Smile. Coz it's funny

my brother and his friends in this field trip group were truly great kids. but they were not above run of the mill teenage boy shenanigans. it’s the end of senior year, you and all your buddies are at the amusement park, you’re naturally going to want to act like a complete moron

there was one kid in the group who was especially prone to goofing around. committed to the bit, some may say. my mom knew that if nonsense was going to break out, he’d likely be at the center of it

so she goes up to this kid at the very start of the trip and says “hey, i’m kinda worried about this chaperoning thing. this might be a lot to ask, but can you help me keep an eye on everyone? you wouldn’t have to do anything big, just be an extra set of eyes for me.”

friends, this kid proceeded to run their field trip group like the fucking us marines. everyone is at the meet up spots at the designated time. everyone waits in line for the rides like a bunch of boy scouts. the second the horseplay gets too out of hand, this kid is getting it back under control

it’s incredible how differently people act based on the expectations you set. instead of going to this kid and saying “hey, i know you’re trouble, so i’ve got my eye on you,” my mom went “hey, i know you have influence in your peer group, so i think you can help me.”

[ID: youtube comment from Hal Sawyer:

My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word “the” used in phrases like: “the more I look at this, the stranger it seems, or “the bigger they come, the harder they fall”. This “the” is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English “þā”, pronounced “tha” which means either “when” or “then”. Back in early Middle English the structure “if - then” had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said “þā whatever, þā whatever”, meaning “when such-and- such, then such-and-such”. “þā” sounds almost the same as “the” and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. “the more, the merrier” literally means “when more, then merrier” or “if more, then merrier’; same as centuries ago.

end ID]

While James Gunn is saying that we do. And that Superman WANTS to help. He loves humanity because humanity is all the best parts of him.

Y'know, the AI that was trained on the stolen work of real authors?

Anyway, I will not be doing that. What I will be doing, however, is adding a note at the start of all my books that no AI was used in the creation of my work because I, the author, did not go to university for four fucking years to study English literature and linguistics only to be told I can't use proper grammar because someone might think a robot wrote it.

My thoughts don’t make me a bad person

My feelings don’t make me a bad person

My thoughts, feelings, and impulses only exist inside my head, and none of it matters unless I act on it

Nobody can see my thoughts or emotions

The only things anyone can see and judge me on are my actions

There’s no such thing as a thought crime

Cores/Intel Cores (Ex. i3, i5, i9)= Processing Speed= how fast your internet and other programs run. More cores is better.

Hard [Disk] Drive(HDD)/Solid State Drive(SSD) (Ex. 250GB, 480GB, 2TB)= How much you can store on your computer (files and apps and programs). A Terabyte(TB) is 1,000 Gigabytes.

*HDD is cheaper and more storage while SSD is faster, more durable, and uses less energy.

Memory/RAM(Random Access Memory) (Ex. 4GB, 8GB, 16GB) = How many different things your computer can do At The Same Time.

Ex. A computer with 4GB of RAM will probably shit itself if you try to play a game with with the internet open.

‘Refurbished’ means it’s been in a technician’s hands recently and can’t be sold as new. That’s it. That’s all. In the US the FTC makes it illegal to sell something new if it’s been sold to an end user, so by definition a lot of perfect, ready-to-go hardware must be ‘refurbished’ in order to sell it again, no matter the circumstances.

Reasons a machine might be a refurb:

- Customer bought the item, decided they didn’t like the color, and returned it

- Customer bought the item, couldn’t figure out how to turn it on, and returned it

- Retailer opened the box for some reason and lost some of what gets shipped inside (manuals, cables, charger) and returned it

- Company bought 100 computers but went out of business before they could be installed or used

- Customer got a replacement for a damaged computer under warranty, and the manufacturer fixed what was wrong with the old machine and is now selling it as a refurb

I HAVE PERSONALLY WITNESSED ALL OF THESE SCENARIOS

Bottom line: ‘refurbished’ hardware has been repaired, tested, cleaned, and renewed back to original specifications by a trained technician. If anything, it’s probably MORE reliable now that it’s been doubly-tested. 

All responsibly refurbished equipment comes with a factory warranty... the only refurbs I would avoid are items sold ‘as-is’ without warranty. That’s dangerous unless you know what you’re doing, like buying stuff for parts.

A lot of my most reliable hardware -- servers, laptops, tablets -- were bought as refurbished goods at huge savings. When I go shopping for a new thing I always look at the refurbished options first. 

They have build guides for every budget and purpose that change quite often.

You can check other people's builds

You can use their PC Builder to personalize your machine based on your budget and it also shows the best price from various merchants.

Plus it tells you if there are compatibility or wattage issues.

When i started as a dishwasher, i was trained by an old career dish pit man named Claudio. He'd spent his whole life washing dishes. It allowed him to move to just about any city in the world that he wanted to and get a job without having to deal with complex hiring processes or strict resumé requirements. Which was the main thing he wanted out of a career. I still think about him.

He'd seen a lot of people come through that station who either didn't consider it a real job or thought it was beneath them, on their way to "better" or "more important" things. And, in retrospect, those first two days he was sort of doing the minimum with me that he could do and still respect himself when he told the manager he'd trained me.

But, maybe it was because i was really interested in learning all the positions there were in a restaurant because i knew they were ALL important, or because i was a hard worker, or maybe it was because i tried to have real conversations with him in my broken spanish and did my best to not make him speak any english unless he wanted to, but after a couple days there was a big shift in the way he and i worked together, and he started to really teach me.

That place ran the dish pit with one dishwasher, so when he was done training me I was going to be doing the job on my own.

The thing that stuck with me the most, for the rest of my restaurant career, was this... and it wasn't just the actual things he was saying, but a completely new way of looking at what i was doing within the context of how the restaurant ran. I came in for my 3rd day and he said

"When you work alone, you want to go home by midnight?"

we clocked on at 3:30 and took a half hour lunch break and usually skipped our tens, so, yeah i absolutely did want to get off work by midnight

Then, even tho i already knew where most of everything was by that time, he took me around and showed me all the dishes, cups, pots and pans, spatulas, silverware, had me look at all of it. Then he told me to remember that almost every one of the dishes I was looking at would be used more than once by the end of our shift- we were clocking on to wash the entire building full of dishes multiple times.

Then he led me back over to the industrial dishwasher most restaurants have, which looks like this:

and then this 60 year old career dishwasher from Mexico City said the thing that changed how I looked at restaurant jobs forever

"This machine takes two full minutes to run a cycle. We are on the clock for 8 hours. That means we have a maximum of 240 times we can run this machine. If you want to wash all those dishes, clean your station, mop, and clock off by midnight? This machine has to be on and running every second of the shift.

If you don't have a full load of dishes collected, scraped, rinsed, stacked, and ready to go into the dishwasher the second it's done every single time? You can't do it. If, over the course of 8 hours, you let this machine lay idle for just one minute in between finishing each load and being turned on again? Instead of 240 loads, you'll do 160 loads.

[like, literally, he had done this math, he had these exact figures]

160 loads instead of 240 loads means you are doing 20 loads in an hour instead of 30 loads. That means the dishes are going to pile up. The cooks will run out of pots and pans and will have to stop and wait for you, the servers will run out of plates and cups and have to stop and wait for you, and your night is going to SUCK. Every part of how this restaurant works can grind to a halt because of that idle minute between dish loads, and if it does you'll have an entire building of people in a hurry and all waiting on you.

And it means you're going to be here until 2 am doing the 200+ loads of dishes this restaurant goes through every night.

For this to work, you MUST have this dishwasher on and running every minute of the shift. As soon as you turn it on you have two minutes to have the next load ready. See these large items i put to the side down here? One or two of them takes up all the space in the machine. I keep them here so that if the machine finishes and shuts off before i'm ready for it i can stick one of these in there and turn it on again immediately. You have to think like that to do this job without stress."

The way he was looking at how the whole restaurant ran, the way he was looking at how he'd spend each minute of the entire shift, the way he broke down what the physical limits were and how to max them out so he could do his job and go home on time without stressing out... The way this 60 year old guy, who had never had professional ambitions beyond being a dishwasher, was still such a competent and brilliant expert in his field.

It was all such an important lesson, and one that stayed with me through every position i went on to work in restaurants, dish pit, busser, server, cook, all the way up through manager before I finally got out of my restaurant career

Claudio never wanted to be anything but a dishwasher who didn't stay any later than he had to.

But he knew how that restaurant ran better than most of the other people in it. I never had a chance to truly thank him for the specific lesson he taught me, because while it had an immediate impact, I didn't really understand how valuable a lesson it was until much later.

He gets upset at the Justice Gang for brutally killing a rampaging Kaiju and not even attempting to find a way to move it or at least euthanize it more humanely.

The only time he raises his voice during Lois’ interview is when she digs into his interference in geopolitics, because people would have died if he hadn’t acted. The only time he yells at Luthor is when Luthor abducts Krypto. The only time he cries is when Luthor murders someone he barely even knew.

I think about her sitting at home at 12 years old, glued to a television screen watching her sister suffer, fearing for her life, wondering if she’d ever see her again, and wondering if it’s her fault? If she would have just been a bit braver or stronger then Katniss wouldn’t have volunteered. Thinking about how it should have been her in those games.

I think about her accepting game and money from Gale, feeling bad about burdening him when he has so much to carry already, feeling bad about again being a mouth to feed. She’s wishing she was a bit braver or stronger so she could go into the woods and hunt.

I think about Katniss coming come and Prim being so relieved and happy but then it’s not quite the same sister that comes back. The Katniss that comes back is scared and distant and hurt and she tries to hide it from Prim but it’s no use because Prim’s always been the one in the family to feel when someone is upset. Prim has her own nightmares about the Games but she doesn’t go to Katniss anymore, she doesn’t want to upset her anymore. She can’t be the little girl that crawls into her sister’s bed and asks for a song.

When she thinks Katniss is at least safe and home she watches her get Reaped again. And Prim is still thinking that this wouldn’t be happening if it had been her in that arena the first time. And this time she doesn’t even get to say goodbye. As she watches the rebellion on the TV she continues to grow up, taking care of the wounded back in 12. She’s surrounded by the Capitol’s cruelty both on the screen and in her home.

Then her home, the only one she’s ever known, is gone and she’s in 13. She’s in this strange and foreign place with a sister who is even further gone than before. And now she has to be the strong one who is there for her sister. And then when Katniss goes to fight in the Capitol Prim loses her again. When she sees her face on TV, when she hears that “the Mockingjay is dead”, she thinks she’s lost her for good this time. And she can’t shake the feeling it’s all her fault, it was her name in that bowl after all.

But Prim needs to be braver and stronger now. She needs to do something to help, it’s what Katniss would do. So even though she’s only 13, much too young to be a doctor, she goes to help the wounded in the Capitol. As the parachutes fall from the sky she is reminded again of the arena, only this time she’s in it. It’s like her nightmares but this one she can’t wake from. Maybe it’s fate catching up to her, a fate that’s been chasing her from the moment that slip was drawn.

Which is why I and so many of my peers are/should be in therapy over the fact that we're terrified to have our needs and mistakes inconvenience others even slightly

Over time, we learn that Rupert started out charming. He told Rebacca all he wanted was to talk to her, he made her feel special. So when Ted comes in every morning to bring her a batch of homemade biscuits and just, hang out with her. She’s understandably hesitant, because that’s how Rupert got her, and she doesn’t yet understand the difference between charming and nice.

But when Ted faces off against Rupert (eg the gala, playing darts) his responses to her being insulted, belittled and spoken down to, all reveal a level of uncontrollable, genuine care.

Rupert would’ve easily brushed off any insults towards his wife with some charm and good natured teasing, he probably even joined in, the fucking guy. Meanwhile, Ted’s reactions to Rupert insulting Rebecca are always abrupt and defensive. He loses his cool, he says something he’s not supposed to, he reveals something he’s not supposed to, he becomes a guy that even we, the audience, are not used to. But his protectiveness never comes from a place of typical, masculine possessiveness or jealousy. (Okay, maybe a little jealousy. A girl can dream)

In the charity-gala episode, Rupert causes immediate stress for Rebecca. So Ted, not even knowing the full extent of it yet, visibly dislikes this guy from the moment they meet. Even when Rupert’s charming the pants off the crowd and raising charity ‘for the children’ Ted continues to react uncomfortably in his presence, no matter how friendly he is.

Then, when he does get the extent of it, (Rebecca crying, Rupert being the one to cancel the musical guest) he lets that dislike out, openly taking Rebecca’s side. Which isn’t surprising, but is still very sweet.

In the dart episode, Rupert reveals he’s gonna be in the owners box everyday. Ted doesn’t like this at all, but he doesn’t go off his own reaction, he observes Rebecca’s reaction to gauge her feelings on the matter. Rebecca is clearly unsettled and uncomfortable, and you can kind of see Ted mentally go, ‘yeah no, she’s not cool with that, that’s not happening.’

And then even before they play darts, first and foremost, Ted checks if Rebecca would like to leave. Now, we know his character hates conflict, especially after his train-wreck marriage, so we know that he would like to leave. But when Rebecca decides to remain in a bar with her horrible ex-husband, his child-bride and a room full of people who adore him, which is a little masochist-y even for me, he doesn’t even hesitate.

Her reasoning is very English. ‘Make yourself suffer out of obligation to polite society’ type shit. But instead of making her feel silly or ridiculous or forcing her to leave, Ted goes out of his way to ease Rebecca’s suffering and make Rupert leave her alone, even if it causes him discomfort.

Now, I know that Ted is a very caring character and a lot of this can be chalked up to him being a good friend. But with the way they present Ted and Rebeca’s relationship (he calls her boss, she calls the shots, she’s more authoritative) To see him take over for her, without thought, whenever Rupert upsets her, reveals more intimacy and depth to their relationship than we previously understood. And to have her be grateful, and in some instances, downright delighted by this display of care and protectiveness, reveals something else entirely.

I'D LOVE TO ELABORATE because this is one of my favorite astronomy stories.

Okay. So in the field of Radio Astronomy, there's this phenomenon called a "fast radio burst", a very short, strong radio pulse picked up by a radio telescope. They're still poorly understood, and are considered very exciting to radio astronomers because of how rare they are.

In the 2010's, astronomers working at Australia's Parkes Radio Observatory identified a number of radio signals picked up by the telescope that appeared to resemble fast radio bursts, which they called Perytons.

However, they quickly realized that the signals had to be terrestrial in origin due to the strength of the signal.... as well as the fact that they always occurred during weekdays, around the same time.

The signals tended to be clustered around midday... hmm...

Further evidence that the signals were man-made... this trend also followed daylight savings!!!

(Unless aliens also follow Australian daylight savings conventions, which is highly unlikely...)

It took the astronomers several years, but they eventually tracked down the source to a microwave oven in the facility's break room.

They were unable to recreate the signal, until they tried opening the microwave door before it beeped. Turns out the microwave was letting out a tiny amount of radio emissions when the door opened, which the nearby telescope was sensitive enough to detect.

The Peryton signals had been popping up in the data for over a decade, presumably because astronomers taking their lunch breaks had been opening the break room microwave prematurely for the same reason cited by OP.

I imagine they must have a big sign reading "LET THE MICROWAVE FINISH BEFORE OPENING" hanging in the break room now.

TLDR: If you work in radio astronomy, let the microwave beep before opening it and removing your lunch.

Katniss has always resented her mother for disappearing, leaving them to starve in her grief. And she has all the right to think, and feel that. She was eleven and selling baby clothes in the rain, about die of starvation. She was signing up for tessarae the minute she was qualified. She was hunting in the woods as a child. She was pushed into immense responsibility because her mother no longer had the will to live--despite her and Prim still being alive. She believed that relationship was severed and she saw her mom as weak, incompetent, and unloving.

But she became her mother when she was separated from Peeta. She, point blank, said she lost the will to live. Even if Prim was still there, and her mother, and Gale, and the country was relying on her to get them through a revolution.

She talked about how she never understood why people stay and watch their loved ones die on the table instead of going away...she did that with Peeta at the end of the first games.

She said that if she know for sure that Peeta was dead, she would just disappear in the woods and never look back. She was also willing to abandon them.

It's slowly sinking in but it was such and important detail how, after she saw Peeta return to district 12 in the last chapter, one of the first things she did was call her mother. Process her grief with someone else, made sure she wasn't alone. Because that's probably when it all clicked for her: Peeta came back, her father could not. She suffered like her mother, but not cometely like her mother.

She said the reason why she hasn't taken her own life back at 12 was because she was waiting for something. Peeta, like he always has, was giving her hope. Her mother did not have that. Nor did she have anyone to share that grief with. No family, no friends, and her children were too young.

This right here is my favorite HG edit.

But further thoughts on it. I was walking home and the line when Katniss says “I make a list in my head of all the good things I’ve seen someone do. Every little thing I can remember,” struck me.

In the edit, the first Good Thing we see is Katniss volunteering for Prim. But I wonder if Katniss still views herself as bad. I wonder in the years that she and Peeta grew back together how long it took her to grow back to the little girl who went to the cabin by the lake with her father? How long did it take before music finally became something permanent in her house again? How long did it take for her to meet that little girl again and feel peace and not the chaos of war and death?

I like to think that Peeta wakes up one night to her whispering this list, and he realizes it’s only things others have done. So he starts to add the Good Things she’s done for others.