food is just pals you can eat

Audio

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:00:03 +0100

This Year - the Mountain Goats

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:18:40 +0100

This Year - the Mountain Goats

pascalcampion: Down at Bob Ross Creek

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:17:11 +0100

pascalcampion:

Down at Bob Ross Creek

justintimberlakedoingthings: Justin Timberlake remembers how...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:13:52 +0100

justintimberlakedoingthings:

Justin Timberlake remembers how scary clowns are

adamusprime: i don’t know if i can pinpoint exactly what i didn’t like about that book it just...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:52:07 +0100

adamusprime:

i don’t know if i can pinpoint exactly what i didn’t like about that book

it just didn’t seem as real as his other books to me? i was just acutely aware that what i was reading was a work of fiction, and that’s fine for more fantastical stuff, but like…i dunno. when you’re going for realism…

i feel kinda nervous talking about this because people seem to take it as a personal attack on them or john green when i say i don’t like it. it’s ok for other people to like it!! LOTS of other people like it! just not me.

I think I know what you mean. personally I liked it, but there were bits where it felt like kind of a pastiche of his other books and overall writing style.

"That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as..."

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 23:34:13 +0000

“That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody’s whim of killing my father or Fats Waller or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, “being alive is a crock of shit.””

- Kurt Vonnegut (via youngstero)

battledad: I’m gonna become friends with John Darnielle one day and I’ll sign all important...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:17:13 +0000

battledad:

I’m gonna become friends with John Darnielle one day and I’ll sign all important documents as Lloyd D. Pyes, Personal Friend of John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats.

Before he started playing at the Evening of Awesome, John Darnielle said that he wanted to thank John Green for relentlessly recommending the Mountain Goats to his readers, but I wanted you to know that I got into the Mountain Goats’ music because of your unrelenting blogging about them.

Lloyd Pyes: arguably more influential than John Green.

Learning languages is weird. I don’t mean, like, wanting to learn a language is weird,...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:49:08 +0000

Learning languages is weird.

I don’t mean, like, wanting to learn a language is weird, that’d be a stupid thing to think. But the way language learning is set up is weird. Like if you want to learn a language, you’d better hope that a lot of other people also want to learn that language or fuck you.

I’ve been learning Lithuanian for ~half a year, and I’ve kind of struggled to find any resources for it. I’ve got a couple of dictionaries, but they’re really more tailored for native Lithuanian speakers learning English, and are just like adequate for doing the inverse.

Even other than Lithuanian, if you look at most websites or products that offer foreign language courses (like Rosetta Stone or duolingo or whatever) the list is usually really small. It’s the same in school, too - or at least from my experience it is. In school I only had the chance to learn French, Spanish or German; and not at university I can take foreign language classes for free, but only in French, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.

And it’s weird, ‘cause it sort of suggests that some languages are more valid than others just because they have a greater number of native speakers, or because people want to go to places where they’re spoken more than other places. Which I guess makes some sense, but I sure don’t agree with it.

Also it must be even weirder for people who don’t speak English as their first language and want to learn another language, because almost all the resources I’ve found for learning languages are for English speakers. I mean, obviously I’m not likely to stumble onto a website for teaching Lithuanian to, say, Urdu speakers. But the podcast I listen to to learn Lithuanian frequently has commenters from the Netherlands or Spain or Germany who are using the same podcast to learn English.

By contrast, I just discovered Byki, which seems fairly good from what I’ve used of it, and actually has a pretty broad range of languages to learn.

(Oh and the podcast I use is Lithuanian Out Loud, if anyone was looking for something to learn Lithuanian from. It’s not updating very frequently any more, but there’s loads of stuff from basic to advanced in the archives, and I’m not even halfway through it yet.)

cantripgames: (Story War is a cool card game we’re making...

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:33:03 +0000

Wizard - He's the witch's rival

Witch - She's the wizard's rival

Fairy - She's a manic pixie dream girl

Red Dragon - He's the muscle of the Dragon Trio

Bone Dragon - It's the leader of the Dragon Trio

Red Dragon - She's the brains of the Dragon Trio

cantripgames:

(Story War is a cool card game we’re making that’s like Apples to Apples combined with Dungeons and Dragons, read more about it here.)

Hey, so! Anybody who makes Story War fan art and posts fan art in the #Story War tag will get a Secret Code that can be used on our Kickstarter to get a special edition of the game at a discounted price! And our Kickstarter launches at the end of the month!

Fan art can be of any of the above characters or anything we’ve posted on our blog! Everything is fair game! (You can even feel free to mashup Story War characters with characters from other fandoms, that’s totally acceptable and kind of canon - our game is set in a world that exists between other fictional worlds, so random cameos aren’t totally out of place! You can draw characters fighting, hanging out, or just doing a cool dramatic pose!

Also: We might be including a sheet of some fan art in the game itself as an additional little zine thing packaged with the cards. So if you submit fan art to the Story War tag, we might message you and ask if we can include your art in the game itself!

What if you can’t draw, and still want a chance at the Secret Code?

That’s fine, by reblogging this post and following our blog you would be doing us a huge favor! So, we’ll go through the notes and pick 10 random people who reblogged this post and give them the Secret Code, in addition to anyone who submits fan art to the #Story War tag.

Alright? Cool! Go go go!

(PS: If you’re in NYC, you can come to our playtest on Saturday!)

scottlava: “Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t...

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 18:45:11 +0000

scottlava:

“Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.”

You can own The Great Showdowns book!

Asimov's Laws of Robotics

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 19:11:35 +0000

fakescience:

marththebland: i hope the scientists run all their tests and find that we are indeed living in a...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:50:56 +0000

marththebland:

i hope the scientists run all their tests and find that we are indeed living in a simulation and then everyone says “okay so now what do we do” and the scientists are like “well uh there’s not really anything we can do, we just know now” and everyone on earth is like “oh… man… dang…” and life just goes on except everyone is gloomy and uncomfortable forever

jtotheizzoe: infinity-imagined: The DNA Replication Complex,...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:50:40 +0000

jtotheizzoe:

infinity-imagined:

The DNA Replication Complex, an assembly of proteins that synthesizes new DNA before cell division. It consists of Helicase, Primase, Single-strand binding proteins, and DNA polymerase III. Because DNA strands can only be copied in one direction, the complex must pull out loops of one strand and replicate it in fragments. At this moment there are hundreds of trillions of these molecular machines in constant activity within your body.

be sure to check out Drew Berry’s full DNA animation here, it will rock your genetic socks off. He also gave a fine TED talk about how he animates the unseeable world of biology.

In humans, this process is happening at the staggering speed of 3,000 DNA bases per minute. And in bacteria? Would you believe 30,000 bases per minute?!? That’s 500 nucleotides per second!!!

deathlehem: vondell-swain: Neil Harbisson (27 July 1982) is...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:22:46 +0000

deathlehem:

vondell-swain:

Neil Harbisson (27 July 1982) is a Catalan-raised, Northern Ireland-born contemporary artist, composer and cyborg activist best known for his self-extended ability to hear colours and to perceive colours outside the ability of human vision. In 2004 he became the first person in the world to wear an eyeborg. The inclusion of the eyeborg on his passport photo has been claimed by some to be official recognition of Harbisson as a cyborg. Colour and the use of technology as an extension of the performer, and not as part of the performance, are the central themes in Harbisson’s work. In 2010, he founded the Cyborg Foundation, an international organisation to help humans become cyborgs.

look!!! this TED talk is one of the most interesting things ive ever seen. the little wikipedia brief is not a good enough idea of how interesting it is.

what a cool person

whaaat. this is really cool.

There are probably more that I missed

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:20:49 +0000

ryannorth:

While I’ve been working on To Be Or Not To Be like crazy the past few days (already the Kickstarter is above $100k and we’re doing a sequel!), it occurred to me that there’s probably no more quoted passage in English (at least when it comes to titling media) than the soliloquy it comes from. I am part of a long and proud tradition of Naming Things Based On What Shakespeare Wrote Hundreds Of Years Ago, and so I took a break and did a thing!

clicky

(This image is too big for Tumblr to display nicely, but if you click you can view it at FULL SIZE)

rocketfists: thesonicscrew: Am I the only one who laughed at...

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:46:10 +0000

rocketfists:

thesonicscrew:

Am I the only one who laughed at this scene because he still did his stupid BatBale voice when nobody else was around?

Right there with you, buddy.

That stupid god damn seagull from GIRP for most annoying video game villain.

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:21:01 +0000

That stupid god damn seagull from GIRP for most annoying video game villain.

cantripgames: abstraire: by Gediminas Pranckevicius These are...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:39:21 +0000

cantripgames:

abstraire:

by Gediminas Pranckevicius

These are great.

jtotheizzoe: Nine minutes of the 2011 Tohuku earthquake, which...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:02:41 +0100

jtotheizzoe:

Nine minutes of the 2011 Tohuku earthquake, which caused the deadly Japanese tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster, recreated in 3D-printed resin by Luke Jerram.

(via The Finch and Pea)

Photo

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:36:55 +0100