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source

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reblog to bap prev with your paw

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In Mario Kart 8/Deluxe, the motion of each character is governed by four independent systems: -animation (which action the character is currently performing, e.g. sitting in the seat, throwing an item, posing after a stunt, etc. In older Mario Kart games, this was the only factor) -head tracking (the character's head turns to look at other drivers and items as they pass by) -facial expressions (the character's face changes to show their current mood, e.g. happy after winning or in pain after being hit) -vehicle motion counterbalance (the character subtly shifts in the seat in accordance with the vehicle's movement by bending limbs or changing posture. Hair and other freely moving character parts also fall under this system)

To demonstrate that these systems are actually completely independent of each other, it is possible to turn one of them off and see that the other ones are still being applied to the character. In the footage, Daisy's animations are turned off, leaving her stuck in a T-pose. However, she still looks around, changes expressions, and even bends her arms and legs to balance the bike's movement.

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Nature really went off with sperm whales. A 70-ton predator with teeth the size of a banana but it only eats squishy prey that it doesn’t even chew, it just schlorps them down whole like a vacuum cleaner. Big giant fat head full of goop. Tiniest fins in the world. Strong enough to smash a ship to pieces and smart enough to figure out how to do so but its first line of defense is just to shit everywhere. Possibly the most complex language in the animal kingdom and it creates sounds by blowing air through its internal right nostril (it uses the left one to breathe) into its giant fat head. It’s the loudest animal on the planet and might have the capability to create a beam of sound so loud it can shake your organs apart but they don’t seem to use that to hunt or fight. They’re highly flammable. We used them to make candles.

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I just recalled a random memory this morning from when I was in scouts. I had a friend who’s mom was a devout catholic, but we were good friends through scouts. One year my friend wanted to give me a gift for Chanukah so their mom took us to Toys R Us together so I could pick out what I wanted. The mom handed my friend cash at the register so my friend could say they bought it and they paid a little extra for wrapping.

As we were leaving the mom said that I couldn’t open it until Christmas.

But my friend specifically said they were giving it to me for Chanukah. Chanukah that year was a week or two before Christmas (I don’t remember exactly) and the mom said that if I opened it before Christmas “Jesus would know”. I cannot stress enough that my friend wanted it to be a CHANUKAH present.

I’m dropped off at home and my friends mom tells my parents that I can’t open my present until Christmas, meanwhile my friend is in the back seat frustrated and almost shouting “Mom [Renkon] is Jewish!”

My dad just nods and says he understands. He’ll make sure I don’t open it until “the appropriate time”.

First night of Chanukah rolls around and my dad hands me the present and tells me to open it but don’t say anything to my friend until he has a chance to talk to their mother.

So I get to enjoy my toy FOR CHANUKAH like my friend intended.

Anyway, Christmas come and goes. Then new years, then on January 3rd my dad calls the mom and asks “what day does your holiday fall on this year? [Renkon] would like to open their present.”

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Gallus rostromegalus

When I was in high school, I was the part-time henchperson of a Mad Scientist.

I’m not exaggerating about “Mad Scientist”.  “Riley” (Name changed for his family’s privacy) was a former Medical Doctor, as well as an artist, microbiologist, pilot (as in, designed and flew his own experimental aircraft), magician, computer programmer and musical composer, and had an outbuilding attached to his house where he kept things like his hand-made 3D printer, electron microscope and drone-dirigible assembly devices.

Riley had ALS and was eventually wheelchair-bound, so by 2006 I was being called in on the odd school night or weekend to go out around FoCo and the surrounding mountains. “I need a younger set of legs and someone with no fear of heights” He’d say.  Being that I was a very boring child that had no interest in sex or drugs and always called when I was going to be late, and that Riley was a trusted family friend, My parents trusted me to go out at like 9PM  and come home at 2AM on a Tuesday.  

…To do things like scale locked fire escapes and climb around on rooftops that we DEFINITELY did not have permission to be on to do things like install speakers and bluetooth broadcasting devices at strategic points around Old Town so that if you download the right app onto your phone (I’ve got it backed up somewhere, I’ll post it when I find it) , you can walk around town and be exposed to the ghostly, extremely shady side of FoCo history for his 2007 Halloween project.

We did get caught by the cops but I was 17, short and white as goddamn mayonnaise so when the cops asked me what I was doing “It’s for a community art project!” actually worked.

My favorite Mad Science Project was in 2009, Gallus rostromegalus.

I was home from college for summer, and Riley had been messing around with Rotational Physics and had managed to make Giant (24’ x 18’) extremely realistic Chicken eggs, weighted and everything so that if you picked one up, it would feel like there was a heavy yolk wobbling around inside.  They’re amusing all on their own, but after leaving them in the slash pile from spring cleaning, Riley realized they had POTENTIAL.

So we went around getting permission from a few businesses and the art museum, and I spent a few nights making plausible enormous chicken feathers in Riley’s lab out of grass, acrylic glaze and some other odds and ends laying around, and filling up the back of my mom’s van with as much of the backyard slash pile as fit in there, then drove out in the middle of the night to set up giant nests for the eggs, strewn with feathers and surrounded by Traffic cones and orange construction mesh and signs from the entirely fictitious “Department Of Fish And Wildfowl, Specious Relocation Division”

(an incomplete nest on the steps of Fort Collins Museum of Art)

(signage, responsibly warning people to stay away in case of giant chickens)

Riley even made QR codes that linked back to an obviously false Wiki- if you scrolled to the bottom, the page was covered in feathers and after five minutes it would start to make chicken noises.

People. Went. INSANE.

Crowds turned up to take selfies with the nests and Riley tracked down literally dozens of tagged photos captioned “IS THIS REAL????”.  

Someone wrote a very worried and not terribly facetious-sounding letter to the editor concerned that Giant Chickens were roaming around FoCo, something that big could hurt someone!  There was an entirely-serious-sounding counter-letter that we Humans have clearly invaded this majestic creature’s natural habitat, where are they SUPPOSED to make their nests, huh?   

Multiple people called the police to report having seen the elusive Gallus rostromegalus up in the hills or skulking around downtown. Reports claimed it was anywhere form five to twelve feet tall, with dramatic plumage and an eerie, yodeling sort of call.

A few nights after installing each nest, we went back, collected the eggs, and left broken ‘eggshells’ and extra down feather around each of the nests. One of the nests was put up at the local Garden Center and I remember one of the assistant managers coming outside just after we finished the ‘hatching’ and shrieking “OH GOD I THOUGHT THOSE WERE FAKE THEY’LL GET TO THE TOMATOES SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE!”  That woman would later become my manager when I worked there for a summer, though she never made the connection between me and The Chickens.

Riley passed away in 2015 after a good and well-lived life, and was kind enough to leave me The Eggs in his will.

It was a truly splendid bit of ruckus, and I miss him terribly, and I very much treasure the memories.  And the Eggs, which I am absolutely going to inflict on some unsuspecting neighbors at some point, in his honor.

(If you’ve enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Paypal so I can support myself telling stories, thank you!)

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do any other butch dykes find the carabiner thing extremely annoying. are we really reducing people to the objects they own. i have like 3 carabiners, but that's not what makes me butch.

it's a fucking object. you can't appropriate a hook that's sold at fucking walmart. it's literally just a hook. jesus fucking christ

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Christmas snake says merry chrisler to those who celebrate and a great day to everyone else :)

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eminem’s got about lyrics about how the secret service interviewed him, so a journalist FOIA’d info about eminem from the secret service to fact check his rap

it turns out the secret service investigated eminem because of lyrics threatening trump and ivanka

and they really did interview him

and when one of the secret service agents started reading the threatening lyrics out loud eminem started rapping along 

and they noted that

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this has reduced me to tears

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Let’s Have Another Bullet Point Story, Courtesy of a Friend

So I have a friend that used to be in the tumblers troupe at the renfaire as a contortionist

We were chatting online and she told me to tell you all this story.

I love Kat dearly

but she forgets that she’s stupid strong and hypermobile

so one day she throws her back out

bad enough that she needed painkillers and couldn’t stand upright

“But also I needed Tampons and like.  A Burrito, real bad.”

she’s flat on her back in her apartment when she decides this

and, in an

impeccable

leap of reasoning, decides

“I can’t roll my back forward to sit/stand up like normal.

But I can ARCH my back just fine.

SO 

I’m going to do that and get on my hands and feet in a stomach-in-the-air this-shit-belongs-in-a-horror-movie-type pose,

And amble on down to the 7-11”

“And get me that Burrito”

It is, 

for context, 

after midnight in July during a wildfire so it’s hot as satan’s own asshole and the moon is red and shit’s already generally cursed.

Imagineyou are some poor sap working nights at the world’s deadest 7-11, and you hear the door jangle but you don’t see anyone’s head over the counters.

Whatever.

Except you keep hearing noises like there’s someone in the next aisle over.  

Fucking around in the burrito section

It’s also worth mentioning that Kat

1. sings whatever earworm is currently running through her head when she’s not paying attention

2. sounds EXACTLY like some kind of creepy child from a horror movie when doing so

tonight’s song is something from veggietales.

DUDE ACTUALLY STANDS HIS GROUND

and/or is really fucking high and isn’t sure if he’s tripping balls or notanyway

Kat goes up to pay for her burrito and tampons

She realizes the counter presents something of a challenge, and then demonstrates for me on her kitchen table at 4AM during a different july wildfire, 

exactly 

how she used the shelves to climb up the counter 

like one of the boston robotics beasties

dude stares at her for like, five minutes and says.

“Register’s broke.”

“Oh No!” Says Kat. “Just Take ‘em.” “Really?  I can leave cash-you don’t have to give me change I don’t want you to get in trouble with your manager.” “…Nah.” “Oh!  OK!  Thank you!” “Yeah ok bye.”

Shortly after she arrived back at the apartment, she got a text on her phone from the campus security about  "A Suspicious Individual” at tle 7-11. 

It took her 

FOUR

FUCKING 

YEARS

 to realize she was the suspicious individual

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WATCH: An Interactive Mirror Built from 450 Rotating Penguins by Daniel Rozin (video)

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