Latest Posts by alianora-of-toure-on-marsh - Page 6

Prince Rupert’s Drop

Did you guys ever hear about Prince Rupert’s Drop? The British Royal Society was really interested in these things back in the 1600s.

It’s basically a long, thin, practically snaky bit of glass that you get when you drop some molten glass into water. It solidifies into a shape like this:

The interesting and weird thing is, you can’t really break the bulb part. You can take a hammer to it but it won’t break. But the long tail is fragile and easily broken. And if you break any part of this thing, it explodes. Really, it just blows up into a million tiny little shards.

With modern high-speed cameras, they’ve managed to measure the speed of the fracture at slightly faster than one mile per second.

The reason why it breaks like this is because, when the molten glass rapidly cools, the surface hardens right up, but the inside still stays hot for a while. As the inside cools, it pulls in on itself really hard in all directions, leaving the entire drop in a constant state of high tension. When it’s entirely cooled, it only takes a tiny fracture to release that chain reaction of released tension that breaks all of it almost at once. 

i walk into lab

hands: bare 

hair: down 

toes: out

-muffled squeaking-

yo bro is it safe down there in the woods? yeah man it’s cool by Tomislav Jagnjic

Все краски осени в одном фото [fs'e kraski os'en'i v adnom foto] - All colors of autumn in one photo www.ruspeach.com

Copaxa syntheratoides by Johanna Murillo

my three favorite things are the oxford comma, irony, and missed opportunities

Could somebody be a paramedic if they were missing a forearm?

Y’know, sometimes a question comes along that exposes your biases. I’m really, really glad you asked me this.

My initial instinct was to say no. There are a lot of tasks as a paramedic that require very specific motions that are sensitive to pressure: drawing medications, spreading the skin to start IVs. There’s strength required–we do a LOT of lifting, and you need to be able to “feel” that lift.

So my first thought was, “not in the field”. There are admin tasks (working in an EMS pharmacy, equipment coordinator, supervisor, dispatcher) that came to mind as being a good fit for someone with the disability you describe, but field work….?

(By the way, I know a number of medics with leg prostheses; these are relatively common and very easy to work with. I’m all in favor of disabled medics. I just didn’t think the job was physically doable with this kind of disability.)

Then I asked. I went into an EMS group and asked some people from all across the country. And the answers I got surprised me.

They were mostly along the lines of “oh totally, there’s one in Pittsburgh, she kicks ass” or “my old partner had a prosthetic forearm and hand, she could medic circles around the rest of her class”. One instructor said they had a student with just such a prosthesis, and wasn’t sure how to teach; the student said “just let me figure it out”, and by the end of the night they were doing very sensitive skills better than their classmates.

Because of that group I know of at least a half-dozen medics here in the US with forearm and hand prostheses.

So yes. You can totally have a character with one forearm, who works as a paramedic for a living.

Thanks again for sending this in. It broadened my worldview.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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My emotions are valid*

*valid does not mean healthy, or good, or to be privileged above common sense and kindness

“it wouldn’t even have to be an evil sponge” is a vital part of my personal lexicon but i don’t think anyone knows what the fuck i’m talking about 99.99% of the time

The first meme for 2017 should be all the old ones but wholesome

I’ll go first

What she says: I’m fine What she means: I love you so much and I want to declare it to the world but public extreme expressions of love short of marriage proposals are looked down upon or made fun of by society and I’m worried people are going to judge me but I’m content being by your side because there’s nothing I love more

Help a Whisper out!

Last Saturday, Whisper started having a rough time with her stomach, and within a few hours she started vomiting and pooping blood. We got her to a vet immediately, and they did bloodwork, x-rays, and a barium screening. It turned out Whisper had eaten the plastic bag one of our prints was in (she has a bad habit of chewing up art.) It basically ripped her up inside as it passed through, and she lost a lot of blood. Fortunately, after a night in the animal hospital, she stabilized and we were able to bring her home the next day, but with a pretty decently sized bill attached. 

Whisper was a rescue cat, and when we got her she’d been living at the shelter for 6 months. She absolutely hated it, she was the saddest looking cat we’d ever seen, but when we picked her up for the first time she rolled over to be held like a baby. I love this cat with all my heart, and I’d do anything to help her. Black cats have a hard enough time getting adopted, they really need the extra awareness and love. 

So, I’m gonna go for two birds with one stone! I’ve put up four new designs on teepublic that are on sale right now for $14, with the goal of raising a little more awareness to how wonderful black cats are. All proceeds will go towards helping pay off Whisper’s vet bills and for her gross new prescription cat food. 

Help a dumb baby out and let the world know just how much you heart black cats!

Dr. Seuss was not even in the general area of fucking around.

(via xamvet)

Cool motive, still larceny.

There’s no such thing as “pepperoni” in Italy, even though it is a corruption of the Italian word “peperoni” (sweet peppers). The most similar Italian food is “salame piccante” (spicy salami).

who wants to buy this book I will never get around to writing

Hermione: Did you find out anything from Dumbledore?

Harry: Not much—only hints and riddles.

Hermione: Did you ask about your scar hurting?

Harry: We didn’t discuss it.

Hermione: You should have. I am sure it is very important.

Harry: In that case I am sure Dumbledore would have refused to explain it.

Hi! Could you, please, if you have some free time, write a short Bleach/Harry Potter crossover, with Urahara Kisuke and Harry Potter as the main characters? Thank you very much in advance. (Btw, you're very awesome!!! You write so well!)

Hi, thank you so much, I’m glad you like my writing!

Though, if you’ve been following my stuff, you’d probably also notice that I am, like, completely incapable of writing anything short hahaha. Especially for anything that remotely involves worldbuilding. I’ll see what I can do?

You should probably just start running if a treatise on how reiatsu and magic are comparable yet not is not your up of tea.

Is now a good time to mention I do have one of those cliched “Dumbledore tries to outsource Voldemort to people who might be more equipped to handle an immortal mortal” WIPs lying around.

(insp.)

I combined all the Hamilton feels into one.

“ In August, 1968, the country was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King four months earlier, and the race riots that followed on its heels. Nightly news showed burning cities, white flight, radicals and reactionaries snarling at each other across the cultural divide.

“A brand new children’s show out of Pittsburgh, which had gone national the previous year, took a different approach. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood introduced Officer Clemmons, a black police officer who was a kindly, responsible authority figure, kept his neighborhood safe, and was Mr. Roger’s equal, colleague and neighbor.

“Around the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him in soaking their tired feet in a plastic wading pool. And there they were, brown feet and pasty white feet, side by side in the water. Silently, contemplatively, without comment.

“25 years later, when the actor playing Officer Clemmons retired, his last scene on the show revisited that same wading pool, this time reminiscing. Officer Clemmons asked Mr. Rogers what he’d been thinking during their silent interlude a quarter century before. Fred Rogers’ answer was that he’d been thinking of the many ways people say “I love you.”

- Carl Aveni’s FB page

By Brianna Garcia

They may look like an Impressionist masterpiece, but these rare nacreous clouds have been spotted ‘painting’ skies above the UK in a rainbow of colours. Photographers across the north of England and Scotland have captured the stunning ‘mother of pearl’ formations which sit in the lower stratosphere. (Source)

If you think about it, all these thinkpieces about how Millenials are “killing” various industries reveal a pretty colossal sense of entitlement.

Under normal circumstances, if a given industry finds itself unable to sell products to a given market demographic, we’d say it’s that industry’s fault for failing to offer products that that demographic is interested in buying.

It only makes sense to blame the target demographic itself is if we’re assuming that the established industries have some intrinsic right to that demographic’s disposable income that’s being denied - which is clearly nonsense.

And I thought Millennials were supposed to be the entitled ones?