aethersea:

teamstopfightingassholes:

feitanswife:

systlin:

ella-raene:

systlin:

beautifultoastdream:

systlin:

GUYS THEY FIGURED OUT THE ROMAN CONCRETE RECIPE THAT MAKES IT IMMUNE TO SEAWATER

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/mystery-of-2000-year-old-roman-concrete-solved-by-scientists/ar-BBDO5VC

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I KNOW RIGHT?!???

I can’t help but feel this is one of those things where we had actual documents saying “it was done with this and this”, and some old rich white guys looked at it and went “oh mirth, the ancients were so silly. They probably wrote this basic stuff down and the actual builders had Secret Techniques we need to Discover”

For a long time, archeologists didn’t know how greek women did their high-piled braids and hair. There was a word that translated to “needle” in the descriptions. They went, “seems like we’ll never know.” Then a hairdresser took a fucking needle (big needle) and did the fucking thing you do with needles, which is sew – and by sewing the braids into place, she replicated ancient styles.

The Egyptians had diagrams of construction steps for their pyramids. Archeologists went “oooh, ancient primitive people, how they do this?” LITERALLY MYTHBUSTERS OR THE OLD DISCOVERY CHANNEL or someone went “what if we did the thing the pictures said they did” AND GUESS FUCKING WHAT. GUESS FUCKING WHAT.

Also that thing with native Americans saying squirrels taught them how to get sap for maple syrup, and colonizers going “that’s a myth sweaty”

Sincerely, if the scientists had to do actual analysis like spectroscopy or whatever, kudos, and no flame. But swear to god, if all these years, we’ve had the recipes and there was just this fuckin institutional bias against just TRYING THE THING THEY SAID WOULD WORK, HELLFIRE AND DEMENTIA.

In this case, it was more they had roman writings saying what went into it but figured there was some secret because when they followed roman recipes it never turned out quite right. 

Because the sources left by Romans always just said to mix with water. Because, if you were a Roman??? Obviously you knew that you used seawater for cement. Duh. That’s so obvious that they never really bothered specifying that you use seawater to mix it, because it wasn’t necessary, everyone knew that. 

But then the empire fell, other empires rose and fell, time passed, and by the time we were trying to reconstruct the formula the ‘mix the dry ingredients with seawater’ trick had been forgotten, until chemical analysis finally figured it out again. 

It’s sort of like the land of Punt, a ally of Egypt that’s mentioned all the time, but we don’t actually know where it was located. Because it isn’t written down anywhere. Why would they write it down? It’s Punt. Everyone knew where Punt was back then. It’d be ridiculous to waste the ink and space to specify where it was, every child knows about Punt. 

3000 years later and we have no damned clue where it was, simply because at the time it was so blindingly obvious that it was never written down. 

So moral of story is be specific

I was thinking it was stupid that they didn’t specify seawater but then I had the thought that we don’t specify to use chicken eggs in baking because DUH so we just write eggs

2000 years in the future people are going to be making scrambled fish eggs and crying bc the ancient recipes make no sense

Things food snobs are wrong about

accentnz:

bogleech:

bogleech:

  • “Organic” isn’t better for you or for the environment. It actually means nothing of any significance at best and is sometimes even the more wasteful, more hazardous option.
  • A shitload of “natural” food including a lot of imported produce is grown and harvested through slave labor in inhumane conditions.
  • Pizza, fried chicken, french fries, fast food, candy bars and chips ARE nutritious. They are loaded with good things. Just because they have an abundance of excess fats and might not be healthy as a staple doesn’t mean they are “nutritionless” or that their calories are “empty.” Those are hokey buzzwords pushed by the people in charge of how much you pay for the alternatives.
  • Eating healthier costs more. Much more. Looking down on people for their reliance on cheaper food is extremely classist and expecting everyone to be able to live off fresh veggies and cage-free meats is insultingly unrealistic in the modern world.
  • “Processed” literally only means the food went through some kind of automated process. This can be literally the exact same thing a human being would have done to the food for it to be labeled “unprocessed.” Being processed does not make something less healthy.
  • Chemicals with long, scary names are part of nature. An apple is full of compounds you probably can’t pronounce. A shorter ingredients label only means they didn’t bother listing all 300 things the product is actually made of and HAS to be made of.
  • Preservatives, artificial flavors and other additives are not the devil. Most are harmless and in general they are part of the reason you haven’t already starved to death or died of a food borne illness.
  • MSG is not bad for you at all.
  • The fact that something might be made of “scrap” meats like pig snouts or chicken necks only means one thing: that we didn’t waste perfectly normal, edible meat.
  • I DON’T KNOW HOW I FORGOT THIS IN MY FIRST VERSION OF THIS POST BUT GMO’S ARE NOT DANGEROUS TO EAT. GMO’S ARE SAVING LIVES. YOU’VE ALREADY EATEN GMO’S BEFORE YOU EVEN KNEW THE TERM. IT’S FINE. EAT THEM.

So I’ve literally done this twice before and so have several other people but here are sources on all of these, most of them fairly recent academic studies or otherwise the most up-to-date I could find:

  • Organic food isn’t better for you: [1] [2] [3]
  • Tracing food industry slave labor: [1]
  • Healthier food is more expensive: [1] [2]
  • Saturated fats (i.e. “junk food”) still provide needed energy, aren’t as bad as people thought: [1] [2]
  • “Processed” isn’t synonymous with less healthy, because it means a lot of different things: [1]
  • “Chemicals” also means a lot of things and many food components are misunderstood by the general public: [1]
  • MSG is not harmful: [1] [2] [3]
  • GMO’s are not dangerous to eat: [400 sources collected here]

“Processed” always gets me, it’s like yeah even that delicious homemade salsa you brought to the party is processed – the moment you took a knife to the tomatoes it underwent processing

tumblunni:

vann-haal:

just-fic-me-up:

eliestela:

two-nipples-maybe-more:

vatupassi:

tindez:

saradominists:

dumbassrights:

dumbassrights:

dumbassrights:

dumbassrights:

@spanish speakers te amo feels weird to say??????

TE AMO! IS TOO! INTIMATE!! maybe if you say it quickly and in a jokey way its ok but in a serious talk??? it feels too much!!!!!!!

“i love you” is NOTHING compared to te amo. i love you feels like a kiss on the check and te amo feels like fucking marriage. 

#I have like a whole thing on saying te amo to anyone

YEA. i had a relationship with someone and she dropped the “te amo” super quicky and i was like…………”thats ok, thank you, but im gonna be honest w you….i’m not saying te amo until i really feel it” thats how serious it is. 

te amo IS very serious, very deep, very intimate. when you want to tell someone that you love them without it being massive, the term you want is te quiero

image

cant believe no one had contributed this

Accuarte AF.

“Te quiero” is the best alternative so we all do not succumb into a “te amo” anxiety.

Since we’re including other languages, any tips for Japanese learners?

Your friendly neighborhood bilingual here to help you out @just-fic-me-up

So idk if you can read hiragana so I’ll just use English letters. There are 4 ways to say you care about somebody in Japanese with increasing degrees of intimacy. Suki is like “I like sushi” type loose feeling. Also used for crushes or “I’d like to ask that person out.” Daisuki is literally “like a lot” and is used for “I love sushi” or “I really like this person” but tends to get translated as “I love you” which is pretty correct. Couples use it for each other

Next up is aishiteru and that’s. Hoo. Boy howdy. That’s te amo levels of intimate. You say that like before you propose, when you’re married, etc. It’s more like “I’m in love with you” and it’s very special. You won’t ever hear this used outside of very private moments between irl couples. I haven’t even seen it used in fiction honestly. And then there’s the big dog

The K word as my wife and I call it. He’s half Japanese and he has never said this to me despite us being literally married and we started dating my senior year of hs which was six and a half years ago. I’ve used this with him MAYBE thrice IF that often. I’ve never seen or heard it used literally ever is how special and intimate this phrase is. Not to totally and completely undersell this but it’s like a “once in a lifetime, the only person who could ever hold my heart” kind of intimate expression of love. It’s whispered on your deathbed to your lover of 65 years special. It’s koishiteru and you DO NOT use that word lightly if ever. It ties your soul directly to someone else’s with just a few sounds

But those are the tiers in Japanese. Go forth my friend and wield your newfound knowledge wisely

Im realizing how limited english is with only one word to cover all of that. No wonder its such an awkward language for translations!

You know that post about how it’s white people crying over Opportunity who don’t cry over black people being killed

For one thing. It’s really really easy to emotionally distance yourself from a death that doesn’t directly effect you because. “X died” like.. unless/until you go deeper into it.. it’s not.. as sad? Like there’s.. “x died” doesn’t get most people until/unless they read about what precisely happened and think about who is effected and how

Which is like.. why people, of all races, would be likely to cry more over a robot than a human death? I mean yes I see the hypocrisy there but. The story of Opportunity is.. it’s human. Sure, because we made it that way.. but. For a lot of people, it’s.. easy to.. “relate to” is the wrong phrase.. but understand. People don’t tend to cry as much over human deaths /unless they actually look into it/. And some people just.. like me.. don’t cry that easily over human deaths, in general?

Like rationally I know it’s sad. I love and miss, for example, my grandpa so, so much. I cry over it sometimes still even though he died years ago (actually I think almost exactly 3 years ago).. but I cried more over Opportunity. Of course, three years down the line, I’m not going to still occasionally cry over Opportunity, but..

Like.. idk. It just. I get the frustration in terms of like.. ignoring actual issues in favor of crying over a robot.. but if you think about it there are reasons other than being racist to do it. Idk if that’s good or bad but I guess I don’t really see emotions themselves as bad with rare exception

I think throwing up when I got to the rink and still feeling like absolute ass is a sign that maybe I was too sick to practice but no actually it’s just “everyone feels shitty at 5:30” yeah but typically it doesn’t feel like someone is drilling a hole in your stomach lol

sarapsys:

kirabook:

Dear people planning to move to pillowfort:

As someone not involved in the development of pillowfort but am a web developer, I think you should lower your expectations, but not for the reason you think.

Pillowfort is a baby. A newborn. A smol bab. If you were here during the early days of Tumblr, think of that. 

Pillowfort simply cannot be the immediate solution to your woes. It needs to be nurtured and cared for to become a mature and happy adult. 

If you want Pillowfort to work, they’ll need feedback, advice, bug reports, etc. This is a chance to make Pillowfort the Ao3 of Fanfiction.net. It’s not gonna happen overnight, you need to give it time and love and it’ll get there. 

If you don’t want to pay money to get into the beta, that’s ok. It will be open to the public soon enough and you won’t have to pay a dime. Their financial model moving forward sounds good (a subscription fee for super extra features), but even an Ao3 model would work swell for them probably. 

We’re living in an interesting time on the internet. Governments across the world are cracking down on content and yet community run websites are starting to thrive more and more. 

Tumblr once upon a time was what Pillowfort is today, but this time, let’s make sure Pillowfort can stay independent from mega corporations. 

yes this

most of the criticism i’ve seen of pf so far ultimately come back to this

is it an alright platform with a good community? yes. does it have a lot of potential? yes. does it have a lot of problems still being worked out? yes.  are the staff open and responsive? absolutely. do i recommend it? yes, if you’re willing to live in a house while it’s being built.

but it’s not a ready-made replacement for tumblr.  set your expectations accordingly.