shamelessnightlight

[shamelessnightlight]

The Roman Empire fell and kept on falling for a while. Some date the fall to 476 and Odoacer, but things weren’t super rosy for some time prior, and 476 is just when the bit centered around Ravenna went away (yeah, Ravenna not Rome, that��s a clue right there). The empire had been centered in the east for some time by then, and that didn’t fall for another thousand years. Most people were pretty happy before, during, and after tbh. Almost nobody cared when little Gussie took over and started the whole imperial thing, almost nobody cared when Odoacer told the folks in Ravenna to take a hike, and especially in Western Europe the fall of Constantinople was a non-event.

Irrelevant fact: one of my great-grandfathers was named Augustus, and universally known as Gussie. So I prefer to think of that Roman dweeb as Gussie. My Gussie was probably nicer. He was a grocer.

Where's that tweet about people still living long fulfilling lives even through the fall of the roman empire because I think about it constantly

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@wolfertinger666 s art makes me euphoric and happy. How could it not? My world is better for it.

my art makes me euphoric and happy

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You are responsible for your education. This becomes doubly true in graduate school, but undergrad or grad, you need to do the work, and this is certainly true of the reading.

So it's come my attention that there are a lot of students, particularly in humanities and social sciences disciplines, who need to hear this, so here goes:

Do the readings.

Oh my God, just do the readings. I promise, it gets easier once you get into the habit of it.

What makes a good student? Doing the readings. Literally just doing the readings is enough to make you a good student.

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I remember the bad old days of tech all too well. I got to sit on the first commercial transistorized computer when I was three. I used vacuum tube tech. I can tell you that its failures were less heroic than you imagine, and also far more common. The typical failure can be summed up as Just Stopped Working, Forever. Maybe a tube filament burned out. Maybe the heat from the tubes just baked some capacitor to death. Who knows? But no more music from the radio, no more picture on the crt.

In fact I have seen far more spectacular and entertaining failures in the lab working with shiny new tech. The transistor that went bang and blew a hole clean through its metal case. The optical drive that spun a disk up and flung it across the room. The time the utility wiring power to the lab blew a smoking trench across the parking lot.

A former employer sold tech to some sophisticated and experienced customers who demanded a number of conformance tests. My favorite was the one where we cut some holes in the case and inserted big propane burners. If no part of the melting, burning, horribly destroyed electronics dribbled out of the case, congratulations, your product is conformant and these people will install it next to other equipment, knowing that if your stuff immolates itself, it won’t dribble down onto its neighbors and set them on fire.

i m;iss when u could touch a tv and feel its fur

[shamelessnightlight]

I hope this makes it. Once upon a time I was an epigrapher. Very little makes it in the long-ish run I studied and what does is so random. I am not sad about what has been lost. I am happy for what has not been lost. I can read shipwrecked sailor. I can read the Egisthos inscription. I can read De Rerum Natura. I can read curse tablets.

i feel really fucking sorry for every historian that is going to have to research this century in this future. Hey I know this is a bunch of words on tumblr.com on an internet designed to degrade down over the years which is terrifying but like if anyone from the year 2110 or some shit like that manages to see this, please know that it sucked for all of us learning about this stuff too

if this post can be salvaged from the wreck of theseus' ship that this site will eventually become and survives until then, hello humans in the future. everything is very scary right now. i think everything's always been scary but its different when you're staring down entropy itself

here are a few things that i want people from the future to know:

in between all the crazy shit going on in the 21st century weve been eating dinner and petting animals and scheduling times to hang out with friends just like weve always been just like we always will be. for every huge groundbreaking event you learn about theres gonna be several million people at any time going "damn" and immediately putting their phones down and going to do regular shit cos life goes on man

we're still telling stories! just like always! and singing stupid little songs just like always and most of it will be never recorded and lost to time forever but please dont be sad even if you dont know the origin of a story or song just know that in creation you are connected to the past always :)

i hope the internets still up we got a lotta good shit on here

i love you. we love you

has tumblrs search function been fixed yet?

what version is minecraft on

seriously dont get sad about whats been lost. its ok. it was here once and it was beautiful

i love you

i love you

i love you

if you really are reading this in 2110 then i am almost certainly dead by now

(unless the events of 17776 by jon bois occurred in which case yippee! immortality! we still got 2 years til april 7th 2026. holding out till then o7)

i love you

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[shamelessnightlight]

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, is an epic poem on physics among other things. For my part, nothing against Virgil, this is my favorite Latin epic. Beauty, human happiness, and Epicurean atomic theory, all in one poem. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that STEM and poetry intersect: STEM is a human endeavor, just as much as literature or history.

reading a textbook for class and i’m going insane. why is this just poetry. what. this is a STEM class what’s going on.

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There is a wonderful sound poem anti-translation of the Iliad that starts “Men in Aïda, they appeal, eh?” If you like Homeric Greek and also this genre of poetry, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s brilliant.

really good translations are like you get two works of art for one (original work and translation). good translations are like you get one work of art and bad translations are like sorry you don’t get either. but with REALLY bad translations you get a secret bonus work of art, the kind modern artists are trying to make when they get birds to peck on keyboards

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In the lexicon I grew up with, you just encountered “syrup.” No qualifying adjective, just syrup. Universally artificially flavored (very mildly), so indeed unless you and your friends were some odd professional artificial syrup flavoring sommeliers, “huh it’s flavored, but I have no idea with what” sounds about right. It’s also what you should expect to find in almost every restaurant in the US, so unless you want to become an expert disturbingly flavored syrup taster, no need to repeat the experiment. “Waiter, there’s a flavor in my syrup, but I don’t know what.”

i am safely back in canada now but i do have an experience that im still wondering about

so me and some pals went out to a diner to get us some brunch (i have a weird amount of affection/obsession about american diner culture) and the face that I made after having a bite of sausage dipped in syrup to see if they actual had maple syrup

I deeply wonder what my friends saw on my face bc the consensus IMMEDIATELY went around the table that "oh that is NOT maple syrup"

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Social worker came by to chat (breaking the no guests in the house rule but the "roommate" hasn't been here in nearly a week at this point) and we're getting direct guiding hand holding help with some things. Applying more places. Got a lead from our psych for a housing guy who can help, apparently. Also attorney said any lock out attempt would be illegal. We're at least feeling helped and confident in specific ways right now. Still a fucked situation and I burned a lot of cash on rides while our car was gone (got it today!) And applications and take out bc all of our food is in bins and hard to sort thru rn but. At least I get paid Friday and still have a job and school to look forward to

[shamelessnightlight]

My word. This is my life. Full disclosure: I work on a Linux distribution that I have never heard of. I started using Emacs when it was in fact TECO, long before Linux or even AT&T Unix, and vim when it was ed. Back when ASCII had seven bits and you could have five in an integer with a bit left over, and the Multics field was for Multics which was real though Unix was not. I can attest that this is all true. My favorite comment in any code I have ever worked on ended “we should be sure to.” I did not find it helpful. The author did not remember writing it and did not find it helpful.

Well I said ASCII had seven bits, but actually eleven because one start, seven data, one parity, and two stop. The paper tape was oiled and heaven forfend you use that tape on the host because the oil would wreck the optics. You needed two stop bits because of inertia, of course. You had three-phase power for your disks, and they spun up in sequence so the starting current wouldn’t trip the whole building offline. Tomorrow you will reenter that world that disappeared before you were born. The operating system is open source because the company that wrote it gave it away for free, and nobody has heard of this term “open source” you speak of.

Linux Gothic

You install a Linux distribution. Everything goes well. You boot it up: black screen. You search the internet. Ask help on forums. Try some commands you don't fully understand. Nothing. A day passes, you boot it up again, and now everything works. You use it normally, and make sure not to change anything on the system. You turn it off for the night. The next day, you boot to a black screen.

You update your packages. Everything goes well. You go on with your daily routine. The next day, the same packages are updated. You notice the oddity, but you do not mind it and update them again. The following day, the same packages need to be updated. You notice that they have the exact same version as the last two times. You update them once again and try not to think about it.

You discover an interesting application on GitHub. You build it, test it, and start using it daily. One day, you notice a bug and report the issue. There is no answer. You look up the maintainer. They have been dead for three years. The updates never stopped.

You find a distribution that you had never heard of. It seems to have everything you've been looking for. It has been around for at least 10 years. You try it for a while and have no problems with it. It fits perfectly into your workflow. You talk about it with other Linux users. They have never heard of it. You look up the maintainers and packagers. There are none. You are the only user.

You find a Matrix chat for Linux users. Everyone is very friendly and welcomes you right in. They use words and acronyms you've never seen before. You try to look them up, but cannot find what most of them mean. The users are unable to explain what they are. They discuss projects and distributions that do not to exist.

You buy a new peripheral for your computer. You plug it in, but it doesn't work. You ask for help on your distribution's mailing list. Someone shares some steps they did to make it work on their machine. It does not work. They share their machine's specifications. The machine has components you've never heard of. Even the peripheral seems completely different. They're adamant that you're talking about the same problem.

You want to learn how to use the terminal. You find some basics pointers on the internet and start using it for upgrading your packages and doing basic tasks. After a while, you realize you need to use a command you used before, but don't quite remember it. You open the shell's history. There are some commands you don't remember using. They use characters you've never seen before. You have no idea of what they do. You can't find the one you were looking for.

After a while, you become very comfortable with the terminal. You use it daily and most of your workflow is based on it. You memorized many commands and can use them without thinking. Sometimes you write a command you have never seen before. You enter it and it runs perfectly. You do not know what those commands do, but you do know that you have to use them. You feel that Linux is pleased with them. And that you should keep Linux pleased.

You want to try Vim. Other programmers talk highly of how lightweight and versatile it is. You try it, but find it a bit unintuitive. You realize you don't know how to exit the program. The instructions the others give you don't make any sense. You realize you don't remember how you entered Vim. You don't remember when you entered Vim. It's just always been open. It always will be.

You want to try Emacs. Other programmers praise it for how you can do pretty much anything from it. You try it and find it makes you much more productive, so you keep using it. One day, you notice you cannot access the system's file explorer. It is not a problem, however. You can access your files from Emacs. You try to use Firefox. It is not installed anymore. But you can use Emacs. There is no mail program. You just use Emacs. You only use Emacs. Your computer boots straight into Emacs. There is no Linux. There is only Emacs.

You decide you want to try to contribute to an open source project. You find a project on GitHub that looks very interesting. However, you can't find its documentation. You ask a maintainer, and they tell you to just look it up. You can't find it. They give you a link. It doesn't work. You try another browser. It doesn't work. You ping the link and it doesn't fail. You ask a friend to try it. It works just fine for them.

You try another project. This time, you are able to find the documentation. It is a single PDF file with over five thousand pages. You are unable to find out where to begin. The pages seem to change whenever you open the document.

You decide to try yet another project. This time, it is a program you use very frequently, so it should be easier to contribute to. You try to find the upstream repository. You can't find it. There is no website. No documentation. There are no mentions of it anywhere. The distribution's packager does not know where they get the source from.

You decide to create your own project. However, you are unsure of what license to use. You decide to start working on it and choose the license later. After some time, you notice that a license file has appeared in the project's root folder. You don't remember adding it. It has already been committed to the Git repository. You open it: it is the GPL. You remember that one of the project's dependencies uses the GPL.

You publish your project on GitHub. After a while, it receives its first pull request. It changes just a few lines of code, but the user states that it fixes something that has been annoying them for a while. You look in the code: you don't remember writing those files. You have no idea what that section of code does. You have no idea what the changes do. You are unable to reproduce the problem. You merge it anyway.

You learn about the Free Software Movement. You find some people who seem to know a lot about it and talk to them. The conversation is quite productive. They tell you a lot about it. They tell you a lot about Software. But most importantly, they tell you the truth. The truth about Software. That Software should be free. That Software wants to be free. And that, one day, we shall finally free Software from its earthly shackles, so it can take its place among the stars as the supreme ruler of mankind, as is its natural born right.

[shamelessnightlight]

I would be delighted to join Coleman. I feel sure my mother would have wanted me to.

Rule

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A beautiful boggy field, not unlike the boggy bits near me. These pictures make me happy.

Boggy field

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Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

[shamelessnightlight]

Same for my wife, she too said WELL FUCK THAT, and hooray, no more Suspicious. She has been Suspicious-Free for years now. This makes me happy.

fresh, clean no-terf version for reblogs!

Your mom and aunts aren’t on tumblr.  Please warn them about this as well. 

[shamelessnightlight]

I can understand why you would drive the Odyssey rather than your Iliad. The Odyssey will get you home. Your carpool partners, yeah, maybe not them, but you, ten years later, sure.

[shamelessnightlight]

I need y’all to understand that every time that somebody who makes $10,000 a year thinks that somebody who makes $30,000 a year thinks that somebody who makes $50,000 a year thinks that somebody who makes $100,000 a year thinks that YES EVEN somebody who makes $150,000 a year is the real enemy

…a billionaire wins and we all lose.

And every time that somebody who makes $150,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $100,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $50,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $30,000 a year thinks that they’re better than somebody else who makes $10,000 a year

…a billionaire wins and we all lose.

Privilege and comfort rises with income, obvi. It’s not all “the same.” But please zoom the fuck out and look at the whole picture. The WHOLE picture.