RT @scalzi: Today’s phrase of the day is “Cis-Trans Test.” It means something specific in biology and I’m also using it to see just how imprecise Dear Leader’s latest attempt to give shitty bigots a tool to boot people they don’t like from this service actually is

RT @scalzi: Today’s phrase of the day is “Cis-Trans Test.” It means something specific in biology, and I’m also using it to see just how imprecise Dear Leader’s latest attempt to give shitty bigots a tool to boot people they don’t like from this service actually is

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cis-trans-test

On Twitter

Weird jet-black deep-sea “footballfish” washes ashore.

Weird jet-black deep-sea “#footballfish” washes ashore.

LA Times (paywall):
Ultra-rare, bizarre fish that washed ashore near San Diego is California’s third this year

Birdsite:

On Wandering.shop
Retweet on Twitter

“The public should understand fully that the Republican Party has become the authoritarian party…unlimited executive power, executive domination of the other branches and selling our democracy to the highest foreign bidder.”

“The public should understand fully that the Republican Party has become the authoritarian party…unlimited executive power, executive domination of the other branches and selling our democracy to the highest foreign bidder.”

I hate that the EPA is still run by someone who thinks it stands for Economic Pandering Agency or something similar. But props to The Hill for choosing a photo of the aftermath of a fire to illustrate the article.

I hate that the EPA is still run by someone who thinks it stands for Economic Pandering Agency or something similar. But props to The Hill for choosing a photo of the aftermath of a fire to illustrate the article.

EPA finalizes rule easing chemical plant safety

Phot of a firefighter and burned out buildings.

— The Hill (@thehill) November 21, 2019

On Twitter

I love the tone in this bit from the Long Beach Comic-Con FAQ

To complete my costume, I carry a large battle-axe that I hone to razor sharpness every day. It’s cool for me to bring that, right?

Ummm, seriously? Props are one thing, but anything that could take an eye out, could hurt someone, or make the cops (or my mother) take it away from you, is not allowed. Please refer to our policies for more clarification.

Long Beach Comic-Con FAQ

On Wandering.shop

What is Yoda’s syntax in other languages?

What is Yoda’s syntax in other languages?

On Tumblr

Seriously, though, check out this thread by @AstroKatie on how the image was produced and why the ring looks the way it does, plus simulations of different viewing angles.

Seriously, though, check out this thread by @AstroKatie on how the image was produced and why the ring looks the way it does, plus simulations of different viewing angles.

On Twitter

And this article by @BadAstronomer on the science behind the image.

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-first-image-of-the-event-horizon-of-a-black-hole

On Twitter

Article by Phil Plait explaining the science behind the Event Horizon Telescope’s ground-breaking image of …

Article by Phil Plait explaining the science behind the Event Horizon Telescope’s ground-breaking image of the supermassive black hole in M87 – the world’s first-ever actual image of the event horizon (or, more precisely, silhouette) of a black hole.

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-first-image-of-the-event-horizon-of-a-black-hole

Birdsite thread by @AstroKatie on how the image was produced and why the ring looks the way it does, plus simulations of different viewing angles.

#science #space #astronomy #blackholes

An orange ring against the blackness of space

On Wandering.shop

alenxa: Valuing low character count may lead to higher visceral response

RT @alenxa:

So I found this list of intellectual vs emotional words and the emotional ones are all shorter. Suggests that valuing low character count may lead to higher visceral response to that communication. Meaning, Twitter is designed so that we get worked up over it. Studies? Plz?

@alenxa Ooh, that’s an angle I hadn’t thought of before!

I’ve seen a lot of discussion of anger driving more engagement (which ad-supported services love) and someone suggested that it’s hard for most people to convey emotion in writing without exaggerating.

Now adding this factor…

I wonder if there’s a way to isolate other factors that have driven up the general anger level and compare the 140-character era to the 280-character era.

It does seem like the general level has been getting worse, but if that change decelerated things, it could support it.

Field Museum: Too. Much. Coffee! 😆 ☕☕☕☕☕

@sohkamyung@mstdn.io wrote:

Bwhahaha! More ‘coffee emotions’ in the twitter thread. 🙂

“Field Museum @FieldMuseum
Too. Much. Coffee. 😳”

“These watercolors were painted by Chinese artists during the mid-19th century and sold to Western customers in port cities of Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton. They’re imaginary birds but with some real #MondayMood feelings.”

#Humour #FieldMuseum #Coffee


@FieldMuseum

These are great!

On Wandering.shop

Yep. Whenever someone complains about newer #StarTrek being “ruined” by social justice or progressive issues, …

Yep. Whenever someone complains about newer #StarTrek being “ruined” by social justice or progressive issues, unlike the older series…I have to wonder whether they ever actually *watched* the show they claim to remember so fondly.

Thread:

On Wandering.shop

Boosting brion@mastodon.technology: Found them! Five photos, taken in fading dusk light after panickingly searching for my camera …

Found them! Five photos, taken in fading dusk light after panickingly searching for my camera during what I sincerely hoped was a _test_ missile. 😉

Missile5

This was the October 3, 1999 antiballistic missile system test described here http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/03/news/mn-18259

Files scanned October 14, 1999, and sat around for aaaaages. 🙂

vintagerpg:Serious nerd history lesson incoming.The first Dungeons & Dragons videogame came out in …

vintagerpg:

Serious nerd history lesson incoming.

The first Dungeons & Dragons videogame came out in 1982
for the Intellivision, but the burgeoning industry was already under the tabletop
game’s influence. By 1980, two games represented a kind of fork in the
philosophical road for computerized RPGs. Rogue focused on the dangers of
dungeon crawling and complex rule sets that verged on the mystical – it was
essentially a simulation of D&D mechanics where stories emerged from the
action without narrative guidance. Down the other path lay Zork.

Zork was developed by students at MIT from 1977 to 1979. It was
inspired by Will Crowther’s 1975 mainframe game Colossal Cave Adventure that,
though it lacked monsters, was directly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons
sessions (which included Zork writer and Infocom founder Dave Lebling). Zork
was definitely fantasy, though, with a vast underground empire to explore,
treasures to find and monsters to fight (or be eaten by, if we’re talking about
the darkness dwelling Grue).

Zork is an interactive fiction, that is, everything is
presented as text. You direct your actions by typing them into the command line
and a bit of code known as a text parser acts as a kind of dungeon master (Zork
III’s subtitle actually is Dungeon Master, come to think of it), interpreting
your commands and telling you their consequences. If the Dave Arneson school of
D&D thought sought to have players inhabit the fantasy stories he read and
loved, then Zork is perhaps the closest we’ve come to that Platonic ideal.

I love Zork. It is as old as I am, has no flashy graphics,
and yet remains my favorite videogame of all time. It stoked my imagination as
no other videogame has, but in ways similar to D&D. As a kid, peering at
the green monochrome screen, trying (and mostly failing) to work out the devious
puzzles. I didn’t make much of a distinction between Zork and Dungeons &
Dragons. Even though they didn’t share a brand name, I knew they were both
facets of a larger world.

Interactive fiction mostly died out in the late 80s, leaving
the mechanical influence of D&D to dominate videogames until recent years,
when technology has allowed complex narrative to remarry rules systems in
something that approximates the experience of telling a story with friends
around the gaming table. Sort of. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Found this tweet from the previous time I read Les Miserables, back in 2013. I …

Found this tweet from the previous time I read Les Miserables, back in 2013. I took several breaks to read other books, including the environmental dystopia The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi:

I’ve been reading The Windup Girl. It’s very good, but I’m ready to go back to Les Miserables for something more cheerful.
— Reading Les Mis (@ReadingLesMis) September 29, 2013

#books #scifi

On BookToot.Club