shxwyxurself

[shxwyxurself]

(via)

Edit: I didn’t know this would get popular, so warning for TERFs in the comments!! Also friendly reminder that TERFs can absolutely fuck off 🥰🥰

[shxwyxurself]

Honestly, the fact that terry Pratchett has experience around nuclear power makes so much sense once you realize what magic is standing as a metaphor for in the discworld. Like, look at this fucking quote from going postal:

"That's why [magic] was left to wizards, who knew how to handle it safely. Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards—not "not doing magic" because they couldn't do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn't. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you knew how easy it was. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again."

Like... It feels incredibly obvious what he's talking about once you know the context.

[shxwyxurself]

able bodied people will freak out when they see an ambulatory mobility aid user not using their aids but won't question it when a hiker only uses a walking stick or trekking poles when they're hiking. they're the same thing.

[shxwyxurself]

"everybody experiences that" says mother who has the same symptom of the same mental illness

[shxwyxurself]

Well obviously I can’t have chronic fatigue, that’s a real problem for real disabled people that’s diagnosed by doctors probably. Clearly I just have some sort of perpetual exhaustion issue, that is also almost certainly my fault somehow

[shxwyxurself]

One of my friends has a young autistic daughter who hurts her cat by hugging it too tightly.

Everyone can easily recognize this as a problem that needs to be fixed. And that's because it's the effect that matters, not the intent. Even when you mean well, you must acknowledge the possibility that you're being hurtful and stop if you are.

But think of all the times when a neurotypical person who's a self proclaimed "empath" takes it upon themself to "help" someone because it's "just who they are". Then, when the person they're "helping" complains, their response is, "I was just trying to help. No need to be so disrespectful and unappreciative." Then they continue to "help" in the same way against the will of the person they're "helping".

Our society seems to have a rule that when you're autistic, it's your effect that matters, but when you're neurotypical, it's your intent that matters. Neurotypical people can easily get away with hurting people because "their heart was in the right place", but the same consideration would never be shown for an autistic person unless the person they're hurting is oppressed in some other way.

[shxwyxurself]

characters can just. be queer. queerness is not dependent on the relationships that they have. they can be gay and alone forever and still be fucking gay.

[shxwyxurself]

Wait a minute, you're telling me that when presented with similar situations at different points in time, you will think and act differently based on factors such as who else is around or your mood? Your feelings and opinions change occasionally as a result of the passage of time? IDK, I think you have some sort of disorder. Normal people have a static sense of self, or so I've been told. I have a disorder, you see.

[shxwyxurself]

honestly I hate “can you pet the dog?!?” not for any of the common reasons but because it was initially interesting as a proposition of “can you interact with the world in a way that is not within the primary mechanical loop” and that very quickly fell away to being “well now any indie developer making a game has to have a pet the dog button or they’re going to get letters”

[shxwyxurself]

As a horror guy I vehemently do not support hatred towards romance girlies. Sister genres in my opinion. We both enjoy familiar tropes. We both enjoy interesting relationship dynamics explored between two or more people. We both enjoy werewolves.

[shxwyxurself]

There was this guy in the 1800s - I can't remember his name, but his name is recorded somewhere - who honestly argued that if given the choice between a beautiful woman and a heron, deep down in their most earnest true heart, every man would rather fuck the heron. And he got mad when people denied this, continuing to deny this what he had decided must be an universal truth, instead of praising him for being the only one who was brave enough to finally say it out loud. Like he really thought that every single person telling him "Jesse what the hell are you talking about" was not only denying him, but denying themselves their true desires and perpetuating the apparently massive cultural lie that herons aren't fuckable.

Anyway what I'm saying here is that every once in a while whenever you find yourself in a situation where nobody else is willing to agree with something that you consider the most obvious truth, take a moment to meditate on the possibility that perhaps they do mean what they say, and perhaps they are right. Maybe nobody else but you wants to fuck the heron.

[shxwyxurself]

Finished a new piece. I think it speaks to my state of mind. Notice the fine details. :)

[shxwyxurself]

i hate people who know highways. “i’m heading south on I-65” okay man. i’m moving my rook to c2

[shxwyxurself]

saw this absolute king at the Paris Miku Expo

[EDIT] : THIS IS @funnyparadox PRESENTED TO YOU, OUR PATHS FINALLY MET

[shxwyxurself]

How do you take a photo of time?

I've been watching the track events at the Olympics since I was a wee lad. It was a tradition in our family. We'd gather around our ancient low-definition 19 inch CRT television and watch tiny blobs compete against other tiny blobs and root for our country.

It was a bit like watching YouTube on your phone in 144p.

Several heroes emerged.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was amazing.

You can't forget about Flo-Jo.

And then the Olympics decided NBA players were allowed in the competition.

Which formed... The Dream Team.

Was this fair?

Well... they won each game by an average of 44 points.

So... no. It was not fair.

Though it became more fair as time went on.

But, umm... yeah. The other teams looked like the Washington Generals and the US looked like the Harlem Globetrotters if they stopped screwing around half of the game.

But my absolute favorite Olympian was a runner named Michael Johnson.

He was cool as heck.

For one thing... gold shoes.

But he also had this crazy, upright, Tom Cruise-ish sprinting style that just made him look like a running robot on the track.

And in the 1996 Atlanta games he just trounced EVERYONE. I mean, it wasn't even close.

Yikes. Those losing blobs are probably really embarrassed.

Last night I decided to invigorate my nostalgia and watch the track events again. And I got to see one of the wildest races in history.

It didn't even last 10 seconds but it was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever witnessed. Almost every runner won the race.

After I saw that initially, I was like... who the heck won???

Even in slow motion I wasn't sure.

This was one of the closest finishes in history. There has never been a race where all 8 runners were within this margin.

The arena was silent as the winner was being confirmed. The runners just kind of paced around waiting for official word. My best guess was the Jamaican runner, Kishane Thompson. But then the loudspeaker announced Noah Lyles.

The last tiny morsel of American pride burst out of me with a big "Wooooo!"

I forgot what it was like to be proud of my country. I wish it happened more often. But this young man, despite being last place in the first 3rd of the race, turned on the afterburners and won in a photo finish.

And that's when my inner nerd took over.

Because when they showed the photo finish image, it looked super weird.

Why is the track white?

Why do all of the runners look all warpy like that QWOP game?

So I went down a research rabbit hole to figure this out.

Photo finishes are actually fascinating. The first photo finish captured the end of a horse race in 1890. But that was mostly luck and timing. The actual photo finish mechanisms weren't used until 1937.

Originally they would film the finish line through a physical slit.

And the first horsie head that appeared in that slit would be the winner. This technology ended a huge aspect of corruption in horse race fixing almost overnight.

But we have come a long way since then. And I'd like to introduce you to the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate.

This slow motion camera sits fixed on the finish line of every race. The concept of the photo finish has remained remarkably similar to the 1930s approach. The camera sensor is specially designed to only record a vertical slit.

Only the finish line itself is actually captured.

And because it limits what it records to only that slit, it can capture 40,000 frames per second to get amazing temporal resolution.

So why don't the photo finishes just look like, well... this?

That is because the camera takes a picture of time more-so than dimensional space. I guess it would be more accurate to say it *assembles* a picture of time.

As the runners cross the finish line, the camera combines all of the little strips of pictures into a single image.

It's almost like if you tried to reassemble a piece of paper after it had been shredded.

Imagine each strip of paper is a picture of ONLY the finish line, just at a slightly different point in time.

What if someone stopped on the finish line and didn't move... what would that look like?

Once they got there, the same part of their body would just be repeated.

So the right side of the photo finish picture represents earlier in time and it just assembles the image strip by strip as time passes and you literally get a picture of time itself.

NEAT!

Okay, but how do they determine the winner from the photo finish?

I mean, that shoe looks like it is ahead of Noah Lyles!

Clavicles!

The IAFF rules state the foremost part of the torso must cross the finish line first. And the endpoint of the torso is the outer end of the clavicle.

So if you get this bone across the finish line first, you win the race.

Two more fun facts!

The start of the race is actually just as carefully timed as the end of the race. There are sensors in the starting blocks of each runner.

The starting gun also has an electronic sensor.

They have determined the fastest a human can react to the sound of a gun is roughly 100 milliseconds. So if you start running before 100 milliseconds they know you didn't actually hear the gun, you just got antsy and started running too early.

And the final fun fact...

Did you notice the Omega logo at the top of the photo finish?

That isn't superimposed or added after the fact. That is captured by the camera.

But if this image is composed only of tiny little slivers, how did they get the Omega logo to show up?

That is a little display. And it is synchronized with the Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate to show a little sliver of the Omega logo for each frame captured.

So when the final image is stitched together, it looks like a cohesive logo at the top of the photo.

Pretty clever, Omega!