Tag: things to tell the committee

Day in the life of a scientist

Me, at an art store: I need a paint marker with low toxicity and a delicate tip.
Employee: What kind of project are you working on?
Me: It’s for a research project. I just need bright colors.
Employee: What medium are you using? Canvas or paper?
Me: uh….spiders.
Employee: Plastic or felt?
Me: ….live spiders. Like, from the forest.
Employee: ….
Employee: I have to get back to the counter.

Fun/non mbti question

beradan:

ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is:

It’s already been a long week, so I have a hopefully fun question.

A friend’s family has a phrase for when we can suspend disbelief for something large, but not something smaller: too many lemons. It comes from that seminal classic, National Treasure, in which they accept that a. Nic Cage is a historian and b. There’s a treasure map on the back of the declaration of independence, but have difficulty believing that Cage’s father has a couple dozen lemons in his refrigerator.

As an avid fan of superhero entertainment I run into this a lot. The science in The Flash is frequently a cause for facepalming but I’m totally fine with the basic premise of “oh yeah, particle accelerators can give people superpowers.” Or I accept that Daredevil can feel a half degree temperature difference but am bothered by the utter insanity of New York geography presented.

So… What’s your too many lemons story?

Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale. I was prepared to accept the costumes. I was prepared to accept the questionably-accurate jousting. I was prepared and possibly excited for the rock music. I was aware that this movie was going to involve a naked Paul Bettany (what is my life that I said afterwards “it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve seen Paul Bettany strategically nude”)

But the characterization of Chaucer. Aie. Nope. Can’t do it. Bailed after about half an hour. Yelled at people afterwards.

thepioden:

sunspotpony:

snowysauropteryx:

wnycradiolab:

You know those little things that keep bread bags closed?  Well, the internet would like to tell you about them.  If you’re not doing anything too important right now, I think you should visit HORG (that’s the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group) and explore a beautiful, obsessive, hilarious taxonomy of occlupanids.

(ht Metafilter)

Some of these must have a tiny , isolated reproducing population, because they’re looking rather in-bread. 

@thepioden

This is amazing and up your alley.

Phylogeny is such an artificial fucking hot mess, I love it. I love it all. 

leofitzisms:

according to hetero dating law the girl shouldn’t pay for her meal which, logically, means that if two girls go on a date together nobody pays and they get everything for free but the catch is that they have to stand the whole time bc no one can pull out a chair

thebibliosphere:

hadanelith:

thebibliosphere:

I’ll never not be amused by the fact that I can drop the words “crucifix nail nipples” into a conversation and some of you who have been with me since the livejournal days will join me in the flashbacks, screaming and crying all the way.

I require context. Because this is a very interesting start of a story, and now I need the rest of it. Could I get a link, or a summary, or something? Pretty please?

All right buckle the fuck up kids, it’s the year 2012 and I’ve just been handed what should be an easy editing gig by my senior editor. It’s a vampire erotica story because one of the final Twilight movies is about to come out, and everything is vampires. Everything. I haven’t edited a single thing in months which isn’t about vampires. I am ready, I can do this. So I open the file and notice there’s a typo in the title, which really should have been my first inkling that something horrendous was about to go down, but you see I’m not quite dead inside yet so I carry on, bushy tailed and bright eyed with my faith in humanity intact. It’ll be dead by page 24, but I don’t know that yet. I’m just editing one more vampire boner fest.

The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.

Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.

Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.

Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.

If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.

So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at
his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t
stop”

This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.

When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.

A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.

And that’s the story of how an author sent me death threats for over a month because I stopped her shitty vampire porn from ever seeing the light of day. You’re all fucking WELCOME.

agritecture:

This Bengaluru-Based Firm Wants to Help You Grow Your Greens at Home

At the Surge conference organised in Bengaluru last week, a handful of hardware products caught our eye, including, of course, the Ather S340. One of the most gawked at booths was that of Bengaluru-based IoT and data science startup BitMantis, which unveiled TheGreenSAGE to the public.

TheGreenSAGE is a microwave-sized hydroponic kit that can help both amateurs and commercial growers raise fresh herbs throughout the year, at home or on site, ensuring that all the crop inputs are free of the residual pesticides found in farm grown vegetables.

At the conference, TheGreenSAGE was shown growing a lush patch of greens. It pairs with a smartphone app that can let the grower monitor plant growth trends and customise growing conditions as required for specific herbs, and it can be used to grow mustard, fenugreek, spinach, dill, coriander and variants of basil.

“We plan on pricing TheGreenSAGE solution in the range of an affordable kitchen appliance. We will be deciding on the exact product price range later this year,” Jayath Sathyanarayana, one of the three co-founders at BitMantis, told Gadgets 360. The year-old startup is planning to launch the device by August 2016, and Sathyanarayana gave us an overview of the benefits of hydroponics, the ethos of the company, and what it aims to accomplish in the long run.

Read the full article here.