Aaay, met another reader coming through town who got the first real exhibition of Karafuto, and then had enough local context to unlimber all my years of thoughts on neighborhood development, Portland urban politics and Cascadian cultural quirks on.

There might come a point where accessibility to random readers becomes less of a positive but for now I’ve really been appreciating talking with strangers preselected for finding the shit I say worth hearing.

No topsoil today but I think I’ll do a full 3 yards tomorrow, and time permitting get a third bedload for when the yard’s closed on Sunday.

So what’s the case “Lucky” was ever a relatable pop song and not about how fucked up it was to be Britney Spears?

Hunter Biden should release a Billy Beer.

“Oh I wonder if the way my thighs are suddenly thicker and more muscular for no reason takes away from the visual impact of how my dick has been thicker and harder for no reason lately” – the kinds of fucking problems I have these days

Oregon attempt to regulate massage to keep grey market storefront prostitution to the “underwear modeling” sector somehow yielding the result that the only massage places in Portland I’m sure aren’t jack shacks are expensive stuff you have to schedule a week ahead from some generation of borderline tedious hippie woo woman.

I just want some Thai grandmother bending me in knots and driving her elbow under my shoulderblade again.

youzicha:

kontextmaschine:

Ivy League graduates often find themselves (well, ourselves) in contexts where it’s not unusual to have an Ivy League degree, which from the outside is “holy shit, you move in Ivy-bedecked elite circles” but from the inside is “having an Ivy League degree is not a distinction that significantly structures my status hierarchies”

Part three of gays answering the age-old question: “Where did you go to college?” #ivyleague #princeton #cornell #admissions #gay

Cornell
Ask a Cornell gay where he went to school and he’ll say “Oh! I hate this question because I don’t want to sound like I’m showing off, but… it’s an Ivy.” He wants you to know he went to an Ivy, but he doesn’t want you to know which one. And that’s because—it’s Cornell.

Ivy League graduates often find themselves (well, ourselves) in contexts where it’s not unusual to have an Ivy League degree, which from the outside is “holy shit, you move in Ivy-bedecked elite circles” but from the inside is “having an Ivy League degree is not a distinction that significantly structures my status hierarchies”

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

Something a lot of cultural background prepared me for having to do some day that has never once come up is playing bridge.

There were commented rounds in the newspaper every day with the comics and horoscopes. Should West lead hearts no-trump? Who the fuck knows?

There’d be chess positions in some papers too, but like on occasion I play chess

kontextmaschine:

Something a lot of cultural background prepared me for having to do some day that has never once come up is playing bridge.

There were commented rounds in the newspaper every day with the comics and horoscopes. Should West lead hearts no-trump? Who the fuck knows?

mariamlovesyou:

At least I don’t have a tumblr

eightyonekilograms:

homoluigi:

eightyonekilograms:

cromulentenough:

brighterflowers-deactivated2024:

a couple years ago, some friends and I did some trespassing urbexing around the abandoned railroad tracks in town, and we came across some sort of warehouse-type facility that had a bunch of old medical equipment and office stuff in it. outside the facility, there was what looked like a large antenna, which was fenced off and had a large sign which said something (I forget the exact wording) about how you should keep back or wear protective gear, or maybe something about exposure limits for workers

later, I tried looking up what that was about, since I had previously heard that radio waves are harmless to humans and the people who worry about them don’t know anything about it. but all I got was some snide guy on a forum saying, “well, of course they have effects, everything has effects, but also you’re stupid if you think it does anything”

so like, does anyone know what that sign was about

certain medical procedures use radioactive substances (there’s cancer treatment where you kill cancer with radiation and there’s also medical tracers that are used for diagnosing things by injecting a small amount and detecting the radiation outside the body to see where stuff is collecting/ going, possibly others i’m forgetting). Possibly it’s somewhere that used to be used to produce/ store that stuff.

That’s all true, but it sounds like OP came across this symbol:

This is the warning symbol for non-ionizing radiation. You often see it near powerful antennas, because those can cause RF heating and tissue damage if you get too close. That said, if the facility was abandoned, the antenna was certainly off, so there was no danger.

So is the issue that while visible light is harmless, getting really close to a building-sized lightbulb can still cook your flesh? It’s just the sheer intensity is going to cook you?

Yes, exactly. Let’s do a mini physics lecture here:

When people talk about “radiation” as the thing that gives you cancer, what they mean is ionizing radiation. “Ionizing” here meaning, the radiation can knock electrons free of their atoms. This changes the chemistry of any molecules those atoms happen to be part of, and turn molecules into other molecules, which in turn can do things like mess up your DNA as though you were flipping random bits in a computer.

The key point here is that only X-rays and gamma rays (and some particles which are outside the scope of this post) are ionizing radiation. Radio waves, microwaves, and visible light are non-ionizing. This means that no matter how powerful the radio waves are— even if they were infinitely powerful— they can never knock electrons free of their atoms. The exact reason for this involves quantum mechanics, but the simplified version is that electrons absorb EM radiation in units of individual photons, and when you make radio waves more powerful, you’re making more of these photons but each individual one doesn’t have more energy, so no matter how many there are they can never kick the electrons loose. So even infinitely-powerful radio antennas (or light bulbs) can never cause cancer in the way that radioactive substances can.

But, if the waves are sufficiently powerful, they can also cause damage via plain old heating, in (more or less) the same way as sitting next to a very very powerful light bulb will cook you. As kircheis said, this is why you don’t stick your hand in a microwave — it won’t give you radiation-induced cancer, but it will just cook you. Same thing with really powerful broadcast antennas — no cancer, but just cooking, so stay clear. Fortunately, since power falls off with the square of distance, you don’t need to be very far to be safe — that’s why these antennas just have fences around them rather than some kind of thick radiation shielding.

femmenietzsche:

femmenietzsche:

Home - ChronoDrome

Announcement!

There’s a project I’ve been working on, off and on for the last year, and it’s finally ready to see the light of day. Behold ChronoDrome, a website with a single purpose: to let people upload timelines, reading orders, viewing orders, and so on, as well as letting readers track their progress through those timelines. Is there a series you love but beginners find impossibly complex to navigate? This is the site for you.

I was inspired in particular by the old Web 1.0 sites I used to visit as a kid (like this one!) and I wanted to recapture the simplicity of those old web pages while still letting people post stuff. I wanted people to be able to create full featured timelines without making their own sites or just posting big blocks of text on Reddit, all while keeping a tight focus on what readers actually want to see.

For a good example of what this site can do, check out this timeline I’ve made for the works of ancient Greek history. Hopefully it’s a good balance between simple and flexible (and interesting in its own right).

Classical History I - Ancient Greece - ChronoDrome

Anyway, check it out! There are a few other timelines already posted, and hopefully more will go up in the coming months. The first part of the Roman history timeline is almost ready to go. Make an account, make some timelines of your own, or just start a new reading project. (The site is definitely better with an account, both for creators and for regular users. I find it very satisfying to watch timelines fill up with more and more entries marked as finished.) And let me know if you encounter any bugs or problems please. :)

The Five Stages of Grief - ChronoDrome

Thank you for your contribution, @discoursedrome, it made me laugh

mourning-again-in-america:

on the panama canal:

bunbunlittleone:

I love eye rolls and crossed eyes as much as the next fetishist, but this kind of trance face will always be my favorite. Just hazy blankness, no one home, unfocused with no fight left.

cadmium-free:

cadmium-free:

cadmium-free:

battling myself over the desire to reblog a post with full pussy on display but not wanting to tag it nsfw because tumblr is a cop about that tag but also not wanting to put a very graphic pornographic tea cup on everyone’s timeline just so i can tell a little story

i once went to a very fancy tea party hosted by a history professor at the end of my first semester in grad school. and when i went to get a cup of tea she was like NO NO NO i have a special cup for you, and handed me a teacup that when you poured the tea in it magnified incredibly explicit lesbian porn on the bottom. It wasn’t a lithoplane cup. I used to have the exact names for these cups, but this was years ago, and i’ve forgotten. INCREDIBLY fucked up object. i just saw a photo of one kinda like it on tumblr. i wish I had stolen it from this professor so badly, but tbh one win for the straight people being weird about me fucking women. thank u for the questionable gay pornography with my tea ma'am.

found a loophole and it’s that i will link you all to the post. the one i was served tea in was way harder to see but. yknow. same energy

Something a lot of cultural background prepared me for having to do some day that has never once come up is playing bridge.

Got a kitchen table & chairs, or at least nice wood folding ones I’ll be glad to have on hand in the garage when everything’s done.

Oh you know what, I bet some of why it’s been so slow going down creatine scoops lately is since I started maul smashing I’ve had such an energy hit for muscle building and baseline use of the new stuff it’s taking up most of the energy budget the recovery of aerobic generation was giving back.

Which means that if I calculate it out there’s a chance I’ll end up past “Slim” and into the “Thin” state, but with really built muscles, which is about where Hollywood leading men are these days.

…which is exactly the A-1 grade of bullshit we’ve come to expect here at Casa Kontextmaschine, so fuck it, sure. Sure.

…

…Karafuto. I guess Karafuto is “Casa Kontextmaschine”.

kontextmaschine:

Why were diners the idiomatic Greek-American restaurant? Was it taking a page from Jewish delis and Italian sandwich shops?

Was it Greek immigrant sailors with a background in galley cooking?

Or is it just like Cambodian donut places in LA, where even if a guy wanted to take you on as a successor and show you the ropes he probably speaks Khmer?

Why were diners the idiomatic Greek-American restaurant? Was it taking a page from Jewish delis and Italian sandwich shops?

Was it Greek immigrant sailors with a background in galley cooking?