#practicalities

[geeoharee]

Alabama have gassed a prisoner: https://apnews.com/article/nitrogen-execution-death-penalty-alabama-699896815486f019f804a8afb7032900

This is an interesting one, as I've long argued that inert gas would be more humane than lethal injection (which only looks 'quiet' because the lethal shot is preceded by a paralytic, so the executioners don't have to watch the guy struggle)

However it appears to have issues in practical administration: in particular, the guy held his breath for two minutes first. I don't know what you'd do about that!

I genuinely don't have much of an opinion about the death penalty because of my beliefs about suffering. I think in theory it's probably better to die quickly than be left in a cage to rot if those are the two options, but nobody on US death row dies quickly, because lawyers. And you have to have lawyers. So I don't know.

In a country that loves guns so much you'd think they'd just shoot prisoners in the head, it works all right on livestock. I think firing squad is legal in a few states but they don't seem to use it.

P.S. if you reply "NAZIS GASSED PEOPLE THEREFORE IT'S BAD" you get blocked

[inadvertent-cineaste]

A perfect opportunity to introduce my favorite website to those who may not know it:

Literally just two drop-down menus and a button. Pick one material from the first drop-down menu, one from the second, click the "Let's Glue!" button, and get excellent, detailed advice about what adhesive will suit your needs.

something you don't learn until you get really far into the making and tinkering life is that there's no such thing as "glue" really. there are so many kinds of substances that stick other substances together and they are all very different and if you just go look at the adhesives aisle in the hardware store the packaging never actually tells you anything useful. it's like "this is SUPER T-REX POWER GLUE" and the fine print says "good for use on wood metal and plastic". okay. but WHICH PLASTICS MY GOOD BITCH,

because SURPRISE, there's no such thing as "plastic" either. every kind of wood is basically the same on a chemical level, but the only thing every plastic has in common is "some of its molecules are long" and that is NOT a quality that determines how things stick together.

I just ordered some stuff I hope will permanently stick a circuit board to a steel sheet and withstand temperatures up to 150 degrees. by the way circuit boards are made of epoxy-bound woven glass cloth which is cool as hell but what the fuck do you glue that with? can any of the 12 kinds of adhesives I currently own do that? no of course not. if I want to stick two pieces of acrylic together so hard they become watertight to a depth of 3000 metres I have some shit that does that, but it does literally nothing else.

anyway. once you start learning how many kinds of sticking things together there are, the people at 3M start to seem like witches and I don't know if they're the kind we can trust with that level of arcane knowledge

[bloodbending]

can’t believe tiktok is actually getting banned, twitter is infested with bots and brainworm-infested musk bootlickers, facebook is king of QAnon, instagram caught the plague from facebook and is dying a slow death in real time… and as the dust settles… only Miss Tumblr is left standing… failing upwards once again

[blondebrainpowered]

Mouse Armor by Jeff de Boer

Etsy Mouse armor necklace and earrings available as well as other work by Jeff de Boor.

[yourmajestybee]

EVERYONE NEEDS TO LOOK AT HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON UNTRAINABLE THE STAGE PLAY RN

[ae3qe27u]

There's a certain degree of pragmatism that goes into things. Like, well, it's gotta come from somewhere! Food, clothing, everything - it all has to come from somewhere, it doesn't just appear out of the blue

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[gorjee-art]

a comic about cuddles

[clonerightsagenda]

I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went "well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?" and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that's more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.

[myriad-of-things]

my little brother tried to show me a "cool trick" where he entered my name and hometown into chatgpt and tried to get it to pull up my personal info like it did on all of his friends, then was absolutely shocked when it couldn't find anything on me

so. keep practicing basic internet safety, guys. it still works. don't put your personal info on social media, keep all your accounts on private, turn off ai scraping on every site that you can, enable all privacy features on social media apps. our info still can be protected, we have to keep fighting for control

[fromcainwithlove]

author’s notes today: hey guys so just a warning there isn’t 100% explicit verbal consent even though they’re both really into it so remember this is FICTION, also they don’t use a condom :((( but in real life safe sex is important!!! please be safe out there everyone

a/n back in the day: kept thinking about ____ stabbing knives through both of _____’s hands to pin him in place while they fucked so here you go lol =P

[noamglompsky]

ERASE the plot of the whole series from your minds. they’re living a calm regular life and have their own jayviks to obsess over.

[peachdoxie]

I bought a desktop laminator using money I got for my birthday and by god if this isn't the sexiest piece of office equipment I've ever had the pleasure of owning

[georgeharris0n]

PRACTICAL EFFECTS AND WILLEM DEFOE?? Letterboxd is going to devour this

[squirrelmop]

[kaereth]

Dragon harpy chimera birdy FALIN!! I love her