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May. 23rd, 2013 @ 11:02 am from the "everything happens at once" files
Current Music: Peter McConnell - Los Angelitos
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  • Yesterday was my last day toiling for eBay Advertising (née shopping.com)
  • Today is our wedding anniversary; more importantly, however, it's captain_nesky's wedding day
  • I start my new job at MapR Technologies on Tuesday, riding side by side with palecur for the first time since the days of Best Internet Communications
Whee!

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ronebofh
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May. 22nd, 2013 @ 10:02 am Gout
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Fuck. Yesterday I thought I was in the clear after a weekend of wine tasting, but woke up this morning with an all-too-familiar pain in my right big toe. Wonder if I ate a trigger food or ingredient last night that contributed.
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evwhore
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May. 19th, 2013 @ 09:27 pm infernal combover
Current Music: Peter Gabriel - Mercy Street
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Don't get the Devil a hairpiece, or there'll be hell toupée.

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ronebofh
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May. 17th, 2013 @ 08:33 pm I can't think of *anything* wrong with this idea
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Moviegoers in Jefferson City, MO called 911 when someone walked in dressed in armor wielding a gun, but it turned out to be just an incredibly ill-advised publicity stunt:

many moviegoers at Goodrich Capital 8 Theatres were, understandably, frightened when hired cosplayers came, some of which were wearing what appeared to be assault gear and carrying rifles.  Another cosplayer entered the theater dressed as Robert Downey Jr.'s character, but it was the fake gun-toting individuals that led some audience members to call 911.
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evwhore
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May. 16th, 2013 @ 07:52 pm you can't write "theater" without "hater"
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Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" features a disco-era guitar riff over a New Wave milieu, which together end up feeling dated rather than retro, and inane lyrics (i can't decide whether "jejune" or "sophomoric" would be more apropos) sung by voices so off-key that they're a case example for why Autotune happens. I can see why y'all are so excited about it.

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ronebofh
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May. 15th, 2013 @ 10:18 pm Shout-out link dump
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Paging rcfox: Scientific Consensus On Anthropogenic Climate Change: "The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming -- 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing human-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW) [...] The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that Earth is warming because of human activity."

Paging schmengie: ( I am sooooo going to hellCollapse )
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evwhore
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May. 15th, 2013 @ 10:01 pm Neat concept
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xkcd_blag: Dictionary of Numbers

Phrases like "they called for a $21 billion budget cut" or "the probe will travel 60 billion miles" or "a 150,000-ton ship ran aground" don't mean very much to me on their own. Is that a large ship? Does 60 billion miles take you outside the Solar System? How much is $21 billion compared to the overall budget? [...]

A friend of mine, Glen Chiacchieri, has created a Chrome extension to help solve this problem: Dictionary of Numbers. It searches the text in your browser for quantities it understands and inserts contextual statements in brackets. It might turn the phrase "315 million people" into "315 million people [≈ the population of the United States]".

[...]

Dictionary of Numbers helpfully informs me that 300,000 acres is about the area of LA or Hong Kong.

[...]

The extension can even be surprisingly funny, like when it seems to be making an oblique suggestion for how to solve a problem -- e.g. "The telescope has been criticized for its budget of $200 million [≈ Mitt Romney net worth]." It can also come across as unexpectedly judgmental. Glen told me about complaint he got from a user: "I installed your extension and then forgot about it... until I logged into my bank account. Apparently my total balance is equal to the cost of a low-end bicycle. Thanks."
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evwhore
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May. 14th, 2013 @ 05:56 pm It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again
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Link dump:

via WWDTM, Nissan is developing a car interior that mimics the feel of human skin. Google for your choice of other links, this seems to have been in the news for a while. While it does sound incredibly creepy, apparently the qualities we most desire in terms of surface texture, resilience/response to pressure, etc., happen to be similar to skin-like qualities.

Why curling stones curl

Segment #2 of this week's Quirks & Quarks discusses using elephants as a modern-day proxy for dinosaurs in an experiment on metabolism in cold-blooded vs. hot-blooded animals. As part of this, the scientist had to develop an elephant rectal thermometer.

"... you can't just go to your local livestock/vet supply and buy an elephant rectal thermometer, so I built them, basically."

"What does an elephant rectal thermometer look like?"

"It's flexible tubing about 35 cm long, hooked to a fast-responding thermocouple thermometer... and a big container of lube."

"You must have raised some eyebrows at the hardware store..."

"... usually when someone walks up and asks if they can help me, I generally say 'I doubt it'"
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evwhore
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May. 12th, 2013 @ 02:08 pm Didn't really think about this at the time, but
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The new house is two stories (well, three counting the garage), which means when I'm about to get in bed I have to go downstairs to check that all the doors are locked and then go back up the stairs to sleep, pitting my OCD against my inherent laziness.
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evwhore
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