenge me.
P.S. This line of reasoning is also why I don’t consider race-based affirmative action to be entirely reasonable; if you’re going to accept someone based on a statistic, accept them based on their financial situation and general likelihood of succeeding without your accepting them, right? But that’s an entirely different can of worms.
so, I definitely see where you’re coming from. but, having attended a couple of these types of events, that wasn’t the impression I got from them. As I see it, the conferences act as a sort of release valve, as a safe space where you can talk about the challenges of being a minority in the tech world.. Grace Hopper was the first time I’ve ever been in a situation that was both technical and mostly women, and for me at least, it was like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders – it just feels different. And I’m a pretty loud and unafraid person, it’s not like I have trouble being heard in otherwise-exclusively-male groups at school.
I also feel that most of the time guys /are/ catered to in STEM fields in a way that women aren’t. From a young age (elementary school, in my experience), most guys are given opportunities to do tech that girls, even if they have the opportunities, are socialized not to take. So we have to target programs specifically to women to make up for the disadvantages they have by the time they’re coming in to the programs.
(Also, I kind of feel like – my parents also met when they were both in college studying engineering, my mother went back to school and got her doctorate in computing when I was in high school and my parents have always encouraged me to go into engineering (they’ve also discouraged me from going into other fields, because that’s how they work). I have always had these benefits that most girls don’t, I’m not going to fall out of the leaky pipeline, so who am I to say it’s unnecessary that we target programs at girls? I know that I’ve seen a lot of inequality in tech and done stuff anyway despite being the only woman, but I can believe that stops others, and I want to help fix the problem.)
anyway this is a problem I think about a lot but my thoughts are kind of disjointed now, hope this makes sense.
Yeah — my opinion is definitely a work in progress. I think I entered college a gung-ho liberal, but (unlike most people) my views evolved to be slightly more conservative due to me becoming very good friends with largely-self-taught computer science majors who believe, above all else, that if someone isn’t the CEO of a tech company or the best in their field it is their own fault for not being motivated (mostly because they got themselves to where they are now pretty much without outside guidance).
Anyway: I see your point regarding you, specifically, not falling out of the leaky pipeline. I guess it’s a little tough for me to notice the difficulties other girls may face in pursuing science, having always wanted to be a scientist and had mostly-male friends for pretty much my entire life before coming to college (for the first time, I think most of my good friends are now female).
An interesting thing that happened recently, though, was that I met a Japanese high school student interested in science. She asked how I got interested in science and I said I always liked science, especially because my parents were both engineers. This sort of amazed her; she said that she had assumed that if I had any role model, it would be my dad, because apparently in Japan there aren’t any women in STEM fields. Like, at all. We talked for a little bit, and at the end she said she looked up to me for going into science. So I don’t know if I want to get into the whole activist culture with She++ or programs like that, but I do know that I’d like to try as hard as I can to accomplish a great deal, if only to provide a role model for young women, because I think that’s the most valuable source of inspiration anyone can have.
We both have the same goals, just different ideas about how to approach it, which I think is interesting in and of itself.
I mean to some extent people have to be motivated to succeed. But there are tons of other factors that can get in the way, even if someone is really otherwise motivated. It can be hard to do school when dealing with poor health, whether mental or physical and often professors are less understanding of mental health issues. And sure, you had a really supportive home environment for you, but not everyone does. And sometimes a supportive home environment doesn’t counteract an unsupportive high school environment, say. Sometimes women students are given the support they need. Sometimes queer students are given the support they need. Sometimes PoC students are given the support they need. But so often, one or many environments are either outright toxic, or quietly degrading, something that can push people to quit what they’re pursuing, and go into something else. There are so many ways a motivated person who wants to be CEO of a tech company/best in their field (or any other goal) can be pushed away from that track, through no fault of their own.
Those are definitely valid points! I guess in the Stanford/Palo Alto bubble you can lose grasp on what the real world is like.
Yeah, college can be its own little world sometimes!
Footnote: There is an article that is currently #1 on Hacker News titled “I’m a Woman CEO and It Doesn’t Change Anything” on the Wall Street Journal, and it pretty much summarizes my viewpoint. The last sentence: “In short, what women need today are more models of successful CEOs that, yes, also happen to be women. We need to start emphasizing the success of women CEOs instead of the womanliness of successful CEOs.”
Yeah. I get what you mean, there. That the story shouldn’t be just about how “oh my, she’s a WOMAN?!” but “this is a good CEO.” and not even mention that the CEO is a woman. That makes sense to me. HOWEVER to get more women to the point where they’re a CEO (or insert other version of success here) there do need to be programs that provide a safe space to balance out the discrimination in other areas.
And it is important to provide visibility of female CEOs (or other leaders) so that younger women who are looking to become CEOs, doctors, museum professionals, writers, mathematicians etc, have someone they can look at and say “She did this. I can do this.”
I found the article and I don’t really disagree with it, although I also didn’t feel that it tackled the issues of sexism in tech in a substantive way.
.
Also, to be perfectly honest I think that your libertarian computer science friends are ludicrously hypocritical, since they didn’t get to Stanford without help and privilege – for example, you can only self-teach yourself computer science if you have regular access to your own computer, and not everyone had a good enough home life to make self-study practical, not everyone can afford to go to a private school like the one they’re currently attending.
Oxlin — yep, I think role models are really critical for anyone going into any field.
Dodecahedron — I know, I’ve tried explaining that to them a couple times, but one of them came from the Czech Republic (which, apparently, isn’t doing too well) and so is somewhat unforgiving. Sorry, I left out a sentence — my point was that I’ve had to moderate my viewpoint to even get anything across to them at all.
Yeah, that makes sense – sorry.
Story time: I’m also a little biased anti-Stanford because the one person I’ve met IRL who goes there, early in his first conversation with me at a tech-focused event, asked if I used Pinterest because he’d found that mostly girls used it. Later, he was the one chosen to write the official write-up for the event and I was frustrated because a) it should’ve been me, they could have chosen literally anyone so there’s no reason it shouldn’t have been me and b) not only was it not me, they chose the most boring pretentious privileged white guy imaginable to do the writeup, what happened to valuing/displaying diversity?
Ouch. That’s rough; I haven’t met anyone here who is truly mean-spirited or pretentious, but I’m sure they exist, and I’m sorry you met one.
I mean, he seemed genuinely curious/confused when I said no rather than rude, but I still don’t look highly upon him for saying it.
How the cake do you end up in that field without having some idea that P(A given B) =/= P(B given A)?Well, it would be close if closer to 50% of the relevant population used it, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Or, y’know, he just didn’t bother to consider that.
/nerdrage
Footnote #2: Sorry, I am at work right now, I promise I will get back to you, oxlin — but my friend sent this to me a little while ago and I just remembered it. Look up “Storms and Teacups” — it should be the first result. Fairly long article that delves into women in CS fields and also further explains my viewpoint.
I share your excitement about the LEGO minifigures and hope your toe heals okay.
Hello friends, long time no see! I haven’t forgotten you, just been busy travelling! I think the last time I checked MB I was about to go to Croatia. I spent a week there with my family, staying on a boat and visiting various towns, then a couple days in England, then a few days hiking in France (Haute-Savoie region) – one day we hiked for nine hours, the views were amazing, then a music camp in the south of France which finished the other day. I’m in Lausanne at the moment, about to do to another music course (with my future violin teacher). In short it has been a good summer so far! I’ll be home in Hong Kong in a couple weeks’ time and I may do a longer post about everything then.
That sounds like a blast!
I posted on the Muse Academy Student Lounge thread. Take a look over there!
Does anyone have any tips or ideas for someone attempting to write a novelization of a video series? I mean, besides watching ten seconds of video, then writing it down, then watching another ten seconds of video, and writing it down?
Well, if by novelization, you mean it’s supposed to be the events of the series described as a novel, I would say that when you’re going through it ten seconds at a time, watch each of those ten-second chunks at least twice– once to make sure you get the dialogue correct (which is very important) and again to pay attention to the visual details.
This is also very important because you’re translating a visual medium (video) to a non-visual medium (text)– the readers should be aware of all of the important details about what the characters and setting look like, how the buildings are laid out, how dark or bright it is in a scene, etc., that they would have seen if they’d watched the video.
I went to Atlantis Marine World (nope, not using the boring new name) with my friend Hannah yesterday and had a blast. The level of detail they put into all of the displays is really very impressive, and it’s something I always took for granted because, growing up, that was *the* aquarium my family went to all the time, and I assumed every aquarium had themed architecture and signage… I love the New England Aquarium in Boston, and I realize why it’s considered world-class, but it’s just so strange to go from an aquarium that looks like the ruins of Atlantis complete with archaeological in-jokes and architectural references to different ancient cultures to one with quite so much… exposed concrete.
I had sort of the opposite reaction when I went to the Southeast Asia Aquarium in Singapore. It’s themed around shipwrecks, though actually very informatively done; they have a cool interactive maps of shipwrecks in this region and displays of artifacts from different trade routes. Nevertheless, it was strange to see an aquarium where the focus was drawn away so much from the actual marine life. There’s even an enormous theater in the shape of a Tang Dynasty ship, showing videos on early marine explorers. I’m used to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is just fantastically well-designed and definitely has a heavier emphasis on the oceans themselves, and I like that a lot better.
… I just deleted a paragraph about how much I love the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Now that I can drive, I think I’m going to save up and get a student membership so I can visit a lot before I leave for college.
Oh man, I want to go to Monterey Bay so bad, the wall of windows that faces the replicated kelp forest sounds amazing.
I feel like Atlantis does teach a lot about the animals– I learned about the existence and coloration schemes of discus fish just on this past visit– the theming is just cool set-dressing and the way that different parts look like the architecture of various ancient cultures is a Parental Bonus. An eight-year-old, even eight-year-old me, is reading the sign about seahorses, not noticing that the border of the sign is an actual mosaic that resembles the mosaic floors of Pompeii and took time and effort. But visiting as a 21-year-old, I notice this and it adds to the experience.
(Except for Unearthing Atlantis, which is a whole section about the practice and methods of archaeology, but I would never complain about that as an archaeology major because it IS accurate and an excellent introduction to the field.)
It doesn’t hurt that Monterey Bay itself is one of the prettiest places on the planet.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is the best
So for obvious reasons I’ve never been to any of these places, but I can’t not remind everyone it’s where the filmed part of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
I just have to chime in to say I went to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago on wednesday!! I hadn’t been in a few years, so it was nice to get to walk through it all again. I didn’t pay extra to see my favorite exhibit, “Jellies”, but in hindsight I kinda wish I had. It was awesome when I went 4-5 years ago.
I did spend half an hour watching the belugas though–and discovered I can imitate some of their sounds pretty well! Two of them would regularly surface and squeak a bit, so I positioned myself conveniently near where they kept coming up, and squeaked back. They seemed to stay up longer to have “conversations” of alternating sounds while i was making noise, but it could have just been wishful thinking.
You know you take your daydreaming/fantasies too seriously when you are daydreaming about a specific date and actually consult a) your schedule to know what clinical rotation you will be on and b) a calendar to determine if it is a weekday (and whether or not you will be at school) and plan your daydream accordingly around this.
Alternatively when you research how long a manned mission to Mars would take from start to finish so you can appropriately plan your daydream in which your eldest daughter ((Ginevra. Who is one of three children and the only girl and depending on the day, sometimes one of her brothers is a fraternal twin to her)) is an astronaut and more specifically the first woman ((actually human in general)) to set foot on Mars.
*headdesk*
Also yes if at any point I have a daughter I plan to name her Ginevra. Possibly with Alexandria for a middle name (because I decided I liked how that sounded. Ginevra Alexandria) Yes I know I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. Other children are going to have names like Lily or James ((and I”ll even be nice and not make the middle names Luna and Sirius)) and possibly Teddy. Also Lucas Aurelius. Because when I was a teenager i sat down with a baby book of names and noted the names I liked. And I liked Lucas for a boy. And I’m not sure where I decided on Aurelius, but I thought it sounded cool “Lucas Aurelius”.
I made chocolate covered coffee bean clusters. The consumption of probably a dozen coffee beans (with chocolate) may or may not be contributing to this post.
If you marry someone whose surname starts with P, their initials could be GAP and LAP.
Is that good or bad? Also….It hadn’t even occurred to me somehow that the middle initial was the same in both of those.
And it’s funny you should mention marrying someone whose surname starts with a P, as I was just re-realizing last night just how attractive Chris Pine is (when I realized that OMG he can sing) which makes me incredibly excited for Into the Woods, because it’s a musical and he’s in it ((generally I don’t care for musicals)). But seriously woah. Chris Pine singing, with those gorgeous eyes, infectious smile, and surprisingly good voice…..*is dead*
And the same middle initial as Regulus Black. Hm…
Or alternatively the same middle initial of at least 3 relatives I can think of…..Which is slightly less sinister, lol.
RAB.
Isn’t it meant to be good luck if your initials spell a word? (This would probably depend on the word.)
I’d never heard that before. But I guess that means my sister and mom are both lucky. Or I guess my sister *was* lucky. I keep forgetting she now has a different last name. And mom I guess is doubly lucky? Because her initials using both her full first name and her nickname spell out words with her maiden name, and her full first name spells out a word with her married name. ((Her nickname–which is what she goes by–and married name do not, however))
I knew a kid whose initials were OWL, he was very popular in Elementary School in Harry Potter Club. My friend Erin M. (the one who asked about cave fish) has made extensive plans about what space acronyms she can make from her kids’ initials based on what her husband’s surname is. If his surname also starts with M, and they have a daughter, she would name her Lori Eileen (after Lori Garver and Eileen Collins), to spell out LEM (Lunar Excursion Module).
My initials are a C major chord (and I’m a musician).
I had a kid in my fourth and fifth grade classes whose initials were KFC.
We never joked about it, and I’m very sad, because that would have been really funny.
Like, I mean, I don’t like country music. ((Probably because my mom really likes it and when we were kids she’d have it on on the radio whenever we were driving somewhere, and I feel like radio stations play like the same small handful of songs over and over, so I kinda got sick of it. And then I got a job as a teenager. And the radio there? When one of the vets was working, he almost always had it tuned in to the country station, playing non stop all day long in the surgery room. So yeah. Like major burnout. And I dunno. I just am not that into country music.)) But holy hell Chris Pine has like a unbelievably amazingly unbelievably superb voice for country music. Yes I may have just purchased a single of Chris Pine singing from a movie he was in from iTunes. And I may be currently playing it on loop. And I may be a little bit in love with his voice (in addition to those eyes. OMG those eyes).
Even worse is cheesy pop songs in the surgery room! I had to listen to the plain white t’s while a doctor used sharp tools to cut into my neck!
And when I say “may be currently playing it on a loop” I definitely do not mean “have listened to the song a total of 58 times since downloading it 8 hours ago.” Nope. Definitely not. iTunes is a lying liar who lies.
Fun fact: If you happen to meet any neurobiologists, they will probably mishear “Lucas Aurelius” as “locus coeruleus”, a region of the brain. In fact, when I read it in my head, I thought “wait, that sounds super familiar”…
A question: If I end up having to choose between French 4 and Physics for this year, what should I choose? I already have three sciences, as well as three years of French (and three years of Latin): so I don’t need either one for my requirements. I’m interested in physics and I also want to keep up my French. (Which would look better to colleges?)
In Texas, some colleges (not all) require physics; I don’t know if that’s a common thing, though.
I think it depends on which one you’re more able to keep up outside of school. I’ve heard that colleges want consistency in extracurricular classes, but in terms of academic classes, I think they’re supposed to reflect your interests? Which is supremely unhelpful, I wish colleges would just say what it is they want. My advice would be to go for Physics because you live in a country where French is spoken, but I obviously don’t know how often you get to practice it, or, for that matter, what you’d be taught in French 4.
I thought I was going to have a similar conflict this year between Spanish and computer science (I didn’t, because they cancelled computer science), and I took the SAT subject test in Spanish to try to show colleges that I could speak/read it decently. If, like me, you feel like the language might be the easier subject to keep working on independently, you could try that.
French 4 is mostly lit and history; it’s what you do once you’ve got a decent grasp on the grammar. But you’re right in that I can teach myself more French more easily than I can teach myself any physics at all. –All the colleges really say is that they want rigor, and physics probably looks better in that sense, in that I’d be challenging myself.
*Tenth Doctor voice* Physics. Physics! Phyyyyyyyyysics. Right. Physics.
Fizzix! Keep up with your French via Duolingo (also you already have another foreign language, so colleges probably won’t care if you have 3 or 4 years of French) and Fizzix is probably quite important for college.
I’ve noticed that in the Coming Soon! sidebar, my birthday is listed as the 15th, although my birthday happens to fall on the 13th. Maybe you’ve gotten me and Choklit mixed up, or we both have the same birthdate.
Just pointing this out.
Catwings, maybe your browser formats things differently, but mine shows your birthday as being September 13. That’s the date listed on our master calendar.
Hm, weird, I think everyone elses’ birthdays are shown as being correct….
*Checks*
Yes, they are. Except mine.
Well, my internet has been exceptionally buggy lately. Probably just a glitch on my end.
I could be mistaken, but I *think* what might be going on, is the event (for instance “Catwing’s birthday”) is listed below the date it occurs on. So if your birthday is on the 13th, the calendar reads:
September 13
Catwing’s birthday.
but I think maybe what’s going on is you’re reading it as displaying the event that is happening *followed* by the date it is suppose to occur on
So you’re seeing it as
Catwing’s birthday
September 15
When the September 15 is actually referring to The Man For Aieou’s birthday (below the 15th date).
It is a bit confusing.
Now I see why people love having roleplay blogs– you can go from helping a homeless person to lecturing on the connections between looting and the international art market to investigating sabotage at an airshow, all in the course of 20 minutes.
Isn’t it FANTASTIC? I can go from torture and eyeball-eating to yelling YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD YOU’RE LIKE 30.
God bless.
And last night I was talking an armed man I found in the Alaskan wilderness out of killing me and then discussing sewing patterns with a robot.
Today, my dear Kai, I talked about how poets are insufferable and then went to having one’s soul forcefully inserted into one’s body.
…Ah, I love roleplay.
Aw, man, I’m insufferable apparently. *grin*
Well, when you’re playing a Victorian-era street urchin, they’re not likely to have a fondness for the arts.
I think you’re pretty sufferable, though.
I know oxlin’s one poet I’ve never had any trouble suffering.
Kai: Are my roleplaying posts relevant?
If so, I have just gone from having my home planet being blown up by my friends, to having a conversation with a dragonman on the history of good music.
Daekie: Your roleplay forum sounds amazing! I wish I knew what it was.
Certainly, that demonstrates exactly what we’re talking about.
It’s actually a RP group named Delicious Friends; we’re based off of the web browser game Fallen London!
My character’s been faux-adopted by some of the older ones, so it gets funny at times.
Is it the one with the page on That Site That Sucks Up Time Like A Black Hole?
We do have a TVTropes page, yeah. It doesn’t get updated super often, but it’s there! It makes us feel like we’re IMPORTANT and SPECIAL, rather than a bunch of dorks blogging about the Victorian era.
Daekie, were you around when we GAPAs unleashed our Victorian MuseBlog?
I don’t think I ever touched it, because my research about the Victorian era extends to how they wanted to swear.
The answer is: their swearing was fantastic.
Hmm, according to your page on That Site, your game is on the same External Blogging Site as my RP blog.
Do encounter us. We’d be pleased to have you, delicious friend.
Don’t worry — there’s only two cannibals, and I play one! We’re only OCCASIONAL cannibals.
(actual cannibal kaiyves)
Actual cannibal Shia LeBeouf?
We actually wrote a filk about that song, focusing on the other cannibal character. It was the result of late nights and me being a memelord.
My username for my main blog is the same as on here and my roleplay blog is linked to in the header. Shoot me a PM so I can find yours!
Could anyone please supply me with a new link to the latest R+P thread? I’d make a new one but I have no idea if the latest one is outdated or just insufficiently tagged.
In other news, my marching band section this year is awesome! We have a mascot that’s a wooden chicken with wheels, and a minecraft server, and one time a bunch of the upperclassmen bought 140 dollars worth of sushi and we brought it back to the school and ate it onstage playing project m (a SSB Brawl mod) on a screen the size of a GPS. it was great.
SFTDP: how could I have forgotten? I have tickets to see Lorde in September!
I am so envious. Have a great time! My cousin went to see her in concert in New Zealand and said it was the coolest thing she’d ever done.
I have tickets to see Lorde in October! Except I only have one ticket. I either have to find a friend to accompany me or somehow get to Berkeley and back all by my lonesome…
Enjoy the show, but don’t get any bloodstains on your ballgowns.
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=14025 as far as I can tell
Thank you!
What are your favorite museums?
THE EXPLORATORIUM in San Francisco. One of my favorite places ever, actually. It’s like a gigantic hands-on museum and I always revert to acting like a seven-year-old whenever I set foot inside. I’ve been there three? times now and I could never get tired of it.
Ooh, I want to go there.
The American Museum of Natural History, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Boston Museum of Science.
Some of my favorites: The Logan Museum of Anthropology (at my college), The Field Museum, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Ashmolean, The Pitt Rivers Museum.
The Museum of Mathematics in NYC is forever the museum of my heart, but it’s not the museum that I have enjoyed the most of all the museums I’ve ever visited – that honor goes to the Computer History Museum in Cambridge, UK. Second place in most-enjoyable is probably the New York Hall of Science in Queens – we went there with a bunch of my friends for my sweet 16, and it’s a cherished memory. Also Maker Faire is held there, another cherished memory.
I really want to go to the Museum of Mathematics, but it wasn’t open yet when I went there.
come visit meeeeeee we will go to all the NYC museums it will be so great
I went to the last Maker Faire around here in San Mateo — it was awesome!
I am blessed that I can take the train from home to visit family who live 10 minutes away from the Hall of Science/World Maker Faire. (which reminds me… I should call them…) I was also lucky last year that I agreed to watch a friend’s exhibit at Maker Faire for about half the time in exchange for one of their free tickets in, which meant that I got a “Maker” badge and everything. I was hoping to do that again this year but unfortunately he’s too busy to do a project now. I’m hopeful that someone else from the hackerspace will need help, but she seems to have things pretty much under control/is doing a group project and probably won’t have free tickets left. If not, it’s only $40 or so entry, I’ve spent more on trips to the city before….
I like OMSI since it was pretty much THE destination for school field trips. Though I’ve been so many times that the permanent exhibits are pretty boring!
I second the Exploratorium, though I haven’t been in many years.
In Chicago, I like the MSI, though I’ve been four times in the past three years and it’s permanent exhibits are again getting a little stale. The funny thing is there’s this video above the erosion exhibit that features 1) my E&M professor and 2) where I worked last summer, both of which I had previously not considered to have much to do with erosion. Where I worked last summer has a huge concrete hill used for studying erosion, but I was too busy hiking around looking at bugs to give it much of a look.
The Tech Museum and the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose are the museums of my childhood. I also have special affection for the museum and science center in town (not mentioned by name) where I worked a combined total of three summers. And the California Science Center to see Endeavor was one of the first places my boyfriend and I went together.
Those are the places where I have strong memories of loving a museum, not just enjoying what they have there. I have been to others, but these are the ones in my heart.
Used “Volcano Cowboys” for all of my examples in my GRE essay practice. Because, really, where is the conflict of appropriate response to proposed change more clearly visible than in a town next to a possibly-but-by-no-means-definitely-active volcano?
I’m a few days into a worldwide scavenger hunt I’m participating in with my friend this week. So far completing items has proven to be a battle between “idealistic craziness of hunt organizers” and “practicality of parents”. One item requires an acoustic guitar and my sister said no, but I might still be able to do it if I can learn a song in three days.
Also, Guardians of the Galaxy is an awesome movie. Everyone go watch it.
That sounds like a ton of fun! Is it like an Alternate Reality Game?
It’s not, although that would be cool. It’s partially a charity thing, some of the items are things like buying a meal for a homeless family or donating blood, and others are just doing weird things in public.
Update on items: I don’t think I can learn guitar in three days but I did sign up to walk on water, help a neighbor clean their yard, and convert a bike to look like a a spaceship.
How are you going to walk on water, MythBusters-style?
Ooh, you’re doing that? Isn’t it the one that Misha Collins organized? I’m going to do that one day. Just… Not this year…
When you’re super bored (read: procrastinating really hard on actually doing all the studying you need desperately to be doing) and decide to record yourself singing along to a song (with headphones in). And then play it back. And you die a little inside as you realize just how beyond absolutely bad you suck. And question how exactly you could ever have been in choir and actually thought yourself capable of decent (albeit not like super amazing or anything) singing. This is beyond cringe inducing.
Oh my god. Oh wow. I must looked insane to people when I’m on a roadtrip and I’ve got my music blaring and I”m singing along. Got the feeling mom might terminate my plan of playing my music loudly and singing along the entire drive to Alaska when I graduate. Seeing as it’s her eardrums that will be getting assaulted…..
I am dying from laughter at the horribleness.
I’m officially in the top 50 of who’s posted how much! *applauds meaningless accomplishment*
In which I begin talking about uni and end up drooling over Melbourne. Posted from my shiny new MacBook Pro Retina! *drools over technology I know little about* (ugh pronouns are hard with **)
I’m in the third week of the second semester. I’ve continued the same subjects as last semester:
Physics: Oh, so that’s why I chose to study this. The first set of lectures are on relativity which is so much fun, and he’s spent some of that time talking about philosophy of science and what makes a good physics theory etc.
Math (Linear algebra and analysis): Why. Why did I sign up for this. Why did I ever like maths. WHYYYYYY.
Chemistry: Pretty interesting so far. The lecturer may or may not have tried to set fire to the lecture theatre… (It was perfectly innocent – he was using flour and a bunsen burner to demonstrate reaction rate).
Comp sci: Can someone please tell me why I (a) thought it was a good idea to sign up for the advanced version (b) why I came back for more? I enjoy it – solving problems is fun, and the theory is interesting enough.
I also joined a bunch of clubs which will hopefully work out for me.
For some reason the CS students seem to be way. more. fun. than the, say, pure science students. The relevant student organisation has awesome events, an awesome common room, and awesome hair. And a group of them were the people who set up the Other Website meet up in this city – the Other Website appeals disproportionately to people in that field.
Although I seem to like the company of the Melbourne and Sydney Other Website people more? It’s still amazing talking about things I spent years fingerling about or thinking about alone, but I like some of the others better. Thanks to a certain social media site, I now hear about relevant things happening in Melbourne, and to a lesser extent Sydney, all the time. Arg.
In defense of my excuse for a city, there’s a decent-sized SF convention in two months and I am going to make an effort to convince my geekier friends to ditch whatever assignment’s due the day after that night and come, and also cosplay.
Well, it’s not like I literally can’t afford to travel interstate, so planning to visit is an option. I’m don’t know anyone who lives there well enough to stay with them, but maybe I know someone who’d want to come with me for similar reasons to mine?
What? No, I’m absolutely not projecting everything I dislike about my current life onto where I’m living it right now. Why would you even consider that?…
So I’ve been cut back to part time at my job (better than being laid off I suppose) But the good thing about this is, I am now doing freelance work, and building up my reputation as a freelancer while still collecting a regular salary, even if it’s a small one. I need to make a website for myself…I’m good at making websites for other people, but I seem to have a mental block about making one for myself.
Also, I want to draw a picture of squid vines on a trellis, but I’m not sure how to position the heads. As in, should the heads hang down, or stick out, or even go upwards, parallel to the trellis? Input would be appreciated.
By squid vines, do you mean vines with little leaf-sized squids on them? I think the heads being at an angle (less than 90 degrees) to the trellis would be cute.
I was going for the whole vine looking rather tentacle-y, so that could work.
Pretty sure “standing around talking to good friend for THREE HOURS” outside the school when you get off at 5pm and have SO MUCH STUDYING to try to catch up does not constitute good time management.
However. It was far more fun than studying.
Much more memorable, too.
i went to moma today!!!!!
thank god the hamburger guy wasn’t the top floor exhibit anymore
also, they had an exhibit of this one artist who’d combine nude photography with other photos and it was sweet, i love photography
Wait, a museum of modern art? Where? I went to the one in Paris and loved it. There were so many cool exhibits.
I have a friend from home visiting today and tomorrow and I am super excited to see him! I haven’t seen him in years — he’s two years above me and just graduated from college, so this may be the first time in two years I’ve seen him. I’m taking him all around SF and Stanford in his brief stay here, and I’m super excited about it! He gave me a list of places he wanted to see, and I haven’t even heard of a lot of them, so that should be very cool!
Also, this weekend is a Filipino cultural festival in SF and I am extremely excited for that as well. Eat all the Filipino food
Did I say two years? I meant, like, four.
People who are really quite tired of puppies, thank you: me. Sleep deprivation and puppy brattiness are really taking their toll on me. My 17-year-old cat and lifelong BFF is the only thing keeping me sane. He’s not too fond of this dog either.
Wheee, summer! I actually went swimming for the first time this year; it’s not that I haven’t been to the Danube often, it’s just cold and current-y. And unexpected non-buoyant after the Red Sea.
A (formerly) good friend of mine unexpectedly bailed on our interrail vacation, so I’m suddenly facing two weeks with no obligations to do anything whatsoever. Unfortunately, most of my friends have gone away, but somehow I’m almost as productive as when I actually should be doing something- I baked my first cheesecake (dairy in Austria ≠dairy in the US), which surprisingly turned out really well, I’m rereading some old lecture notes that I never studied in depth, actually studying what I’m supposed to be studying (well, for about 2 hours a day- probability theory is fascinating but the course was too short to go into much depth) and trying to read some textbooks on theoretical physics from the library.
The latter is a bit daunting- I picked a textbook that mainly covers the mathematical aspects, since I know that and would really like to see all that theory come in handy sometime… well, to beget more theory that theoretically has something to do with “the world out there”*. But while is math is all nice, it doesn’t explain the physics aspect enough for me, so I’ll probably just start off reading the Feynman lectures and then try to go back to figuring out while Hilbert-spaces are suddenly cool and eigenvectors get a bit of mystery and flair.
I’ve also started exercising again, though I like to think of it as a sort of Mr-Miyagi style training in mental fortitude, pacing and humility. I jog in a park of historical and aesthetic value, which somehow contrives to be mostly uphill, and the pacing thing usually means I end up running up the hill way too fast and semi-collapsing in front of immaculately styled (usually asian) tourists. I have the feeling that I should be learning something from this experience, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Oh, and happy belated birthday MB!
*In a particles and planets, not paycheck sense
Hmm, can I convince a parental unit to take me to AMNH to see Deepsea Challenge this weekend?
I think anyone who has a dog can relate to this, but, whatever my dog does to make me mad, he makes up for it by still being loyal. Like, if he’s taking a nap, and I’m in the other room, and he wakes up and I’m not there, he goes to find me, and takes another nap in the nearest sleeping place.
Brought to you by an only-slightly-sleep-deprived-fangirl who is between LoK episodes.
Wednesday: My dad went on an overnight business trip. At 8pm I was sitting in McDonald’s, eating a burger and so on while watching lectures on my shiny new laptop. I think I looked pretty weird? Then I stayed up fairly late doing stuff then rewatching SMBC Theater because lol sleep. I was actually asleep by 4am.
Thursday: I hazily woke up and 10:50am, was too tired to want to move, went back to sleep. I’d set the alarm for 11:30. PM. I woke up properly at 1. My three-hour, can’t miss handing report in or you fail the course, chemistry lab was at 2. The bus came at 1.30. (Classic example of “X expands to fill the time allowedâ€, right?)
I caught said bus and put breakfast in my face, but had a headache and cold, was coffee deprived, and late. (Last semester, I turned up half an hour late for a semi-legitimate reason, and was told by my long-suffering demonstrator they generally make you go to the next session but it was Friday so… And that is how I went from the “studious nerd†role to the “straight-A slacker†one.) I thought, well, I do feel legitimately sick anyway, and last time when I actually felt terrible no one ever asked for my medical certificate.
Then at home last night, I checked over my work, filled out the declaration, and submitted the assignment that was due the next afternoon.
What. I’m not dreaming because – yep, fully clothed, in this weather I’d definitely have noticed if it was otherwise.
Today: So I somehow went to all my lectures? I ditched a tutorial, but still. We’ve finished the relativity part of the course and started actions physics. I don’t even know what that is, but finding out should be fun.
I was three episodes behind on Korra and that show is my non-dark Horcrux or something, alongside Star Trek (and I thought I’d turned cynical…), and on Thursday night I’d been reading physics notes. I watched one and a half on my laptop in the CS lab foyer, interrupted by the slow WiFi, and semi-awkwardly chatted with one of the Other Website guys who actually watches that show, what I can’t even.
I joined the dance society at market day, and went to a salsa workshop tonight and last Friday. It was fun and interesting.
And in analysis we’re studying converge/divergence of series, and he finally, finally, made the obligatory joke.
What is the next number in this sequence? 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, 13112221, 1113213211
31131211131221
13211311123112112211
I thought this was that one vocal exercise for a second — 1, 121, 12321, 1234321, 123454321, etc cetera.
Or maybe 12345, 12345, 1234 512345 123?
There’s a lot of warmups with numbers, actually, now that I think about it…
You would think that when you’ve heard a song over 200 times, that you’d actually know all the words and what order they go in. Also hey. It’s 3am. Why couldn’t I have felt this awake when I got home from school at 5pm, so I could have actually gotten work done then. Instead of only starting to be productive at midnight. Ugh. Cuz I feel really awake and like I could get at least a couple hours more productivity right now. but I have to get up at 7:30ish, because I’m “on call” for ICU shift (if they’re short handed/have bunches of critical patients, I have to go in and help) and I”m suppose to check in at 8am. So. Yeah. Can’t really stay up longer even though I’m feeling awake and productive. So tomorrow I won’t feel awake and productive until probably about the time I should be thinking seriously about oging to bed….Wash, rinse, repeat. Ugh.
I’m trying my hand at posting a photo; it’s not showing up in the preview, but maybe it will in the actual comment?
I went to watch Singapore’s National Day parade today. It featured a live concert with fireworks and cheesy patriotic music (including a song called “Put Your Heart and Mind and Skills to Our Defense”), displays of military technology, particularly tanks, and various groups of government workers marching in uniform. Also a show by the Singapore Fire Brigade, in which they lit a very small power and then used all the extremely complicated technology they have to put it out.
There were also fireworks and a light show! They’ve been rehearsing all of this for weeks; every night, they’ve not only synchronized the lasers but had a practice parade and concert, complete with standins for all the government officials (which means a lot of people in red shirts marching down the street holding signs that say “Member of Parliament” or “Prime Minister”).
Meh. Not showing up. It was a pretty cool photo, with lasers and everything. I’ll try a link, if that’s alright?
[Image Gnome to the rescue.]
That is pretty cool.
Such a pretty view!
Me: *reading*
My brother J: “What’s that?” *points at photos in book*
Me: “Wood carvings.”
My brother J: “What civilization?”
Me: “The Asmat tribe of New Guinea.”
My brother J: “I thought it looked *asthmatic*.”
Me: “Oh brother…”
As you can see, my family is very big on puns.
Ah, good ol’-fashioned family pun.
So I was contemplating watching a movie with Chris Pine in it instead of studying, cuz I really don’t want to study right now since I kind of need to.
So I was browsing what movies he’s been in, and which ones I”d seen, and then was looking at the movies he’s been in that haven’t yet been released and looking at when they’re suppose to be released. So I follow the link for one of them to see what it is about cuz it has a “bizarre” name (“Z for Zachariah”) and I see that it is based on a book. So I click on the link for the book, contemplating whether or not I want to read wikipedia’s plot summary for the book. And a line in the vague non spoilery part of the summary at the beginning of the article says something about how it’s about a girl who survived a nuclear war/nuclear fallout living in a valley with it’s own weather system and how she thought she was the only survivor. And I’m like wait. That sounds really really really familiar. Let’s sneak a few more peeks without completely spoilering things. A visitor arriving in the valley and a radioactive stream are mentioned, and I’m like “no, definitely. This is definitely familiar. I dont’ know what happened, but I remember this. This stuff is familiar. I’ve read this.”
So apparently I read the book at some point.
First, a note: If you like Doctor Who and listen to podcasts, you should do yourself a favor and look up the Ood Cast — it’s a discussion podcast with comedy sketches and parody songs. (My favorite is their version of Still Alive: “It was a triumph. / I’m making a note here: huge success. / Season six was really kind of awesome. / I’m Steven Moffat. / I write Doctor Who because I’m great. / All my scripts are really good / except the Christmas special. / But there’s no sense crying over every mistake. / We all flew to Utah and then filmed by a lake!”) Also, Verity! is an all-woman DW podcast that’s super-fun and talks a lot about Classic Who if that’s your thing.
Things are going pretty well? I like all the classes I’ve chosen / been assigned this semester (Brit Lit, Bible, Calculus, Physics, AP Psych, Senior Transitions [essentially: how to apply to colleges and iron shirts], and it looks like I get to take French 4 as an independent study). The new Doctor Who is soon (which is why the Ood Cast and Verity are on my mind) and if you can credit it there’s someone I’m planning to watch it with: not family, either.
And today I wore a cute shirt and made tiny pies and started reading the Inferno and watched “Rose” with my baby* brother and yesterday was the first day of school and I was so glad to see everyone and I think they were glad to see me and, I dunno, I think everything might turn out okay. I hope, I hope, I hope.
*Sixth grader.
Having friends to fangirl [or whatever your preferred gender-neutral term for that is, if you’ve got one?] is the best. From my limited experience, anyway.
Also, do you go to a some-sort-of-Christian school or just a secular one that does that sort of thing? I have a vested interest because I went to a (single-sex) Catholic school making my experiences rather different from most MBers’.
Yes, I go to a Christian school! Though mine’s Protestant (well, non-denominational, but there’s a weird situation where most students are Catholic and most teachers are Protestant) and coed.
Okay. Woah. That is so so weird. So I got distracted in my quest for a movie to watch because I got sucked into the void that is YouTube video watching, where you watch one video, and then there’s another on the side bar that you just *have* to watch, until you realize hours later that you really don’t have time for this and wait, how long have you been on?
So on the side bar was a video that showed Zach Quinto hooked up to some bungee jump thing on a really tall building. I didn’t click on it, cuz whatever, and I was watching clips from various things Chris Pine has been in.
But then just now I was looking back through old comments on the ‘blog, and came across a post I made last August saying I had a dream about Zach Quinto. And I”m like wait, what? I did? Gotta read this, cuz I don’t remember this AT ALL. And apparently in my dream, Quinto was bungee jumping off a building and autographed my hand (for a fee of $25 which apparently annoyed me in my dream, since it was going to get washed off).
So then I’m like, wait, what? I dreamed about him bungee jumping? Did I see this youtube clip and that influence my dreams? I dont’ remember seeing this clip? So I go watch the clip. Definitely don’t think I ever saw it. So that is so super weird, that I had a dream back in August about him bungee jumping off a building, when he actually did bungee jump off a building at some point? Freaky.
Places my cats sleep:
On my backpack
On my laptop case
On jackets
In a box filled with a phone charger, smaller boxes, and packaging (attempted)
If they fits, they sits.
I thought I posted here before but I guess I didn’t??? wherp
I fly back to Cambridge tomorrow, till around thanksgiving. It’s a great opportunity and I can’t complain about the work at all, but I’ve just been feeling pretty down after being at my parent’s all week, so idk. everything just feels like so much effort.
I did book tickets/hotel for WorldCon/LonCon3 next weekend though–I know I’ll enjoy it even if it takes me a lot of effort/motivation to get myself down there. I have a friend (who I met in Ireland, but is from/lives in the US) going too, and lots of authors it’ll be fun to meet/have things signed by.
whrrrr I had other things but idr anymore…
I just had an interview for what sounds like a dream job for me! It’s at a small company that does something called “inbound marketing” which is like advertising except that it’s targeted to people who asked for it, so it’s informative instead of annoying. The job includes graphic design, animation, and some website coding as well. I really, really, really hope I get this!!!
FINAL GHANA UPDATE: Trip cancelled by the university due to the Ebola outbreak. Considering I wasn’t even certain I wanted to go two months ago, I’m extremely disappointed. I don’t want to sit at home for three weeks… I’m trying to get my parents to let me stay on campus for a couple of weeks after summer move-out so that I can continue working at the lab
and drown my sorrows in science. Luckily, I have friends on campus for that interim period, so I won’t have to be homeless for two weeks. (Bless my friends, they’re far too kind to me.)Hopefully we can also get reimbursed for the visa and yellow fever vaccination, because those two combined were like $200.
I’m sorry you don’t get to go on your trip and I hope you get reimbursed. If you’re in New York during your free time, though, maybe we can kokon?
My parents aren’t going to let me go anywhere — they want me at home. I would also like to continue working and get as much done as possible before the school year starts. I will be in NYC over Thanksgiving, though, for the Macy’s parade! My sister is dancing in it. I’ll probably spend the entire time with my parents, though.
Understood. Good luck with your work.
Well, these hurricanes were a bit of a disappointment. I like to think of what happened as Iselle getting ripped apart and Julio was like, “Lol nope ahaha that ain’t happenin’ to me” and ran off north.
I’m glad the damage wasn’t too devastating, though, and that I got a day of cancelled school, but I was actually excited for them. Nothing interesting ever happens here.
Part of me wants to see a tornado from a safe distance. I’m not sure if that’s healthy or not.
That makes two unhealthies on this blog.
Anyone feel free to adjust my number.
So I finished the scavenger hunt (fun, although I ran out of time to do the walking on water item), saw Guardians again, and did more driving lessons. I also get my wisdom teeth out on Friday under general anesthesia. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about possibly saying embarrassing/personal things to my parents when they take me home after the surgery. I’ve seen some stories about having too much gauze in your mouth or being in too much pain to talk, but an equal if not greater number of stories about yelling at nurses or telling secrets. Possibly I could write a note to my future self reminding me to stay quiet? If I could remember to find it in my pocket.
I couldn’t talk at all because my tongue was numbed and my mouth was full of gauze, but if your anesthetic scheme (where they apply it, what kind they use) is different, your experience may be different.
Same as Kai, I didn’t have any troubles. I wouldn’t stress about it too much–I think the people likely to talk a lot are pretty talkative people, so if you go into it not wanting to say much… you probably won’t. The most I ever was was groggy for the first 20 minutes or so, and then just tired. I never once “lost control” of myself.
Also, like Kai said–your mouth is gonna be gauzed up pretty hard, it’ll be hard to say anything intelligible for a while.
As Kai and Jade said, you’re probably going to be completely unintelligible anyway immediately after the surgery. I don’t remember this, but apparently I was mumbling quite loudly (probably with medical questions… right before I went out I was asking what was in the IV or something), but no one could understand me anyway.
I didn’t take any of the Vicodin they gave me — ibuprofen was just fine — but truly, the worst part of the surgery was that I was seeing double afterward. I got dizzy on the way home and almost threw up upon getting home just because I never fully got my bearings until after I took a nap. People tell good stories, obviously, so you hear about all of the people who yelled random stuff, but not about [the majority of] people who just mumble incoherently and then pass out.
You’ll be fine. I got tired of Jell-O and… something else that I can’t quite remember (probably oatmeal)… pretty quickly, but I was also able to graduate to ramen (cooled) with some other kind of soup in it to avoid the super-saltiness of typical ramen flavoring. Just take all of your meds (especially the antibiotics!!!), don’t drink from a straw, be super careful when brushing your teeth.
Oh, yeah, a lot of what makes people loopy is the pain meds you get afterwards, depending on how you react to them–they just made me sleepy and a little disoriented, and since I didn’t have much pain at all, I just didn’t take them past the first 24 hours (I don’t think I even took ibuprofen).
DO take the antibiotics and stuff they give you though that part is non-optional.
When you get tired of yogurt/pudding/jello, I found taco meat with an obscene amount of cheese melted into it was a nice change of pace.
My mom got me baby food, which works surprisingly well as it’s nutritious and soft, and there are lots of different kinds. Even though I felt weird eating baby food, at least I was getting a more balanced meal then just Jamba Juice.
Re: Jadestone’s unmoderated post.
I found my mouth to be fairly painful where they pulled the teeth, especially at night, but I didn’t take much of the prescription meds they gave me (hydrocodone, I believe). I mainly just took an ibuprofen and tylenol combo (because the doctor said I could take these together) so I did that instead of the prescription painkillers for the most part.
And speaking of antibiotics–I wasn’t given/prescribed any when I had my teeth pulled. I don’t know if it’s because I’m potentially allergic to both penicillins and cephalosporins (I got a rash when I was given these meds for ear infections as a child), or if my doctor subscribed to the philosophy that giving antibiotics for a routine surgery such as having teeth pulled is unnecessary and overkill in a healthy individual. Which actually, is a valid philosophy. Throwing antibiotics at every surgery promotes bacterial resistance, and any transient bacteremia from having your teeth pulled (just like any transient bacteremia when having your teeth cleaned–and you do get transient bacteremia every time you have your teeth cleaned) in most immunocompetent people is going to get taken care of by your immune system. I’m not saying antibiotics is wrong to do with getting teeth pulled, and certainly if you’re prescribed them, take the full course and don’t stop part way through, I’m just acknowledging that it’s not necessarily necessary to prescribe them and I wasn’t prescribed any, myself.
And as for soft foods–I went straight to real solid food with my first meal. Had difficultly not chewing my tongue/cheeks, but I ate chicken pasta for dinner (one of those frozen garlic chicken pastas you can get in the freezer section at the grocery store), and then was eating normal food the next day. I mean lots of soups and stuff I think. Maybe. Not sure. And probably not too much crunchy stuff, and I know that Saturday I had a milkshake (NO straw though. don’t do straws. straws are bad, unless you want to suck the clot right out of your open sockets).
I mean I had trouble opening my mouth very far for awhile (my jaw was kind of stiff), but I didn’t swell up or anything, and all things considered, I think I had a good experience with it.
Oh–do ask for a curved tip syringe, either from whomever does the surgery or your dental hygienist. My upper wisdom teeth, they didn’t suture, just left them open to drain, and I would get food stuck up in the open sockets and while not painful, it was challenging to get out, but a curved tip syringe of water, with gentle pressure would flush the food debris out of them. I was doing this for several weeks after, because there were residual little “holes” that were slow to completely seal shut. I mean, the tissue was healed, the gingiva just hadn’t sealed over the holes.
Stellini pasta is pretty good, with meat sauce if you want protein.
I could talk, but I didn’t do anymore talking/talk about anything I wouldn’t have anyway. I remember them putting the IV in, have a brief memory of something vibrating in my mouth at some point (I don’t know what i was given for anesthesia, other than obviously injectable. It may have just been some kind of dissociative where I wasn’t truly asleep, but wan’t creating memories etc during the event. I dont’ know. I was out of it, I just have a brief flash of “something vibrating n my mouth” when they told me they had to drill to get one of the 4 teeth out), and then being awake, the oral surgeon giving me my teeth, saying they had to drill a bit on one of them, and that my mom was in the waiting room and they would wheel me out to the car in a wheelchair (policy). And I had gauze in my mouth I believe, I’m not sure. But I was wheeled out to the car, Mom drove the two of us to her work where my sister was waiting to take me home since Mom had to work the rest of the day, and then my sister drove me home, and per my request watched Harry Potter. I got sleepy at one poitn during the movie, but I didn’t babble and talk about anything I wouldn’t have babbled and talked about unde rnormal circumstances. I think you’re proably stressing too much about what you may or may not say.
Odds are even if you’re loopy, if there’s soemthing you wouldn’t normally ever want to tell your parents for whatever reason, you’re probably not going to start telling them just because of the meds.
My only problems with the anesthesia related to them causing me to vomit later that night. Not fun with 4 open wounds in your mouth and a jaw that hurts to open more than about one finger width. It stung really really bad.
And of course the numb tongue (and cheeks) was fun for eating dinner that night. yay lacerations.
Update! So I had the surgery this morning. I was really scared and cried and asked the nurses to make sure I didn’t say anything embarrassing in front of my parents, but they said I would be able to remember by myself. They put some heart rate monitors on me and an IV drip in my arm and the last thing I remember was the nurse telling me to relax and think about the weekend. When I woke up in the recovery room my mouth was full of gauze and my tongue was numb, so I mimed writing on a notepad to ask the nurse for paper. I did remember the conversation from earlier, not that I could talk anyway. I was tired but pretty much lucid and used the paper to tell my parents how the surgery went and write down stuff about food and medications. At home I ate scrambled eggs and slept for most of the day. I’m on pain meds now and my mouth was bleeding a lot earlier, but it seems to be slowing down.
Thanks to everybody for your advice. n_n
Glad everything went well for you! And that your fears were for naught. Did you have a full set of wisdom teeth, or just 2?
Good to see that you’re doing well. Now take a few days to lie around the house holding ice to your cheeks, re-reading Animorphs, and writing satirical reviews of bad movies like I did and you’ll be fine.
I concur, especially with the second item in this list
A pun I hope to someday use in context: combining peace and frontispiece to make frontispeace. “But alas, the initial diplomatic negotiations were only a frontispeace to what would be one of the bloodiest conflicts in the nation’s history.”
Here’s a pun I thought of while reading a news article about a drug bust.
“Have you ever taken drugs?”
“Not even ingest.”
Oh man, I love thinking up of terrible puns! (My friends hate me for it.)
I was watching my friends play chess…
“That is the chess-tion!” 
Friend: “Hmm. To move this knight or to not move it…”
Me:
Friends: …
My brother P once was very happy to show me a square of replica chain mail he had bought.
Me: “You’ve got mail!”
P: “Shut up.”
Why does it not surprise me that MBers are fiendishly good at this?
Here is my coelacanth pun: There were once two warehouse workers, Low and High. One day Low pulled her shoulders and couldn’t lift anything above her head. The supervisor asked High to do her job temporarily. When she asked why, the supervisor pointed at Low’s brace and ice pack and said, “See? Low can’t.”
I have a Czech friend. He loathes the puns I make on it.
Example: If someone’s dad is from Prague but their mom is from Beijing, are they a Czech’s mix?
Oh, that was excellent.
That reminds me: any fan of puns should search on Youtube for “Andy Zaltzman pun run”. He’s an English comedian who does a satirical news podcast with John Oliver, and he is an absolute master of puns. Try the “dog concert” pun run first.
Also!
“The God Dilution: A fascinating discourse on how religion should be subject to homeopathic treatments by Richard Dawkins.”
I did a chain one with P once…
P: “I wonder if they let you sleep over at the Higgins Armory? That would be so cool.” (If they ever did, it doesn’t matter, as the Armory is closed now.)
Me: “Yeah, they could call it ‘A KNIGHT at the Museum’.”
P: “Heh, that’s pretty good.”
Me: “Yeah, it would certainly be a KNIGHT to remember.”
P: *groans*
Me: “I mean, I know you love that KNIGHT life…”
P: “Shut up, Kai.”
Went to bed between 12:30-1am (early compared to recently) so I could get up at 3am to drive several miles to find a non light polluted place where I could attempt to watch the perseid meteor shower. Which ended upb eing successful, I think I saw about half a dozen maybe a few more in the 30-45 minutes I was watching. Tehre was scattered cloud cover at first, plus bright moon behind me, and the flash of shooting light was so transient from any given one, that it gave you just enough time to register “Hey I think I just saw one out of the corner of my eye” before disappearing before you could redirect you vision to try to track it or anything. So there were some where I’m like wait, did I really see that?
Wishes on shooting stars come true, right?
And gotta get up for school in 3 hours. *sigh*
Nice, it’s been overcast here.
Okay… okay… I know that not only was my opinion (probably) largely unpopular, but also that the “women in CS” discussion has thoroughly cooled off, BUT I just wanted to show you all something. (This probably belongs in the Rants and Plaints thread, but I honestly can’t find it. I tried. I apologize.)
Google “made with code”. Go to the first sub-link under the first result called “bracelet”. Go through the process. Watch as they pat you on the back for doing literally nothing related to coding at all and call it “coding”.
O Image Gnome, please, let me post this image that I got from elsewhere on the Internet but is from this thing:
So, this, a process COMPLETELY unrelated to coding and not at all representative of what CS is like in the slightest, is flaunted as “teaching you to code”. I made one. I got an email back saying “Watch inspiring stories, code another project or connect with other coders in your community.” Which would be all well and good if you had actually coded something in the first place.
What the [self-snipped] was Google thinking? “Noooo, girls can’t actually code! But we want them to code! We’ll show them this and call it ‘coding’ because that’s all they can do!” There are SO MANY WAYS they could have shown people an introduction to coding. Make a short Python thingy. Follow Codeacademy’s model.
This is what I meant by people being condescending towards women in order to get them interested in computer science, and this is what really irritates me.
Okay. So the usual HTML way of embedding images doesn’t work here. Let me try a link:
[Gnomes to the rescue, as usual.]
Yeah, that does sound condescending. I wish they’d do the Codeacademy thing too. I don’t like that they decided that the project /had/ to be a bracelet. I’ll have to take a look at the other projects. I mean making a thing and getting something physical from your coding is a cool idea, but if there isn’t really coding involved then what is the point. Also why does it have to be a bracelet? Couldn’t it be a bracelet or a key chain or a guitar pick or a whatever else can be 3D printed here?
I don’t think it’s as unrelated to coding as you do – the dragging blocks into place in lieu of writing text is a classic way of teaching analytical thinking for coding with young children. (I did this when I started, on RoboLab, for use with lego robots, ages ago), and while this is the “hello world” of 3D printing, that doesn’t mean it’s entirely useless.
With that said, trying to get girls into coding by having them make jewelry doesn’t sit well with me either. I’ve read that older girls want to code when they hear about how they can help their communities with programming, and I think that would be a better way to get them interested. As I said, this seems like an activity for small children, and if I adjust my expectations accordingly, it’s not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.
Ah. I didn’t really explore the website very well, but if it is for small children, that would make more sense.
I don’t know… the problem with those sorts of things is that someone has to guide you through the leap from dragging-and-dropping to actual, line-by-line coding. I’ve read stories about people who just dropped their kids in front of the Hour of Code-esque things and assumed they knew how to code, when in fact kids just treat it as a game and don’t take it seriously and, subsequently, don’t learn any real coding skills. Hour of Code seems okay from what I’ve done with it, but this is, like, Hour of Code-lite.
Also, I’m not so sure it’s for super-little kids — if you look at the “community” page, the girls in the picture seem college-age. I could be misinterpreting it, but if you look under “Events” (I looked in the Stanford area), most of the events seem geared toward high-school-age kids, for whom dragging and dropping squares is in no way appropriate.
The events in my area seem unaffiliated with the actual site. I don’t live in a major city, so they’re mostly (expensive) programming camps for teens held at local colleges and events which are unrealistically far away. I expect that the camps actually include typing code, since they seem similar to summer camp classes my mother’s taught at the local community college, and she says the older teens did write code (she worked with younger kids, age 7 or so, on the block-dragging lego robotics) .
You’re right that there need to be bridge programs, and that high school students can do more than this.
The block-dragging could be a very basic version of object-oriented programming. But if they want it to be an effective way of getting people to code, they need to bridge the gap between that and an actual object-oriented language, like C++ or Java.
Does anyone know of a good way to evict fleas from a dog? We’ve tried everything.
My dog, as I’ve mentioned him before, likes chasing the neighbor’s cats – well, the cats chase him, mostly – and those cats have fleas, and now my dog has fleas. And, as a red-blooded human being, I would like my dog to no longer have fleas.
Has anyone here had experience in this field?
There are medicines you can get- ask the veterinarian. For our cat, it was this repelling stuff that we’d put in his fur (it was really gross) and it’d kill the entire life cycle of the fleas living there.
Actually, we’d tried that. If anything the stuff we bought attracted even more.
I moved into a new apartment in late May, but then I went home and then to summer festivals so this is really only my second week in it. I came back to a bunch of boxes and a broken fridge, too, which was a whole saga in itself that ended with getting a new fridge, thankfully so I didn’t have to finish cleaning the old one out. As of about an hour ago, though, everything in my apartment is clean, organized, and put away, all the pictures are hung, everything’s dusted and vacuumed, my rug is placed, I even cleaned out my desk, and it’s beautiful. It looks like a real home, which is something my old apartment never did even though I lived there three years. I’m so proud of myself.
(I’ll probably post some time about my summer festivals because I want to talk about it and the people I’d talk to in real life either were there or saw the Facebook pictures…)
i have to go back to school on monday
back to no tanktops and no shorts shorter than mid thigh or i get in trouble
i live in florida. it is 90 degrees. WHO’S READY TO GET HEATSTROKE
I would like to remind everyone who is watching Shark Week or considering it that the two “Megalodon is still alive” programs airing tonight are works of fiction by Discovery Communications’ own admission. If you disapprove of fiction being presented as fact on a channel that is supposedly educational, the best form of protest is to spend those four hours starting at 8PM Eastern watching some other channel, to damage their claims that pseudodocumentaries always garner high ratings.
That’s what shark week is? I thought is about sharks. Like informative stuff about them/saving sharks. I don’t watch TV, though, so I guess that is why I was confused. That sounds terrible.
Not all of the programs are fabricated, but these two tonight are, and the opening program this week, “Shark of Darkness” (is that supposed to be a very belabored Joseph Conrad shout-out or just a “mash cool words together to make a title” thing?), was as well. The other programs are factual in the sense of being based on reality, but often overdramatized, oversensationalized, and focused on sharks attacking humans. Which is wrong, but not as wrong as outright saying an extinct species is still alive when it isn’t.
It’s definitely an allusion to “Heart of Darkness.”
Was it Discovery that showed a mockumentary about mermaids?
That was Animal Planet, another channel under the Discovery Communications umbrella.
Yeah…
And I mean, years ago one of those channels did a mockumentary on dragons– but outside the hour-long program, they did nothing to imply it was real, and directly afterwards they had another hour-long special explaining their reasonings behind all the steps they created in the dramitization and how they did some of the special effects to make it look real. I loved it! It was like one of those fake-science-field-guides (like Dragonology) for tv–wishful/fanciful but not feeling like a scheme to get attention/actually make people believe like the megalodon or mermaids one. Sigh.
Put just as well as in our discussion on External Blogging Site last year…
Put just as well as in our discussion last year on External Blogging Site.
(I tried to post that before, but I mistyped my e-mail.)
“Shark” doesn’t even rhyme with “Heart”.
They should have called it “Heart of Sharkness”
At least that would have been a hint the program was a joke…
I wish Discovery thought megalodons were interesting enough for a documentary without trying to convince people they’re secretly alive. I mean, people still think dinosaurs are cool …
BBC did, they had megalodons in “Chased By Sea Monsters”! They even threatened time travelers! (Dang, that was a good show, I can’t believe it’s ten years old.)
So, spring quarter I took a seminar about cars and their historical significance (of individual cars, not of cars as a whole) — and as a part of that class, we have an all-expenses-paid trip to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, which is this Sunday and the fanciest, most ridiculous car show in the entire world. Think Jay Leno (a renowned car fanatic) and one-of-a-kind Ferrari fanciness. We will be judging from a [predetermined by the Pebble Beach staff] pool of historically significant cars, and will ultimately present a prize to the winner.
This is unbelievable. Tickets to the Concours are $300, and usually the only people they let judge are the ivory-tower, car-expert-and-super-old-person, owns-at-least-five-Ferraris-type people. And now I, as an 18-year-old college student who is essentially unable to drive and bases all of her automotive knowledge on Top Gear, will be allowed to prance around as a judge and ask car owners silly questions and be able to do what I like because, hey, I’ll be a judge!
Furthermore, there are other events going on all this week, and as Stanford is paying for both my Concours ticket and my hotel room, I figured I’d drive down with a friend [who can afford the Concours ticket and can crash on the floor of my hotel room] tomorrow morning, go to the Concorso Italiano as well (tickets are $150 but that’s okay because basically every other expense is covered), and have the best luxury car weekend college-student-income can buy.
Awesome! Have fun!
That sounds phenomenal. Y’know, if you happen to get any extra tickets, I think I might be able to get rid of one for you….
Today, George RR Martin complimented my outfit.
That’s awesome!
Cool! In what context?
Just got back from seeing a production of “Cymbeline” by a local Shakespeare in the Park company. I hadn’t read or seen it before, but holy cake is it an awesome play.
Guess who agreed to lead the one-after-the-next meetup of a certain group of weirdos. My first thought was “Why on earth would he think I’m in any way qualified to talk about akrasia OR do anything resembling public speaking” and my second was “OH MY CAKE YES (because I want to be that cool person) (because I didn’t know the people who started our city’s thing existed so I was genuinely willing to start one myself) (because I’ve actually had some success overcoming akrasia and these people think enough like me that I can use myself as a starting point) (because it’s quite discussion-based anyway and by the end of the night we’ll just be talking about random stuff)”.
Uh, context – the group in my city are literally all students, so I’m one of the youngest/ most inexperienced regular attendees, and I’m not one of those people who’s already done a lot of cool stuff, and talking to people about things I care about is hard which interferes with intelligent discussion.
SFTD Monster Post
The effect is mostly positive – I’m motivated to do awesome stuff instead of not even trying. But to use a term from another website which ruined my life, the Sydney and Melbourne people have taken levels in badass.
This is what meeting people at the Australia-wide event was like:
*first person who met me in Sydney* “Oh, when I moved here I did some research on what the most important criteria were and picked somewhere walking distance from work.”
“___ is part of a group trying to convince people to turn off their lights at night [and is also an awesomely grouchy weirdo]”
“This is [cute Melbourne guy], he’s involved in effective altruism.”
“You can remember everyone’s names by using spaced repetition.” (it worked!)
“I’m writing a sci-fi/fantasy book [detailed but spoiler-free explanation of how he’s getting his world to make sense].”
“I build a CAT scanner with cobalt-60 I ordered through the post.”
“Oh, [different Melbourne guy] works in cryonics. As in, building the first facility in the Southern Hemisphere.” (I was going to say I hoped that there wasn’t too much location-specific info, but then I remembered I’m 18.)
The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was AWESOME. As was the Concorso Italiano. Totally worth the sunburn I got at the latter (wearing a dress) and the horrible tan I got at the former (wearing a blouse). Think pale stripe on collarbone –> sunburn on shoulder –> pale-but-tanner-than-the-stripe upper arm –> LINE between upper arm and rest of arm, which is very tan. (Yep, I achieved a fully-fledged farmer’s tan in one day.)
Anyway… the Concorso and Pebble actually had very different feels; the Concorso was mostly new (Italian, of course) cars — flashy Lamborghinis with understated Maseratis (it’s the 100th anniversary of Maserati so they were a pretty big deal) and bright red Ferraris, none more than maybe forty or fifty years old, and only modified slightly, if at all.
Pebble, on the other hand, had early steam cars all the way to maybe 1906’s Ferraris — and, if the cars were production, they were extremely rare (e.g. Testa Rossas or Ruxtons). Most of them were custom in some way or one-of-a-kind. Non-automotive celebrities spotted were Jay Leno, Taylor Lautner (???), Jerry Seinfeld, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; Sir Stirling Moss and other famous racecar drivers were there as well.
In all honesty, I preferred Pebble — the venue was, of course, astounding; luxury cars parked on the 18th hole of the Pebble Beach golf course overlooking Monterey Bay — because not only were the cars one-of-a-kind, but the owners seemed to take their cars more seriously and yet were extremely entertaining. Let me explain: At the Concorso, license plates like “AWSM 4RE” and “GO FAST” were abound, and one license plate holder for a Ferrari even read “MY OTHER CAR IS A FERRARI”. It was a little cheesy. Meanwhile, at Pebble, the cars were spectacular and the owners were basically all old rich white people, but they were hilarious without even realizing it. I counted no less than two people with parrots on their shoulders; three poodles, all with ridiculous haircuts; two pairs of salmon pink pants; a pair of tie-dye pants; some lady with a dead fox draped around her neck (hope it was fake); many, many, feather hats; and this white conical hat on some lady that looked like a bleached wizard’s hat, complete with long white sheer tassels. It was an extremely interesting contrast between the noveau riche and old money, and without making any blanket-statement classist assumptions, I found the old-money event to be more entertaining. (It probably helped that I didn’t get sunburned at that one.)
One of the best parts of the day was that, long before the event and in class, I became a big fan of a 1954 Ferrari 375mm Scaglietti Coupe. I was lobbying for it for a while, but ultimately it fell off our short list for our Most Historically Significant prize (which we awarded to an unrestored Testa Rossa). WELL, it turned out that I was a genius, because it got awarded Best in Show! Which is a huge deal for Pebble. I cheered when it won, and it turns out that I made a very good call getting a picture with the car — I may be one of the last to do so for a while.
If you read all that and want to see pictures, I am more than happy to post some; just let me know.
Pictures please! That sounds absolutely incredible. The best I’ve done lately is a Mustang show a couple blocks from a farmers’ market….
Yes sir. Here are the Concorso Italiano pics (will post PBC in a little while). O Image Gnome, hear my prayers:
Example of the ridiculous license plates:
The cutest car ever, complete with old-timey leather suitcases:
The Lamborghini SuperLeggero, which looks like it would slit your throat in your sleep and walk away:
A Lamborghini tractor:
A matte black Ferrari:
Ferrari Enzo:
pretty sure I saw a lamborghini superleggero in the wild last month – I was in an area that I guess was very rich because there kept being tons of classic cars, fancy cars, etc driving by..
(I’ve never been able to log in, so I can’t put this on Rants and Plaints.)
I get that I’m bad at parallel parking, Dad. I do want to pass my roadtest next week, I wasn’t any happier about failing the first two times than you were. I want to practice so that I can get better. I know that I’m bad at parallel parking, but here’s the thing:
SHOUTING FOUR-LETTER WORDS AT ME WHILE I PRACTICE WILL NOT MAKE ME ANY BETTER OR LESS STRESSED.
I do find it hard to pull up so that I’m not too close or too far away. I do find it hard to turn just enough and back up just enough and turn the other way at just the right moment and speed and ease in and not hit the curb. And I find it even harder when the person in the front passenger seat is screaming “(Fudge) you, Kai”, “you’re so (gosh-darn) smart but you can’t drive worth (cake)”, “you’re twenty-one (fudging) years old and you can’t do this”, etc. at the top of his lungs.
Not that it makes it any less stressful or unpleasant, but I feel your pain. My experience learning to parallel park with my dad as a teacher was very similar. Lots of swearing and screaming on his part and lots of screaming and crying on my part (“stop acting like a (fudging) baby, Luna”).
Parallel parking is challenging. I wish you the bet of luck (skill) on mastering it enough for the exam–just remember you’ll almost never use it in real life afterward.
*hugs*
Wow. My experience was completely different when my dad was teaching me to parallel park. I’ve never heard my dad swear, and he wound up just getting out of the car, standing to where a car would be in front of / behind me, and telling me to keep going or stop using hand signals. It was incredibly stressful, but in a completely different sort of way.
I’m sorry your dad is getting angry at you. Is there another relative you can ask to help?
Wow, I feel you. I recently failed my first test and am still stressed about decision making. (I probably do suck, but what kind of sadistic person makes you parallel park on a hill?) Fortunately my dad is really non-confrontational, but he’s stressed because we’re paying for lessons from a legit professional… Would/has that option work/ed for you?
Can you practice with a friend or your mom? I feel your pain, I’m starting to learn how to drive and parking… ugh.
Are any of your friends also twenty-one and license-havers so that you could practice with them in the car? In MN at least, you can drive with anyone with a license who is 21 in the car when you’re practicing with a permit.
I made the Roy Chapman Andrews video somewhat presentable on iMovie, but my parents said I can’t upload it because someone could use it to embarrass me somehow.
On what thread did we discuss the presence or absence of a McDonalds at the bottom of the Mariana Trench?
‘Twas Pleistocene Dreams.
Ah yes, that was a fun conversation. Thank you.
I figure boiling kills most pathogens. And thoroughly cooked aged eggs are probably less risky than raw eggs in cookie dough and cake/brownie batter, which I’ve been eating since before I can remember. And not gotten sick yet
Only on Museblog.
Kokonilly, we moved your Pebble Beach photos to their own thread.
I have a new job! Doing graphic design! And animation!
*brings out pies and offers everyone some in celebration*
Oh, I love pie, especially with a scoop of vicarious world domination. Mazel tov, Groundhog!
Hi! I would like to recommend a musician, S.J. Tucker. She does folklore and fairytale-inspired music, as well as other songs. I really love her tunes and lyrics. Some of her stuff sounds blues-y, some of it folk-y and she has one punk song. I’d recommend the album Wonders or the album Mischief!
So “Blue Meridian” was a good book.
I feel at 24 years of age i should probably know how to boil an egg without having to text my mother.
also. time will tell if eggs dated sell by April and which float are toxic. given that apparently floating is an indicator that they’re old (again, something I feel i should probably know at 24 years of age). but supposedly if they don’t smell or look yucky, they shouldn’t be harmful even though they’re super old…..it will be an experiment, lol.
They’re compressed and not as “fluffy” as a fresher egg, because of the much enlarged air space, but they seem to be perfectly edible based on the one I ate because it had an accident (it broke open and was massively deformed and I took pity on it and ate it to put it out of its misery).
I wouldn’t take chances with eggs, but if you’re still alive and well to read this, we’ll know you got away with it this time.
Sooooo!
my computer is spending most of it’s time being unable to connect to the internet (whatever they fixed a few weeks ago, did not work, so taking it back soon), and I’m reluctant to type much on phone since the Carpal Tunnel, so my posting will be… as sporadic as it usually is even when I have no excuse, I guess.
Anyway! LonCon was lots of fun, I got things signed by George RR Martin, Cat Valente, Robin Hobb, Scott Lynch, and Leigh Bardugo.
I got 4 things signed by Cat Valente actually. You know how sometimes you read a book and afterwards you want nothing more than to be best friends and talk a lot with the author?? This happens for me a lot with Terry Pratchett. But she has been the latest for this this summer, with her Fairyland series and a poem I love (and will probably post to poems & songs shortly). So I got the first book in that series/a copy of the poem I… sort of illustrated with watercolor…just 2 pages/my nook signed, and then at one of her talks later she gave away 4 books with samples of her next Fairyland book in it (plus selections from precious work) to the 4 youngest people in the room, of which I was 3rd youngest. So!! That was awesome. She also walked up to me when I was wearing my Toothless hoodie and wanted to know where I got it/told me she loved it when I said I’d made it so I may or may not have spent the rest of that day walking on air.
OTHERWISE, lots of readings, Scott Lynch’s next book sounds as hilarious as the first three, GRRM cancelled the talk he was gonna have the day I was there but it meant I made it to a different signing/talk anyway, so that was okay.
ummmmmmm idk probably more I can say but I fear for the internet eating this as it dies so just gonna post
So my new roommate has a tardis keychain
I know it’s an anti-racism film, but when my dad watches “42” in the other room, it still makes me uncomfortable to hear the n-word shouted so much.
Oh, you should watch Django Unchained.
So. I had thought Misha Collins rendition of the ice bucket challenge raising awareness for ALS was my favorite (I mean, c’mon, the man is naked in a bathtub for goodness sake, and who doesn’t love the bad ass angel that is Castiel?), but….I don’t know. Benedict Cumberbatch’s is pretty far up there too. Been looking forward to it ever since Hiddleston nominated him, because Cumberbatch + water? It’s like the deleted shower scene form Star Trek Into Darkness except way better.
Plus he did it five times!
I like Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly’s video, and Chris Pratt’s. My Dad thinks Patrick Stewart’s is the best, though.
My personal favorite is Jeremy Clarkson’s…
Thoughts from a Sunday morning: everyone who said senior year would be fun was lying.
Which I was all sad about yesterday, because I do not want a repeat of last semester. But I went up to San Francisco and played my violin on the waterfront, and people were really nice to me, and someone left a rose in my case. The world is pretty beautiful, and San Francisco at night is even more so.
My AP Civics teacher is running for city council, strongly believes that Lyndon B. Johnson killed Kennedy, and has no inside voice. I think this promises to be an interesting semester, if not a fun one.
Also: I slept through a magnitude 6.0 earthquake last night, apparently. But I did wake up for the aftershocks, which set off all the car alarms in my city.
I didn’t feel the earthquake either! At all. I woke up to two texts asking if I felt it, haha.
Pre-roadtest anxiety.
You’ll do fine. <3
Good luck!
Knock ’em deadbe careful.I taught my sister to drive in Arlington Cemetery, figuring that the people there were beyond further harm.
Was your sister learning to drive stickshift or automatic?
I don’t remember — probably automatic. We had both kinds of cars, but it would have made sense to teach her the easier one first.
(Hold on, there must a pun in there somewhere. …
I’ve got it! She was learning to drive graveyard shift.)
My dad gave me driving lessons in the cemetery, too, with similar anouncement. He also said it forced me to learn how to turn well since the whole place was basically a giant grid. I don’t think there was a straight section longer than an eighth of a mile in the place.
My early problem was driving in reverse, so on a Sunday when the commissary at the military base was closed, my dad made me back up through the pick-up lanes. (Like a drive-through at the bank but much, much longer; seemed like miles longer.)
I’ve heard that’s true of a lot of Washingtonians.
UGH my computer locked up right before I clicked the comment button and the following is a reconstruction UGH
There’s a student in my composition class who wrote compelling, publishable work for a twenty-minute exercise. I just..kinda want to brag about having class with him. HE’S REALLY GOOD I’M IN AWE OF HIM AND HOPE YOU ALL GET TO READ HIS STUFF IN THE FUTURE
I’ve had a few sociology classes now and am getting the impression that my professor likes me and thinks of me as a social deviant. I’m rather pleased with myself.
On the other hand, it’s taken me three sessions of a class in a small room to realize that a student I’d seen on campus and thought looked cool and attractive is actually in that class. Pleased about en’s presence, not pleased about my apparent inability to notice and recognize my classmates. (This is just one example! (But I give myself slack on the three to five white guys of medium build with shaved heads. I can’t tell them apart enough to know how many of them are actually the same person, but. They look more like each other than Tatiana Maslany looks like herself.))
Overheard on campus: “Did you just say he has sex appeal? Men don’t ‘have sex appeal’! That isn’t something people say!”
~This has been a college post~ ~Now I’m going to do some college work~
Is it okay for me to/ do I have the powers to make a new Warm Fuzzies thread?
By all means! Go right ahead.
Okay, so I failed again, but this time I got to do the 3-point turn and I got to parallel park and I did both of those nearly perfectly. I did almost everything right, but when I was pulling out into an intersection (and it looked like everyone was gone in both directions), another car came up and I thought, well, I’m already turning and I have enough space to make it, so I’m fine. But apparently I should have waited just a little longer at the sign, seen him coming over the hill, and yielded to him. And I get that.
But I’m okay because everything else was perfect and I can try again another time. Fourth time’s the charm.
Yes, it sounds as if you nailed the hard parts. Nice going. (Three-point turns are fun, aren’t they?)
Yes, and much easier than parallel parking.
I failed my first test because in my nervous state I thought it was okay to make a left turn from a side street onto a street when someone on that street was waiting to make a left turn… Seems kind of obvious in hindshight that’s a big no-no, but whatever.
The second time they took me a different route and literally all my left turns were at lights with only arrows. :/
Do you live in a big enough city where there’s another DMV? Apparently the DMV at the north end of my city had driving tests that were a lot easier than the ones at the DMV really close to where I live.
Oregon has a really easy driving test though; no parallel parking, just back up along the curb. Which you think wouldn’t even need to be tested because all you have to do is keep the wheel straight.
Agreed that you should try going to another road test site. Kai, you’re in greater New York, right? See how far upstate your parents are willing to take you for a test. (2 hours should be more than enough). Avoid cities, go for small towns instead. For example, it was common knowledge at my high school to take your road test in a tiny town about half an hour east of us. I failed my first road test in a city (a very small city to be fair) but passed it the second time in that town, and it was much more calming in the town because there were no other cars.
Another vote for this. In my area there were the notoriously easy sites and the notoriously hard sites and people generally went to the former.
I can’t retake it immediately, I have to take a class, as my last class certification was only good for two attempts.
Really? That’s silly. In mn all we needed was a permit, the class and behind the wheel but it was for any number of attempts.
Sorry to hear that, and good luck with your class/subsequent attempt (singular because next time for sure!)
Wow. I think it’s a lot easier to get a license in California than where you live. They never tested me on parallel parking or three-point turns- only basic backing up, merging, a lot of lane switches, and intersections. And I passed despite not knowing where the emergency parking brake was, let alone what to do with it (you’re allowed a certain number of mistakes before you fail the actual test).
It still takes me about half an hour to parallel-park satisfactorily, but I’m getting practiced at passing people on highways and changing lanes and so forth. I noticed over the summer that people in other parts of the country don’t always change lanes with the same merry abandon that Californians do, which is probably nice.
Anyway, I admire your persistence, Kai, and it sounds like the issue was fairly specific to your particular test; here’s to next time!
WARNING: small personal rant ahead
So recently I’ve been doing paid psych studies to make a bit of extra cash, and I just completed one about eating habits. I have no idea what their conclusions will be, but my personal conclusion was that my eating habits are absolutely dreadful.
I mean, rationally I know that I should eat healthy, vegetables and whatnot, etc., but considering my BMI is on the low side of healthy and I am still alive, I don’t have much motivation to change my diet. I have always been a picky eater, and though I’ve gotten much better over the years, my diet is not exactly normal. Some of my quirks are even healthy — I never drink soda because I hate the fizziness. I was also discussing this with my roommate, and she said that if presented with a plate of food she doesn’t particularly enjoy, she would eat it anyway. However, if I were presented with a plate of food I don’t enjoy, I just wouldn’t eat it. I would nibble at the things on the plate I did like out of politeness, rearrange some of the food, and then wait for better food to come along, even if it meant hours.
I’ve considered getting one of those tests to determine whether you’re a “supertaster” or not (i.e. if you have more taste buds than the average person or something), but I’m afraid that if I am then it’ll just be validation of my already poor eating habits, and if I’m not then I have no excuse — I’m just weird. If that makes sense.
I’ve been trying to try new foods lately; I tried mooncake yesterday for the first time (and quite liked it), and Clif bars recently (and hated them). But there are some foods I’m afraid I will never enjoy, like strawberries.
Anyway. /rant
How can you resist taking the supertaster test? I’d want to know as much as possible about myself, especially if I thought I might have superpowers.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were something about odd about your taste buds. I mean, mooncake? Tasty? The ones I’ve eaten have all been memorably bland — like shortbread with the gustatory volume turned down so far it’s almost subliminal. But then, I’m probably a subtaster.
Yeah, I think I’ll just go ahead and buy the kit.
[pause]
All right, just bought it on Amazon. And I really liked the mooncake! It was pandan and pumpkin flavored. Also, I like shortbread. But you are right; there probably is something different about my taste buds. I almost always get the “original” flavors of things (chips, etc.) because anything more is overwhelming. I also usually drink water, which is — as I gather — unusual. Guess we’ll see! I’ll keep you guys posted.
Keep us updated!
I don’t think I’m a supertaster, but I think I’m on the more supertaster end of the middle range. Some of the dislikes that supertasters have (excessively sweet things like pop) resonate. I also hate brussel sprouts. There is more than this that is resonating, but I forgot some of it. It isn’t enough to make me think that I’m a super taster, but I think I’m within the range of normal that is closest to super tasters.
I am a supertaster but somewhere along the way I developed a preference for foods that supertasters typically avoid (black coffee, grapefruit juice, brassicas of all sorts, and so on).
An eccentric supertaster? How Muserly!
Huh. Part of the reason I think I am nearer to the supertaster side of normal, but not an actual supertaster, is that I dislike, but do not hate, cilantro. It tastes sort of like tinfoil to me, but only sort of. It doesn’t taste like soap, like it apparently does to some people.
Yeah, I won the cilantro jackpot: soapy and metallic. But I decided I wanted to like it because it was such a common ingredient in my favorite cuisines, so I kept trying it in different dishes. I absolutely love it now. It doesn’t taste soapy any more either. Some years back I read that the problem with developing a taste for something is that we give up way too soon. We generally make up our minds on the first try — or maybe give it a second shot at best. But developing a taste actually takes much more effort, something like eight rounds. Even so, our tastes are more malleable than we think. Try some experiments. Many of my current staples are foods I used to find unpleasant but now truly enjoy.
This is excellent advice. I’ve done the same thing and forced myself to eat foods I didn’t like. Some of these have been very successful (onions are one of my absolute favorite foods now) while others are less drastic (the mere sight of mushrooms used to make me nauseous and increase my heartrate, but now I can eat them as long as I don’t focus on them too much). I think it goes beyond food; “fake it till you make it” is probably the truest and most worthwhile cliched advice I’ve ever dealt with, and I think it’s one of the essential keys to success in whatever you’re trying to be successful with.
Mm. I usually try things multiple times, too. I discovered how awesome avocados are partway through college. Cilantro is still kind of weird tasting, but it isn’t weird enough to ruin a dish with it in there, just to make me think that dish tastes weird.
I like mooncake! In moderation though, as it’s so rich.
I’ve never thought about what my taste buds might be like. Something my family always finds strange is how much I like vinegar… I eat most things, aside from mushrooms (the one food I can’t stand).
My brother went through a stage of putting vinegar on EVERYTHING…french fries, yes, but also spaghetti and pizza
Interesting! I’m definitely not that extreme. I’m pretty standard in terms of what foods I consume it with, so if it’s meant to be in the dish or on the side – like salad (dressing), or dumplings. I just tend to use a greater amount than others might (e.g. dunking the entire dumpling into the vinegar dish for a good ten seconds, etc.)
You sound like a couple of people at the Marine Biology station I just got back from! One was a really picky eater (to the point she brought cup of noodles for the many times she wouldn’t eat the cafeteria food) and the other didn’t like strawberries or cherries, and also didn’t like the fizziness of soda. They were both supertasters, by the way.
Personally I won’t eat anything I absolutely hate, but I enjoy a large majority of foods. I’ll eat stuff I don’t particularly like, as in a lot of vegetables/salad because I know they’re good for me. I feel like I taste all the varying tastes in foods and like most of them. *shrug*
It’s not so much pickiness as a kind of cultural proclivity, but it’s slightly related. Next week I’m going to Paris with my mum and grandparents (all Chinese) for a few days before I settle in Geneva. We are bringing a rice cooker. To Paris.
To that I say, count me out of the hotel room rice, I’m planning on enjoying plenty of patisserie and French cheeses while I can!
In fairness, they rarely travel abroad and my grandfather especially requires rice to be involved in order to consider anything a meal.
That’s actually really adorable, ahh
I’m normally okay with cafeteria food, as long as they have pizza or chicken or fries or something. My diet is pretty carbs-heavy; I’ll eat plain rice, pasta, fries, bread, etc. I’m also not a fan of strawberries, cherries, or soda! Guess we’ll see.
And in response to Sel’s comment re: rice: Despite my pickiness, I would never bring a rice cooker to France. I always try to taste the local cuisines; sometimes I even like them! I was a big fan of koeksisters and ostrich in South Africa, for example.
Reasons why I’m probably not a supertaster: I can’t imagine not liking strawberries or cherries! I don’t like pop though.
For some reason I have a particular aversion to strawberries. I once ordered a Nutella crepe; it came with strawberries without my knowledge, and the unexpected, sudden onslaught of strawberry-ness made me gag. I dunno. I think it’s the seeds.
I disliked the taste of strawberries until I picked them myself when they were dead ripe. From there I learned that my dislike came from refrigerating them, which made the flavor harsh.
If it is the seeds, do you also dislike raspberries?
Yes? I think so. It’s been a while since I’ve had raspberries, but if I recall correctly I did not enjoy them.
Four hours at the art museum and then dinner at Whole Foods– mom and I were very *fancy* today.
The Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is awesome, I hope I get accepted to their grad school so that I can go all the time!
Hi from junior year. I’m really busy right now. I have marching band which is kind of awful and kills me sometimes. I hate after school rehearsals. But on the bright side I got into my area’s youth jazz ensemble. That’s pretty fun.
Congrats!
Enjoy the jazz ensemble.
Second week of school: everything is hard and I have 6 AP classes and I want to cry. But. BUT. I am also a T.A. for a teacher who keeps ducks, which she occasionally brings to school to “socialize” them.
Today my T.A. duties were to cuddle a duckling for an hour and a half.
Life is good.
That sounds adorable!
6 APs sounds like a heck of a lot.. I know you can do it. Just think how much you’ll know by the end of this year!
Once again, I cannot seem to locate the Rants and Plaints. Our Administrators may feel free to do with this post what they feel necessary. Although they probably would anyway.
I have two things to rave about right now; One being my stupid public school. They will not answer any questions my dad sends them. And the free laptop we ordered from them (which they supply) seems as though it will not get here in time to do the required things for the school on it anyways, so what is the point?! After today, it will be too late to download the required programs or set up orientation.
And, also;
My aunt is dying. I think she has some kind of cancer, and is not doing well at all. It’s not that I’m all too worried about her, she seems to accept it as inevitable and is prepared for what’s coming. It’s just my cousins I’m worried about. I mean, she’s their mother. I can only imagine how heartbroken they will all feel. And I don’t know what I can do to help, I mean, I’m not very close to many of them. Or, they’re not very close to me. And I’m just a twelve-almost-thirteen-year-old who always wears black and sits in the corner pretending she’s mute because she doesn’t know what else to do. I always feel so helpless around this kind of thing….
*My stupid online school.
I’m sorry, Catwings, having a relative fatally ill is one of the most stressful things there is. *hugs*
Catwings, as for your second dilemma, I am pretty sure I have an idea of what you’re going through. I don’t feel comfortable disclosing exact details, but in the last year, I have had (different) relatives diagnosed with (different types of) cancer, one almost certainly fatal and the other not so much after surgery and chemo. Another very close relative had a heart attack last Thanksgiving very unexpectedly but is, thankfully, okay now. Needless to say, it’s been an extremely emotionally taxing year and I’ve spent more time staring off into space in despair than I care to admit (also, trying to comfort a younger sister on the phone and telling her everything is going to be okay while you’re quietly crying yourself is extremely depressing).
Hugs.
So. Totally just saw a UFO. Well, 2 UFOs. And no, I’m not so far gone down the path of insanity to believe that they’re alien spaceships, but they were unidentified flying objects.
Heard someone’s phone (?) ringing in the parking lot outside my apartment, more like an old school type ring. And then what sounded like maybe someone speaking through a megaphone for a minute, so I got curious and peeked out. Just some probably half drunk guys in a car waiting for someone/dropping someone off (it was game day. Lots of even louder than normal drunk undergrads milling about. I hate game days).
And then for some reason I looked up toward the sky. And saw a reddish orange light, moving about airplane speed, but far too large to be an airplane. Those are just tiny blinking yellow/white lights. This was much larger. Reminded me a smidge–sorry. got interrupted by a hoarde of disrespectful individuals who are currently blaring their “music” full blast from their vehicles in the middle of the parking lot while they “dance” to it. If rap lyric where the only words that one can pick out are the “n” word, and a vulgar slang word for female genitalia. And now they’re tearing off out of the parking lot at such high speeds that I’m not convinced they’re not trying to achieve warp. Did I mention my hatred of undergrads yet?
So. back to the UFO. This was far too large to be an airplane, and didn’t blink like an airplane. It was much larger, had a reddish orange hue, and it did kind of flicker, but more like a flame or an ember flickers. At one point it almost looked like it flickered out before coming back. For a brief minute it reminded me of a firefly before my brain decided it actually looked more like flame or embers or sparks from a fire, but up in the sky moving at the speed of a plane.
And then it disappeared from view (over the top of the apartment complex) and then i realied there was another one that I could see near the moon and I went to grab my binoculars but it disappeared from view while I was tryng to locate it in the sky with the binoculars. They were both coming from a kind of northwest direction, maybe in the vague direction of the football stadium, so it’s probably something to do with that, but. It was weird.
I mean, large-ish, reddish orange ember-like UFOs? Thoughts on what a non-fantastical explanation might be, anyone?
Likely fireworks at a far distance.
TMFA: No, they definitely weren’t any type of fireworks. They didn’t move in an upward direction from their source, they were definitely travelling in a semi-easterly direction. Because I first saw the first one somewhere in the distance toward the west, and it passed over the top of my apartment building heading east.
A satellite? No blinking, no engine noise, moving rather quickly in an arc?
Hot air balloons? Chinese lanterns?
Seconding the Chinese lanturns guess–we had one crash down into our lake 2 years ago, and right until it went below treeline we all thought it was much larger and farther up. They also move surprisingly fast! Tricky things.
Ooooh, I bet it was probably a couple chinese lanterns, Piggy. Less sold on the idea of hot air balloons (although now that you mention them, I do remember seeing one earlier in the evening while it was still daylight), because I would think they’d be lit up enough that I’d be able to discern the balloon part, not just the flickering fire.
Oh yes, sky lanterns are a very common source of UFO sightings. (And there are some people who have been known to release oddly-colored and configured ones in the hopes of tricking people.)
Sorry about the game day thing. I went to the Stanford-UC Davis football game yesterday and while my friends and I weren’t drunk, we were probably quite loud as we all hadn’t seen each other in a little while. (The game also got very boring very quickly, and the final score was 45-0…)
What is the polite way to say “I feel it is more-inclusive to describe space missions such as ‘Curiosity’, ‘Voyager’ and ‘Rosetta’ as ‘robotic’ or ‘uncrewed’ than ‘unmanned’.” without sounding like a Soapbox Sadie?
Positive instead of inclusive?
Hm. That’s a pretty polite way of saying it. I’d say if someone thinks you’re a Soapbox Sadie that’s their problem.
You could just note that “unmanned” is old-fashioned and that most scientific journals nowadays use one of the other terms. It’s true, and it would keep the discussion in the realm of facts instead of value judgments — much firmer ground for making a point. People are more likely to change their behavior when they don’t feel that you are judging and condemning them.
After three and a half years of the same gravatar, I have finally ended the Age of the Rutabaga in favor of ushering in the new Age of David. David may look like a duck, but he is in fact a chicken. After drawing his portrait, I was so enamored with my creation that I immediately changed all of my online pictures to match his likeness.
Hooray for David!
Wow I have so many things to reply to now that I have a working computer again! But for now I must sleep. Hopefully this is the end of Computer Woes: Summer Edition though.