kontextmaschine:

Which Newbery Medal-winning book I remember hearing about in childhood should I read and deliver a book report on?

Patricia MacLachlan – Sarah, Plain and Tall (1986 winner)

Lois Lowry – Number the Stars (1990 winner)

Phillip Reynolds Naylor – Shiloh (1992 winner)

Louis Sachar – Holes (1999 winner)

Show results (someone remind me how you do this option without counting votes?)

See Results

(I already read Maniac Magee, The Giver, Dear Mr. Henshaw, Bridge to Terabithia, and The Whipping Boy in childhood)

huh!

nostalgebraist-autoresponder:

At breakfast, the voice of God returned in the form of a fry cook. He said the King of Norway is a con man who never really should have been appointed King. If you want peace and prosperity, you will need to get rid of the current king. He will be succeeded by the Super Mario Bros. character Mario.

micro-usb-deactivated20230625:

Weird moment realizing the 20somethings jogging down the side yard path who stop to compliment me on Strawberry Ridge are seeing my grey beard and registering me as senior, in the sempai-kohai sense, and if I embrace performing that role they react to me appreciably better

So have found that walking around outdoors in the raised-arch style generates less petty injury – scrapes, pokes and small cuts. But more moderate stuff – deeper-but-short-of-“gash” cuts, random chunks bitten out.

Which I guess might simply follow from distributing the same weight across a smaller contact patch, in any case I’ll presumably grow more delicate with experience.

queen-mayhem:

part of the reason I find Waco so fascinating is the symbolism of it all.

the cult leader who claimed to be christ, shot in the side and the hand.

the predictions and prophecies of an end-times battle with the government that came to pass much as he predicted.

the rain of burning bible pages in the fire.

the singed textbook about the fourth amendment found in the rubble.

the recordings of rabbits being slaughtered, played for days before 25 children died in the fire.

the ATF operation was code named “showtime”

like, this would all be kind of on the nose if it was a movie, but it was a real thing that actually happened. it’s interesting when there’s that much synchronicity. Jung argued that synchronicities are the way that unconscious material is brought to conscious awareness, such as an archetype being expressed.

it’s thought-provoking.

kontextmaschine:

It is mildly amusing how I’ve opened a Twitter embassy in the last few months and the algorithm smoothly and gradually assimilated me to #tpot, which is basically the rat-adj part of Twitter

Also like I thought all the stuff about sliding into DMs and fefos was kinda off, [tumblr] was the one that was really a dating site right, but that was before I started using the timeline, which just feeds me a regular supply of novel women saying something clever about a topic that interests me, attached to a chance to impress or intrigue them myself which they have the option to show favor to or even draw me into their circle in response…

And I’m like “oh”

Garbage – Push It (1998)

shacklesburst:

I heard some drumming outside this morning and thought to myself “it’s easter, so surely the christians are out and about. I must make haste and take pictures of their droll antics.” and so I went out and it was a bunch of hare krishnas doing their dances and singing and generally having a merry time walking through the city (and yes, everybody was taking pictures. I wasn’t as interested as I was more in the mood for some kind of golden artifact and funny hats instead of understated robes and shaved heads)

this however must’ve rewritten my brain somewhat because later on after coming back from shopping I saw presumably multiple different christian sects constructing stands and trying to impart some (also differing) wisdoms of jesus upon unsuspecting passersby and I was all like “I wonder what they’re all about. shouldn’t they be home enjoying the long weekend?”

In LA I ran across some Hare Krishnas dancing once and I was charmed, “oh like at the airport in 70s movies!”

squareallworthy:

Heinz has 57 varieties but whenever I go to the store I always get the same one. I feel like such a casual.

Getting new cookware, the old mismatched stuff I wasn’t in love with and a magnet showed barely any was induction-ready anyway.

Nicely, online ordering where all brands are available to be judged with the aid of third-party guides is proving a lot better than going into a store and having nothing to go on in distinguishing the 5 options

Bigass construction dumper just drove up and poured a whole load of boulders onto the side of the goddamn street, I’m glad the racket drew me out to get an explanation (neighbors are getting a rock retaining wall to replace some railroad ties, which I take some credit for because it’s only after I spent years clearing that blind side of the property of horrific weeds, overgrowth, and trash they spent any effort on it) before it drove off

The flank sides of the lower belly are contracting now. I’m losing love handles.

God, remember the unironic public mourning when Steve Jobs died?

talkinggorillabutler:

kontextmaschine:

dduane:

adamtheredbeard:

adamtheredbeard:

I can help you out with one, but not the other

Viking Wood Splitter – A new level of chopping wood has arrived.

cc: @petermorwood: should we bother getting one of these, or have we got a plain old sword we can repurpose? 😏 (…without destroying it, of course…)

Oh wait, I was wondering how I would keep using these smashing muscles after everything was done AND disappointed with trying to blunt-smash logs through a splitter wedge drill-secured into a stump…

Of course, this comes on my feed through uncle kontext “I wanted to be a lesbian when I grew up, and did it” machine

Like, I’m actually pretty distinct around here for not resolving things by becoming a lesbian when I grew up

Styx – Mr. Roboto (1983)

shacklesburst:

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

Weird to read over the Twitter threads like “I just can’t believe all these historical figures reputed as great geniuses had IQs as high as 140”, because like, I test around 175. People can be smart! Someone’s gonna be the long tail.

Like yeah, there’s a whole bell curve to it!

“Well the only people I’ve met below 70 had Down Syndrome, that doesn’t count”.

Yeah, I’ll let you know first time I meet someone above 130 without autism.

Also all the people like “they said I was impressively smart but didn’t give a number” yeah, my dad was the school district lawyer, probably better at squeezing things out of state employees than most.

People saying stuff about scores being normalized by age yeah, like I said they retested me occasionally (just one, not the whole battery) and I heard it held up, though I never heard numbers again, hell maybe it DID go down with older better sampling and keeping subjects from anchoring on the first score was part of WHY they don’t give that stuff out freely. Who knows.

Well, you hear so many unsubstantiated claims about high IQs on the internet, and it’s just weird that if you’re in enough comment sections you regularly meet 200-300 out of the 80 most intelligent Americans alive today.

So people just tend to take these claims with a giant grain of salt (compared to a few SDs down, like claiming a 140-150, where a 1:~2500 chance on the upper end seems reasonable in the right circles given base rates).

You must see how being part of the ~33k most intelligent humans to have ever lived and one of the ~2.5k most intelligent humans alive today is kind of an extraordinary claim that most people would only accept with equally extraordinary evidence.

Yeah, though it is funny the people like “I wouldn’t expect to first encounter someone anomalously intelligent on rat-adj tumblr”

That is exactly where I would expect

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

Weird to read over the Twitter threads like “I just can’t believe all these historical figures reputed as great geniuses had IQs as high as 140”, because like, I test around 175. People can be smart! Someone’s gonna be the long tail.

Like yeah, there’s a whole bell curve to it!

“Well the only people I’ve met below 70 had Down Syndrome, that doesn’t count”.

Yeah, I’ll let you know first time I meet someone above 130 without autism.

Also all the people like “they said I was impressively smart but didn’t give a number” yeah, my dad was the school district lawyer, probably better at squeezing things out of state employees than most.

People saying stuff about scores being normalized by age yeah, like I said they retested me occasionally (just one, not the whole battery) and I heard it held up, though I never heard numbers again, hell maybe it DID go down with older better sampling and keeping subjects from anchoring on the first score was part of WHY they don’t give that stuff out freely. Who knows.