Dust, collecting

sexpigeon: English-language hand washing maintains a lead.

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:43:28 +0200

English-language hand washing maintains a lead.

kororaa: scinerds: Barns Are Painted Red Because of the...

Fri, 17 May 2013 03:49:55 +0200

scinerds:

Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars

Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the chemistry of dying stars. Seriously.

Yonatan Zunger is a Google employee who decided to explain this phenomenon on Google+ recently. The simple answer to why barns are painted red is because red paint is cheap. The cheapest paint there is, in fact. But the reason it’s so cheap? Well, that’s the interesting part.

Red ochre—Fe2O3—is a simple compound of iron and oxygen that absorbs yellow, green and blue light and appears red. It’s what makes red paint red. It’s really cheap because it’s really plentiful. And it’s really plentiful because of nuclear fusion in dying stars. Zunger explains :

The only thing holding the star up was the energy of the fusion reactions, so as power levels go down, the star starts to shrink. And as it shrinks, the pressure goes up, and the temperature goes up, until suddenly it hits a temperature where a new reaction can get started. These new reactions give it a big burst of energy, but start to form heavier elements still, and so the cycle gradually repeats, with the star reacting further and further up the periodic table, producing more and more heavy elements as it goes. Until it hits 56. At that point, the reactions simply stop producing energy at all; the star shuts down and collapses without stopping.

As soon as the star hits the 56 nucleon (total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus) cutoff, it falls apart. It doesn’t make anything heavier than 56. What does this have to do with red paint? Because the star stops at 56, it winds up making a ton of things with 56 neucleons. It makes more 56 nucleon containing things than anything else (aside from the super light stuff in the star that is too light to fuse).

The element that has 56 protons and neutrons in its nucleus in its stable state? Iron. The stuff that makes red paint.

And that, Zunger explains, is how the death of a star determines what color barns are painted.

i love this

new-aesthetic: Disunion - The guillotine simulator for Oculus...

Sat, 11 May 2013 01:16:21 +0200

new-aesthetic:

Disunion - The guillotine simulator for Oculus Rift. (by André Berlemont)

new-aesthetic: The halfcat, attracting newly revived interest...

Wed, 08 May 2013 23:50:46 +0200

new-aesthetic:

The halfcat, attracting newly revived interest on Twitter thanks to this blog post, appears to have first been spotted in this blog post in August 2009. But there are no attributions. The latest reports pin it to Street View - not mentioned in the original posting - and it certainly appears to be Street View image, but, lacking coordinates, the halfcat seems destined to be a mystery forever, one of any number of mythical beings, lost in the Clouds.

More interesting than the halfcat’s strangeness, perhaps, is its unknowability. Someone saw the halfcat, snapped it, but the route back is lost. The databases contain such multitudes of new myths.

"People first, culture second, strategy third…100 percent of the time."

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:32:34 +0200

“People first, culture second, strategy third…100 percent of the time.”

- A really smart, short piece on developing a positive company culture — and a competitive edge — in FastCompany. (via poptech)

Um, no.

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:47:02 +0200

Um, no.

jtotheizzoe: How Richard Feynman cracked the safes at Los...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:49:09 +0200

jtotheizzoe:

How Richard Feynman cracked the safes at Los Alamos using human behavior and simple math, in the meantime convincing everyone there he was some sort of magician and further cementing his place in my heart as coolest, cleverest dude ever.

(Numberphile via Open Culture)

sexpigeon: That’s some pretty authentic trash, and it speaks to...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:57:43 +0100

sexpigeon:

That’s some pretty authentic trash, and it speaks to a certain “realness” that NYC can offer and Silicon Valley cannot.

"When you run an organization and you find people engaging in child rape, forced labor, child theft..."

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:06:45 +0100

“

When you run an organization and you find people engaging in child rape, forced labor, child theft and the other atrocities that the Catholic church has engaged in…the right thing to do is say “Hey, we discovered a problem in our organization. The actions these people took do NOT represent our values. We are cooperating with the authorities to bring these people to justice and we are taking steps to ensure that this sort of act can never darken our doorway again. We offer our sincere apologies to the victims and we intend to work to regain your trust and confidence in the future. We wish that we had known about this sooner, so that we could have correct this before more people were hurt.” Etc.

That’s not what the Catholic church has done. They had policies that shielded people from prosecution. They’ve denied accusations. They’ve obstructed justice. They’ve blamed the victims. They’ve avoided the subject….they’ve done whatever they felt they needed to do in order to try to protect the reputation of the church. They’re wrong…and some of what they’ve done is criminal.

The fact that you feel the need to come here and defend them - to the point of accusing some portion of us of being conspiracy theorists is absolutely pathetic. Go…pray…search your heart and figure out why you’re willing to support pedophiles and the people who protect them. Why are you willing to make excuses for people who have stolen children, threatened pregnant teens and created workhouses for people suspected of wanting to have sex outside of wedlock?

”

- Matt Dillahunty on the catholic church

jtotheizzoe: explore-blog: The West Wing breaks down what’s...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:39:12 +0100

jtotheizzoe:

explore-blog:

The West Wing breaks down what’s wrong with maps and why the Gals-Peters Projection is more accurate and less politically biased than the Mercator map we’ve been using for centuries.

Complement with maps as power and propaganda, 100 diagrams that changed the world, and some intentionally distorted maps that make political points.

(↬ Buzzfeed)

It’s pretty amazing to find out that the way you’ve been viewing the world your whole life is not at all how that world actually looks. Must-watch.

"In an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist John Bargh and his collaborators..."

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 02:11:04 +0100

“In an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist John Bargh and his collaborators asked students at New York University—most aged eighteen to twenty-two—to assemble four-word sentences from a set of five words (for example, “finds he it yellow instantly”). For one group of students, half the scrambled sentences contained words associated with the elderly, such as Florida, forgetful, bald, gray, or wrinkle. When they had completed that task, the young participants were sent out to do another experiment in an office down the hall. That short walk was what the experiment was about. The researchers unobtrusively measured the time it took people to get from one end of the corridor to the other. As Bargh had predicted, the young people who had fashioned a sentence from words with an elderly theme walked down the hallway significantly more slowly than the others.”

- Daniel Kahneman

STFU, Conservatives: For #RoeAt40, all of my favorite pro-choice resources

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 12:03:41 +0100

STFU, Conservatives: For #RoeAt40, all of my favorite pro-choice resources:

stfuconservatives:

As my long-time readers know, abortion is an issue I’m very passionate about. So passionate that I have a bookmarks folder simply labeled “Abortion” that has about 75 links in it. For your edification, some of my favorite response to pro-life ignorance:

“Banning abortions would decrease…

jtotheizzoe: theatlantic: Today in tremendous geekiness. This...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:23:02 +0100

jtotheizzoe:

theatlantic:

Today in tremendous geekiness.

This happened.

cocoku: deeplezstonerwitch: sugaryumyum: juicyjacqulyn: audgy...

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 22:57:16 +0100

cocoku:

deeplezstonerwitch:

sugaryumyum:

juicyjacqulyn:

audgy:

yerawizardmary:

yerawizardmary:

Dying right now.

I cannot believe this got so many notes. But this is the continuation.

Mary, you’re my online dating hero!

OH PLEASE fucking tell me you were honest about sending his mom the convo

because i need a christmas present that good

knowing a guy is going to have to deal with his mom knowing he perpetuates rape culture

and be accountable for his actions

Amazing.

merry christmas

Poetry!

jtotheizzoe: Tokyo Slime Rail Ok, so we’ve seen that a slime...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:59:47 +0100

jtotheizzoe:

Tokyo Slime Rail

Ok, so we’ve seen that a slime mold can solve a maze better than a toddler. But that’s basically as simple as finding your way from point A to point B without retracing your steps. Not impressed?

Let’s raise the stakes. Network design is a pretty complicated sort of problem, where a group of distributed points, like cities, need to be connected in the most efficient way. Highways, shipping routes, railways … they all depend on this kind of complex planning. Finding the best path between each point saves humans money and time.

What takes humans several years of civil engineering school to master is no problem at all for slime molds. First, oats (a food source) were laid out on a dish in the pattern of the cities that surround Tokyo.

The slime mold, acting as a single, branching cell, reaches out in all directions, probing and tasting like a blind, hungry octopus. It gradually lays down a vein between each point, sharing nutrients over the whole “supercell” plumbing network, and deletes the veins it doesn’t use. It has no ability to plan and no brain, but the result matches the human-designed Tokyo rail system almost perfectly!

Sharing resources and complex planning, out of a single-celled slime mold. Not bad, eh? Ed Yong wrote all of this up in great detail a while back, check it out.

Dear Coquette: On guilt and shame

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:45:06 +0100

Dear Coquette: On guilt and shame:

dearcoquette:

Do you feel guilt? That’s not a loaded question, I mean it in regard to your very (very) well developed sense of mature morality. You just seem like such a morally advanced person that you’d sort of be “beyond” guilt.

The only people who are beyond guilt are narcissists and sociopaths. I feel…

maureenjohnsonbooks: SECDEE!

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 01:07:56 +0100

maureenjohnsonbooks:

SECDEE!

Photo

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:15:04 +0100

beaverbrook: The Tub

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 08:31:03 +0100

beaverbrook:

The Tub

WHEN THE UNDERGRAD THINKS HE CAN HANDLE MY PROJECT

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 01:50:25 +0200

whatshouldwecallgradschool:

credit: Kettner