me when i recommend something to someone and they end up not liking it
A portrait of an Alexander horned sphere I drew for a professor’s birthday
Originally designed for a quiz night, I am happy to release this unto the world. Everyone prepare for:
(No, I will not give you a free drink)
Prepare a gauntlet of mind-bending, reality shattering questions designed to test all facets of the human soul in five distinct rounds:
The Science
The humanities
The Arts
Raw Physical Strength
Mystery Bonus Round
This game is NOT for the weak of heart, throughout the experience you will encounter TRAPS, SECRETS and HORRORS. Following your performance in this game your soul will be judged into one of five ranks, and your results may shatter your worldview irreparably.
Requirements
To play you will need at least two players
An additional player will be The Brooke (the host)
Answers MUST be written on paper and this paper must be standardized between players
A screen everyone can see, preferably a large one as to see small text
How To Play
The Brooke should go through the presentation before hand to gain familiarity with all the questions and secrets
The first three rounds are multiple choice questions, one point is awarded per correct answer
If the correct choice is "None of the above" an additional point is awarded for stating the correct answer
Secrets with their own rules can be found throughout the presentation
The Raw Physical Strength round appoints one point to any player who can complete the task
The mystery bonus round is not multiple choice, each question has two correct answers, each correct answer given awards one point to the player.
Without any further ado, I present to you the quiz:
Our Animal Care team recently completed annual exams on all seven leopard sharks in our Kelp Forest exhibit. From aquarists to veterinarians and volunteers, it takes a small community of shark afishionados to get this important job done!
Each shark was brought up individually by the dive team, anesthetized, and given a full workup. Vet services drew blood, inspected gills for parasites, checked eyes, and examined the elasmobranchs via ultrasound. Meanwhile, aquarists recorded measurements as the sharks woke up.
These annual checkups are critical to the ongoing care of these amazing animals—and it wouldn’t be possible without the collaborative work of our dedicated Aquarium community! 💙
📸 Thanks to staffers Mary and Tiffany for the fintastic photos!
Our local newspaper ran a story about the legendary graffiti artist who recently passed away and. Literally everything about it is fucking insane. I'm insane about it.
So this guy has been extremely active for around fifteen years, during which he spread these beautiful, high quality pieces all over the country, way over a thousand of his standard signature, and probably thousands more. He did completely batshit stuff like literally spray painting an entire train from top to bottom or leaving his signature at the top of a 600ft tall overpass and this whole time, only five people from his crew know who he really is. To everyone else it's a complete mystery.
And then he dies at the age of 35. A few weeks after his death, his crew shows up at his completely unassuming parents' doorstep, reveals who they are and asks if they can host a memorial exhibition of his art.
Turns out, this dude has been leading an insane double life. In the daytime he was a meek little office worker with a partially paralyzed arm and no social life to speak of. In the nighttime he was a fucking legend. Not only did he climb that fucking 600ft overpass, he did it WITH A PHYSICAL DISABILITY. THE MADLAD. And throughout the entire time, fifteen years, he got caught once. ONCE. HE DID ALL THAT UNNOTICED. THAT'S INSANE.
"Do you ever dream of land?" The whale asks the tuna.
"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"
"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."
"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."
"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.
"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."
"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."
"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.
"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.
"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."
"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."
"You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."
Pater Hoyt: Let me tell you this tragic story of the slow death of my church, the desperation of believers to save it, the most terrifying trees, the dismissiveness of science for "unimportant" subjects, and a concept of immortality so gruesome it makes priests question the existence of god.
Sol Weintraub: Let me tell you about the slow death of my only child, about time and inevidability and being a parent, about having to witness your daughter wake up confused and frightened every single day and my powerlessness to help her. Let me tell you about the Binding of Isaac and a nonbeliever's struggle with god.
The Consul: Let me tell you about the doomed rebellion of a beautiful world and the death of it's ecosystem. About how interstellar travel and relative time separate people. About my lifelong struggle to fight my grandmother's fight to the detriment of my own person to the point where I do not even have a name.
Martin Silenus: Let me tell you about my incredibly long life and all the stuff I've lost, including earth itself and my ability to speak. How I became unfathomably wealthy writing shitty pulp fiction. About art and the process of creation in such a profound way that you'll forget you hated me.
Brawne Lamia: Let me tell you about our Robot Kings and how humanity is unable to stop whatever they are doing. About how everything you have been told about our history might be a lie. About corruption and murder in the highest office of our government. And about the cute twink I met, fell in love with, got pregnant from and then lost.
Het Masteen did not live to tell his story.
Fedmahn Kassad: Let me tell you about my incredibly hot secret girlfriend and about all the sex we had in detail!
I've recently been seeing this article making rounds around this website and particularly people misusing this very cool advancement to imply that modern nuclear reactors are "unsafe" or "dangerous", which is partially due to the just blatantly bad journalism on display here.
The accomplishment of this new reactor is definitely exceptionally impressive but I think that news websites (Even ones specializing in science) have been mischaracterizing the reactor as "meltdown-proof" which is just - wrong? and implies that current reactors are just begging to meltdown.
The cool thing about this new reactor is that its passively cooled, but that doesn't mean its INVULNERABLE to nuclear meltdowns, for example the Chernobyl meltdown happened completely independently of whether it was cooled passively or not.
In fact, passive cooling would only pose an advantage in situations where ALL pumps and backup pumps break and the core doesn't get coolant pumped to it. That's happened exactly once: in Fukushima and only after a literal tsunami hit it, and there's no reason to think that the passive Helium coolant in this new reactor wouldn't also just break. Fukushima happened because of corruption in regulation, preventing suitable defenses against this exact thing from getting built, not because of unsafe reactor design.
There's also some articles like this one which talk about the new reactor being "self-regulating" which is true, but misses the point that the vast majority of nuclear reactors in service today are also stable in the exact same way. Negative feedback loops are a HUGE part of reactor design, the most popular reactor design today is the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) which is incredibly stable - PWRs just truly hate increasing (or decreasing) energy output.
Most nuclear reactors today are already incredibly safe, even if you had complete control over a nuclear reactor it would be effectively impossible to cause a meltdown on purpose - both the physics of the system and the thousands of automated components would beat the ever loving shit out of any hope of trying to do so.
Articles like these just turn this impressive achievements into a kind of fearmongering over the "dangerous" nuclear reactors currently being used. The fact is that nuclear reactors are incredibly safe, PWRs are an incredible feat of engineering genius and its a genuine shame that the general public isn't aware of how much care goes into their design and safety, let alone how useful and essential they are in our electrical systems.
Modern nuclear reactors are clean, they are safe, and they are vital to a healthy energy grid in the post-fossil-fuel future.
A really good read I highly recommend is Colin Tucker's How To Drive A Nuclear Reactor. He's very clear and very frank with the workings and reality of nuclear power today.
nobody understands my craft
mormons undoubtedly in the top 5 worst things the united states has ever invented which is really saying something
early gnostic theologian: material existence is a form of torture thrusted upon humanity by the treacherous demiurge.
the same theologian eleven months on estrogen: well maybe actually it not so bad.
I think a lot about maths, dinosaurs and boardgames, often simultaneously 20,non-binary
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